In the Shadow of Wolves Read online

  Praise for In the Shadow of Wolves

  ‘Vivid, highly dramatic and compelling… Alvydas Šlepikas has broken the dam of silence.’

  Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten

  ‘In the Shadow of Wolves is a gem of Lithuanian literature. It touches a nerve as it tells the story of those who survived an awful fate, who have experienced the most terrible things.’

  Alfa

  ‘This novel finds the perfect balance between documentary and literary narrative.’

  Kieler Nachrichten

  ‘Alvydas Šlepikas uses direct yet poetic language to write about a period of history that has remained almost entirely buried until now. His concise prose conveys the tragedy of the situation and contains rich details about that time and place.’

  Šiaurės Atėnai

  ‘This novel differs from other works of its kind in its narration and its sensitive, poetic style. Alvydas Šlepikas paints a beautiful picture of the world through a child’s eyes.’

  bernardinai

  ‘In poetic language that is by turns concise and compact, Alvydas Šlepikas brings justice for his young heroes and victims. Readers can almost smell the cold sweat of the women and girls as they encounter drunken soldiers, feel the deep, penetrating hunger, the biting winter cold, the beatings suffered and handed out by children as they fight for a single morsel of food, and share in their despair and their sheer will to survive.’

  hansen & munk culture blog

  ‘A significant work of memorialisation… Šlepikas – who is also a scriptwriter and director – injects his writing with a dramatic urgency that seeks to capture the scale of extraordinary suffering.’

  The Calvert Journal

  ‘In the Shadow of Wolves is fast-paced, with the children sharing one experience after another. And the reader is always there too, hiding with the children in old railway trains, praying and hoping with them.’

  BR24

  ‘In the Shadow of Wolves paints a very realistic, bleak picture of life after the Second World War. The novel is unique in its story, which focuses on the life of Germans and Lithuanians after the war, and because it will not only warm readers’ hearts, but will also inspire them to live.’

  15min

  ‘Alvydas Šlepikas has written a sensitive novel that takes us back to a time filled with death, violence, hunger and bitter cold. This novel broke the taboo of silence in Lithuania.’

  Leipzig Book Fair

  The author is grateful to

  Mrs Renate, Rolandas, Ričardas,

  his mother Renata, Evaldas and Rita

  for their support and help in writing this book.

  In memory of

  Almantas Grikevičius

  EVERYTHING RISES UP from the past as if through fog. People and events are enveloped in the snow carried on the wind and the mist that hovers in the silence. All is distant but not forgotten. Some details are clear, others are already lost, as in a faded photograph. Time and forgetfulness have covered everything in snow and sand, in blood and murky water.

  People appear as if emerging through a mist, a snowstorm, a winter fog; they grow dark, casting a shadow on the trampled, blood-soaked earth, and then are gone. Individual episodes surface for one brief flash of memory, or as a few marks on the dotted line of history, scattered in no particular order:

  here are the Russian words on a poster seen on reaching the other side of the Nemunas river*: ‘Soldier of the Red Army! Before you lies the lair of the fascist beast’;

  here are the Russian soldiers laden with their plunder – clocks, curtains, silver dishes;

  here is a woman’s headless body nailed to a wall;

  here is a crowd of starving people tearing apart the fallen corpse of a water carrier’s nag;

  here is a mother with her children walking straight into the Nemunas rumbling with ice floes, disappearing into the river without a word, without a single thought in her head, as if drowning oneself were a simple, everyday act;

  here are corpses brought up by the river, blackened and swollen, without first names, without surnames;

  here are graves dug up;

  here are the ruins of bombed churches;

  here are Russian pamphlets handed out to Soviet soldiers, urging them: ‘Kill all the Germans, their children too. There are no innocent Germans. Take their possessions, take their women. That is your right, those are the spoils of war’;

  here are mothers bartering, selling some of their children to Lithuanian farmers for potatoes, flour and food, so that their other children can survive;

