“I know, Grandmother” was all Nettie would say.
They had this conversation many times. Kezia felt Nettie needed to know what life had in store if she was to survive it. She was only fourteen.
Nettie didn’t tell her grandmother that she had already seen what would come to pass. The government had begun rounding up citizens and shipping them to gulags, labor camps, where every door to life was closed. Stalin’s henchmen targeted the educated: professors who taught the wrong subject, writers who wrote the wrong words, and politicians who did not clap long enough for speeches. Quotas for filling the camps were established and had to be met. As a playwright and a fashion designer, Sergei and Galina were surely sympathizers with the West. The government put them on the list. The entire family was marked. Her mother would be sent to one of the worst gulags in the Taiga Forest, far to the north in Siberia. She would labor for three years before dying of starvation. Nettie’s father would survive two years longer and be shot in a field with other prisoners. Her grandfather would die much sooner, unable to survive the initial interrogation. And her grandmother… Kezia would die first. She would pass away the day after saving a young girl from being beaten and taking the punishment herself.
Nettie would have given anything to erase the knowledge burned into her mind. She had had premonitions all her life, and they had always come true. But her worst visions still had not come to pass, and she prayed every day they never would.
***
As the months passed, Kezia felt a growing urgency and encouraged Nettie to use her cards.
“Always remember, they are only symbols on cards allowing you to see into your own mind. Divination is a mirror, reflecting what is here and here,” Kezia would tell her, pointing to Nettie’s heart and head. Nettie nodded like a solemn student.
“Whatever the cards show you, always trust the words that well inside you. The truth is waiting to be heard. Never doubt it.”
Nettie held the cards in her hands. They felt smooth and pulsed with energy.
“People want to hear about their lives. They are afraid. They want to know what is in store for them. Speak the truth as the words come. Now draw,” Kezia commanded.
Nettie drew the top card.The Hanged Man.
“What do you see? Quickly, without thinking,” Kezia demanded.
“All of life’s trappings stripped away,” Nettie answered.
“And what does it mean?” Kezia asked with impatience.
“A second war.”
“And?” Kezia sounded harsh. “What is in your mind? Say it!”
“They are going to take us away. I hope you die in your sleep before they come here.” Nettie gasped, appalled that she had said such a thing.
“But I won’t,” her grandmother said softly.
They stared at each other in a moment of deep understanding. The raids were going to happen. Soon the country would go to war—the Second World War. St. Petersburg, their beloved city, now called Leningrad, would come under a siege that would claim the lives of over a million people. But they wouldn’t be there.
Nettie wondered how much her grandmother knew. Perhaps she knew just as much.
***
The night before they came, Nettie helped her mother bathe and brush her hair dry. Galina sang along to a favorite song on the radio. Nettie could sense the change in the air: it was as though they were stealing this moment of joy. Soon they would no longer have these simple comforts. A black maw was descending on them.
The next morning the family sat down at the table and had breakfast. Galina puttered around the kitchen, humming the same tune. When Nettie’s father left for work, she ran to the door and hugged him longer than usual.
“What’s this,Solnyshko?” He laughed. “I’m not going on a trip. I’ll see you at supper.”
“Yes, Papa.” Still, she squeezed him harder and tried not to cry.Solnyshko,Little Sun, was his nickname for her. She would never hear it again.
After he had gone, she returned to the table and sat down to wait. Sergei read the paper over coffee. Kezia sat quietly, holding her cards on the table.
Nettie watched her grandmother’s fingers twitch; it was the only sign that Kezia was bothered. A sliver of sunlight pushed through the blinds and illuminated them in a golden light.
To know when a moment will become the last is a painful burden. Nettie bathed in those final seconds, feeling her family’s love and wishing she could stop time forever. Then she blinked and life continued its tick forward. The moment had ceased.
A sharp knock came at the door.
Suddenly half a dozen state security men were swarming the room. They spoke in a chaotic rush of words, each one a cataclysm.
