Daughters of the Night Sky, page 27
“It won’t, my Vanya. I promise.”
I felt the warmth of his arms around me, but when I moved to return the embrace he vanished, reappearing just out of my grasp.
“If you love me, you will come with me. You will stay safe with me.”
I took a step in his direction. “Vanya, I can’t. I can’t leave the girls behind. Could you really have crossed the border into Turkey? Could I have let us?”
Poof. He was now directly behind me. I spun to see him.
“This is killing me, Katyushka. What is a man if he can’t keep the woman he loves from peril?”
“The best kind. It means you trust me to stay alive. I trust you to do the same.”
“You’re a fool, Katyushka. I didn’t think you were. There are no happy endings in war.”
The words he never said ripped at me like fangs. I took a step closer to him. Poof.
He didn’t reappear.
I fought sleep, resented wakefulness.
I longed for the darkness to carry me to oblivion, until at last the dawn came again.
CHAPTER 26
Natalia left the next morning, not wanting to leave Antonin alone too long with his grief. I hugged her tenderly and promised that if nothing else, I would come visit to pay my respects to my father-in-law. No matter the animosity Vanya had felt toward his father, no matter how badly he had yearned for another life, he had inherited a good measure of his father’s pragmatism. Vanya would have loved nothing more than to spend his days studying art and devoting his life to his craft, but we were not born into a time where many people had the luxury of pursuing their passions.
His father had been wise to see his son trained in aviation. It had nearly saved his life.
Vanya could have gone to a conservatory and studied painting under masters. And he would have been plucked from school to die under a pile of rubble during the siege on Stalingrad or Leningrad. His training had given him at least a fighting chance to survive the war. He fell several weeks short of the mark, but Vanya had done more for his country before his death than a poor foot soldier who only survived service for a few weeks.
His death had not been in vain, and it was this thought alone that kept me sane.
On the dark days I remembered the time in the convalescent center with Vanya by my side. Him whispering in my ear. Imploring me to run away. To let him buy the papers that would allow us to escape safely to Sweden, Switzerland, or Portugal—anywhere neutral. If the truck hadn’t crashed, had my body not betrayed me, he would still be alive. It was almost two years since he’d implored me to leave. Simultaneously a lifetime and a handful of moments ago. Maybe Vanya could have coaxed me over the border. We would have been well settled somewhere safe, clamoring for news of the war in any newspaper we could scrounge up. Celebrating the end of the war we’d started but hadn’t the courage to finish. We would both see guilt glinting in each other’s eyes at every mention of the war. With the news of each fallen friend.
But it would have faded in time as we built our lives together. Vanya would have found scraps of time to paint when he wasn’t working to support us. I would have taught young pilots or found some other way to stretch my wings.
There might have been a child by now. A scamp of a boy with Vanya’s black hair that curled when it was overlong. My blue eyes and porcelain skin. Perhaps a girl with my red hair and her father’s mischievous coal-black eyes. Every time I tried to sleep, if it wasn’t the vision of Vanya’s face swirling in my mind, it was some variation of the child-that-never-was. The child-that-would-never-be. Or Taisiya. Oksana. Sofia. All the others we lost in three years.
That first week I spent most of my days curled up in the comfort of those pink, lavender, and periwinkle flannel pajamas and buried myself under Mama’s quilt. I only ate when she forced the issue. I could neither read nor write. My hands didn’t seem equal to mending or any menial task. I found myself staring at the patterns on the quilt to the point where the little white flowers began to dance on the inky-blue backdrop.
Oksana’s snowdrops.
I clutched the quilt to my chest and found, inexplicably, that I envied her. She was with her Yana now. Matvei had fallen in Stalingrad and had gone off to join his Taisiya. Even if heaven didn’t exist, I had to believe they were no longer lonely for one another.
Polina had her Andrei. I wondered if they waited a full hour to find a civil-registry bureau to have their union made official. Renata was young and would find her beau before long.
