Between Shades of Gray

Lina lies awake that night, thinking about her father and wishing that Kretzsky was mistaken about her father being shot. She tries to sketch but can only draw her father’s face, contorted in pain, and herself screaming at Kretzsky with snakes coming out of her mouth. The storm continues, and they give shelter to two lost Finns, one of whom has dysentery. Everyone is crawling with lice as well. After three days, the man who winds his watch leads the Finns back to their own jurta, and they take turns washing out the bucket to try to prevent others from getting dysentery. By November 20, Andrius’s birthday, the storm has abated, and Lina spends the day hauling logs and thinking about him. That night she reads Dombey and Son, still looking for the word krasivaya. She skips ahead, thinking she might see it further on; instead she finds notes in the margins from Andrius. The first three notes are teasing and funny, but the last two are more serious. Andrius tells her he’s thinking of her and then asks if she is thinking of him. She closes her eyes and wishes him a happy birthday.

By mid-December, the repeater has frostbite and many people, especially children, are suffering from dysentery, typhus, scurvy, and starvation. One man hangs himself with a fishing net; Janina is the one to find him. Every day they must range farther from camp to find wood, and one day Janina offers to show Lina something Liale showed her. It’s a dead snowy owl. Janina suggests that they eat it, but they have to find a way to get it back to the jurta without the NKVD seeing it. Lina puts it under her shirt, and when Janina asks other prisoners for help, they form a crowd around Lina, hiding her from NKVD eyes. They get the bird back safely and cook it. Though the meat is tough, its taste is “heavenly” (302) to them.

Christmas arrives, and they have made it halfway through winter, but life is bleak. Elena is too weak to sit up for their celebration. The repeater gets typhus from the lice and he leaves to stay in a jurta with other typhus-infected people. Days later, Lina sees his body in a pile of corpses, with one frostbitten hand missing and his stomach eaten by foxes. The sight reminds Lina of something Munch said: “‘From my rotting body flowers shall grow, and I am in them and that is eternity’” (305). That night, Lina sits with her mother, who asks her if she has apologized to Kretzsky. Lina says no, and Elena tells her about a time that he helped her when she was being harassed by some NKVD guards. She reminds Lina of what her father would say: “‘A wrongdoing doesn’t give us the right to do wrong’” (306). Jonas arrives, asking how Elena is. She has a high fever but feels cold. Jonas lies down next to her and has Lina put his coat over them along with a hide that Ulyushka sent with them.

Lina’s mother has been ill for months, and now the man who winds his watch and Janina’s mother are also sick. Lina resolves to ask Kretzsky for help and practices the words she needs in Russian: “Doctor. Medicine. Mother. Please” (308). When she finds him, he is with Ivanov. She waits, hoping to catch him alone, but Ivanov sees her. She tells him her mother is sick and they need medicine and a doctor. Then she appeals to Kretzsky, but he tells her there is no doctor. Ivanov threatens her with “another twenty years” if she doesn’t go away and revokes her bread ration. That evening, the children curve themselves around their mother, trying to keep her warm. Mrs. Rimas heats bricks for Elena’s feet, Janina picks lice off her eyelashes, and the bald man gives her his bread ration. Hours later, Elena’s lips turn blue and she is shivering. She gives Kostas’s wedding ring to Jonas, telling him, “It’s full of love. Nothing is more important” (309).

On January 5, Jonas, Lina, and Mrs. Rimas tend to Elena, trying to keep her warm. Jonas holds her, Mrs. Rimas massages her and tries to feed her, and Lina heats bricks and tells her stories about their home in Kaunaus. Suddenly, Elena looks at Jonas, opening her mouth as if to speak, but no sound comes out. Then the trembling stops and her body relaxes, her eyes fading. She has died. Jonas sobs and tears stream down Lina’s face. The man who winds his watch says “She had a beautiful spirit” (311), and Mrs. Rimas recites the 23rd Psalm and then begins to cry as well. Lina and Jonas resolve to bury her rather than allow the NKVD to take her and throw her onto the pile of frozen corpses. The bald man says nothing. Lina remembers her grandmother’s funeral and how her father explained death to Jonas: the spirit is like a kite and when you let go of the string it flies up into the sky. The bald man asks, “Why is it so hard to die?” (312), and then admits that he “helped turn [them] in” (312) by agreeing to “confirm people’s professions” (312). He says that he later changed his mind but that it was too late. Mrs. Rimas calls him “pathetic” (312); he agrees and concludes that “survival is [his] punishment” (312).