Lev turns to me. “You’d better hurry.” Closes me in his arms, kisses the top of my head. He waves once more and then he’s gone.
The black body of the train shifts beside me.
I concentrate. Somewhere. My mother is somewhere. Momma. Ben and Poppa are in our compartment, arranging the bags. I step up onto the train, step over the gap between the platform and the restless metal body of the train. And here’s Poppa, and Ben, who’s already rummaging through the basket Lev has left. I look out the window. Momma. That woman walking quickly, stiffly – no, it’s not her. My mother isn’t here; she’s nowhere.
“Annette,” Poppa says, “I have her ticket. I’ll just take one more look . . .” I nod. Ben looks up, continues sorting out our baggage, fitting and refitting the boxes, suitcases around us. I look out the window.
Poppa.
He’s so still on the platform. Everything else is moving, as the bags, baskets, packages are heaved through the train windows, as people shove their way onto the train, babies wailing, women shouting through the crowd, the train clearing its throat, anxious, ready. In all the noise, the smell of this hot, frantic day, Poppa is still, in his white shirt, his arms by his sides. The train shifts.
“Poppa?”
He turns around to face me, comes to the open window, moving towards me. “I’ll find her, Annette, Ben.”
“Poppa
–” “You two go ahead on this train. I’ll find her and then we’ll both come to Moscow on another train.” He steps closer to the window, hands our tickets to Ben. “Ben, that green suitcase, hand it to me.” Then he hands Ben a small packet in a brown paper wrapper. “Be careful with this.” He lowers his voice. “Lev gave us some extra cash. Give it to Pavel and Raisa as soon as you get there. Everything will be fine. I’ll see you in Moscow soon, soon . . .”
Poppa. I open my mouth, but not a sound comes out.
The engine takes a deep breath. Pumps like a slow heartbeat and the train pulls away.
Chapter Five
I’m hot, my nightgown soaked in sweat, the thin cotton nightgown that Poppa packed for me, his brown hands on the white cloth, tucking in the folds, smoothing back my hair. You’re grown now. No. I sit up, throw the sheets off, listen. Nothing. He went to my mother, and not with me. I hold my own two hands up to my face, feel the skin soft against my palms, my mouth open. Feel the loneliness slide down my throat, open a space in me. I’m porous, hollow, the night moving through me. If I start to cry, make noise, I’ll wake Raisa and Pavel. I don’t want anyone but Poppa. My face is wet, the tears slipping between my fingers, but I’m quiet. I should wash my face. I get up, don’t turn on the light, feel my way with one hand skimming the wall to the washroom. The window is open, the room cooler. I stand at the basin and the breeze rinses my bare shoulders, arms, cools my face. Laps tenderly at my skin, touches me. There.
Fourteen days past summer solstice the light is everywhere, inescapable: Moscow’s broad streets, tall buildings, are rinsed in light; every speck, corner, licked at. There’s no place for me to hide from my father’s choice. Even the nights are brief, barely any respite from the light. In that first confusing flurry of days I find myself walking unfamiliar Moscow streets as Raisa keeps me busy with one chore after another. The onion domes of Saint Basil’s, the carnival shapes – ice cream cones, that little church on Main Street – are at home here at last. But not me. What am I doing here? Where am I? Moscow, the capital city of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Fifty-six degrees north, farther north than I’ve ever been: six degrees of latitude north of Winnipeg, ten north of Odessa. Night brief. And twilight – that hour when darkness has taken over the eastern sky so that it’s studded with hard cold points of stars that look artificial, as though Stalin himself has ordered them into being, that hour when the west is still light, still another world, the world of day – does twilight count as night or day? I don’t know. I know nothing, lost as I am under the big M, the rings of arches that lead to the Metro stations. Under the vaults of the ceilings underground, the embrace of those arched walls closing over my head doesn’t touch me. The escalators tunnelling down to the centre of the earth, step after step, lead me nowhere. I’m lost also on the sidewalks, among the proud stiff buildings, the streets wider than Main Street, wider than Portage Avenue: there’s no place to hide.