I was the one torn between the land of the living and the dead.
Mama came in on a balmy afternoon. It was just over a week since I returned home. She placed a tray with a bowl of hearty soup and a chunk of brown bread on my bedside table, sat on the edge of my bed, and brushed the hair from my forehead.
“I like your hair shorter,” she said. “It suits you.”
I smiled up at her. I knew what she was saying: I’m worried about you, but I know you need time.
“It’s better now than it was when the butcher of a barber had his way with it. I like it, too.”
Thank you for not pushing. I will try to get better.
“Will you please eat?” She took my hand in hers and squeezed gently. I can’t bear to lose you, too.
I sat up in my bed and accepted the tray from Mama. The soup was thick with savory beef, carrots, potatoes, and peas. The bread was crusty and rich—ambrosia compared to the black rocks they’d been serving us for the past four years. Grigory was doing his duty for Mama, and I was grateful to him for this. The soup tasted as palatable to me as soot, but I at least felt some of my physical discomfort ebb away. The dull ache in my head subsided, and I was able to focus more clearly.
“It’s wonderful, Mama. Thank you,” I said, placing the tray back on the table when I could no longer tolerate the food.
“You don’t need to say such things, my dear. Food tasted like dirt for weeks after your papa died. But thank you for eating all the same. You probably don’t remember your babushka feeding me like I am feeding you. I had no idea she was so sick at the time.”
I remembered Babushka Olga with fondness, but her death had barely registered with me after the loss of Papa. I’m sure it was the same for Mama, and I imagine there was some guilt in her heart some years later over not grieving as deeply for her mother as she should have done.
“I am also going to do something for you that my mama did for me.”
The image of the little cabin in Miass flashed before my eyes, and I felt my breath catch. I could not spend the rest of my life so far from the rest of the world. “Mama, I can’t go back there. Not Miass.”
“No, darling. I am not kicking you out of your home. And make no mistake, this is your home. I am, however, going to insist that you get up, bathe, get dressed, and fetch some bread from the bakery for supper.”
It was a simple request, but it seemed Herculean in scope. “Mama, maybe tomorrow?” The thought of dressing, let alone leaving the apartment, seemed more daunting than flying another mission over Germany.
“No, my darling, today. You need to move. Get some air.” Mama gripped my hand and fixed my eyes with hers.
“That won’t fix anything.” I buried my face in my hands for a moment, rubbing my eyes in defeat.
“No, but it’s a start. You must trust your old mama, Katya. I never wanted you to walk in these shoes, but I have worn them for over a decade. I will help where I can, but you have to make the first steps on your own.”
The realization that Mama had endured this same pain, and that I could only now understand it, shook me. I wondered now how she had been able to go on with her life as she had done. To give me a normal, if cheerless, childhood. I had met some brave women during the course of the war, but I now felt awed by my own mother’s strength.
“How did you manage to do this, Mama? How did you move on?”
“I’m not sure I ever moved on, Katinka. Not really. But I learned to carry my grief for your papa like the medals on your chest. Proof I had loved and been loved. I had no choice but to find a way to carry on. For you, my sweet girl.”
I did as Mama commanded. I rose from my bed and scrubbed away a week’s worth of grime and sleep. I washed the grit from my hair and let the warm water trickle down my face, where tears refused to flow.
When I returned from the washroom, I found my bed already made up with clean sheets, and a light dress of dark charcoal gray, appropriate for both the summer heat and a widow in mourning, draped like a shroud over the blue-and-white field of snowdrops.
Mama knew I couldn’t face the world in a pink frock. She knew exactly what I needed and now had the means to provide for me the way she’d longed to.
I was a woman grown. A widow. I should be beyond my mother’s care. I shook my head, remembering the strength she’d shown after Papa’s death. I shouldn’t be troubling my mother, as needy for her attentions as an infant.
And I would never have the words to tell her how grateful I was for her.
