Death of a Nightingale Read Online Free PDF Page A

though Father was the foreman for the kolkhoz, and the harvest was better than the previous year, the bread rations were meager. Father would not take more for his family than the ordinary workers received, Oxana reported proudly. Just once, he had brought home a load of potatoes and a barrel of rancid salt pork that he had bought on the open market, and that had lasted a whole month.
    It had not been enough. Not even the salt pork had staved off the hunger altogether and silenced the hollow ache under the ribs. And spring had been the worst. While everything bloomed around them, hunger had gnawed at their stomachs worse than ever.
    It wasn’t Father’s fault, that much Olga understood. And it had gotten better in the course of the first warm summer months. ButMother still cried and scolded all the time and was thin and tired and grey even though the sun was shining and they had been able to collect the first potatoes in the garden over a month ago. She had lost two teeth in her lower jaw, which now gaped as emptily as Oxana’s.
    But it occurred to Olga now that the whispered arguments in the night throughout the spring had not been just about Mother’s longing for Kharkiv and her fear of cold and starvation.
    Father drank his tea someplace else.
    A picture of Father down by the sawmill in the company of a smiling, full-figured woman whirled through Olga’s head, followed by the laughing mug of Sergej from school. Sergej had lice and stank, like the little pig he was.
    “What do you think of the widow Svetlova?” he had asked.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Do you like her?”
    Olga shrugged. She had no interest in talking with Sergej, who was seven and disgusting to look at, with large pox scars on his forehead.
    “You father does,” he said and pulled his index finger quickly back and forth through a circle he made of the index finger and thumb on his other hand. It was deeply disquieting even though Olga didn’t understand what it meant.
    The realization hit her now like a spurt of blood, burning her cheeks and her stomach.
    The widow Svetlova had made it through the winter in a better state than Mother. She had no children and was younger. Much younger, with round cheeks and broad white teeth without a single gap.
    Oxana sat with her head lowered and picked at the splinters in the table. She was probably pouting because she hadn’t gotten any melon, but she didn’t deserve any better.
    “Now look what you’ve done,” hissed Olga. “You’ve made Mother sad.”
    Oxana shrugged. She scowled, eyes full of tears.
    “You’re such a baby,” was all she said. “You wouldn’t be able to wait for anything if your life depended on it.”

 
    “Magnus, damn it,” snapped Nina, but Magnus was driving twenty-five meters in front of her and couldn’t hear her clenched exclamation. The winding forest road to the Coal-House Camp was not at the top of the municipality’s list of priorities as far as plowing went, and with every snowfall the road got narrower and the snowbanks on both sides got higher. Magnus was driving close to the speed limit, with Volvo steadiness on authorized winter tires, while her middle-aged Nissan Micra skated around the turns as if it had never heard the word “traction.”
    The Micra was an emergency solution. It was almost fifteen years old, the door handle on the passenger side had broken off and the gearshift suffered from a reluctance to return to the middle position unless you gave it a sharp whack. Someone had painted green racing stripes on its curry-green door, most likely in a desperate attempt to give it a bit of personality. It was not the dream car; it was the “what I can afford?” car. She couldn’t do without it. The public transportation’s tenuous connection to the Coal-House Camp, more officially known as Red Cross Center Furesø, ceased completely at 9 P.M. , and night shifts were an unavoidable part of the job of nurse.
    The Micra’s front wheels spun without