Lene Kaaberbol - Death of a Nightingale

Please don’t let Semienova see what I’m thinking, prayed Olga quietly. She must not see what I’m thinking about Oxana … but now Semienova was on her way out and only turned in the doorway to say goodbye to Mother.

Mother didn’t look up, but suddenly some force inside her seemed to come alive again. “Damn you, Semienova. Damn you to hell—you and all your fine friends in the Party.” She wasn’t speaking very loudly. “They were my children, and now you won’t even let me see them. Not even in death can I get them back.”

Olga held her breath, and Semienova, who had been about to close the door behind her, hesitated. She opened it again, and an ice-cold blast of winter raced through the living room, even though Olga had thought it couldn’t possibly get any colder.

“Watch what you say,” said Semienova. She looked shaken and upset, and Olga understood her. Mother should not be scolding her like this, and Olga felt sorry for Semienova. “I like you and your daughter, but I can’t protect you from everything. Your ex-husband’s family has already been arrested and is on their way to Sorokivka. There will be a harsh reckoning with the kulaks and their anti-Soviet propaganda.”

It was no use. Mother couldn’t be stopped. Her eyes were black pieces of coal in her pale face. “None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for you,” she hissed. “You have blood on your hands, and it will never come off.”

MOTHER MADE ANeffort to stay upright for the funeral. She did not brush her own hair or change her clothes, but she washed Olga’s face and braided her hair, her touch gentle. Olga found her good dress, the one she had worn in the picture Semienova took; it was still pretty, although the sleeves were now too short. Oxana’s dress would have fit her better, but Mother had given it to Semienova so Oxana could wear it in the coffin. A waste. Wouldn’t it have been better for Olga to be dressed nicely for the funeral and for Oxana to be in the too-small dress rather than the other way around? The coffin was closed anyway.

Olga pictured Oxana lying there beneath the heavy lid with her hair spread out on the pillow. Kolja was to be buried in his new coat, although without his rifle. Even though Olga had searched and searched for it down by the stream, she hadn’t been able to find it.

Then they were off. Down the main street, where the snow had started to melt and turn to mud. Spring would come without Father and Kolja and Oxana, even though Olga had not thought it would be possible.

IN THE GRAVEYARD,a brass band was playing, and the pioneer division from Sorokivka had come. Some of the older children must have met Oxana, because they stood with tears in their eyes when Comrade Semienova stepped forward to speak. She looked wonderful in pants and a man’s jacket, her mouth painted red. She spoke of how Oxana had wished for freedom for the workers and the peasants, and how she had often talked about how unfair it was that the kulaks still had so much when others had so little. Too good for this world, Comrade Semienova concluded. The people’s nightingale had fallen from the sky, but her song would still sound in everyone’s hearts.

No one said anything about Kolja.

Natasha was pretty sure that she was going to die.

Not because the man next to her had said anything particular to her or had been deliberately threatening. It was more the way that the woman in the backseat and he spoke to each other—so quiet and relaxed, as if Natasha had already been taken care of and never would be a threat again.

“Did you speak to Nikolaij?” asked the man.

“No. No, I’ll wait to call until we get home again. He thinks I’m in Odessa. I couldn’t say …”

“No, I guess you couldn’t.” The man’s tone had become dry and distant.

“Jurij, you know it’s different with him. He doesn’t understand these things.”

“I know. Forget it, Mamo. It’ll work out. We can leave tonight if you want. Then we’ll be home by Tuesday morning at the latest. I need some proper food; I’m about to throw up from all the hot dog buns.” He laughed a brief, explosive laugh and slammed one hand flat against the steering wheel.

Even though he was probably the one who would be in charge of the actual execution, it was the old woman who made the hairs at the back of Natasha’s neck stand up. She made Natasha intensely uncomfortable, and Natasha couldn’t help turning her head every other second so she could at least see her out of the corner of her eye. The Witch noticed and sent her a brief, unreadable look before turning her head toward the side window.

“What are we looking for, Jurij?” she asked. Passing headlights and the white overhead flicker of the streetlamps illuminated her narrow face and made deep black shadows of the furrows around her mouth and eyes.

He shrugged. “A good place,” he said.

Natasha sank a little deeper into the seat. The blood kept collecting in her mouth, and she was tired of swallowing it. She considered how he might react if she spat it out, either on the bottom of the car or in a dramatic red splatter on the side window. She caught sight of herself in the side-view mirror, her ghostlike reflection flashing back at her each time they passed another streetlight. Her face looked battered and distorted. One of her eyes had almost disappeared in a swelling that seemed to grow with every glimpse. Strands of hair had come loose from her ponytail and were matted against her forehead, nose and swollen eyelid, but she was unable to push them aside or scrub away the bloody tracks under her nose. The man, Jurij, had bound her hands behind her back with thin plastic strips of the kind normally used to organize cables or attach plastic toys to brightly colored cardboard backgrounds.

Like a Barbie in a cardboard box, she thought. The face in the mirror, which was no longer really hers, crumpled and emitted an odd, sobbing snort, neither laughing nor crying. Little flecks of blood hit the man’s hand on the gearshift. He shot her an irritated look, reached across her and searched for something in the glove compartment. Finally he found a pack of wet wipes and wiped his hands, cursing softly, before once more turning his full attention to the road.

The traffic abruptly slowed down and then almost stopped. Up ahead Natasha could see blinking blue lights and men in yellow reflective vests. Some of them read POLICE.

She considered whether there was anything she could do. The nice Danish policemen probably wouldn’t be quite as nice now that she had attacked one of their own, but they wouldn’t kill her and bury her in “a good place.” But it was hopeless. She could neither wave nor knock on the window, at least not unless she began pounding her head against it. Jurij glanced at her and pulled aside his overcoat in a relaxed way so she could see the butt of a black pistol.

“First I’ll shoot you,” he said. “Then I’ll shoot them if necessary. But first you.”

She sat passive, her head bowed, while they passed the police car and the tow truck that was in the process of pulling two cars apart.

WHEN THE POLICEcame to say that Pavel was dead, she hadn’t been surprised. That is what happens when you don’t believe in the reality of wolves, she thought. Meanwhile, her body registered an inner breakdown, as if her spine had finally succumbed to some long-term pressure and collapsed. Her legs became numb, and she could no longer feel her face. Her hearing came and went, and she had to ask the policeman to repeat the message several times to catch it all. In a car. At Lake Didorovka. What had he been doing there?

“Did he come off the road?” she asked, because maybe there was still a chance to normalize his death into the comprehensible everyday universe. But no. Of course not. It was homicide. A “suspicious death,” they called it. That didn’t surprise her either.