The Witch of Stalingrad

by Justine Saracen

  “Why did you disappear? I waited for some word from you. Anything.”

  Alex winced at the reproach. “You can’t imagine how much I wanted to come back. But that man who came to the door was NKVD. He said we were being watched and that I endangered you simply be being there. I had to stay away.”

  Lilya studied her, as if trying to decide whether to believe her, then glanced for the briefest instant to the side. “We can’t keep standing here this way, with people watching us. I’ll find you later, all right?” With a noncommittal nod, she strode away and followed the other three pilots of the first squadron into the hangar.

  Alex watched from the hangar entrance while the women gave their report. She was too far away to hear anything, but Major Kazar seemed to be berating the group for some reason.

  Afterward, Katia headed toward her quarters, but the others returned to the airfield. Lilya passed her once again but this time gave no sign of recognition. Alex watched, troubled, as she and Raisa climbed into their Yaks and took off once again.

  She caught up with Katia, who seemed to be fuming.

  “What’s going on?”

  Katia scowled. “Commander Kazar found something to complain about for all of us. Little nothings. But she really hates Lilya and Raisa, so she sent them out to escort some big-shot party boss. Double duty as punishment.”

  “Is she that rough on everyone?”

  “Yeah, but she despises those of us who complain. And the stupid woman doesn’t even fly.”

  Alex realized that Katia was talking to her in whole sentences, confiding in her. It was deeply flattering. “I noticed that when we came in from the Saratov Aviation Works. Does anyone know why?”

  “Supposedly she has an old wound that never heals and so she can’t use the pedals in a cramped cockpit. Maybe that’s true, but then, she shouldn’t have been appointed to lead an air regiment. No one knows what kind of pilot she was, so no one really respects her.”

  “How did she manage to be appointed, then? Oh, wait, I remember. That was General Osipenko’s doing. I was actually there in the room with Major Raskova when he made the announcement.”

  “Major Raskova.” Katia repeated the name softly and stared into space for a moment. “I joined the regiment for her, and each time I engaged the enemy, it was for her. I’d give my life, if only she could come back and lead the regiment.”

  Alex was moved, as much by the memory of the commander as by Katia’s devotion to her. “Yes, she knew how to lead. What a difference between the two of them.”

  Katia’s grimace returned. “Major Raskova confided in me that Kazar got the appointment because she had the Order of Lenin. But she shouldn’t have even qualified for that, since she’d never done anything exceptional in aviation. We decided it must have been for denouncing people. The Kremlin rewards that.”

  Alex was speechless. That hadn’t occurred to her.

  Katia shrugged resignation. “Don’t worry about it. Those are our quarrels, not yours,” she said, and marched back toward her own hut.

  Night fell, and Alex waited with Inna at the end of the airfield, stamping her feet and blowing into her hands to keep warm. “Do you wait this way every night?”

  “Someone has to. The pilots don’t have any light otherwise.”

  “You don’t use any kind of landing lights?”

  “Just a couple of us on each side of the landing strip so they can aim.”

  “Is she very late? They, I mean. Are they late?”

  “Not so…ssssh. Listen. Two engines. They’re back.” Inna handed her one of her flashlights. “Go over there about twenty meters. Then flash on and off with me. That means it’s all right to land.”

  Alex did as she was told. The sound of the engines grew louder, and in a few moments, both Yaks were on the ground taxiing toward them. When they pulled into their designated spots and the pilots climbed from the cockpits, Alex couldn’t distinguish one from the other. Then one of them pulled her leather flight helmet back on her head, and a halo of pale hair became visible even in the dark.

  Lilya and Raisa strode toward them with large, hurried steps to make their report. Lilya smiled at Alex in passing, then at her mechanic. “Thank you for waiting, Inna. Did they leave any supper for us?”

  “I’m sure they did,” Inna called after her. “We’ll storm them together after you’ve reported.”

  The report was fortunately brief, and within ten minutes, the two pilots had returned. “Let’s eat, comrades,” Alex said. “I’m famished.”

