Of HEROIC PROPORTION
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Chapter One
The Soviet Union, Post WWII, First Trip to Moscow
 

The boy tried to disguise his nervousness with a jaw that stood tight and eyes that narrowed to keep watch. He had good reason to compensate. He was pale and thin with a vulnerable posture that exaggerated his adolescent youth. The dark circles beneath his telling eyes were drawn there by his exhaustion and hunger.

There was one wisp of color, the luminous blue eyes that radiated despite their guarded caution. The rest of him though was lost in a drab mixture of browns and sun-bleached grays that covered his thread-worn garb.

Deep wrinkles etched his bent elbows, knees and crotch from sitting too long. An opportunity to soothe them…. and his cramped muscles was long overdue. But he dare not stand and risk losing his seat.

The train, almost always crowded, was overstuffed with people. Some, literally hanging on, barely found enough footing on the steps of the train’s entry way to remain on. Two women monitors shared a twenty-four hour shift guarding the train from vagabonds and urchin boys who hoped to board or ride the brake beams without tickets. At each stop, they would exit and merge carrying red flags as they detected the scoundrels and chased them away.

Each time the train approached another station, he found and held dear to his ticket which he had bought with his own hard work and meager savings. It was his only proof that he belonged on the train and did not deserve to be ejected along with the other orphans and beggars. Then, he’d sit tight and wait for the people and dust to settle, so the train would move again.
The ride had been a stagnant, boring existence for a fourteen-year-old boy, even for one with as dreary a past as his. He had survived mainly on a ration of sugar-water and dry bread, as had many of the other passengers.

A few more fortunate travelers had been able to buy an occasional cup of hot tea made by the women monitors, who would scavenge bits of wood to boil water and then mix it with samovar leaves. Or they had been able to scurry off the train at one of the stops and purchase kvass, mineral water or milk from barefoot children eager to sell their wares. Of course, each passenger had to provide their own receptacle, usually a small metal pail or empty vodka bottle to get their fill.

Over his grueling two-week journey, there had been little else to do but study Stalin’s masterpiece through the train’s cracked, smudged window. As the locomotive clanged, hiccupped, hissed and moaned its way over the Soviet countryside, they would occasionally pass a tank trapped in a trench or weathered sandbags sheltering a fox hole. These were all abandoned artifacts of history and the nation’s trauma and war with Germany.

Fast moving rivers turned into swamp land and rolling hills rose up into dense forests only to wither away into patches of cut-over or burnt oak and spruce trees. Ash and alder renewed the earth with shrubs determined to live, though the land grieved for what it had seen.

Everywhere drained, worn faces mourned, and stared back in the same unfocused, haggard way. At once, they blended in with the backdrop of Stalin’s Russia and contrasted with nature’s beauty which, with a mind of its own, still exuded from the evergreen forests and tall grassed meadows that grew vibrantly without human tending.

The people’s pain, so visible, had a color all its own and it spoke too, calling out.

Humiliation. Hopelessness.  Agony… perfectly captured on the human canvas.

All credit went to Stalin. While the war had drained them, it was Stalin who had enslaved them. Their condition was their dictator’s creation, a vision of his perfect world held still as if by an artist’s stroke in perfect portrayal of mass human degradation.
It went against the heart of all people to witness such tragic devastation and loss of free will, yet live… but millions had, somehow… including the boy. Such is the power of the human spirit to go on. Such is the irony of history.

Each face had their own story to tell, and the boy’s was no less revealing… just less noticed. So goes human nature throughout time and place, we rarely turn the pages of another’s story when we are overwhelmed with our own. This was one slight fortune for him as he was determined… rather desperate to keep his story hidden … at least until he was safely within the keep of the American Embassy in Moscow.
Occasionally, a fellow passenger would speak to him, usually in an authoritative tone.

He would answer in a respectful and humble manner reflecting his Ukrainian upbringing and the history of repression against his people. Really though, neither he nor they had much desire for conversation
.
No one asked who he was, where he was going or why. No one cared. It felt both usual and unnatural at the same time. Of course, it could also have been the paranoia that seemed to grip the country, caused by neighbor betraying neighbor, a symptom of Stalin’s repression, which had left his own people deeply scarred, guarded and alienated.

Danyk was finally approaching the Moscow train station. For him, it would be the last of many stops that the train had made since leaving his small village of Gorodnitsa, once part of Poland, but now part of the Soviet Union post World War II.
The train slowed, then jerked to a stop, but Danyk knew they were not yet at the station. It was a familiar routine that did, however, warn him and the other passengers that their arrival was imminent. Those whose final destination was within sight began to stir.
Adrenalin commenced his heart to hammer, and he jittered, distracted by the pounding in his chest. Perhaps it was the anticipation of the journey’s end, the sugar-water diet or simply overwhelming fear that made him feel like a dry twig, crisp and ripe to snap. It was difficult to remain seated. But he did. It was difficult not to look at the other passengers. But he didn’t.
This was how he had spent much of his life. Doing… that which he should not have been able to do.
It had made him resourceful, mature beyond his years, but still the fearfulness, the vulnerability never left him. He measured it with every breath he took.

