by Amber Lough
“Remember when you were taking lessons from Ilya? How you left my birthday party early because that was the one day he could show you how to fight with a saber without you two getting caught by the armory sergeant?”
“I thought you didn’t like it when I did that!” She hadn’t complained, but she’d never asked to join us—which, for Masha, was usually a clear sign of disapproval.
“Well, I was a little jealous you had so much time alone with Ilya,” she said slyly. “But I knew you weren’t running off to kiss him.”
The thought of Ilya turned my stomach.
Slowly, I slipped my hand out from beneath hers. “I can’t go to the rally.” My voice came out sharp. My eyes stung and I blinked hard. The flyer had spoken to me, and I wanted to go. I wanted to carry a rifle and wear the uniform, and if any woman in Petrograd was ready for it, it was me.
“Why not?”
“All three of us can’t be at the front—there’d be no one left at home.” If Babushka were still alive, or if my mother had stayed with us, perhaps it would be different. But I’d promised Maxim I would be here when he got back.
“I thought you wanted to help with the war.”
“We are helping with the war.” I forced a smile and made it wicked, hoping to cover the sinking feeling in my chest. “We make the best grenades this side of Paris.”
—
May 16, 1917
A ration of bread, cheese, an onion, and three books from Elena Stefanovna’s Russian room weighted down my arms as I kicked in the front door to my apartment building. It groaned open, and while I wondered when it had last been oiled, the old guard ran over to help. I shook my head.
“I’m fine.”
He was blocking my way to the stairwell. “Ekaterina Pavlova? There’s a telegram for you.”
The books doubled in weight and the straps of the linen bag dug into my palm like a knife. Telegrams only brought bad news.
He pulled an envelope out of his pocket. “It’s from Colonel Pavlov.” He held it out for a moment and, when I didn’t move, set it on top of the stack of books.
“Thank you.” The words were habit, and so were my steps as I made my way around him. The light through the stairwell’s yellow glass window, the ivory and black checkered steps, the key in the lock and the bread, cheese, and onion on the floor. The books on the shoe rack, the gray envelope shaking, shaking, ripping open.
I looked at the telegram inside.
Maxim did not arrive. Deserter.
—Col V. Pavlov
No one was dead.
I sank onto the floor and curled over the telegram, all the gut-twisting worry draining from me like dishwater, only to be replaced by a dull sick feeling. If I’d heard it from a soldier, or if I’d read it in the paper, I would not have believed it. But Papa never lied, never embellished, and had never sent a telegram in the three years he’d been gone. If Papa said it, it must be so.
I’d been hoarding tears of worry for weeks, fearful that the last I’d ever see of Maxim would be through that grimy train window. But I hadn’t expected this.
No matter how many times I looked, the type was always the same. Papa’s voice grew louder in my ear until he was shouting, his voice carrying across Belarus, over the east of Russia to Petrograd.
My son has deserted! I heard him cry. And then the telegram was spotted and damp, the ink spreading, its barbs branching along the folds. Now there is no one to stand with me at the front.
The door had been left open, and a neighbor’s steps echoed in the stairwell. With a sharp kick, I shut the door and was alone with a ration of bread, a bit of cheese, an onion, and three leather-covered novels.
Maxim’s face in the train window wavered in my mind, his jawline dissolving in the shadowy interior. His palm against the pane. My own hand absorbing the cold of the glass, but somehow also feeling his hand against mine.
It would be the last time together, because Maxim would never come home now. He was not dead, but the scant five words from my father declared Maxim dead to him.
“Olga had a deep hole dug inside Kiev’s walls, and when her people brought Prince Mal’s men—in their boat—she had them dropped into the hole.”
“No!”
“Oh yes. Olga leaned down over them and said, ‘Have we honored you justly?’ Then she had them buried alive.”
7
May 17, 1917
Masha didn’t show up at the factory the next day. As soon as I clocked out and washed my hands, I made my way across Petrograd to her apartment building, a twenty-minute walk from my own. With each bump of the rails, I wondered what had kept her. She hadn’t seemed ill the day before, and she never missed a day otherwise.
The sun perforated a thick clump of dark clouds, scattering weak light across the city. It was chillier than it had been a few hours ago, but I had my shawl and enough anger burning inside to keep me warm whenever I thought of Maxim’s desertion and how the war had torn apart my family.
Masha lived on a busier street than the one I grew up on. The buildings were taller, tighter, and cobwebbed with electrical wires crisscrossing the street. Her parents chose this part of town because, according to her father, it had a dynamic culture, and that was where the best ideas were sprung.
I ran the two flights up to her apartment. When I knocked, the front door creaked open of its own accord. There was no one in the hallway, so I let myself in. It was too quiet.
In the parlor, Masha sat on the sofa beside her mother, both of them drained of life. They were like paper dolls, in fine clothes but pale and stiff.
Relief that Masha wasn’t ill gave way to dread when I noticed the telegram in Masha’s mother’s lap. “What happened?” I took the seat opposite from them.
“It’s Papa,” Masha croaked. “He’s in a hospital somewhere near Riga. They don’t—” She hiccupped and clapped a hand over her mouth.