Raisa takes a deep breath, spreads her short, neat fingers – so different from my mother’s – across the table surface as if she’s about to make an announcement. But she doesn’t say anything. Didn’t say anything at first when they met us at the station, believing that Poppa and my mother would be with us. The look on her face, though. Poor Raisa, she’s stuck with us. We’re sitting, stiff as puppets, at the table: Pavel and Raisa, Ben and me. Vladimir’s roaming restlessly, touching the pictures on the walls, fingering the cushions on the davenport.
Then suddenly it joins us in the apartment – Stalin’s voice, the first time he’s been on the radio since the Germans invaded.
Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and sisters! Soldiers of our army and navy! My friends, I now speak to you in person. Since June 22 a perfidious military aggression by Hitler’s Germany against our motherland has been under way. Despite the heroic resistance of the Red Army, despite the fact that the best enemy divisions and aviation units have already been destroyed, and that the battlefields are strewn with enemy graves, the enemy continues to thrust forward by sending fresh forces to the front . . .
Despite the bad news, it’s soothing to hear the familiar voice; it makes things feel more like home.
“Annette, sweetheart, can you stop humming?”
“Sorry, Raisa,” I say. “It drives my mother crazy.” Raisa flinches. Because I said the word mother. “It’s just that I’m jumpy.”
So jumpy that it’s hard to pay attention to the speech. A few words filter through:
How has it happened that our glorious Red Army left the Fascists in control of a number of our cities and regions? . . . invincible . . . monsters and cannibals like Hitler and Ribbentrop . . . conditions favourable for German troops and unfavourable for Soviet troops . . . destined to win . . . bravery of our soldiers . . . abandon peacetime habits. . . .
When the speech is over, Pavel switches off the radio, runs a hand through his pale, thinning hair. He’s still handsome, Pavel, though his face seems thinner even than usual. He’s so much younger than Poppa. I never really realized it before.
“Pavel?”
“Yes, Annette?”
“They’re still safe, aren’t they? My parents, Lev and Manya?”
“They’re safe, Annette. It’s just been hard for them to find a way to get here. But they’re safe. You mustn’t worry.”
Raisa pours a glass of water, hands it to Ben. “Ben, do you have Joseph’s address? We have to send a letter to your brother, tell him he can write to you here.”
Ben nods, puts his hands around the water glass, clenching and unclenching.
We have to write and tell Joseph that Poppa didn’t come . . . Full fathom five thy father lies. I hear Joseph’s voice again, reading me Shakespeare poems back on Main Street. Poppa left us just the way he left Joseph. No, I can’t think that way. And what if Poppa’s lost to us now, gone? And Joseph so far away. Nobody to help me. But it’s not true. I have Ben. Ben’s here. And Raisa and Pavel and Vladimir.
“Poppa,”Vladimir says, frowning. “What Comrade Stalin said . . .”
“What is it, Vladimir?”
“There was a part in Comrade Stalin’s speech that didn’t make sense.”
Pavel pulls Vladimir onto his lap. He looks small there. Is he small for nine? Pavel’s so gentle with him, like Poppa. He frowns through his gold spectacles, though his hand continues to sift through Vladimir’s hair. “What part, Vladimir?”
“Well, he said that it was because our troops weren’t ready for war that the Germans had been able to take over so much of our land so fast. And that the reason that we weren’t ready for war was b
ecause we’d trusted the peace. But then Comrade Stalin said that the peace with Germany had given us a year and a half to get ready for war.”
Earlier in the year, Vladimir had sent a letter to Comrade Stalin. Raisa had written us about it, amused and moved at the same time. Vladimir was worried about the beggars that he’d seen in the streets of Moscow. He thought Comrade Stalin should know, that he should do something about them.
Not fair. That’s what Vladimir would have been thinking: not fair. Mean. I remember thinking that way myself, believing the world was supposed to be fair.
So Vladimir had written to Comrade Stalin, and then been upset when nothing had changed, when he’d kept seeing the same beggars in the same streets.