  here are soldiers, drunk and laughing, shooting birds for fun, and then shooting people just as merrily and mindlessly, without thinking – the fire of war has hardened them, like clay in blast furnaces;

  here are women digging trenches, dying from hunger and fatigue;

  here are children setting off shells left behind by the war;

  here are wolves that have grown accustomed to eating human flesh;

  here is a dog with a blackened human hand in its teeth;

  here are the eyes of the starving, here is famine, famine and famine;

  here are corpses – death and corpses;

  here are the new arrivals, colonists, destroying everything that has survived – churches, castles, cemeteries, drainage systems, animal pens;

  here are the empty and desolate fields, in which even the wind loses its way, not finding a single familiar path among the ruins and barren wastes;

  here is postwar Prussia, trampled underfoot, raped, stood against a wall and shot.

  FRAGMENTS OF THE past flickered and vanished, emerging from the darkness as if they were a shadow-play, like a black-and-white film.

  It was the winter of 1946.

  A cold and terrible postwar winter, a time of desolation. A bridge suspended between heaven and earth across the Nemunas. The wind carried a dusting of snow along the river as if it were a highway. In places there was ice, off-white like marble. It was cold, at least minus 20 degrees Celsius.

  There were metal struts criss-crossing each other like an opaque net. The wind whistled through them. The bridge howled the songs of storms.

  A soldier’s own strange song drifted along on the wind from the east.

  Through the metal struts you could see dark figures moving on the other side of the river.

  Pasted on the bridge there were posters, signs and newspapers proclaiming victory, encouraging the soldiers to show no mercy, to kill, and warning that access was allowed only with a permit from the military authorities.

  The edge of one of the posters was ragged and fluttered in the wind. The song of longing grew louder.

  On the bridge were two guards: a singing Asian and a Russian. The Russian was trying to light a roll-up but the wind kept putting out his match, and this made him angry. The narrow-eyed soldier’s singing irritated him too.

  The black dots across the river were drawing closer – they were German children trying to cross the frozen Nemunas. There were about seven of them.

  The Russian couldn’t stand it any longer.

  ‘For fuck’s sake shut your mouth, you idiot.’

  The Asian smiled. He was quiet for a while, and then said, under his breath: ‘Idiot, idiot, you’re the idiot.’

  The wind was whistling, the motherland was far away, the roll-up fell apart, the match broke in the soldier’s calloused hands.

  The Asian laughed: ‘Hey, Ivan…’

  ‘My name’s not Ivan, it’s Yevgeny. They call me Zhenya.’

  ‘Look, Ivan, the little Germans are running.’

  The German children were running across the ice like partridges. A couple of the smaller children lagged behind a little.

  T
he Russian soldier shouted: ‘Stop! Go back! Stop! That’s an order! Stop, you fascist pigs!’

  But the bridge was high up, the wind masked the guard’s voice and they ran on. They could see a person on the bridge waving his arms about, but they couldn’t understand the soldier’s language.

  ‘Hey, Ivan.’

  ‘My name’s not Ivan, you idiot.’

  ‘They’re telling you to suck their dicks, Ivan…’

  ‘I’m going to kill you.’

  ‘Calm down, you fool.’

  The Russian took a grenade, pulled the pin out and threw it at the group of children. Both soldiers crouched down to avoid the shrapnel, and the blast reverberated like a thunderclap in the icy air.

  The smoke cleared.

  One of the children had fallen through the ice and was struggling to climb out. It was cold and an icy mist rose from the water. The other children were running back, running away from death.

  The noise died down, and for a moment there was complete silence. Then a strange sound like the wail of a dying beast cut through the silence, high-pitched and endless. Another child was badly injured. He lay writhing, his feet kicking out at the ice; the scream was coming from him. As he twisted and turned, blood seeped out from under him, painting an ever-larger area of snow and ice: a stain of colour in a black world.

  A six-year-old boy, scared to death, stood between the one who was injured and the one who was trying to get out of the hole in the ice. It was as if he’d turned to stone. He had no control over his legs; the screeching pierced his body. His eyes were filled with horror.