My stomach plummeted. “I am so sorry, Masha.” I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed.
Her mother, Sabina Andreyevna, looked as if she would never move again. She didn’t even blink. Her face was edged in sadness the way rose petals fade and darken as they die. “He could already be dead, and we wouldn’t know,” she said faintly.
“They’ll wire you as soon as they know something more,” I said, although I didn’t believe that. The army was notorious for taking weeks, or even months, to let families know what had happened. In some cases, they claimed a soldier had disappeared in battle, never to be seen again.
And sometimes they sent a telegram with a five-word message.
Sabina Andreyevna sat up straight. “I am going to him.”
“Mama, no. It’s too far.”
“Masha is right,” I added. “And they won’t let you in unless you’re a nurse.”
Sabina Andreyevna bent over, clutching at her stomach. “I can’t sit here and do nothing,” she cried. “I can’t.”
“Write to him. It would get there faster than you could, and someone will read it to him if he can’t do it himself,” I said. “My brother—” My voice hitched, but I pressed on. “My brother said that they never failed to bring him my letters when he was in the hospital. They were the only things he had to look forward to.” I looked away, unable to face Masha. I’d come to tell her about Maxim, but now was not the time.
“We’ll write to him tonight and send it first thing tomorrow, Mama. We don’t know if I’ll be . . .” Masha trailed off, sounding suddenly unsure.
“I can’t believe you’re still going to join that woman! Knowing what has happened to your father!”
“Are you still signing up?” I squeaked. “For the women’s battalion?”
“Mama,” she said, ignoring my question, “the danger hasn’t grown any greater since we received the telegram. And Papa will get better.” She turned to me. “Won’t he, Katya?”
I felt sick, but I nodded.
“But what about you?” Sabina Andreyevna’s voice wavered, like she w
as afraid to choose a direction for her fear. “How can I allow my daughter to fight? What if I lose you both?”
“I’m more afraid to stay here and, as you said, Mama, do nothing,” Masha snapped.
Sabina Andreyevna’s eyes flashed up to me. “Are you going too, Katya?”
Masha grabbed my wrist. “Say you’ll come with me. Just to the assembly.”
I rested my elbows on my knees and stared at the coffee table as if I could see beyond it, through the stones of Petrograd and into the wooden piles the city was built upon. We were a strange line of women, crying over the wounded in one breath and talking of joining the fight in the other.
My father had no one to stand with him at the front.
Perhaps I could prove to him that I didn’t have to be a man to be a good soldier.
I nodded. “I’ll go the assembly.”
“Katya, dear, you don’t have to just because Masha wants to!”
“It’s not that, Sabina Andreyevna. I want to do more for the war effort; I want to have a purpose. And there’s no reason for me to stay in Petrograd any longer.”
Sabina Andreyevna took my other hand and wrapped it in hers. “Because your brother went back to the front and you’re all alone.”
Her hands were soft and smelled of rose water.
“My brother deserted.”
The silence was light and fragile, and Masha smashed it to shards. “Damned Germans and their poisonous propaganda!”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I read it in the newspaper. The German planes drop leaflets encouraging our soldiers to retreat, to run away. They say they’ll be merciful with those that desert, but not with those that fight. The article said it’s working, too.”
“Another reason General Kerensky agreed to this Women’s Battalion scheme, I expect,” Sabina Andreyevna said. “If our women go to war, our men will have to stay or be shamed forever.”
“I wouldn’t go to shame our Russian men,” I said. “I would go because I don’t want to wait for them all to come home in boxes.”
Sabina Andreyevna’s face turned to a mask of forced fortitude. “You are the bravest girls I know. It tears my heart into pieces to think of you in the middle of the fight, but I . . . Let me get the vodka.”
As soon as she left the room, Masha scooted closer to me. “You don’t have to join. Truly.”
“I wouldn’t join because of you.” I jabbed her lightly in the ribs. “And I haven’t decided yet. Let’s see what happens at the assembly.”
“I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you, Katya. Why don’t you stay and take care of my mother?”
“If you want your mother taken care of, stay for her yourself.”
Sabina Andreyevna returned with the vodka and three crystal glasses. She poured us each a tiny bit, but her hands shook and it sloshed onto the rug.
“It’s a good thing it’s clear.” She handed me my glass. It was barely bigger than a thimble, and I held it delicately between my thumb and forefinger.
“To the women of Russia,” Masha said.
“To the women,” I said.
“To Russia,” Sabina Andreyevna said.
We drank, and the vodka burned away the sour taste I’d had on my tongue since I read the word deserter.
“Olga sent a message to Prince Mal asking for an escort to his city for their marriage.”
“Did he know about the men in the boat?”
“I don’t know. But he sent his men to Olga, and she asked them to come to her after they had bathed.”
“They must have smelled bad.”
“Perhaps. Hygiene wasn’t as important then.”
“What did they bathe with?”
“These men never took that bath, unfortunately.”
“Why? Did she have them killed too?”
“She locked them in the bathhouse and had it set on fire.”
“Buried alive and now burned alive! What did she do next?”
