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The Impossible Journey

Chapter One

Leningrad 1934

Comrade Sergei Kirov was killed on the first day of December. That same night my parents disappeared. The day of Kirov's assassination was a school day and started out like any other. I awoke shivering because my brother, Georgi, who is seven, six years younger than I, had stolen our quilt to wrap himself like a caterpillar in its cocoon. Trying to touch as little of the cold floor as possible, I picked my way across the room. From the window I could see the snow-covered jumble of Leningrad's rooftops and, beyond them, the Neva River. The freezing winds were rushing down from Siberia to lock the Neva in ice.

I pulled on wool stockings and slipped a sweater over my blouse, leaving my hair for Mama to braid. Then I did something wicked. There are people who carefully plan all they do. I'm sure such people never get into trouble. But how do they get anything done? If you think too much about a plan, you think of all the reasons against carrying it out. I rush at things and never make plans. With me everything gets done. The trouble comes later.

I hastily opened a dresser drawer and felt way in the back for the little box I had once discovered there. Inside the box, wrapped in flannel, was a gold locket wreathed with tiny diamonds. I slipped the flannel with the locket into my pocket.

Before I left the room, I poked at the soft lump that was Georgi to awaken him. When he pretended to be asleep, I poked harder. "You have to get up, or we'll be late for school."

"Marya, let me be," his muffled voice came from deep inside the covers. "It's too cold to get up."

I gave the quilt a tug, unrolling Georgi. Ducking the pillows he flung my way, I hurried into the warmth of the kitchen. The tiny kitchen was off our sitting room, where Mama and Papa slept. Down a hall was the washroom, which we shared with the Zotov family. Sergei Ivanovich Zotov was a tall, skinny man like a twist of rope. Olga Pavlovna Zotov was thin like her husband and greedy. If we left our soap in the washroom, it disappeared.

We often found bear hairs in the bathtub, for Mr. Zotov owned a bear cub. You could find Mr. Zotov any day on the Nevsky Prospekt, Leningrad's main street. Holding the cub's leash in one hand and a tin cup in the other, he collected money from the passersby. When a cub grew too large, Mr. Zotov sold it off to a circus. With the money he bought a new cub.

Our warm kitchen was my favorite place. The teakettle was dancing over the fire, the steam from its spout clouding the windows. The day before, Papa had gone to the pawnshop and traded his fur hat to get money for a winter jacket for Georgi.

Mama was setting out sausage and cheese and bowls of hot kasha. "Let me do your hair, Marya," she said. Mama was gentle, never pulling too tightly.

Papa watched. "Spun gold," he teased. "It would take only a lock or two to buy the whole city."

"St. Petersburg is already ours," Mama said. "We have the Summer Garden and the Neva and the Prospekt. It's all there for the taking."

"Katya," Papa cautioned. "Not St. Petersburg! It is now Leningrad. What if the children should call the city St. Petersburg in front of strangers? The man with the mustache might hear of it."

The name of our city had been changed from St. Petersburg to Leningrad after Comrade Lenin died. Lenin was the father of the Communist revolution. "The man with the mustache" was what Papa called Russia's ruler, Comrade Stalin. Papa and Mama despised Comrade Stalin, though this was a dangerous opinion to hold.

Stalin's people had turned my grandmother and her friends out of their land, stealing it and forcing them onto a state farm. There the work was so hard and food so scarce, my grandmother had died.

Georgi stumbled into the kitchen, his sweater inside out, one stocking on and one off. He climbed onto Mama's lap like a fledgling into its nest. "I don't think I should go to school today," he said. "I don't feel so well."

Mama looked closely at him. "Does anything hurt?" she asked.

Georgi thought for a minute. "My ears and my toes."

Mama tried not to smile. She felt his forehead. "You're fine, Georgi. Now let me turn your sweater right side out." She gave Papa a quick, worried look. "Are we having a meeting tonight?"

Papa frowned. "I think we must," he said.

"Misha," Mama warned, "these are such dangerous times. Everywhere, you hear rumors that Stalin is angry with Comrade Kirov for opposing him."

In this year of 1934 Comrade Kirov was the head of the Communist Party in Leningrad and the city's most important man. I had seen Kirov being driven about the city in a big black car. He was a short, square man in a worn black coat who always had bodyguards around him like a flock of crows chasing a small black bird.

Papa said, "There's much about Kirov I don't trust, but what other hope do we have?"

Impatient with all the talk, Georgi helped himself to more kasha, getting porridge all over the floor. Mama reached for the rag, and no more was said about the meeting.

After breakfast Papa left for Leningrad University, where he ought to have been a professor, for he was very learned. Instead he worked there as a janitor, for Papa's parents had been aristocrats. Stalin said all aristocrats were enemies of the people, so Papa was no longer allowed to teach ...

The Impossible Journey. Copyright © by Gloria Whelan. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.