Marina Cramer - Roads

The road project involved clearing debris from a section that had been heavily bombed. “Throw the loose stuff into the craters and pack dirt on top,” Evans instructed. “Pack it good. We won’t be paving here anytime soon.”

They were issued a pass and permitted to work without supervision. “I wonder why.” Filip leaned on his shovel and brushed the sweat out of his eyes.

“Who wants to watch a couple of men shovel rocks into a pit?” Ilya straightened, stretching his back. “They have their hands full with those prisoners.”

After another hour or so they sat down in the shade of an old oak. Ilya rolled a cigarette. A squirrel chattered overhead. Ilya craned his neck in time to see it disappear into a hole in the trunk, with an angry flick of its puffed-out tail, its mouth full of leaves and twigs. Nesting , he thought. Making a home.

“I wonder where our women are,” he said. He coughed and blew a stream of smoke into the clear May air. “Don’t you want to know? To see your child?”

“Of course I want to know,” Filip answered with half-closed eyes. “Pass me the tobacco. I’m out of American smokes.”

They smoked a while in silence, the squirrel, resigned to their intrusive presence, going on about its business overhead. Filip took a chocolate bar out of his pocket, took a bite.

“I heard the Americans talking the other day, through an open window. I couldn’t understand everything, but it sounded like they don’t know what to do with us.”

“What did they say?” Ilya waved his hand, refusing the last of the treat his son-in-law belatedly offered to share.

“Something like ‘We’re supposed to start sending them back, but their papers are a mess. I can’t figure out who goes where.’”

“What else?”

“One said, ‘These ROA guys, you know they’re DOA. They won’t get a hero’s welcome.’ And the other one said, ‘Stupid bastards. Why do they keep coming back?’”

“What does DOA mean?”

“I asked a soldier later. It means ‘dead when you get there.’”

It couldn’t be more obvious. If the Americans started following orders to the letter, the repatriation would begin. It wouldn’t matter what anyone’s papers said; there was no guarantee their stateless status would protect them. Sergeant Evans had given them a clear chance to get away, and they had nearly squandered it.

Ilya stood up. “Get your things together, Filip. We’re leaving.”

“What, now? But we haven’t finished. It’s still early—”

“Not the road. The camp. Tomorrow morning.”

In the morning, just after breakfast, they simply walked away. Outside the gate they met Anneliese. She pedaled slowly, her basket balanced on the handlebars. Her knowing glance took in the rucksack Ilya carried, but she said nothing, pausing to follow them with her eyes before entering the compound to deliver the laundry.

Once they put the camp behind them and it was clear there would be no pursuit, the men picked up the pace, moving into the trees when the sun rose higher in the sky.

“Good thing we’re in the American sector.” Ilya shifted the rucksack to his other shoulder. “I’ve heard the British are sending all ROA back to the Soviet Union, even if they were only auxiliaries or sympathizers.”

“Why? Aren’t we all refugees? My feet hurt. Can we stop now?”

Ilya ignored his son-in-law’s complaint. “They see us as enemy combatants.”

“Combatants? That’s ridiculous. The Allies were never our enemies.” And I never wanted anything to do with this stupid idea. I never wanted to fight anyone.

“The British are a cold people, logical. They can’t see how anyone wearing a German uniform can be anything but the enemy. Americans are more practical. They can use our hands to help rebuild the country they destroyed.”

“So why did they let us go? The sentry must have seen us.” Filip slowed down to demonstrate his growing fatigue.

“They are not disciplined. Do you remember how they rolled into camp, handing out chocolate, laughing and waving? Their people feel secure between the oceans, they know nothing of living with war or the harsh realities of military occupation.”

Filip sat down defiantly on a fallen tree trunk. “Where are we, anyway?”

“South of Berlin, southwest of Dresden.” Ilya swung the rucksack to the ground and rubbed his shoulder where the canvas strap had bitten into the cloth of his coat.

“I know that.” Did the old man think him stupid? “But where exactly are we going?”

“To find my wife, and yours.” Ilya rested against a boulder, drank deeply from his water flask.

“Where? How?” Filip’s voice rose in exasperation. “Who will help us? The Germans hate us because we’re Russians. The Russians see us as traitors. So we can’t go back, and we can’t stay here. We left our passports and working papers, false though they are, at the American camp. So we can’t leave the country, either.” He stopped ranting and turned his face away. “And don’t say, ‘God will help us.’”

“We must keep moving,” Ilya said with conviction. “There are others like us, many others. When we find them, we will find our strength, and get information about our family, too, I’m certain.” He leaned the rucksack in Filip’s direction. “You take this for a while.”

Filip winced when the frayed strap settled onto his shoulder. “What did you put in here to make it so damn heavy?”

“My toolbox. A rusty hatchet head the Americans threw away; we can easily make a new handle for it. The boots you won in last week’s card game. A little food. Extra underclothes and socks. What we don’t have, and need, is a change of clothes.”

Filip grunted. He kept a few paces behind Ilya on the forested path, walking parallel to the road. He knew the toolbox alone made up most of the weight. It was made of wood panels several centimeters thick, filled with awls and files and chisels, flat polished disks of ivory and horn ready for carving, cutters and pliers and spools of wire.

It was a mystery to Filip how the old man had managed to hold on to his precious box since leaving Yalta. Time and again, it had been confiscated by guards and camp officials, only to reappear in his possession a day or two later with no explanation. Even in the pandemonium of Dresden, Ilya had refused to leave his toolbox with the piles of carefully labeled luggage on the railroad platform, as if he knew it would only be safe in his own hands, like a cherished child.

THE OLD MAN was still sleeping when Filip got back. The sun was already high in the sky, the walls of the dilapidated shed pierced by its rays. Filip hated sheltering like this, moving with the stealth of escaped criminals, hiding in barns and outbuildings, scrounging for food, sleeping, as often as not, in the woods. But we are criminals , he thought grimly. Turncoats and traitors. And now Ilya was sick, very sick, Filip guessed, looking at the face and neck flushed with fever, the dull, sweat-soaked hair. He had never known his father-in-law to sleep so late.

At home, in Yalta, Ilya was always up at first light, bent over his worktable, tapping and scraping at one of his brooches before leaving for his job at the shipping office or the market, depending on the day of the week. This steadfast industriousness, along with the innate goodness of the man, the quiet, unswerving moral certitude, was what Filip found unspeakably irritating.

Filip would lie in bed, listening to Ilya’s and Ksenia’s voices in the kitchen, his a low, calming counterpoint to her higher, more agitated tone. He would wait for them to finish their breakfast tea, consciously avoiding the silent reproach he was sure he saw in Ilya’s eyes, evading, too, the unspoken questions about his own lack of occupation or thought about his future.