by Gwen C. Katz
He stepped aside and let me run after Pasha.
The house had survived many bombs and shells. Its entire second floor was gone, its past existence attested to only by two stone walls intact enough to contain the sills of upstairs windows. A few remnants of the top story’s plaster floor supported a makeshift new roof of planks, tarps, and corrugated iron. Some of the windows were boarded up, others covered with oiled newspaper deep amber with indoor light. A blanket hung in place of a door that was absent except for its hinges.
Inside, a stout woman with a deeply lined face and thick, callused hands was tearing a sheet into strips by the light of a tin lantern. Flicking her eyes over the two partisans and their burden, she instantly sized up the situation, picked up the lantern, and ordered, “Bring him to the basement.”
I followed the group down a stairwell narrow enough that I could touch both cold brick walls with my elbows. By the looks of it, the cluttered basement served variously as a coal cellar, bomb shelter, command center, munitions dump, and infirmary. The air was warmer than upstairs and close with gunpowder and cigarette smoke.
With one sweep of her arm, the woman cleared maps, compasses, fat grease pencils, cartridge casings, and dirty mugs off a sturdy wooden table. The young man and woman laid Pasha’s inert form down on it. When I saw how he looked, my breath caught and I thought momentarily that he was dead already. His face was chalky, his lips light violet, his tunic saturated with dark red. The woman set the lantern down next to him and shooed the rest of us off with one hand. “Go on. You’ll only be in the way.”
Iskra and the two partisans departed. I remained. I said, “I want to help. He’s important to me.”
The woman tossed me a cloth. “Keep pressure on the wound.”
I laid the cloth on Pasha’s shoulder. He flinched when I touched the wound, making me draw back, but the woman gave me a stern look and so I bit my lip and pressed down with the heels of both hands. The cloth was immediately soaked through. Dark blood pooled underneath him, seeping into the wood and getting in his hair. I stubbornly kept the pressure on. The woman put a bottle of vodka on the table and set a kettle on the stove to boil.
A boy descended the stairs silently on portyanki-clad feet with one hand trailing along the wall. He looked about thirteen. It was hard not to look at his face. It was crisscrossed with scars, not bandaged, but red and raw. One of his eyes had been stitched shut. The other, foggy gray, stared indistinctly at the far wall. A pang stabbed through me as I realized that I was looking at my own handiwork.
He asked, “Mama, what’s going on?”
“Go back to bed,” said the woman.
“Papa says I need to help more if I want to stay,” said the boy.
“Not yet,” the woman told him. “There are so many things you need to relearn. Get some sleep.”
The boy wordlessly retreated up the stairs. The woman tucked a few stray strands of iron-gray hair back under her scarf and turned her full attention to Pasha, brushing me aside. Her short-fingered hands worked with surprising dexterity. She unbuckled his belt, undid his buttons, and slid his arms out of the tunic sleeves. She attempted to pull off his scuffed black boots, the uppers of which were pulling away from the soles, but when she was unable to get them off his swollen feet, she sliced through the leather with a pair of steel scissors. She removed the rest of his clothing the same way, cutting him free of the padded trousers and the grimy, frayed undergarments stiff with sweat and blood, letting the many layers of rags that wrapped his feet in lieu of portyanki fall to the ground in scraps. She ran her blunt fingertips lightly over his body, taking stock of his injuries.
“Is it only the shoulder?” I asked.
“His feet don’t look good, either,” the woman replied. The compassion in her voice filled me with guilt. I didn’t deserve her help. What would she do to me if she knew that I’d tried to kill her? That I’d blinded her son? What would she do to Pasha?
The woman told me, “Get him cleaned up. I’ll deal with that gunshot.”
I brought the kettle over and set it on the end of the table. I tossed the blood-soaked cloth onto the floor, fetched another, and wiped away the layers of blood and filth that coated Pasha’s body. The warm water soothed my hands. Sometime during this process, Pasha began to struggle weakly and his eyelids fluttered. He parted his dry, sticky lips, but I told him, “Shh. Lie still. We’ll talk later.”