“You’re more bloodthirsty than I’d thought. Maybe we should talk about Saint Kirill and the alphabet instead.”
“Papa!”
8
May 21, 1917
The Mariinsky Theater was, to some people in Petrograd, the jewel of society. Although it was famous for its gilded balconies, it was the people who came that made it unforgettable. The Tsar’s family used to sit in the heavily curtained central balcony and peer down at the ballet, although I’d not seen them the one time I’d gone as a child. My mother brought me—just me—to see the new ballet, Swan Lake. I was unaware that she knew the handsome man seated beside her, until a week later when she left the city with him, never to return.
The Mariinsky had been tainted by the memory of her ever since, and I’d managed to avoid it until today.
Hundreds of women stood where the seats usually were, with barely a space to breathe between them, and with this many people in one place, I almost didn’t want to go in. The air was thick with perfume, sweat, and candle wax. A golden brocade curtain hung over most of the stage, leaving a good two meters of space for the lonely podium in the center.
Masha shoved into me as we were finding a spot, and I pressed into her shoulder for a heartbeat before saying, “Everyone here is either a war widow or too rough to be a nurse.”
“Not true,” she said, and patted her hair for good measure. “We’re here, as well as a quarter of the factory women from Petrograd. And I think a peasant woman would make a better nurse than a noblewoman would, anyway. Can you imagine Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolayevna holding a bed pan?” Her humor had returned, thanks to the telegram she and her mother had received this morning, notifying them of her father’s imminent arrival in Petrograd.
There was a wave of movement to our left, where women were passing a stack of paper into the crowd. The gray sheets fanned out quickly, and I wasn’t able to snatch one before they were all gone.
“What does it say?” Masha asked, but the woman beside me had trembling hands, causing the words to shake, so I only caught a few words.
When a soldier came on stage, everyone fell silent. It was a grenadier lieutenant, if his epaulets were truly green and not a trick of stage lighting, and he dragged his right leg a little. With each hiss of his boot on the stage, my heart pounded louder. This was real. This was a rally for women to join the army.
He cleared his throat and came to a position behind the podium.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began.
Someone called out, “What gentlemen?” and several women laughed. There were admittedly few men present on the house floor.
“Yes, well,” he continued, “the Provisional Government welcomes you tonight.”
“Is he a soldier or a circus ring leader?” someone muttered, which sent another row of women tittering. I frowned, not because I had made up my mind to join the army but because whatever would be said tonight would be monumental and these women were making light of it. Or perhaps they were nervous.
“Before we begin, I must introduce you to the person behind this evening’s event.” The Lieutenant raised his right arm, and a woman in uniform marched onstage. “Sergeant Maria Bochkareva.”
Sergeant Bochkareva filled her starched uniform with energy and confidence. Her hair was cut close to the scalp like a common soldier’s, but her mouth was soft, small, and serious. She wore several medals pinned across her chest, including an orange-and-black Cross of Saint Georgi for valor in battle. She snapped to attention at the podium, clicking her heels with a crack that carried across the theater.
“Women of Russia!” she shouted. “It is time for us to prove ourselves. To prove our strength and courage!”
“She’s right to the point, isn’t she?” Masha whispered. I nodded but didn’t take my eyes off the stage.
“You are the spirit and strength of Russia, and you are needed at the front,” the sergeant called. “Not as nurses, but to fight! Not as a lone woman in a band of brothers, but with your sisters-in-a
rms! General Kerensky has given me the authority to lead a battalion that will not turn and flee when facing the enemy. My battalion will show our Russian men what it truly means to defend one’s country with honor.”
She waited a moment, staring out into the crowd with eyes as sharp and clear as a hawk’s. Even with her harsh peasant accent, she had hold of the entire house. “I joined the war as soon as I was able, but because I was a woman, I needed a telegram from the Tsar himself—which I obtained. I have been wounded twice in battle, but still I am not afraid. I will go back to the front! I will go to keep our lands free of the Germans. And this time, some of you will come with me.”
I could barely take in a breath. Never, in all the time I’d spent with my father’s soldiers, had I seen anyone like her. Other soldiers, my brother included, were trying to avoid returning to the front. But she was eager.
I wondered what sort of soldier I would be if I enlisted. Would I be like her, or would I cower?
Her eyes, scanning the crowd, stopped at mine. The hairs on the back of my neck rose at once, and I was caught in her gaze until she blinked and continued looking out at the other women present. She smiled, and her cheeks turned rosy. “I do believe some of you came only to see the novelty of a woman in uniform. Or maybe to see if the rumors were true. But there are women here with the blood and strength of Russia in their veins and these are the women I am speaking to tonight.”
Suddenly, I needed to know which one she thought I was. I stole a glance at Masha, but she only had eyes for the sergeant. Her mouth hung open slightly.
The speech continued, gaining volume and energy. A parade of women came on stage, some belonging to the Women’s Council, others in infantry uniforms who’d had experience fighting alongside men, and one who didn’t speak Russian at all but was there representing women’s rights—an Englishwoman named Pankhurst. All of them, some with the help of a translator, made the same point: for Russia to be victorious, the women would need to pick up the rifles our men had tossed to the ground in fear.