I found the little handbag I used before the war, and placed a few bills and coins inside. Grigory smiled broadly from the kitchen table as he saw me emerge from my bedroom fully dressed and looking equal to facing the world. I let the corners of my lips turn upward. I let him think this was more than a farce I was putting on for my mother’s sake. And his.
I descended into the world below. The July sun only made the ice in my veins pulse a few degrees colder. The crowd looked both weary and jubilant, as one would expect of a people worn down by war. Many of the shops were empty, a few buildings still in shambles from raids and stray bombs, yet there was a buzz of excitement in the air that I never remembered of the Moscow of my youth. I was happy for my people. I had fought for this very thing.
It took nearly a half hour to find an open bakery, and the first one I found was the very shop where I had purchased my illicit matryoshka pryanik as a girl. The shopkeeper handed over the loaf of bread for our evening meal with a smile. There were no matryoshka cookies in the case that day. In honor of our victory, the cookies were all shaped like stars, helmets, and tanks. In the corner was a pile of the spiced cookies shaped like tiny airplanes.
“A dozen, please,” I said, pointing to the case. So many promises I had made since the start of the war, but this was one I would be able to keep.
I did not eat my fill of the still-warm cakes I had sworn to eat in the depth of my hunger at the front. The spices smelled alluring, but even they could not awaken my appetite. Instead I wandered. It was less than a block before I came upon my first hungry child. The little boy’s features were coated in a layer of dirt. His teeth seemed shockingly white as he smiled at the gift. Three more children emerged when they saw his prize. Within moments the cookies were consumed, and at least there would be four children not sleeping on empty stomachs that night.
I couldn’t help Klaus or Veronika. I couldn’t help the children Oksana tried to protect. But I had done something small for these children.
I returned to Mama and Grigory’s apartment to give Mama the bread. She would begin cooking soon, and I would offer to help. I entered noiselessly into the apartment, the door and latch too new to have a telltale creak. I was greeted with the sight of my mother and Grigory sitting companionably on the sofa. She was mending a pair of his uniform trousers while he read the newspaper. He leaned over to kiss her temple as he turned the beige-and-black pages. I took a step back, as though I had witnessed them in the deepest throes of lovemaking. I turned my head and placed the loaf on the kitchen table.
I darted to my room, where I found Papa’s violin. I grasped the handle and walked through the parlor without looking back at Mama and Grigory.
“Katya?” Mama called. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I’m going out again, Mama. Please don’t hold supper. I’m still full.”
“Be home before too late, dear,” she called after me. “It isn’t safe, even now.” I wanted to rebuke her but remembered I had neither my service pistol nor my band of sisters in arms at my side.
I found myself on the warm stone steps of the university, which appeared to be slowly coming back to life, though many of its scholars were forever lost in the war. I fussed with the violin case for a moment but then set the instrument beside me, still ensconced in the love-worn leather case.
I could not make my father’s music anymore.
I watched the bustle on the streets thin as the light grew weaker, but could not rise to return to the relative safety of the apartment. When I had seen Mama and Grigory together that afternoon, I saw the contentment and tranquility they shared. I was casting a shadow on the sunshine of their newly wedded bliss. They deserved their happiness unmarred by my bereavement.
The prospect of retreating to Miass, living in Babushka’s cabin, was enough to cause me to shake, despite the July sun.
Could I live as a bird in a gilded cage in Korkino, doted on by Vanya’s family? It wasn’t the life he’d wanted for himself, nor could I imagine myself spending my days with such a constant reminder of what I had lost.
I had to find a way out. Today I had ventured as far as the bakery. Tomorrow I had to venture far enough to find a life.