The activity in the car began to rise as the train jerked forward and stopped, then jerked forward again. The jolt had caused a stringy strand of blond hair, browned by weeks without soap to land mid right eye. He wiped it away, but it annoyingly bounced right back. Absent-mindedly, he chewed his right thumbnail until his teeth felt gritty from the dislodged dirt.
Until recently, his secret had been well kept, but as it unraveled… so had his world. Once dreary but predictable, it had altered the day the Soviet soldiers had come to arrest his mother and grandmother after learning of their western ties. No greater sin could have been committed in Stalin’s Russia. The consequences of this had spun out of control and had had an effect on every member of his family who had managed to survive WWII or The Great Patriotic War as it was known to the average Soviet citizen.
With the threads of his existence untwined, there seemed little else to do but put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Millions of other Soviets had done it before him. They were all a part of the sea of sad faces that seemed to be everywhere he looked at every train station, at every village and farm.

When the train took one last jolt and came to a final stop, he stood and at once became part of the cattle drive that moved forward, down the aisle and off the train. His last step was a leap onto a crude wooden crate that gave way and squeaked to the bounce of his unsteady footing.

After weeks of sitting with barely any movement at all, he was suddenly caught up in a frenzy of activity. A train whistle blew in the distance urging him forward and it seemed to stir energy into the otherwise lifeless and bleak-looking passengers. Within moments they converged to become one wall of bodies that moved in unison, dragging him determinedly along to follow the path of the rushing current.

He suddenly felt weak and dazed. The physical demands of the long trip with almost no sleep and little food to sustain him, were taking their toll. He quite literally could have dropped from the exhaustion… certainly physical but mental as well.
To his surprise and against his will…his body slowed becoming a frictional force that worked against the rushing crowd and suddenly he stilled. Just like a protruding rock in a flowing river, the stream began to divide and rush by and around him. The force, still moving, lifted his elbow and pushed forward his right shoulder. He was barely aware of it though, until his stillness, contrasted to the wind created by the rushing crowd, forced him to gulp for air to fill his lungs.

Frantically, he looked for refuge and eyed a quiet cobbled area off to the side. He scrambled against legs and limbs headed elsewhere, until he reached the tiny, paved area. There he was able to squat his body and rest his head on his knees. Within minutes the station quieted, and for the first time in weeks he was once again, all alone.

No less fearful or drained than he was moments before, he rose to his feet unsteadily, knowing there were no choices to make. He needed to be on his way and face whatever lay ahead of him.

Just put one foot in front of the other, then again, then again…

He meandered through the streets of Moscow in the direction of Red Square, vaguely aware of his right foot developing a blister from its constant rubbing and knocking about in an overly large boot. The footwear was his most valuable possession and had served his family during the war as their only pair. He asked anyone who gave him a second glance the same question.
“Kah dojty do Amerikanskojo posolstra?”

“How do I get to the American Embassy?”

Recognizing a Ukrainian accent, many only frowned annoyance and continued on their way. Some pointed, giving a vague indication of which way he should continue.

He made his way down Mochovaya, until finally, just across from the Kremlin, the embassy came into view… along with the endless line of people waiting to get into it! Were they Americans, too?

An armed Soviet guard stood at the entrance door checking papers that people had anxiously readied and held in hand. Most were turned away even though they had waited long hours. Their faces were marked with raw grief. Rarely, however, did the guard get an argument. Soviets were long used to being ruled by a sole authority. To argue usually meant severe consequences. Danyk was sure many had come a long way just as he had, only to be turned away. Even after many brutal years of war, his heart was still a soft place and it squeezed tight with compassion to see such despair and mass helplessness.

Patiently, he took his place at the far end of the line and began his laggard wait. Time ticked by sluggishly, while his heartbeat quickened. Bravely, he reined in his trembling apprehension with a pretense of youthful boredom and spent his restless energy sliding his weight from side to side.

Finally, when it was his turn to hand over his papers, the guard took all of five seconds to review them. Danyk knew the guard couldn’t possibly be able to read them as they were in English, sent to him from his American father back in the United States of America. But he looked to be reviewing them anyway. He looked from top to bottom, then he turned them over and frowned when they were blank on the back. Other than that, he gave little reaction to indicate what he was thinking, one way or the other… and it was an endless moment before his verdict was ultimately revealed.

With little more than a wave of his hand, he indicated that Danyk must move on like the others. Danyk would not be getting Soviet permission to enter the American Embassy, at least not today!

The shock of it was numbing. He had been so desperate; he had not allowed himself to even consider the possibility that he would be turned away, as the many others had been.

But I’m an American citizen! I was born in America!!! I have documents! I belong with my father in America… and I have no place else to go!

He wanted to shout into the guard’s face, to shake him, to demand that he let him into the embassy… but of course he did not. He had had many childhood experiences with war and bad men, and one did not ever expose his anger to someone holding a gun.
Still his mind raced…

I have no food! No family… no place to go! Only a father in America!

He froze, uncertain of what to do next.

All he could think to do was go back to the end of the line. Maybe a new guard would be here by the time he reached the front again and …

The boy’s anguish did not go unnoticed by the guard whose next impulsive move demonstrated either great human kindness or Soviet disinterest and apathy.

Suddenly… the guard walked away leaving a clear path into the embassy! If Danyk took a second to think it would be too late.
Run. Runnnnnnnnnnn!!! Run as fast as you can!

Danyk seized the moment.

Off he ran for the over-large, arched Embassy door. Flinging it open, he scrambled as deep into the belly of the United States Embassy as he could.

For the next ten months, this would be home.

END OF CHAPTER ONE