  Comrades. Had she actually said that? What would Terry think?

  *

  Dinner had been borsht with potatoes and larded bread, but the cook reheated the soup for the latecomers, and the warmth alone did them all good. A few of the other pilots and navigators had lingered, on their own time now, and they gathered around them. Alex was content to be near Lilya again without fear of NKVD scrutiny, but for the moment Lilya’s attention was focused on the simmering resentment she shared with the other pilots.

  “Sending you both out again when we had a dozen other pilots that could have gone, that was vicious,” Klavdia said under her breath. “How much longer are we going to put up with that?”

  “Not much longer,” Lilya said. “I’m going to send a complaint to the division commander. Will you all sign it with me?”

  “I will, and I know at least eight others who have the courage to do it, too,” Raisa said.

  “Good. It’s settled then.” Katia wiped out her mess kit with the last of the bread and folded it up. “We have a journalist from an American magazine with us, and we don’t want her to think we’re all rebels and malcontents.”

  “Don’t worry, none of that’s my business. I’m just here to photograph the heroic deeds.”

  “Heroic. That’s us, all right.” Raisa poured the last of her tea into her mess dish and swirled it around before drinking it. “And right now, this hero’s going to the latrine. Good night, all.”

  “Everybody out,” the mess officer called. “I’m closing up.” She rinsed the empty soup pot, set it upside down on a bench, and blew out the lanterns. Raisa and Katia drifted out of the mess and headed toward their huts. Alex stood in the doorway, wondering if she would ever get close to Lilya. How were they going to talk?

  But Lilya brushed past her and murmured, “At my Yak. In half an hour. Say you’re going to the latrine.” Then she caught up with Katia.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Alex lay in her bunk waiting for the time to pass. Was anything sweeter than this, the first invitation to intimacy? It made no difference that, in the frigid night air, “intimacy” could mean little more than brief conversation, perhaps an embrace, before the cold drove them back inside. It would mark the beginning of…of what? Nothing in her experience prepared her for this moment. The longing for someone so vastly different from herself, from a culture and politics she’d grown up hating, left her off balance.

  She checked her watch. Half an hour had passed. Most of her hut-mates had used the latrine and climbed into their bunks. It was time.

  She drew on her parka and ventured outside, where the temperature had dropped and she felt the chill on her face. She let her eyes acclimate to the darkness, and after a few minutes, she could make out the aircraft by ambient light. Whatever was pale gray was field or sky; whatever was black was a Yak.

  She hurried to the second plane, still standing where it had taxied in an hour before. Passing the tail, Alex could see the number 44 painted in white on the fuselage.

  Lilya leaned against one of the wings, and when she was close enough, they clasped gloved hands, like children about to circle dance. Lilya’s eyes were black pits, but wisps of her pale hair flickered around her face in the night breeze.

  Alex gripped the gloved hands more tightly and pressed them against her chest. “I was so worried about you, after I left your apartment. It broke my heart to not be able to look after you and bring you things. But the NKVD man said y
ou might be arrested for…oh, I don’t know…fraternizing with a capitalist. I had to go.”

  “But now you’re back.”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to put you in danger again.”

  “It doesn’t seem fair. The Germans out to get me in the sky, the NKVD on the ground.”

  Alex chortled. “The NKVD, maybe, but not the people. They love you. I hear you’ve become a sort of aviation hero.”

  “Lilya brushed off the compliment with a shrug. “Do you want to see the inside of my Yak?”

  “My Yak. I love it that you have your own plane.”

  “Yes, it’s my second home. Come on, I’ll let you sit in it.” She pulled Alex up onto the wing, then slid back the canopy. “Go ahead. Get in. I’ll explain everything to you.”

  Alex climbed into the cockpit, settling in on the narrow seat with the control stick jutting up between her knees. “It’s all a black hole in here. I can’t see a thing.”