The bullet had torn an ugly, gaping hole in Pasha’s right shoulder below his collarbone. The woman uncorked the vodka bottle with her teeth and poured the liquid over the wound. Pasha cried out. The woman said soothingly, “Poor child. You’ve been through so much. But no one will hurt you now.”
She told me, “There isn’t much I can do about infection. We’ve been low on medicine since the supply planes stopped coming. We don’t have any penicillin, and we used up the last of the iodine after we were bombed. I can’t promise you anything.”
She packed the wound with bits of torn-up sheet and wrapped up his shoulder. Then she turned her attention to his feet. They were covered in raw spots and blisters, his toes mottled with black frostbite. She shook her head. “It’s too late. He’ll lose some of those.” She pierced the blisters with a needle and massaged his feet until their normal color started to return.
She shook out a thick flannel blanket and laid it on the floor in front of the stove. “Bring him over here.”
I gathered Pasha in my arms as if he were a child who had fallen asleep before bedtime. I laid him on his side on the blanket and folded the rest of it over him, taking care not to touch his injured shoulder.
The woman told me, “I’m sorry I can’t give him anything for the pain. For now, the most important thing is to keep him warm. He’s lost a lot of blood. He’ll get cold very quickly. You need to depart while it’s still dark?”
I nodded. “We’d never make it over the front lines in daylight.”
“He can still get several hours of rest before dawn. I’ll see if I can find some fresh clothes for him, and for you.”
“For me?” I looked down at myself. The entire front of my flight suit was soaked in blood. “Oh. I’ll be fine.” I couldn’t think of taking any more from the people I’d hurt.
She shrugged and vanished up the stairs.
I knelt on the floor, letting the dry warmth of the stove roll over me. I looked down at the soldier I had rescued. I would face the camps because of him, but I didn’t doubt for an instant that he was worth it. For the first time in a long time, maybe the first time in the entire war, I had done something I was glad of without reservation.
“Valyushka,” he rasped, his voice barely audible.
“I’m here, Pashenka.” I slipped out of my oversized fur boots, took off my flight helmet and cap comforter, and slid under the blanket next to him. “I’m here.”
Pasha’s shoulders shivered, then shook. He was crying. I wondered what images were flashing through his mind, what sounds and feelings and colors he was remembering, and I knew that I would not find out. I drew him close so that I could feel the warmth returning to his body. He turned toward me and buried his head in my breasts. Tears joined the other stains on my flight suit. Silent, painful sobs wracked his body for what seemed like ages. Finally they subsided. I felt I shouldn’t break the quiet. Pasha would speak when he was ready.
His left hand, the good one, crept forward and his fingertips came to rest on my red star. He whispered, “You wore it.”
I replied in the same tone, unsure whether I was whispering to avoid disturbing those upstairs or simply because it made me feel closer to him, “I wouldn’t want to disappoint you.”
He gave a weak but genuine smile and said, “I finally got to meet your airplane after hearing so much about it. You used to compare planes to horses.”
“Not anymore,” I said. “Silly thing to do, really.”
“I don’t think it’s silly,” said Pasha. “In fairy tales, the hero always rides a white horse.”
> “I’m no fairy-tale hero,” I said, wondering what, amid the pain, had made Pasha think of fairy tales.
“I know,” said Pasha, closing his eyes again. And then, “I wish you hadn’t killed that soldier.”
“I had to. You were surrounded.”
“I understand. All the same, I wish someone else could have done it. I don’t want you to be . . .” His hoarse voice trailed off.
“Pashenka.” It hurt me to say this. After all he’d been through, somehow Pasha was still more innocent than me. I didn’t deserve him. I had no right to return to a peaceful civilian life. That had been forfeit when we dropped our first bomb. “He wasn’t the first man I’ve killed. There have been others. Many others. And there will be more. I can’t pretend otherwise. If you want to be with me, you have to accept that.”
He nodded solemnly. An uneven layer of black stubble speckled his cheeks. I ran a hand over it. “When did you start growing a beard?”
“When I used my razor to fix the radio.”
“It suits you. It makes you look more like a man.”
“I don’t feel like a man,” Pasha admitted.
