Motherland Read online

  For Babchya— You gave me the story of your life

  so that I could change the course of my own.

  And to the immigrants that are searching for a place on this earth: may you always know that your stories are our music; without you, our hearts would never learn how to dance.

  MOTHERLAND

  MOTHERLAND

  Tetyana Denford

  2020

  This is a work of fiction, loosely based on factual events.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used to explain real events with some fictitious elements.

  Motherland. Copyright © 2020 Tetyana Denford

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, transmitted, or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher.

  First Printing: 2020

  Tetyana Denford

  [email protected]

  New York, NY

  http://www.tetyanadenford.com/

  http://www.instagram.com/tetyanawrites

  During and after the Second World War,

  millions of Eastern Europeans migrated

  to New York,England, and Australia,

  to start new lives.

  Many lost entire families along the way

  and never saw them again.

  Melbourne, 1952

  On a cool afternoon in April on a quiet street, Julia kept her hands in the pockets of her brown threadbare coat and stared at the house. It sat politely at the end of a concrete path, set off from the road, with a sturdy white wood porch that wrapped around the front like a smile. The lamplight in the windows glowed warmly against the darkening haze of the afternoon, and well-dressed people gathered inside.

  She straightened her shoulders. In her fingers she held a folded piece of paper, her heart beating in her ears, her breath as thin as the breeze that blew across her legs. She was here now; she couldn't turn back until she’d seen them— it would take her two and a half hours to get back home, and her bus would leave soon. Love takes courage her mother used to say to her.

  She walked slowly to the door, happy conversations and the smells of a roast dinner hovered in the air as she approached. She knocked once. Then twice. And looked down at her shoes; on the pristine white porch, they looked even more battered than usual.

  A woman appeared, dressed in a green silk blouse and full skirt. ‘Yes?’ The pearls at her ears shone at the edges of her icy blonde hair.

  Julia smoothed her dark hair and tucked it behind her ears, revealing a small scar on her jaw. ‘Hello. I— ‘she faltered, and then cleared her throat. ‘Are you Mrs. Douglas?’

  ‘I’m Irene, yes, and you are...?’

  ‘I’m...’ she started and shook her head. Her name wouldn’t matter. Julia reached into her pocket and retrieved the folded paper, showing it to her. ‘I wanted to give you this.’ Her hands were shaking.

  Irene looked at it quizzically, then back at Julia. ‘What is this?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I just… I want to… ‘tears filled her eyes as she rose on her tiptoes to see over into the hallway, craning her neck forward and moving closer.

  Irene suddenly understood and moved to block her view. ‘You can’t be here,’ she said coolly.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How did you find this address?’

  Julia searched this woman’s face. ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘None of this was my fault. Please, just listen—’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to say —’

  ‘I was...’ Julia interrupted, and then she heard children’s laughter echoing in the house. It was their laughter, as bright as the sun. Desperation flashed across her eyes.

  ‘I can’t have you do this,’ the woman’s heels clicked as she moved back. ‘I don’t want to have to call the police. Please leave.’

  Julia nodded, tears spilling. ‘I understand.’ And then, knowing it was her last chance, she suddenly lurched forward, grabbing Irene’s soft hand in her own calloused one, crushing the paper into it. ‘Just,’ she pleaded, her eyes shining with sadness. ‘Please give this to them. Keep it for them. Maybe one day…’

  Irene extracted her hand, the paper inside it, it and retreated into the hallway, gripping the door handle. She attempted a smile, but her mouth stiffened. ‘You have to leave,’ she said a final time before closing the door.

  The shadow of Julia’s body against the inlaid glass dissipated, little by little, and vanished.

  Irene turned the latch and walked down the hallway, slipping the paper into the pocket of her skirt, its rough texture in stark contrast to the smooth cotton. She passed the kitchen and found the dining room, the table filled with children wearing colorful masks, playing games.

  One of them, a little boy with scarlet cheeks playfully elbowing his sister, smiled as a cake, alight with candles, was brought to the table. She placed a hand on his dark mop of hair and kissed his cheek as she watched both their faces lean forward towards the flames to blow them out.

  ‘Happy Birthday, my loves.’

  Later that evening, the children slept heavily, and the remaining, sweet conversations bubbled out through the dining room, then down the hallway, dissipating quietly up the stairs.

  Gold hats littered the polished floor, some with broken elastic straps, and the smell of candles and sugar wafted from the kitchen, mingling with the lilies of Irene’s perfume. Voices grew louder as guests prepared to leave, shrugging into fur-trimmed coats and hats, offering handshakes and saying their goodbyes to Bill, politely complaining about how the chilly Australian winter seemed never-ending.

  Pale-colored balloons happily bumped against one another as people shifted their feet. Irene had tied each balloon herself, with a long, thin gold ribbon, securing a note on the end of each: Happy Birthday said one. You are 4 today! said another. Mummy and Daddy love you both.