“And also,” Vladimir goes on, “at the end of the speech, Comrade Stalin said that our army was invincible. But at the beginning of the speech, when he was talking about Germany, he said that history shows us that no army is invincible.”
Pavel pulls Vladimir tighter to him. Not fair, that’s what we’re all thinking. “It’s rhetoric, Vladimir. Under these circumstances, I suppose rhetoric is excusable.”
“What circumstances, Poppa? What Comrade Stalin said?”
“What did he say?”
“That we’re fighting for our lives.”
Pavel goes pale, doesn’t answer for a moment. Vladimir wriggles in his lap. “Poppa . . .”
Pavel kisses the top of his head. “It’s not something for you to worry about, tateleh. We’re here, in Moscow; we’re safe.”
In one of the labelled, orderly blue file folders, I have it still – miraculously – the letter on thin paper, in Lev’s elegant scrawl. The only letter we received from Odessa that summer. But I don’t have to look for it: that summer Raisa let me read it and I pored over it; I read it until I’d memorized it, wanting Lev’s promises to come true. Wanting us all to be together, to be safe.
July 10, 1941
Odessa
My Dear Pavel and Raisa, I write not knowing whether you’ll receive this letter – we’re not sure what’s getting through. Avram has sent the children three letters already, but no mail has come from Moscow. I’m sure you’re concerned about us, but you needn’t be. You’d be surprised how little has changed here. Odessa is still Odessa, and summer still summer. The municipal flowers are obediently in bloom and the cinemas advertise the latest movies. Shops and cafés have their doors open to catch a breeze. It’s been very warm.
All this despite the fact that, two weeks ago, martial law was declared – at least the Odessa version of martial law: curfew from midnight to four thirty am. Shops to remain open no later than ten o’clock at night. Theatres, cinemas and cultural establishments to close no later than eleven. Scarcely a strict regime.
But despite appearances, and despite the carefully mod ulated constant good news Pravda keeps offering us, if one observes closely enough, there are changes. The sidewalks, with many more women than men, aren’t nearly as crowded. And people don’t stroll these days – they walk quickly, preoccupied. I think even the citizenry of Odessa is beginning to understand that the party’s over: it’s our war now.
And there are more obvious signs of the preparations for war. On every major artery of the city there are work crews, mostly women, building barricades of timbers and sandbags across the streets. A portal is left for the trolleys and for the truckloads of women volunteers who are digging the anti-tank ditches on the outskirts of town.
Thank God Avram got Ben and Annette off safely to Moscow.
I know that you’ll be troubled that we haven’t left ourselves. I want to assure you that I’m at this very moment tying up the last loose ends, dealing with a few more obligations. Shipping has been paralyzed and there are some crucial shipments stalled, some delays. As soon as I have these last things settled we’ll pack up the family and leave. Manya has her own concerns about this delay, but refuses to leave without me. We haven’t been able to do anything about persuading Reva and Basya to take their families east. And dear Anya remains difficult as always. I’m sure in the end we’ll pry her loose of her beloved city. We’ll get everyone safely out.
I have to trust my instincts here. It’s a question of timing. And you do know that my timing, so far, has been mostly good. The paperwork for our evacuation to Moscow has been in order for weeks. I just need another week, another two.
Your loving cousin,
Lev
The July evenings were unexpectedly cool, good sleeping weather. But sleep didn’t come easy for me in that first month of separation. Raisa had made the davenport in the front room up as a bed for me. We had to move it away from the window. A few bombs had fallen in June, and Raisa was worried. I would lie sleepless in the dark, hanging on to my family, their faces – Poppa, my mother, Manya, Lev – remembering the sound of Poppa’s voice: there-there. And when I did dream, I dreamt in English, dreamt that I was back in the store.
The shelves go up high, high. I’m little again. The store’s full of customers; everyone’s talking English. And there’s Vladimir making milkshakes. “One for each of you,” he says. It’s the old family: Poppa, my mother, Joseph, Ben. I’m counting us. I keep counting, but one of us is missing, and I don’t know which one.