  “You don’t have to see it. You can just touch it.” She leaned over the edge of the cockpit and took hold of Alex’s hand, brushing it lightly over one of the tiny displays. “This is the fuel gauge. The other instruments are altimeter here and airspeed indicator here, heading and attitude indicators right below them, vertical-speed indicator and turn coordinator over there.”

  “Hmm, different from the planes I flew at home. But I bet I could learn it.”

  “I bet you could, too. Anyhow, the radio is right in the center, and the switch for the landing gear is on your right by your knee. As far as the guns are concerned, they’re all controlled from the stick and you can fire them all at the same time.”

  “Oooh, major mayhem. But a great plane. It’s only too bad the enemy planes have guns, too.”

  “Well, that’s the way things are.” Lilya was leaning over her now, her face only inches away, her breath warm.

  Alex reached up with her gloved hand and touched her collar. “You still wear my scarf.”

  “Yes. Always. It brings me luck,” she murmured, then brushed her lips against Alex’s brow, in the narrow spot between her fur hat and eyebrow.

  Alex grasped the fabric of Lilya’s jacket and pulled her down. She sensed rather than saw the lovely young lips as she tilted her head back and placed an upward kiss on them.

  Lilya made some soft sound and returned the pressure, sliding her left arm into the cockpit to cradle Alex’s head.

  How wonderful and strange to kiss in the ice-cold dark. Everything outside of them was freezing, hostile, hard. Only the spot that connected them was alive and warm. For a few precious moments, there was no war or winter—only Lilya’s hot mouth.

  Alex drew her in closer and the heat leapt to the place between her legs, though she knew she could do nothing about it. Lilya must have felt the same, for her breath came hard through her nose as she gave herself to the kiss.

  Strange, too, the power of an embrace, when they had only that. In the frigid air and confines of the plane, with gloved hands and heavily padded bodies, no other touch was possible. But for a few moments, the kiss was a pledge, a surrender, the center of the world, the star around which both their lives orbited.

  Too soon Lilya broke away. “We have to go back,” she breathed. “The others will start to miss us soon.”

  “Yes, of course.” Cold reality menaced them again. Alex clambered out of the cockpit and slid down the wing behind Lilya but reached out to grasp her hand again.

  Wordlessly, she pulled her into her arms. Then, bending her back against the wing, she kissed her again. This time she could sense the outline of Lilya’s body, the warmth of their interlocking thighs.

  But this embrace too came to an end, as the cold invaded them both, and Alex pulled her upright. “I know. We have to go,” she said. “And we can’t go back holding hands.”

  “No. Nothing like that. Ever.”

  They both fell silent. Words were paltry now, though a shared euphoria seemed to hold them together. As they separated before the bunkers and each one continued on to her own, Alex thought she saw a shadow. Someone stepping out of sight behind a plane.

  No. It must have been her imagination.

  *

  What a strange torment to have new love requited, yet no time or place to express it. Alex swam in a haze, where every glimpse of Lilya set her heart racing, every smile Lilya gave to others made her jealous, every mission Lilya flew filled her with fear.

  Yet she grew proud of the whole regiment and every victory they achieved, as Lilya was proud of them. She found reasons to delay her return to Moscow, shooting fewer photos so as to conserve her film, caught up completely in their struggle.

  Lilya was becoming a star, even among the other pilots. Scarcely a week later, she and Raisa landed after a mission and rushed with unusual haste to the hangar to report. Alex and half a dozen other women hurried behind them to listen.

  “A swarm of them, Comrade Major,” Raisa said. “Junkers 88s escorted by Me-109s. Headed southeast, toward Stalingrad.”

  “We engaged them.” Lilya interrupted her. “Raisa knocked out one of them and I got another one. The remaining bombers dropped their load on empty territory and escaped.”

  “We shot down one of Messerschmitts, too, and I pursued the other one but ran out of ammunition. Then Comrade Drachenko followed him down.”

  “I winged him, but he managed to circle and came back at me, and got me in the tail. But then I climbed above him and dove. My last shots caught his fuel tank, but I’m pretty sure he bailed out before the explosion.”

