Waiting for Stalin to Die

She placed the opaque sleeve of wax paper on the table, unwrapping the plotka with reverence and care. Offering it in turn, she watched everyone break off a piece. Each person then offered his piece to another. They smiled with respect and good feeling. And watching the shared pieces growing ever smaller, Vytas felt the cohesion of family and tradition.

Part way through the meal, the phone rang.

“Don’t answer it,” Danguole said. ”It’ll just be the hospital. They can leave us alone for once.”

“They might need me.”

“And what about your own family?”

“What about the sick person who can’t be at home with his family on Christmas Eve?”

“What has that got to do with me?”

He decided that he would go even if it wasn’t necessary.

A woman had given birth in a taxi. She was running a slight fever. Could the doctor see her? He said he would come right away.

“Go,” his mother said. “You are needed. We’ll still be here when you come back.”

“We’ll see about that,” Danguole snapped.

“And where will you be?” Ona said. “Sulking in the bedroom? Go then. When you want to come back, there might be no room for you. Be careful what you wish for, my girl.”

Danguole turned away, sour and silent.

Vytas could stand no more. He got up. But the words stuck to him. What about your own family? He had no answer.

The night was cold and dark, the crisp snow crunching underfoot. Walking along the empty street to his car, he passed lit houses filled with families. They were celebrating closeness. He didn’t mind. Alone in the silent night, thinking of Lydia, he found it beautiful.

The hospital was busy with Christmas Eve crises. He attended the young woman who had given birth. He checked on his other patients. He spent the night on duty. He didn’t stop working. Nor did he wish to.

In the early morning, he looked in again on the new mother. Watching her sleep, he saw the flushed skin, the damp hairline lying dark along forehead, the half open mouth, the calm breathing after danger had passed. She opened her eyes with a groggy smile. She reached out a grateful hand. And grasping the living warmth, he held on.

Where are you, Lidia? Where are you, my love? Everywhere. Nowhere. Gone.

MARYTE

TORONTO 1950

When the commandant first came to her, she would not accept him. She wanted to bargain, to get something in return, something which mattered little to him but meant life-and-death to her. He was a gentleman and would not press. And eventually she would have to become his. But first she would negotiate safe passage for her brother.

Dobilas was not right in the mind. An idiot. The Nazis were shooting idiots.

What about you? the commandant had asked one night in bed, propped up on one elbow and looking down at this serious woman who seemed to care so little about herself.

Please. Safe passage for my brother.

But who will take care of you?

With the brother gone, the sister would lie heavy on the commandant’s hands. And there were so many obliging women these days, refugees, needy and pretty, begging to be chosen. He was not unkind, but he knew himself well. He would tire of her. He promised to arrange passage for brother and sister both.

She had pressed her face against his chest, hiding genuine tears.

Chapter 1

Maryte hurried down Gore Vale Avenue, hunching her shoulders against the heavy snow. Moving between banks piled high on either side, she reached Queen Street. She turned right. She passed Shaw, Crawford, and Ossington. And approaching the mental hospital at 999 Queen she thought how lucky she was to be able to walk to work.

The street was an empty corridor filled with still-falling snow, a white world in which not even streetcars ran. Passing through a city brought to a standstill, she moved through silence. The peacefulness was comforting. It was like treasure. Ahead, the blurred yellow lights of the hospital beckoned.

She worked in the laundry, lifting heavy wet sheets out of washing machines into carts. Steadying the waterlogged mounds with one hand, she would push the rattling carts across the linoleum floor to the dryers. Sometimes the unwieldy mounds slithered to the floor. They had to be washed again. And picking them up, she was glad of the work after the listless life in the DP camp, even in such a sad place as this.

She would deliver the clean sheets, wheeling her trolley through to the wards. Moving along the hallways, she would see women muttering in front of walls, men shuffling in slippers, their half-open, green and grey striped bathrobes tied with a loose cord, their hairy legs naked. Vargšai, she thought. Poor souls. And thinking of her brother living at home with her, she knew these wretches to be worse off.

They had a rented room on the second floor of a house on Gore Vale Avenue. Returning home at the end of her shift, she would turn on the veranda to look at the winter park. Snow swirled across the white expanse of open ground in which earth and sky merged. A dull sun hung behind a distant trellis of black trees. And resting her gloved hands on the railing, her legs shielded by white panels with a raised diamond of green in the centre, she thought of tundra, bitter, empty and endless.

It could be Siberia, she thought. But it wasn’t. It was Canada. And they were safe.

Dobilas would spend the day in their room, waiting for her to come home. While barley soup bubbled on the stove, he would lay out two bowls and two spoons on a table covered with a red checked cloth. He would turn to greet her, his lit face rounded like the back of a spoon. Dobilai, she would say, Dobiluk. And opening her arms wide she would step into golden light.

They were orphans, their mother having died giving birth to Dobilas, their father having hung himself soon afterwards. Some villagers said that the husband, having spirited the wife away over the objections of her family only to have her die, could not live with the guilt. Others said he was crazed with grief. Whichever it was, Maryte was eight years old and left with a baby brother.

She had found her father hanging from a rafter in the barn. She had watched the blacksmith gripping her father’s body to cut it down, then the carpenter building a coffin for the second time. Why did you not live, papa? she thought, listening to the ringing of hammer and nails. Why did you not live for Dobilas and me? And watching her father’s coffin being lowered into the ground, she saw husband being laid to rest beside wife.

There were no aunts or uncles to take them in. Their father’s family shunned this wayward son whose passion made had him forget filial duty. Their mother chose not to speak of the faraway village from which she had been carried. Maryte didn’t know her relations. She didn’t know where to look. Finding themselves cast upon the benevolence of the villagers, they did well enough.

She learned to sew for the ladies of Vilnius, making dresses, embroidering tablecloths and pillowcases. Sitting on the front steps of the house that was now theirs, her work in her lap, she watched Dobilas romping in the field. She would take him on walks through the meadow. She would point out the names of flowers, trees and birds. And sitting on the front steps at dusk, a plate of bread and cheese on their knees, they would eat their evening meal.