Chapter 2 #3
“How did this happen, and so quickly?” Tatyanna whispered to Vlad as they sat on the ground at the train station.
They had already been there for ten hours and there was no sign of the train, as more people kept arriving, pushing their way into the station, and some of them were standing on the tracks.
It was four in the afternoon. At six o’clock, the people at the edge of the platform saw a family of five get shot by a sniper from a low-flying airplane.
Vlad saw him laugh as they flew away, dipping their wings to indicate success to the planes around them.
They were on a mission, following orders to fly east.
People on the platform rushed forward to help the injured mother and father and three children, and recoiled in sorrow and horror when they saw that all five of them were dead. It made Vlad and Tatyanna think of Yana the day before.
The train finally pulled into the station just after nine p.m., fifteen hours after they got there.
Vlad and Tatyanna hadn’t slept the night before, and their day of agony while the doctors had tried to save Yana.
It was all like a very bad movie, and still impossible to believe that their ordinary lives had turned into this since Vlad’s birthday two days before.
As Tatyanna stood waiting to board, they watched tearful goodbyes all around them, children clinging to their fathers, husbands and wives kissing, men crying as much as their women, while helping them to push forward, to make sure they got on the train.
Not boarding the train would leave them in this hellhole of death waiting for the next bomb to fall, which might kill them all.
The family that had been shot earlier had been covered by tarps by then, and laid to the side, waiting to be picked up by soldiers driving one of the trucks that were already full of the dead to take them where bodies could be identified, when possible, and then buried quickly in mass graves.
Vlad pushed a path through the crowd for Tatyanna, and kept a firm arm around her waist so he didn’t lose her.
The force of the crowd pushing toward the train was so powerful that she didn’t have to walk, the mob just moved her forward, and they finally made it to the steps of the train.
He grabbed and held her, crushing her to him, as tears poured down her cheeks.
“I can’t leave you,” she said, breathless.
“It won’t be for long. You’ll be back soon. I love you, Taty,” he said, as tears filled his eyes too.
“Stay safe, I’ll come back as soon as I can,” she said, with no idea where she was going.
The train was going to Poland, just over the border, but she didn’t know what to do or where to go after that.
The crowd was relentlessly pushing her toward the train, until she had to climb the steps or step aside or be crushed or trampled by the ever-moving crowd.
This was their only chance for escape. She clung to Vlad one last time and kissed him, gently touching his face for a moment.
“Stay alive,” she said to him. “You’re all I have. ”
“I’ll be waiting for you,” he said, smiling through his tears as he gave her a hand up the steps, with her suitcase. She had left Yana’s on the platform, still covered with blood. And she had the money Vlad had given them in her coat pocket. It was all she had.
Tatyanna pushed her way to the nearest window once she was on the train, and it wouldn’t open. She held her hand flat on the window and he matched it with his own, and then thought of something and pulled out his phone and called her. She felt hers vibrate in her pocket, and answered it.
“I’m right here, Taty,” he said clearly, and she smiled. She could hear him and see him, although she couldn’t touch him, and all around him were crying people, and families of only women and children who boarded the train while the men stayed back to defend their country.
It took nearly an hour for everyone to board.
In a car farther down, Daryna was clinging to her mother, with Pavlo on her other side, holding the dog in his red sweater, and Yulya’s eyes locked into her husband’s as she looked at him out the window of the train, and he smiled and nodded at them and touched his heart, his face red from the cold and his cheeks wet with tears.
Yulya touched her own heart and pointed to him and knew she would remember his face at that moment forever.
She had never loved him more and didn’t want to leave.
She would have stayed with Symon if he’d let her, but she wanted to get her children to safety in Poland.
She was thinking of coming back to be with him, and to check on her parents, but she had to get her children to safety first. She just prayed that Symon would stay safe and alive.
He had never been a soldier, or handled a gun, and he would have to learn all of it quickly now.