For now they were safe. The rumours about the Germans bombing Odessa were just that, rumours. And we were safe. They had not bombed Moscow since those strays in June. Though blackout curtains shielded Pavel and Raisa’s apartment from the half-light of night beyond them, they were just a precaution. Preparedness, preparedness and resolution are the keys – the voices on the loudspeakers blared it all the time. And Joseph too was safe. We received a brief letter from Winnipeg; he was still in Winnipeg, had tried to enlist but been turned down, just as Poppa thought, because of his flat feet. And they’d had a little boy, and his name was Nathan. Poppa had a grandson whose name he didn’t know. Joseph was writing to Odessa as well – he’d let us know if he received any news.
Ben joined a People’s Army unit. The men couldn’t be processed fast enough to get them into the real army, so People’s Army units were formed. Vladimir and I would watch Ben’s unit drill, the slightly uneven rows of young men moving up and down in front of the apartment building, people waving from the windows. Such young faces, trying to look stern, trying to look older. The sound of their marching wavered because they were in shoes – they hadn’t got any boots as yet, no uniforms either. The boys were all eager to stand beside each other, move into line, into formation; so eager to give up their individual lives. Their voices – I didn’t recognize the patriotic songs they sang – and their footsteps would echo against the walls of the buildings, the sound moving through the open windows, out of the public space and into the private spaces of people’s rooms.
The days and sleepless nights ran into one another. At night, as I drifted towards dreams, English words would wash through my mind, funny bits about English. Miss MacLeod, the comfort sounds she used to make when one of her pupils scraped a knee: Now-now. There-there. Poppa’s sounds, the sound of soothing. There-there; go to sleep. Now-now; don’t cry. English in my head. It should have been then-then, really, to go with there-there. I think in those first weeks of shock I lived nowhere but inside my own head, my good-for-nothing head. What I wanted was to sleep through the night with no dreams and to wake up and be in one place, be where I was: Moscow. I was in Moscow because of my father. He dreamt Moscow into being for me, because of what he wanted for me and couldn’t give himself. Who dreamt Moscow first, who dreamt Moscow into being? Some tsar back in the fourteenth, fifteenth century? At first there was nothing and then there was this city. People wish for things, dream them into being, good or bad. And not just buildings, or roads. The Revolution, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Marx, Lenin. Stalin. But not just them. People like my mother, and Poppa, and everyone else who believed in the Revolution, in a Soviet Russia.
And the war. Hitler dreamt it. It’s all desire: cities and streets and governments and w
ars, anything built by people. Hitler wanted his living space. Germany wasn’t enough for him. He willed a war. No, that’s not true either. It wasn’t Hitler alone; it wasn’t one man. Not Hitler and not Lenin and not Stalin. Someone wished them into being, dreamt along with them. Whole peoples, nations, believers who dreamt them into power. Awake and dreaming, they’d made it all.
And what about me, what have I dreamt into being? Or have I let myself be dreamt by someone else? What about me?
Joseph’s head is bumpy; my knees bang against his shoulders. He’s giving me a piggyback ride. It’s dark and very late. The air smells of the sharp, sweet scent of grass. The sky is full of coloured bits of light, red and green and blue Blossoms and pinwheels of light. “Did you like that, Annette? Do you like Firecracker Day?” I can hear pops like bubbles bursting and then a shaky boom. That flower of light, right on top of my head, inside me. I’m big with light. Then it fades. How can Joseph carry me like this? I’m too big for a piggyback ride. He’s walking away from the fireworks, but the noise is getting louder. Someone’s banging on the door. I can smell the sulphur from the matches. I’m pounding Joseph on the shoulders. He has to stop. It’s too noisy; I don’t want to go.
“Annette,” Raisa’s voice is in my ear, “Annette, get up.”
I’m too tired to get up. I try to pull the covers back on.
“Annette, we’ve got to hurry.”
“Where’s Poppa?” That howling, sirens. Is there a fire?
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