  It was little Hansel – we’ll get to know him later.

  The Asian raised his rifle, took aim and fired. The screaming stopped; the injured child was no longer moving. Hansel woke from his stupor and started to run, shouting something. He wasn’t running towards the shore but along the frozen river. A couple of shots followed, but Hansel ran on.

  Having missed him, the Asian soldier shook his head.

  The other child was still trying to get out of the hole in the ice, using every ounce of his strength.

  The Russian soldier spat and looked down at the little child below him in the river. They were hardly struggling any more.

  The child’s head went under. One hand was still holding on to the ice, until finally it too disappeared.

  The Russian soldier at last managed to light his roll-up.

  The wind was whistling.

  Again a sad, wild song was heard.

  NIGHT WAS DRAWING in. It came so quickly in winter. To Eva it seemed that for the last few months it had always been night. The never-ending winter, the never-ending snowstorms, frosts, twilight, cold, wind, the never-ending hunger. The cold passed through her clothes to her very heart, to her bones and her brain. Eva began to feel dizzy from hunger again; it had been a long time since she had last eaten. Whenever she managed to find a morsel of something she gave it to the children. The world was turning on its axis and for a moment darkness covered her eyes, but her friend Martha, who never gave in, grabbed her by the elbow. ‘Hold on,’ she said, ‘hold on, Eva, remember the children.’ Eva didn’t need reminding; the children were the only thing she thought about – Monika, Renate, pampered Helmut, who was so gentle but weak, sickly, so different from her Heinz. Where is he now, my Heinz, my little boy? He set off for Lithuania by train almost a week ago. Is he alive, is he healthy, what is he eating, does he have anywhere to rest his head?

  People stood motionless, hunched up against the wind and the cold, pressing close to one another like sheep – dark silhouettes in the gloom of the approaching night, in the grip of the dying day. Eva leant against Martha. It was good that there was someone next to her who was stronger and tougher. Martha always knew the way out of any situation. Eva didn’t think she’d ever seen her friend cry. Even now, when all the days were but one big, black day of loss, one big hole in the ground dug for a grave. No, Martha had never cried. She believed in life. Even now she was a pillar, a shelter for Eva, who was afraid of everything and easily frightened. Oh, Martha, Martha, how good to have you by my side, how good it is that you are by my side, only I can’t tell you that, it’s impossible to say the words. If there were no more Martha the world would be without compass – though now it was more a formless mass than a world.

  Finally two soldiers showed up: two youths, probably only eighteen, but stern, serious. They were dragging along a huge pot with scraps of food in it, mostly potato peels, the potato peels the crowd had been so desperately waiting for. The people – the elderly, women and children, Eva and Martha among them – instantly came to life. Their eyes seemed to catch fire and everyone moved forward; they were all starving, tired of waiting, freezing, their faces drawn, their bodies swathed in rags. Everyone gathered round, but they knew they had to wait for the command, for permission. The young soldiers shouted something, but Eva didn’t speak Russian; all she knew was ‘thank you’ and ‘goodbye’, and now she’d also learnt to say ‘bread’ and ‘potatoes’. But the young soldiers didn’t say ‘bread’ and they didn’t say ‘thank you’. They were shouting: ‘What are you doing, you spawn of the devil? What are you doing, you fascists? Get back or you’ll get a beating! Don’t climb over each other!’ No one was climbing over anyone, all they were doing was hesitantly moving closer; everyone was ready to snatch their portion, which would be as large as they could manage to grab. Eva and the others approached the young soldiers, the pot full of leftover scraps and potato peels. For a moment the space around her seemed to distort, people’s hands and faces lost their contours, everything expanded and then shrank again, everything slowed down. The soldiers emptied the pot straight out onto the ground, right there by the army canteen at the end of the yard. Once there had been a tavern here, now it was a canteen. They were throwing out a lot today; they weren’t always so lucky, especially in the evenings.