  In the square, cream-walled sitting room where the fireplace popped and hissed underneath the mahogany mantle, a row of cards had been carefully erected on the antique sideboard beside, next to the family photos, awards, and heirlooms. Across from the fireplace was a cream fleur-de-lis sofa with oak end tables on either side, and Irene sat, stocking feet tucked under her, two unopened envelopes in her hand.

  The first one was from Auntie Sylvia; the other was from Bill’s brother Joe. She placed them on her lap and withdrew the paper from her pocket. It was yellowed, as if it had traveled in a storm.

  She let the words unravel in front of her.

  My babies-

  How I miss you. I am sorry I can’t be with you, but you must be so happy, with so many gifts to open. The other day, I found the two waxflowers that you pressed into my book for my birthday so long ago, and it made me think of you. Do you remember that day? They have their color still— pale pink and white. They remind me of your faces.

  I won’t be able to write for a while again, but when I can, I will try, and tell you more. Just remember I love you very much.

  Mama

  Out in the hallway, the heavy sound of wood as the door closed, a crack in the silence. She fed the letter back into her pocket.

  ‘Well, that’s the last of ‘em.’ Bill looked at his reflection in the glass inlay. He was tired, all of his 48 years now gathered in the stoop of his shoulders and the hollow of his cheeks.

  Approaching the sitting room, he saw his wife, motionless, staring down at her lap. The room was warm, but felt oddly hollow and expectant: like the pause before a piece of music.

  He cleared his throat. ‘So, sweetheart, what’d you think? Was pretty nice, having a few people around. Nice to celebrate. You did really well.’

  ‘Yes.’


  ‘Yes, you liked being a hostess?’ He leaned against the doorframe.

  ‘Sure, that’s part of it, I guess. It was a great evening,’ Irene nodded and looked up, her eyes focusing through him, distant. ‘Thank you, darling.’ She rested her hands on top of the cards on her lap.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Just a bit emotional about the whole thing, I guess. I’d be grateful for a drink though.’

  ‘Well, I have an idea. How about— ‘

  ‘Now, please? Thank you.’ She smiled sweetly.

  He winked, and bowed exaggeratedly, a sandy tuft of hair falling over his eyes. ‘Sure, sweetheart. Can do. Be right back.’

  As he disappeared past the doorframe, she stood up—a couple smoothly diverging into separate rooms— and delicately padded across the room, cards at her fingertips. She carefully placed Auntie Sylvia and Uncle Joe on the sideboard next to the other sentiments of birthday wishes. Four years, she thought gratefully, despite being wary of old wounds.

  She turned to look towards the hallway; the balloons were already deflating. She placed her hand in her pocket and withdrew the letter.

  And then she walked toward the fire.

  I’m kissing you now — across the gap of a thousand years.

  – Marina Tsvetayeva

  Part I

  Ukraine to Germany

  1940-1946

  1

  Ukraine, 1940

  The wheels of the cart thrummed along the ground, a black silhouette moving across the slate skies, the figure of Julia’s sister cut out in black, holding the reigns. They were now hours away from what they had left behind, the unknown ahead of them. The horse followed a steady pace through the tracks of the ones that had gone before them already, and Julia watched, curled under a blanket, as the fading stars moved through the small opening in the canvas that covered her. Night was safest for this type of journey.

  She held her coat to her body, the wool too thin for the raw spring cold. She still felt the lingering warmth of her mother’s arms around her, and the rosary she had given her lay delicately around her neck.

  ‘Maria?’ she called to her sister softly as she clicked the horses onward. ‘Can’t we just turn back?’

  ‘Keep your voice down.’

  ‘But it’s so early- no one will hear us.’

  ‘Russians have taken over the entire village practically, they’ll be looking for anyone they can get their hands on, now that they’ve killed our brothers.’ Maria hissed.

  Julia sighed exasperatedly.

  Maria shrugged. ‘Maybe I just don’t want to hear your doubts right now. I have enough of my own.’

  Julia surrendered to the dark, the memory of what she’d left behind leaving a hollow pain in her chest. They were children abandoning their childhoods, at the mercy of a world they had no control over.

  Like a receding tide, it had all shifted suddenly under their feet: the humble farm that sat comfortably in the clean still air, beside the rows of pear and apple trees that stretched across to the river, gilded in the pink of an early morning sun and giving off a soft scent on the breeze; the cows and horses huddled in clouds of breath, standing in silhouette against the wheat fields beyond. This was the hand on her back, and it was being taken away, and she faced her life without direction now. The ashes of burning cities would settle there soon, and the home where Julia had lived for 17 years would be no longer.

  The sisters had walked unsteadily from school those final days, before it was closed and students were evacuated by the Russian police: families were hunted, forced out onto the streets holding their belongings in their arms; children clinging to their siblings, frightened eyes bearing silent witness in shop windows. Homes were emptied and strange new tenants took possession, most of them soldiers. Curfews were installed. Some tried to run, and were shot in warning, cries haunting the streets. Neighbors began to distrust each other’s alliances, and it affected them all, like an illness, from one family to the next, hushed dinners and secret meetings spent behind closed doors, words of prayer and clasped hands, mourning dead sons and brothers that had had no proper funerals. Thatched farmhouses with kerosene lamps filling small windows with a timid glow in the lush, dark valleys. It was only a matter of time for it all to reach Julia and her family, creeping towards the edges of the farmland that they used to call home. And even still, the uniqueness in Julia was that she found a place in her heart for the beauty in the melancholy, like lullabies sung in minor keys. It was self-preservation.