“But you are one.”
He was. We were the same height now. He’d grown into his once-awkward facial features. His chest and shoulders were lean and muscled from long marches carrying his radio. He was no longer the boy I had sat beside on the barge from Stakhanovo. And, I realized, I was no longer the girl in pigtails and overalls.
I said, “Why didn’t I kiss you on the barge? I’ve been thinking about that for more than a year. I’ve done so many stupid things, but the stupidest of all was not kissing you when I had the chance.”
“I wanted you to,” said Pasha.
“I thought you were going to kiss me,” I said, realizing as I said it how foolish I had been.
“I thought you were going to kiss me.”
“Well, no more of that nonsense.” I raised his face with my hand and lowered my own so that our foreheads rested against each other, but I wasn’t sure whether I brought my mouth to his or the other way around. My lips were dry and cracked from the winter wind. So were his. The raw patches stung when they came into contact. I wouldn’t have stopped for anything.
“This wasn’t where I expected to have our first kiss,” I murmured.
“Me either,” said Pasha.
Then, abruptly, he drew back and curled up protectively. I thought for a moment that I had done something wrong. He said hoarsely, “I’m a cripple, Valyuskha, aren’t I?”
“No. You’re only hurt.”
“My arm. I can’t move it at all. I can’t wiggle my fingers or make a fist.”
“Shh. Don’t try. You can’t move it because you’re in so much pain. You’ll heal up like new. That’s how it was with me.”
Pasha nodded obediently. He asked in a timid voice, “Valyushka?”
“Yeah?”
“You were hurt too. You have scars.”
“Yes.”
“Will you show me?”
And I did.
THIRTY-SIX
THE SKY WAS A PREDAWN SLATE GRAY WHEN OUR LITTLE biplane departed. For that brief time while we flew, I felt like I was not a part of the war, despite the devastation spread out below us, despite the injured soldier, now fitted out with civilian clothes, in my arms. This was our last moment together, maybe our last moment alive, but it was easy to imagine that it would never end, that it would always be us and the ticking engine.
I wondered what Iskra was thinking back there with her steady hands on the controls. Maybe I could ask her to just fly us away like I’d offered to fly Pasha away the day he left for the front. But we both knew that wasn’t an option. We had made our choice and we’d accept the consequences like the soldiers we were. And then we were over our aerodrome, approaching the plowed stretch of runway covered with thick stripes from tires and thin stripes from tail skids. We touched down to meet our fate.
The other women in the regiment were scattered over the trucks and the dugout roofs and the wings of their planes eating breakfast, but when Number 18 came to a stop, there was a general clatter from all across the airfield as everyone dropped her dishes and ran over. Iskra hopped out of the rear cockpit and was instantly mobbed with hugs and kisses from our friends, the girls we’d deceived, the girls who still didn’t know about our act of treason. Tanya gave her a light smack on the arm and scolded, “What do you think you’re doing, making your flight commander worry?”
Ilyushina, soaked in oil and in the process of dismantling a plane’s fuel system, took a moment to give us a thumbs-up.
Zhigli said, “We set out dishes for you. We knew you were coming back. A little engine trouble wouldn’t finish off the Korolevas.”
“It wasn’t exactly engine trouble,” Iskra admitted.
I undid my harness and helped Pasha out of the cockpit, saying, “He’s wounded. Can someone give him a hand getting down?”
Zhigli’s jaw dropped.
It was probably the first time in history that a man had landed at a military airfield and been swarmed by a crowd of curious women. It didn’t take them long to divine that this was the mysterious Pasha, and then, of course, he and I were both inundated with questions.
“Give him some space. He’s hurt!” I said to no avail. Our aide-de-camp eventually rescued him and whisked him off to the field hospital.
As I slung my leg over the edge of the cockpit, my other foot brushed something. A canvas bag. I had forgotten about it. I pulled the drawstring open. Inside was a handful of photographs. Of course. I took them out and climbed down.