  The young soldier shouted: ‘Here you are, help yourselves, you fascists!’ The only thing he said in German was ‘here you are’, everything else was in Russian, but to the starving, hungry and deathly cold people, whatever he might or might not have said wasn’t important. They rushed towards the potato peels and the other scraps, grabbed them and stuffed them into little linen sacks and bags. An old woman began to yell: ‘That’s mine, that’s mine! I want to live too!’ She fell, someone tripped over her and stepped on her hand, making her yell again. Eva went to pieces; she stopped for a moment, perhaps half a second, suddenly seeing herself as a worm wriggling around in the leftovers, but the image was immediately dispelled by Martha’s voice, saying: Remember the children. Or perhaps it wasn’t Martha at all, perhaps it was her own voice reminding her of the children, her inner maternal voice. Like a predator she grabbed, tore, pulled and stuffed the frozen potato peels into her little linen sack. She was probably crying too. Or perhaps it was only a few tears from the cold and the wind.

  ‘Pigs is what they are, they’re not even human,’ said the soldier in Russian, tapping a woman’s cigarette holder against the corner of the building to get rid of the bits of tobacco in it.

  A snowstorm was raging.

  The strong wind whipped the falling snow into people’s eyes. Eva and Martha were hurrying, but it was hard to walk; the silhouettes of their bodies, bent forward, began to disappear into the falling night. Finally they reached the former dairy, then the wool-carding workshop, its corner destroyed by an artillery shell. The building had been opened up like the flank of a slaughtered animal, but inside there was only bottomless darkness. These buildings, so devoid of life, petrified her; she was always seeing shadows persecuting her and Martha. She was sweating, though the cold was going right through her. In this snowstorm the little town where she was born now seemed alien – horrible and malignant.

  A shot echoed somewhere. Then another. The women quickened their pace. The sound of a Russian accordion came in waves through the howling of the storm and the swirling snow. Even though it was a foreign sound, it had a calming
effect because it was so unexpected, as if from another world. It even appeared to Eva that she herself, her consciousness, was playing this music, this simple, wild music in a major key. Eva held on tightly to the potato peels she’d grabbed by the soldiers’ canteen. At home the children were waiting, hungry, her children who were dearer to her than life itself. Eva would have liked to howl like a she-wolf; she would have liked to cut off a piece of her own body and feed those hungry children, innocent, suffering children punished by God. She would bring back the scraps thrown out by the Russian soldiers, and her sister-in-law Lotte would dry the potato peels on a metal camping stove, then grind them into flour in an old coffee mill to bake flat bread. Eva wouldn’t have known how to survive without Lotte. And Martha.

  Eva and Martha were hurrying home, hunched up against the wind and the fear that someone might speak to them. From time to time, light broke through the falling snow; they could just about make out vehicles, soldiers, shapes of some kind. Someone was laughing, someone shouted at them, but the women pretended they didn’t hear. It was important not to stop, not to turn around, to pass by quietly. Eva strode out and measured every step with a syllable from the prayer taught by Jesus: ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…’ She had never been religious – more of a free thinker – but now she repeated that prayer over and over again, and had even taught it to the children. It seemed to her that it helped, that the saints helped, those words that had come from the lips of God. Martha made fun of her: ‘You’ve become a religious old biddy.’ Eva wasn’t angry with Martha. It was impossible to be angry with her – with this beautiful, sturdy woman who couldn’t be broken by any misfortune; you couldn’t be angry with her, not with that infectious laugh of hers. It was hard to believe, but even now Martha laughed from time to time. Perhaps in an attempt to lighten the mood.

  Suddenly someone seized Eva by the arm. ‘Babushki, babushki,’ a drunk soldier shouted and laughed, his eyes like those of a madman. Eva was so shocked that she screamed. She pushed the soldier, but he had a firm grip on her and they both fell over. Eva smelt a strong odour of alcohol coming from the soldier’s mouth; she pushed, kicked, scrambled up. The soldier kept his hold on her sleeve, but Martha helped and pulled him off Eva. Other men had gathered around them now, laughing with bared teeth.