Except for their army, the Ukrainians were a nation of dedicated and willing but inexperienced warriors.
The platform was full of men crying openly as their women and children left for safety.
They were all secretly praying that no one would drop a bomb on them, as the train lurched forward, lumbered for a short distance, and then picked up speed and headed out of the station.
The men on the platform disappeared from view.
The women were left with the bodies pressed against them, the sights and the smells of a train filled to four or five times capacity with other women and children, cats and dogs, belongings carried in paper bags and garbage bags, old suitcases, whatever they had found to carry the remainders of their lives in as they fled their homes in the dark of night.
Even Max the dog looked sad, as Daryna and Pavlo made a small space for themselves on the floor, and Yulya leaned against the window, looking at the faces in the crowd.
She had no idea where they were going, but it didn’t matter, as long as they crossed the border to safety in Poland, and there life would be normal again.
No one would be shooting at them, bombs wouldn’t be dropping, and children wouldn’t be dying.
Max curled up on Pavlo’s lap. At least it was warm on the train, and Pavlo gave him a little sip of the water they’d brought with them.
None of them had any idea how long they would be on the train or where it would stop before their destination.
There was no room for a single additional body.
Yulya wondered if it would come off the tracks from the weight of the burden it was carrying, far beyond normal capacity or any kind of safety rules.
She slid down to the floor next to her children after a while, and others who could find the space to do it had done the same.
Daryna leaned her head against her mother and drifted off to sleep.
They’d had too little food and sleep for too long, but Yulya knew that once they got to her brother’s house in Warsaw, they would be safe and well cared for.
The nightmare hadn’t spread to Poland, which everyone feared, but for now it was confined to Ukraine.
The car that Tatyanna was in was so crowded that she pushed her way through the women into the next car, where she saw a little group sitting on the floor, a family with a small black dog and two children, and she squeezed into a tiny space next to them near a window.
The windows didn’t open, but at least when you stood, you could see countryside and farms and houses, and some semblance of normalcy.
Tatyanna smiled at them. The children looked very serious, and their mother smiled at Tatyanna, a small tired smile, as she leaned her head back against the wall, closed her eyes, and went to sleep with the rhythmic movement of the train.
—
Symon stood staring at the tracks long after the train disappeared around a bend, carrying his family with it.
He felt a wave of panic at the idea that he might never see them again, but he forced the thought from his mind, praying for their safety, bowed his head, and started making his way away from the station.
The men were subdued as they left, with the same thoughts he’d had, worrying about their women and children’s well-being, fearful the train would be bombed before it reached the Polish border.
Symon was distracted when he heard a shout through the crowd and heard his name.
He looked up and didn’t see anyone he recognized, and then he saw an arm frantically waving and Vlad squeezing his way past a cluster of burly men, and Symon’s face broke into a smile.
He had tutored Vlad at the ballet school for several years, as one of the extra duties he took on, and he remembered what a bright boy and diligent student he had been, and what a sweet kid.
Symon had gone to one of Vlad’s recitals and been impressed by how talented he was.
He bounded over to Symon and they hugged each other.
It was such a relief for both of them to see a familiar face after the past forty-eight horrendous hours.
“What are you doing here?” Symon asked, still smiling as they walked away from the station, down the road to where Symon had left his car. It was pretty far, and a long walk in the cold. And he was happy to see Vlad.
“I just put my girlfriend on the train,” Vlad said seriously.
“The pretty girl I saw you dance with two years ago?” They had only been sixteen then and already an exquisite pair. Symon had felt like he was watching the Bolshoi in Moscow. The training was outstanding, as was their talent.
“Yes, Tatyanna. We’re still together. It’s been three years.” Vlad smiled, feeling very adult. “She’s on the train.”
“So are my wife and kids and dog.” Symon smiled at Vlad as they walked along, with plumes of frost coming from their mouths as they talked, and it started to snow. “Does your girlfriend have relatives in Poland?”