A hundred kilometres from occupied Kiev, lost in the snowdrifts and evergreen pines, a freight train crawled through the Ukrainian countryside, carrying Lisa Smirnova to a certain death. As she huddled in the corner, feet numb and hands trembling, she could feel other bodies pressing into her with every motion of the train, enveloping her in a putrid cloud of sweat, urine and worse. Her face damp with tears, she thought of her family, who would never know what had happened to her. She thought of her life before the war, of sunshine and happiness, gone without a trace.
But most of all, she thought of a small sandwich she had left on the kitchen table of her communal apartment that morning. She had prepared the sandwich lovingly out of some stale bread and a smear of butter she’d managed to find at the market. Having forgotten what butter looked, smelt and tasted like after a year and a half of occupation, she had been more than happy to part with the silver bracelet her father had given to her for her eighteenth birthday just to hold the tiny white ball in her hands.
To Lisa, it was more than dinner for one night. The butter was a sign. God had sent this miracle her way to tell her she no longer had anything to fear.But, of course, there was plenty to fear and now the sandwich remained in the kitchen in plain sight of her neighbours. How long before someone noticed it and claimed it for their own? Not that it mattered, because Lisa wasn’t coming back. As she stared into darkness that was alive with sound – groans, sobs and occasional laughter – she berated herself for being so short-sighted.
She should have devoured the butter right there, at the market, instead of taking it home and trying to pretend she was a regular girl living a regular life in a place that hadn’t been twisted and torn by Hitler’s Army Group South. At the very least, she should have hidden the sandwich in her pocket when she heard the hated Nazis knocking on the door of the apartment she shared with five other people, young and afraid, just like herself.
Had she done that, she wouldn’t be so mind-numbingly hungry right now. Everything looked different on a full stomach. Maybe if she’d eaten the sandwich, the future wouldn’t appear so grim to Lisa…
Leave a Reply