Shadows on the Tundra

This year I been making a concerted effort to re-balance my reading towards women writers, and, as I read mainly in translation, this means that Women in Translation Month 2018 might not look radically different from any other month in 2018: 65% of the books I have reviewed this year have been written by women, with just over half of those in translation. This can be seen as the culmination of a process which began with my participation in the first Women in Translation month in 2014 where I encountered writers such as Elena Ferrante, Teffi, Clarice Lispector, Silvina Ocampo, Herta Muller and Hella Haasse. Women writers in translation may not always be as visible as male writers, but, over the years, encouraged by WITMonth founder Biblio and the discoveries of other bloggers, I have developed my own personal cannon which (perhaps because there are still so many untranslated women) increases annually.

One of the few negatives of a month of reading women in translation, however, is that the subject matter can be harrowing. Yes, this is partly because I am attracted to depressing books, but I think it also reflects how difficult life for women is across the globe, both historically and in the present day. Dalia Grinkeviciute’s Shadows on the Tundra, the story of the author’s incarceration, along with her mother and brother, in a Soviet labour camp in Siberia, is no exception. Aged fourteen, she is taken from her home in Lithuania and begins the long journey to Siberia. Though unaware of what lies ahead, she realises the significance of their exile:

“I am aware a phase of my life has come to an end, a line drawn underneath it. Another is beginning, uncertain and ominous.”

“I wonder how many pairs of eyes,” she speculates, “are taking in their native city for the last time…” By writing largely in the present tense Grinkeviciute not only gives the narrative a sense of immediacy and immaturity, but is able to reflect the changing mood of the prisoners as they are transported, which ranges from despondent to hopeful. There are rumours, for example, that they will be deported to America. When they are on a barge on the Lena:

“Everyone is upbeat. We are fed three times a day and given as much water as we can drink… For the young, it is like a field trip. A school holiday.”

Only occasionally does the narrator look ahead:

“I get a bad feeling, as though I was seeing the shadow of death hovering above some heads. Perhaps it was only a child’s intuition. Yet time would confirm it.”

When they reach their destination life could hardly be bleaker:

“I look around and am chilled to the bone. Far and wide, tundra and more tundra, naked tundra, not a sprig of vegetation, just moss as far as the eye can see.”

First they must build their own shelters, and then begins the never-ending battle against cold and hunger. When winter arrives “although we have a brick shelter we might as well be outside.” She steals firewood and, when she is caught, simply admits it – her youth and candour winning her a reprieve. At times the entrance to their shelter is completely blocked by snow. Hunger also haunts them perpetually:

“At night we all dream of bread…but when you go to eat it – the bread disappears.”

While they starve their overseers live comfortably:

“I thought that in wartime everyone was supposed to bear the burden equally, but these people don’t feel the war at all.”

What makes her story bearable is her will to live. From the beginning she tells herself, “We will live, we will survive. We will fight and we will triumph – hear that?” Much later she continues to hold onto these sentiments:

“I want to live, to live, to be alive, to return to life, damn it.”

As one of the other prisoners tells her, “You’re incredibly determined, practically possessed, in the way you grapple with life.” This, at least, gives the reader something to hold onto in a story in which the suffering of ordinary people torn from their homeland is foremost. The survival of the book itself might also bring us hope: written when Grinkeviciute was in her early twenties, having illegally returned to Lithuania, she buried the manuscript in a glass jar fearing (correctly) arrest. When she was allowed to return six years later (in 1956) she was unable to find the jar, and it was only discovered by accident in 1974. (And now, thanks to Delija Valiukenas and Peirene Press it is available in English).This, like the book itself, demonstrates that the testament of women throughout the world, however painful or uncomfortable, should not, and cannot, be silenced.