  Julia propped her head onto her duffle, the chalk of her name leaving a dusting of white on her shoulder. Just yesterday morning, she had been singing a beautiful song, and she had been unafraid. Just yesterday afternoon they had learned of their brothers’ deaths.

  Her eyes stung, and she hummed softly, the clattering of the wheels muffling the melody as she let a memory surround her. Just yesterday, she had been home, in a room where her voice echoed happily. It felt like a lifetime had passed since then.

  The cold spring sun streamed through Julia’s bedroom window that morning, casting shadow branches on the wood floor. Her voice trilled and meandered in the maudlin tones of the song that her mother and grandmother had taught her, her pale, delicate fingers threaded buttons through the holes in the shirt that was now too small over her teenage body, and her skirts moved with her hips, in awkward rhythm.

  ‘Mama?’ she called out, her dark hair trailing over her brow and down her shoulders in molasses waves. She pulled her tights over her bony knees and fastened the shirt that was now a little tight over her breasts. Her body was tall and strong, womanly but also still coltish, in the sharp angles of her elbows and knees.

  ‘Yes, little mouse?’ Anna replied warmly.

  ‘Are you making tea? Is Papa out already?’ She looked out through the window in her room for him, and thought she saw his silhouette in the distance. ‘He’s out, I can see him,’ she murmured to herself, her breath moistening the glass as she plaited her thick hair.

  Her father always disappeared early, before everyone else, and not entirely because he was grieving the loss of his sons. It was because it was the calm he craved: getting out of bed as the sun was still rising, lacing his boots and walking outside into the thin light, hearing the animals in their pens shift and rustle and breathe in jittery bursts. The farmhouse and the surrounding twenty acres of farmland was given to him by his father when Mikola was 19, shortly before his death: a large, white walled house with worn-wood framed windows and a thatched roof hovering thickly over six rooms within. It sat peacefully on acres of lush green, neatly folded within the valleys on the outskirts of western Ukraine, at the base of the Karpaty mountains. He and Anna had married shortly thereafter, and their five children arrived later than they had anticipated, when Anna had assumed it wasn’t in the cards for her to have any children.

  In the spring the smell of crocus and mineral earth filled every breath, mixed with wet hides and animal breath. The rich, dark land, the chernozem-- once so proud and large, now whittled away by a famine and war-- spread generously across slightly obstructed southern views to the river, a small orchard towards the back of the house, and animals that constantly moved in it and around it like a hum: there were small families of cows, twenty sheep, a clutch of hens, a handful of shaggy stallions, a few mares, three dogs, and geese. The air smelled of wet hides and manure and grass. On days where the temperature was warm enough to lie heavy on their skins— and if the wind was attentive to the groves— the air tasted of rain and strawberries.

  The crops were meager now, though they were so plentiful long ago. After the great starvation, the Holodomor, the family gave everything they had: vegetables sprinkled in fresh soil, fresh milk, wild blackberries, sweaty fat plums and sticky pears. Now, they lived on what they had stored, and the food cards that they were allowed as part of the occupation. Police checked on them regularly, so they had to be careful.

  Julia strode into the kitchen and ran her han
ds over the heavy wooden table beside her mother, her palms feeling the soft grain of it. The kitchen was warm, open, windows looking out to the fields, decorated with red-embroidered curtains. There was no food set out yet, and she was hungry, and her mouth watered for sugar, and preserves, and sausage. She could imagine it, taste it. Julia reached for the oven, and her mother, without turning around, slapped her hand away.

  ‘Chekai.’ Wait. ‘It’s not ready yet.’ Anna crouched in front of the stove, hovering in impatience, and then moving again, keeping busy. The flesh of her arms vibrated as she kneaded dough for a batch of pyrohy, cracking fresh eggs into it, glistening like little suns. Her wiry, greying hair was scraped back off her face to reveal a strong jaw, dark blue eyes and creased, milky skin. Her face had a weariness to it, but her eyes always shone like stars.

  The heavy smell of butter and onions dominated the kitchen in a cloud of acidic sweetness. ‘Breakfast after your chores,’ she groaned. Her back suffered often. ‘Your sister will help later, but right now there is only you and your father and I, so we have to work harder.’ There was sadness in her voice, as there had been for months. She wiped the table in front of her, clearing a path in the flour to make more dough.

  ‘How is Maria?’ Julia walked across the room to get her coat and glanced down at the small closed door across from her own bedroom. Maria had been ill of late, an occurrence in her life that had been common since she was little, and a dry cough that had become almost a pattern of her speech. She was slight. Pale. Her body was always fighting to remain strong. ‘Is she still asleep?’

  ‘Yes. She needs her rest.’

  Julia held her coat in her hands. ‘It has always been this way. Seems as if she has been ill forever.’