  “We should look for him, Comrade Major. I’m pretty sure I can locate the spot. It was near a river bend, and we’ll see traces of the fire on the ground.” Raisa was obviously still excited and annoyed at missing the kill.

  Kazar crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll notify the division commander and he’ll send someone back to the site.”

  Lilya scowled. “Why can’t we capture him ourselves?”

  “Capture is not our job. Besides, if the pilot’s still alive, the colonel will want to interrogate him. Refuel and await my orders.” The cluster of pilots dispersed and the matter seemed settled.

  Major Kazar contacted division command as promised, and late in the afternoon the men from the nearby airfield brought in the German pilot. Since he counted as one of the kills of the 586th, the interrogation would take place at their field. To Alex’s surprise, the major asked her to be present and to take photos for headquarters.

  The pilot had obviously parachuted safely, for he was unharmed. He sat, rigid and sullen between his guards, as Major Kazar, then the division commander and his interpreter entered.

  Alex photographed discreetly from a corner and studied the German aviator. Though she knew little of German military decorations, she did recognize the iron cross at his throat, and the row of other awards on his tunic was impressive. Clearly, he was a top pilot.

  “What’s your name,” the colonel said, and the interpreter repeated in German.

  “I am Kurt Stengler. I hold the rank of Hauptmann. My serial number is 7566348.”

  “What field did you fly out from?”.

  “I am Kurt Stengler. I hold the rank of Hauptmann. My serial number is 7566348.”

  “Would you like a drink of water, Hauptmann Stengler? Tell us what airfield you’re from.”

  “I am Kurt Stengler. I hold the rank of Hauptmann. My serial number is 7566348.”

  The colonel scratched his chin. “You seem an exemplary airman. All those medals and awards. I bet you’re a real hero.” He paused to allow his interpreter to repeat.

  “Do you want to see who shot you down?”

  The German reacted. “Yes, I want to meet the man who could outfly me.”

  When the interpreter repeated his response in Russian, everyone in the room snickered. The colonel turned to Major Kazar. “Would you summon our aviator?”

  Kazar stepped out for a moment and returned with Lilya behind her. The German pilot’s mouth twisted i
n a sneer. “Is this how you insult a fellow air-force officer, by ridiculing me with a stupid girl?”

  “This ‘stupid girl’ is the aviator who shot you out of the sky,” the colonel said.

  “I don’t believe you.” He looked away in contempt.

  Lilya glanced once at the colonel for permission, and when he nodded, she stepped before the captive. She still wore her flight suit, Alex noted, perhaps to taunt him.

  “You were the second of two Me-109s and your number was 34. My comrade and I shot down the first one, and I followed you when you dove. At about 1500 meters, I winged you, but you managed to circle and come back at me, and got me in the tail. I had enough power to climb above you and then dive. You fired toward me, but you were looking into the sun, so you missed, while I had a good shot at you from overhead. My fire swept across you and finally caught your fuel tank. You must have seen that coming, because you bailed out seconds before it exploded.”

  The translator repeated the story in German, sentence by sentence.

  “It was you, then.” His voice was raw with bitterness and loathing. “Sheer luck. One of us will get you next time.” He looked away.

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” Lilya said indifferently, and stepped away.

  The colonel presumably had lost patience with the airman and signaled the guards to take him away. The next interrogation wouldn’t be so friendly, Alex thought, but her job was over.

  “Thank you, Major Kazar. And thank your pilots for their work. We will see that this capture is noted on their records.” With a round of saluting, the men left with the prisoner in a troop truck.

  *

  “Well done, first squadron. Well done, us!” Sitting in the mess hut, Klavdia Nechaeva play-punched Katia on the arm.

  “Sorry we left you behind that way, you two, but we didn’t see him,” Katia said.

  “It was nothing. Don’t even mention it.” Lilya waved a dismissive hand. “We cleaned up the stragglers, didn’t we, Raisa?”

  “Did we? I didn’t notice. I was polishing my nails,” Raisa wisecracked, and the others broke into laughter.