There was no reason for optimism. The train, heading for an obscure junction outside of Riga, was within thirty kilometres of its destination when it was stopped on the tracks by the Russians. Inside the boxcar, thirty people who had bartered and sold their souls for passage, stood still, their resolve and acceptance unified in horror. They weren't going to make it.

If Ilga could see outside her wooden prison, she'd have recognized the expression; the salivating thirst for blood that the young Russian soldiers wore. She'd seen the look before, watched as boys barely older than her own brothers, marched into Jelgava and satisfied their hunger.

The soldier who raped her, forced her mother to watch as he grunted, his buttocks quivering before he raised his pistol. "She loved every minute of it," he said before putting a bullet between her mother's eyes.

He rose, towering over Ilga, roughly grabbing his trousers and signalled for his comrades to come into the shed where her family had sought refuge. "Come take your turn," he yelled.

"Wait," Ilga bartered. "You are right. I did love it. Will you really allow those pigs to violate me, when you could come back for more later?"

"You will run. I can't trust you, bitch."

Ilga had watched the confusion on the soldier's face; the surge of renewed lust made his manhood dance. She was sickened by her own survival instinct, disgusted by her desperation to live while those she loved lay dead around her.

"Isn't it worth the gamble," she said, stroking her bare breasts seductively.

"In an hour; if you are not here, I will hunt you down and skin you alive."

The soldiers marched out of the yard. She heard the neighbours screaming, the shots and stood, vomiting, quivering as she closed her mother's eyes.

The occupants of the boxcar each had their own story. The only bond they shared was their discovery of a route to freedom. Now that seemed lost.

Ilga could hear the engineer arguing with the Russians. "Nothing, but swine; I am delivering livestock to your troops so they will not starve. Clear the tracks and let me pass."

The sound of footsteps crunching in the snow as the soldiers circled the train kept Ilga on high alert. She could hear sliding doors open and shut as the contents of other cars were verified. Two soldiers stopped outside their car, lit cigarettes and joked about the women they 'liberated' the night before.

Centimetres separated the men outside from the Latvians inside the train. She wondered if her rapist was one of the men gloating over his nocturnal conquests, and felt the bile and rage rise in her throat. She willed her mind to go blank. She did not want to remember the sight of her family's slaughtered bodies bleeding into the snow.

The stench of fear permeated the boxcar as men and women stood still, afraid to breathe. Someone had soiled himself, a baby began to whimper. A woman struggled with her woollen shawl, clasped the infant and pulled him to her breast. The baby continued to fuss. The soldiers outside the train, alerted to the sound threw their cigarettes into the snow bank and whirled around looking for the source of the cries.

Men surrounded the woman and her child. In a moment there was silence. The lifeless baby remained in the arms of the mother whose mouth gaped, the soundless screams rising in her throat. In a moment, she too was dead, her neck snapped. The woman was left on the floor, the first victim of what Ilga thought would be a massacre. She didn't consider the men's actions murder. Though only fifteen, Ilga had seen atrocity. She knew, without a second thought, the woman and her child died so that the rest might live.

A string of Russian commands from the front of the train distracted the two soldiers. They responded to their commandant's orders to return to their jeeps, but not before they shot a few rounds into the boxcar.

Four more bodies littered the floor of the car before the train stopped twenty miles farther up the tracks. The engineer walked back to the boxcar, pulled back the door and ordered everyone out. Despite protests, the people scattered, heading into the forest.

"Five miles that way," the engineer said, pointing in the opposite direction that the people had dispersed. Ilga stood looking into the bearded face of the man whose eyes looked as if once upon a time they were kind. "Why...?" she asked, watching the backs of the people who once stood beside her, now running into the blackness of the woods.

"I must go through a checkpoint. I can not risk passengers."

"Why there? Why not that way...with them?"

The engineer did not answer. He returned to the engine and the train snaked down the tracks, leaving Ilga to make her choice.

She followed the direction that the engineer indicated, finding herself at the top of a precipice that looked over the Baltic, but plunged into a deep canyon. It was impossible for Ilga to imagine how she would scale down rocks covered in snow and find a safe path to the port. From her position, she could see the people from the train plodding through the snow, trying to reach Riga. There, in the one-time capital of her country, she'd been told were sympathetic fishermen who might take her to safety. Beyond that, she knew nothing else.

Alone, she had the option to do nothing, freeze to death on this outcrop where no one would find her or care whether she lived or died, or risk what was left of her life to the canyon. She tried to permit herself a moment to grieve, but as she watched from high over the forest, the Russians emerged from hiding, gunning down the desperate people who had travelled so far with nothing more than hope. Ilga made the decision to survive.

*****

"Nana, why do you speak so funny? Grandpa doesn't talk that way. Did you eat something prickly that stuck in your throat?"

"Nu, Andris, why do you ask so many questions?"

"My name is Andrew, not Andris. Why do you call me Andris? "

"If you were born in Latvia, your name would be Andris," Ilga answered.

"Where is Latvia? Is that where you were born? Can you tell me about it?"

"No. Some things are best forgotten. I shall try to remember to call you Andrew."