CHAPTER 27
August 20, 1945
The celebration shook Moscow with a jolt nearly the equal of the bombs that had cascaded down on her four years earlier. Ten Polikarpovs—one piloted by Polina and navigated by Renata—flew overhead, overshadowed by the massive bombers and sleek fighters. I’d been asked, as the commanding officer of the regiment, to lead the honor guard, but ceded my place so that Renata and Polina could go up together. Polina never got her chance to pilot her own plane during the war, and though she never complained, I knew she was happy for the chance to take command.
There had been victory parades before now, but more soldiers and pilots were home to be recognized for their service. There wasn’t the pomp of the rain-sodden parade several weeks prior, where our soldiers tossed fallen German standards at Comrade Stalin’s feet. This was a true celebration of the people and the soldiers who had defended them.
Mama and Grigory joined me in Red Square to take part in the revelry. Both seemed happy to see me out among the living. I was spending less and less time in the apartment, and I let them think it was because I was faring well enough to be out among people. The truth is that I spent most of my time trying to find some escape. I’d taken the initiative to inquire about a university course. I’d spent hours in libraries, even in the neighborhood church, to see if I might find some comfort in Renata’s faith. I’d rather have been nearly anywhere else than the pulsing square that crackled with the energy of a people too long denied a reason to celebrate, but I knew Mama, and especially Grigory, were anxious to join in the excitement.
Even after darkness fell, the lights strobed over the square so brightly it might have been day. I trembled, trying not to think of the German searchlights that had so often spelled our doom.
Do not cower. They’re fireworks. Amusement fit for children. Do not cower.
“You look pale, Katinka.” Concern was etched upon Mama’s brow. “Do we need to go home?”
I shook my head and forced my attention to the podium, where party leaders shouted and congratulated themselves on the victory, as though it had been done at their hands alone. As though millions of soldiers hadn’t paid their pound of flesh to defeat the German army.
“You need only say the word, my dear, and we can find our way out of this mob.” Grigory smiled at me over my mother’s head. He was a soldier, too, and knew something of what I was experiencing.
“I’ll be fine,” I assured them, taking Mama’s free hand in my own. Grigory had long since claimed the other.
The red, gold, and green flashes of light scarred the night sky. Today we celebrated our victory with the naive certainty that such horror would never be seen again. We’d thought the same thing a generation before when we closed the chapter on the last atrocity that had ripped the world apart. The war in the Pacific was boiling to its conclusion. The Americans had destroyed two Japanese cities to end it, and I remembered Oksana’s similar justification for her tactics: the longer the war dragged on, the longer the innocent would suffer.
We were disbanded officially in October. My commanding officer gathered us all in a great assembly room in the Kremlin to present us with the medals we had earned since the last time they had been able to attend to such matters. A gold star dangling from a red ribbon was attached to my jacket. Hero of the Soviet Union. There were twenty-four of us granted this highest honor. It was conferred upon both Oksana and Taisiya posthumously, and I accepted on their behalf as the commanding officer and their navigator. I would take Taisiya’s medals back to her family, perhaps taking the time to honor my promise and see Vanya’s parents, and to see Chelyabinsk and the academy one more time. I couldn’t imagine there being many more occasions to travel that far east again.
“You will take care of yourselves,” I said to Renata and Polina, who wore their medals on chests puffed with well-deserved pride. “It’s my last order to you as your commanding officer.”
“Of course, Major,” Renata said with a crisp salute. “So long as you promise to do the same.”
“I’ll do my best,” I answered softly, not knowing what that might look like after the months of putting their well-being before my own. “And you take care of your Andrei, too, Polina.”
“I will,” she said with a smile. She was married already, just as I had predicted, but enrolling at the university, too. Andrei had secured a job in Moscow, and they would make their lives there. A life in the capital suited them both.
“The quiet is strange, isn’t it?” Renata said. “I didn’t expect it.”
“Deafening,” I agreed. “Unless I’m out on the streets at the busiest time of day, everything seems too quiet. Too slow.” No artillery fire. No roar of the Polikarpov. No din of chatter at every meal. I was glad to not be alone with this thought.
