Between Shades of Gray

That night, Lina falls asleep writing a letter to Joana but is awakened in the middle of the night by the NKVD and taken to the commander’s office, along with the rest of her group, with the exception of Andrius and his mother. The commander tells them they must all sign a document agreeing that they will join the collective farm, pay 200 rubles for each person, admit to being criminals and accept the accompanying sentence of twenty-five years of hard labor. Everyone is shocked. The gray-haired man, who turns out to be an attorney named Alexandras Lukas, advises them not to sign the paper, hypothesizing that they will not be killed, yet, given how much work needs to be done before winter. Instead, they ask Elena to tell Komorov that they are not yet ready to sign. Then, on the advice of Mr. Lukas, they sit down on the floor to wait quietly, for hours, to be dismissed. They are not allowed to sleep. Before Komorov leaves, putting Kretzsky in charge, he spits in Elena’s face.

At sunrise they are sent back to their shacks to get ready for another day of work. On their way to their work line-up, they see the body of a man staked to the outside of one of the office walls. He was killed for writing a letter to Lithuanian freedom fighters, which the NKVD intercepted. Its few crudely drawn lines make Lina realize she needs to hide her much more lifelike and expressive drawings. An angry and tired Kretzsky marches them to the pit they dug the day before, and Lina estimates that four men could lie down inside it. He instructs them to dig another pit beside it. They dig until their water arrives, along with Komorov, who commands them to lie down in the first pit they dug. Then he shoots into the pit and dirt rains down on them. After firing a couple of shots, Komorov begins kicking dirt into the pit, covering the women completely. He shoots his pistol a couple more times; laughing so much that he begins to cough uncontrollably and has to leave. Kretzsky helps them out of the pit, quietly offering Lina a hand up, and sets them to work digging again.

When Lina and her mother get back to Ulyushka’s shack, they do not tell Jonas about being buried in the pit. He has managed to get them three potatoes to add to their bread rations. While Elena goes to deliver food to Mr. Stalas, Lina hides her drawings inside the lining of her suitcase. Then she realizes that her mother did not take any food with her to give to Mr. Stalas, so she follows her and sees her talking to and taking a bundle from Andrius. Then she follows Andrius to an NKVD building. She sees Mrs. Arvydas inside, looking clean and well-fed, serving beverages to NKVD men sitting around a table. Lina concludes that Andrius and his mother are “working with the Soviets” (161).

Lina has a difficult time being thankful for the potato soup at dinner, as she is distracted by what she believes to be Andrius’ betrayal. When her mother mentions how risky it was for him to get them the bread they had with their soup, Lina scoffs, noting that he looks quite well-fed, just like the NKVD. That night, they are not woken up and the next day, Lina and her mother go to work in the beet fields, “using hoes without handles” (163). That evening, Lina refuses to take food to Mr. Stalas because she doesn’t want to see Andrius, but when Jonas offers to do it instead, Elena insists that Lina accompany him.

Outside Mr. Stalas’ shack, Andrius is waiting. Lina takes the beets inside, leaving Jonas with Andrius. She sees that her mother has given Mr. Stalas her gray coat to make his bed more comfortable. Mr. Stalas tells her that the Soviets don’t really care if they sign the paper; they’ll do what they’re doing to them no matter what, and Lina’s anger is useless and unbecoming. When Lina returns to Jonas, Andrius offers her salami, which she refuses, asking him where he got it. Jonas leaves them alone at Andrius’ request, and Lina and Andrius argue about why it is that he is so well-fed, well-rested, and so well-connected that he is able to procure extra food and cigarettes. She accuses him of spying on them. He becomes angry when she observes that his mother does not have to work in the dirt like hers, telling Lina that it’s because the NKVD threatened to kill him if his mother didn’t sleep with them. He asks her how she thinks his father would feel if he knew, how his mother must feel sleeping with “the men who murdered her husband” (165), and calls Lina a “spoiled kid” (165) before 

That night, as Lina tosses and turns, unable to sleep, her mother tells her that Andrius is “trying” (166) and that “kindness can be delivered in a clumsy way” (166), comparing Andrius to her own husband, who “fell out of an oak tree” (166) the first time he tried to talk to her. Lina cries, thinking about her father and her fight with Andrius. As she finally falls asleep, she recalls the time she went with Joana to meet her sweetheart and his younger brother, whom Lina had met once before and was excited to see again. As they approached the boys, Lina clutching the drawing she made of her crush, she saw him with his arm around another girl, sharing an ice cream cone. She told Joana and her boyfriend that she forgot something and ran away, stopping only to tear up the portrait and throw it in the trashcan.