Death of a Nightingale Read Online Free Page B

bad conscience. Mother could keep her rye bread, pickles and thyme tea today, and Oxana could stare at her as sourly as she liked. Olga took another piece.
    “You’re such a baby,” Oxana said, outraged. “I’m waiting for Father.”
    Olga stuck out her tongue and kicked at Oxana under the table, but for once Mother didn’t say anything. She had taken a piece of melon herself, bending her head over the table and carefully spitting out the black, mature seeds onto a piece of newspaper to be dried and saved for next year’s crop. Then she pushed the plate of pickles toward Oxana. “Eat.”
    Oxana shook her head and glanced up the road.
    Something was wrong. Olga could feel it all the way in the pit of her stomach. A kind of dark energy shone out of Mother now. Itwas like the wind that suddenly arrived and stirred up the dust in the road before a thundershower. From the Pretrenkos’ house on the other side of the cabbage patch, Olga could hear laughter and Vladimir shouting something or other at Jana. Other than that, everything was quiet in the oppressive afternoon heat.
    “Do you want to spoil the food?” Mother asked. She was pale with anger now. “Eat, or I guarantee that you will go to bed without food. Your father is drinking his tea someplace else today.”
    Oxana looked frightened. Mother rarely got angry, but when she did, she sometimes struck them. Mother’s hands were hard and dry as wood. Now she got up abruptly and began shoving the food off the table with angry gestures. Kolja reached out fast, grabbed two more pieces of melon and raced down to the bottom of the garden with his prize. Olga remained petrified, looking at her mother. A kind of hidden knowledge began to bubble up to the surface.
    The arguments had woken her in the night several times in the first months of spring. When Mother and Father argued, they whispered instead of shouting, so that it sounded like an excited hissing in the dark. Mother had never hidden the fact that she would have preferred to stay in Kharkiv, where Father had been a factory manager and a highly respected member of the Party. Even in the great hunger year, they had had bread and also a little sugar, salt and vegetables. To return to the village was suicide, she had said, but even though she cried, Father insisted.
    It was the Party that had asked him to take over the management of the collective because he was known in the village and had a bit of experience with farming from his boyhood. And the Party was greater than Mother’s tears, that much Olga knew. Father loved his Party and his country and would do everything possible to ensure that everyone would be better off. He would build a better future with his own hands. Olga had been on Mother’s side, but of course Oxana had beenon Father’s, as she always was. And he was the one who got what he wanted in the end. Mother had dried her eyes, packed their things in silence and had followed him to the village where they had both grown up.
    They had arrived in Mykolayevka in the fall right after the harvest, and Olga had hated the place instantly. Half the village’s houses stood empty, with rattling shutters and broken planks and beams. Most of the trees along the main street had been chopped down, and the few that were left had been stripped of their bark and were as dead as the houses around them. Just two poplars remained by the house of the village soviet, their silver leaves rustling in the wind. The few people in the street were thin and starved and dressed in layer upon layer of rags and coats full of holes. Even Father had looked frightened, Olga thought, but then he said that this year, the harvest was already safe. The horror stories of the great hunger year would soon be only that: stories. They would see; it would soon get better. Oxana believed him, but Olga’s stomach hurt, and she tried to hide her face against Mother’s chest.
    The first winter had been just as terrible as Mother had feared. Even