Bershanskaya stood with her chief of staff a little apart from the raucous group, marking down that her lost eaglets had returned. I’d never worked out what to say to her, sometimes wanting to defiantly stand by my actions and sometimes only wanting to beg her not to be disappointed with us. It hardly mattered. Not even Iskra’s quick thinking could get us out of this one. So I just saluted and pushed the photos into her hands.
Bershanskaya looked me up and down and said only, “Are you hurt?”
I touched the dark stain that covered most of my flight jacket. “Oh—I’m fine. That’s not my blood.”
Kazarinova was there in an instant, her arms crossed, the crease between her eyes deepening as she considered me, Iskra, and the photos. I bowed my head, ready to accept what was coming. She told Bershanskaya, “I trust this settles the question of their loyalty.”
“Yes,” said Bershanskaya.
To me, Kazarinova said, “You two are going to Siberia for this.”
No despair settled its black wings on me, only peace. I’d found Pasha. I’d finished the task that fate had given me. I could handle anything now, even the camps. “Understood, ma’am.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Bershanskaya said brusquely.
“They deliberately disobeyed orders and deserted to rescue a known traitor!”
“They did none of that.” Bershanskaya squinted at Kazarinova. She was the taller of the two. I wondered why I’d never noticed that before. “I revised our flight plan a second time last night and reassigned the Korolevas to the rescue mission. Since the first squadron’s bombing objective was in the same direction, I had them depart with the rest of the squadron. Isn’t that right, Junior Lieutenant?”
The look she gave me was not hard to interpret. Hope flickering in my chest, I said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“In fact, I may recommend the three of you for decoration,” Bershanskaya mused. “You’ve all demonstrated great bravery and resourcefulness. I’m thinking, perhaps, the Order of the Red Banner?”
“We also took out an Me 109,” I added.
“Technically, the bridge took it out,” Iskra corrected me.
“Our regiment’s first kill. This has been a successful night,” said Bershanskaya.
Kazarinova’s voice was steely with carefully controlled fury. “Major, I think you don’t fully understand the repercussions of what you’re doing.�
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“And I think you’re needed back in Moscow,” said Bershanskaya steadily. “If you want to get into a discussion with our superiors about why you interfered with a mission to secure strategically important documents, we can. But I would think carefully about whether there’s anything in your past that you’d rather not have subjected to further scrutiny.” To her chief of staff, she added, “Captain, go warm up Major Kazarinova’s car.”
Kazarinova threw Bershanskaya one last sullen look and then, walking heavily, favoring her bad leg, she followed the chief of staff. Relief poured over me like warm honey. It was over. No one would go to the camps, no one would be shot, and no one would ever, ever take Pasha from me again. I mouthed the words “Thank you” to my commander. Bershanskaya let her shy half smile creep across her face, but it passed and she told the two of us, “See that your aircraft is fit to fly and then get some sleep. You fly tonight at eighteen hundred hours.”
Epilogue
I KNEW I WAS HOME WHEN I SMELLED SULFUR SMOKE. Iskra and I sat side by side on the lead barge’s blunt front end as the tow made its lazy way up the canal. We wore not oversized men’s uniforms but fitted uniforms with skirts and the shoulder boards of a Guards regiment.
A lump of coal lay on the deck by my foot. I absentmindedly picked it up. It was slick and solid, with an oily rainbow sheen. It would go into the ovens to make coke, which would be used to make steel, which would become machines and bridges and rails. We had destroyed enough. It was time to rebuild our nation, the nation that chose for its symbol the tools of peaceful labor.
Iskra looked at her ripply reflection, her chin resting on one hand. After the delirious joy of victory had worn off, she’d grown quiet and downcast. For her, the war had changed everything and nothing. The Soviet regime was still corrupt and brutal and it still viewed her with a suspicion that even her military service couldn’t expunge. She was growing to accept that there might never be a place for her in the Motherland she loved so dearly.
As the familiar dust-gray buildings of Stakhanovo came into view, I found it difficult to believe that a few months ago I had stood on the broken streets of Berlin. There, in the ruins of the fascist capital, I had felt no joy or satisfaction, just weariness. I was tired of endless amphetamine-fueled nights. Tired of watching my friends catch fire in the sky. And most of all, tired of killing.
