Between Shades of Gray

The train ride begins. A little girl with yellowish skin coughs up phlegm and blood on Jonas’s shirt, which Elena throws down the toilet hole in a feeble attempt to keep him healthy. On the third night, Janina wakes Lina to tell her that Liale has told her that the “yellow girl is dead” (250). Lina pulls Janina close to her and cuddles her back to sleep. The yellow skinned girl is, indeed, dead, and the next day the guards throw her body off the train. Her mother jumps down after her, and they shoot her dead. Later, Elena shares the food that Ulyushka gave her before they left with everyone, supplementing the meager nourishment of the buckets of gray slop. Janina asks the bald man about being Jewish and whether he knows about Hitler. The tall man, now called “the repeater,” keeps repeating his certainty that they are going to America.

After a week’s travelling, they stop at Makarov station. Everyone must disembark, but Elena is weak and stumbling. Kretzsky is there, demanding that they hurry. Elena sees him and says, “Nikolai” (255). They are herded into a large building where they sleep on top of their belongings. In the morning, while their mother is still asleep, Lina and Jonas talk about how Elena called Kretzsky “Nikolai,” and Jonas is upset. The NKVD give them mushroom soup and take them in groups to shower. Then they travel by truck to the Angara River, and the repeater again tries to convince them that they are being sent to America via the Bering Strait.

They stay at the Angara River for over a week, eating barley soup. Lina draws on scraps of paper, thinking about Andrius and hiding the scraps in the pages of her book. At night they build bonfires and sing Lithuanian songs. One day, Lina and her mother wade into the river, which upsets Jonas, who tells them to cover themselves because the NKVD are watching. Elena says the men would not find them attractive, but Jonas says that perhaps “Nikolai” finds her interesting. Elena asks him what he means, and he asks her how she knows Kretzsky’s name. She says that she asked him his name, and Lina wonders why she would bother, since he’s a “monster” (259). Elena disagrees, saying “‘We don’t know what he is’” (259). Lina responds with disdain and her mother grabs her arm, saying “‘He’s a boy. He’s just a boy’” (259). She then tells Jonas that she is not sleeping with him before she walks away from both of them.

They travel for weeks up the Angara River on barges, then by truck “through dense forests” (260), then again, after a two-week wait in Ust Kut, by barge on the River Lena. The repeater continues talking about going to America, and Lina remembers a conversation she had with Joana about the good American universities in a place called New England. Joana told her that New York was “quite fashionable” (261) and that her mother had an uncle in Pennsylvania. Lina was unimpressed, since she knew of no good American artists. She draws the bald man who tells her to tear the picture up. She refuses and asks him why he was deported, since he’s just a stamp collector. He tells her to mind her own business, and that she’ll never be a “famous artist” (262) because she’s not dead, yet. Janina disagrees, and then reminds them that her dolly is dead.

The barges arrive at Jakustk and the prisoners debate where they are going next. Lina sees Kretzsky disembark with his belongings and argue with the commander, who tells him to get back on the barge. They continue to sail. It is August, but they have crossed into the Arctic Circle so the temperature is dropping. They leave large groups of prisoners on deserted shores at Bulun and Stolbai, and then continue northward. In late August, they reach the mouth of the River Lena, at the Laptev Sea, where the temperatures are just above freezing. They disembark on an uninhabited shore. There are two buildings, but only the NKVD are allowed in them. The prisoners, who number over 300, are stranded there, without shelter, and told they will have to “finish the bakery and build a fish factory” before they can build any shelters for themselves. They spend ten hours unloading bricks, wood, kerosene, flour, and small fishing boats from the barge for the NKVD. As they finish, Janina announces that Liale says they’re not going to America. The bald man points to a sign: they are in Trofimovsk, near the North Pole.