A moment later, a young medic arrived with a folded canvas stretcher. She laid it crosswise over the bed and opened it, revealing an ominous patchwork of dark stains.
“Don’t try to stand up. Just slide over onto this,” the medic ordered her, and Alex obeyed, lying down on her good side with a muffled moan. “My camera. Where’s my camera?”
“It’s here.” Lilya lifted the battered case from the floor and laid the strap over her shoulder. She took the head end of the stretcher while the medic lifted the foot end, and they trotted together through the ward into the corridor. Alex saw immediately why she had to surrender her place. All along the corridor floor, hastily bandaged men lay on blankets. Some were unconscious, while others whimpered in pain.
The snow-filled air outside the hospital was a shock, but they needed to scuttle only some twenty feet to the ambulance. Once inside, Lilya thanked the medic and closed the rear door. The interior of the vehicle was plunged into darkness, but after a few moments, Alex’s eyes adapted to the gray light coming through the ice-covered windows, and she could see the crates piled up all around them.
“Is anyone else in here?” she asked as the ambulance bumped and lurched over the road.
“It looks like we’re the only passengers in this direction,” Lilya said, squatting next to her on the floor. “How are you doing? Are you warm enough?”
“I’m all right. Besides, we’re alone in the dark again. Remember the last time?” she asked, trying to cheer them both up.
Lilya chortled. “My sweetest memory.”
“Good, because I want to say I love you. I want you to come back with me to New York.”
“I love you too, but how can I leave? This is my land, my language, my people.” Lilya gripped her hand, her voice betraying a new anxiety. “You’re going back to New York now?”
“No, I don’t mean now. I’ll stay here as long as I can. But when the war’s over, if we’re both still alive. Please, think about it. I know the Russians are your people, but Stalin’s a tyrant. He’s killed so many—his kulaks, his own officers, men like your father.”
Lilya pulled her hand away. “You don’t understand about my father. Or about how important it is for Communism to succeed. It wasn’t Stalin who killed him. He was an enemy of the state, of the people.”
“Darling, do you really believe that? Do you really believe Stalin didn’t order and approve the purges, the denunciations, the Gulags, the labor camps, the tortures in the NKVD prisons? Why do you have to send secret letters to your mother for fear of being arrested? Why do we have to whisper this entire conversation, if not that you could be executed for having it?”
“Stop, please. I don’t want to hear this now. I don’t want to talk about Stalin. I’ve just gotten you back from the dead, and all I want is for us to be together and safe.”
Alex tried to reach out toward her in the dark, but the jolt of pain that shot through her shoulder stopped her. “Take my hand again, please.”
“Yes, of course.” Lilya clasped the closest hand between both of her own and kissed the cold fingertips. “We have so much to talk about, I know. But not now. Not when we’re both fighting to stay alive.”
“You’re right. We barely know each other, and there’s so much more I want to learn. I don’t even know if you like dogs or what kind of music you prefer.”
Lilya pressed Alex’s hand to her chest. “I love dogs, big ones and little ones, though I never had one. I love folk songs and Mussorgsky.”
“Did you ever have a boyfriend or fall in love?”
“In school once I kissed a boy named Dmitri. We were twelve. The first person I really adored was Marina Raskova, but everyone loved her. No, I’ve only been in love with you, your lips, the incredible things you can do to me with your hands.”
With her good arm, Alex tugged Lilya down to her and kissed her gently. “I wish I could keep you from going up in your plane ever again.”
“You can’t. But you’ll always be with me in the cockpit. I wear your polka-dot scarf all the time. But what about you? You lost so much blood, and you can’t even lift your arm. I can’t take care of you in a bunker. Where will you go to recover?”
“I’ll be all right staying at the Hotel Metropole. The air raids have mostly stopped, and I can still afford to buy food. I’ll be fine.”
Lilya kissed the palm of her hand. “I’m so glad. You know the other journalists, too. Yes, that’s a good solution. I’ll always know where you are, at least for a few weeks.”
Alex’s sigh merged with a grunt of pain for her injured shoulder. “I wish I could say the same for you.”
*
The Metropole was nothing like a hospital, though in some respects, it was better. No one looked after her while she lay feverish and in pain, and no medicine was available other than the aspirin she’d brought with her from New York a year before. But, unlike thousands of injured Soviet soldiers, she had a real bed to lie on, and, by paying extra, she could have the hotel’s food brought to her room. What she mostly suffered from was soul-killing boredom.
But some days later, while she lay shivering in the under-heated room, someone knocked at her door. “Come in,” she called out. “It’s not locked.”
The door handle turned and a foot slipped into the opening. Slowly a black-clad figure slid into the room, awkwardly clutching a cooking pot wrapped in towels.
Anna Drachenko smiled timidly. “They told me in the kitchen that you were wounded, so I brought you some borscht. I made it myself.”
Alex was momentarily speechless, then waved her closer to the bed. “It’s dangerous for you to come here. I mean, fraternization—”
“I work in the laundry here on Saturdays, so it’s a small risk. Anyhow, I knew you were alone.” She stood now in the middle of the hotel room holding her pot. “Do you have any cups?”
“Yes, the hotel bowls and spoons are still here from breakfast.” She pointed with her chin toward the night table. Anna set the pot down and carried the used bowls to the corner sink to wash them.
“You brought a pot of hot soup all the way from your house?”
Anna drew up a chair to Alex’s bed and set the bowls next to the soup pot. “Of course not. I carried it in a jar, and they let me heat it in the hotel kitchen. It’s not really allowed, but I have a few friends there.” She poured out the crimson liquid, which was still hot enough to give off an aroma.
They ate together silently, and Alex was surprised at how good the borscht tasted. Anna had probably put a week’s ration of vegetables and fat into it. The ache in her shoulder didn’t stop, but the simple fact of being cared for did her good.
Anna finished her soup first and set down her bowl. “How do you feel?”
“I can’t complain. It still hurts like hell, but the fever’s gone, so it looks like I have no infection. I should be fine in a couple of weeks.”
“Is anyone looking after you?”
“Not exactly, but if I really need someone, I can send for one of the other journalists.”
“That’s good.” Awkward moments passed while Anna collected the empty bowls and took them again to the tiny sink. While she washed them a second time, she spoke over her shoulder.
“Please do not think I’m prying, but you said once you went to school in Leningrad. Is that where you were born?”
Alex saw no reason to be secretive. “Yes, and lived there until I was ten. My father worked in the Tsar’s stables, so you can imagine that the Bolsheviks didn’t love him. I don’t remember the revolution, though. Only the horses.”
“Interesting how children remember only what they need to. My father was a locomotive driver with the railroad. He drove the train that took the Romanov family to their deaths in Yekaterinburg. But of course I don’t remember any of that either. Just the locomotives. Do you still have any relatives there?”
“None that I know of. That saves me from agonizing too much about the siege. It’s bad enough to know how many Leningra
ders are starving to death. It would be worse if I had names for them.”
“Yes, names make all the difference, don’t they?”
“They do. Before I came here, the Russians were a faceless people, a culture that my parents had run away from. They even gave up their Russian name. How different everything looks now that I know you and the aviators, and Lilya.”
“You care for her a lot, don’t you?” Anna’s glance seemed penetrating.
“Yes, I do. I want all the best things for her, just as you do, I’m sure. I don’t mean fame—she has that already—but some kind of happiness after the war.”
Anna clasped her long, callused hands. “I wish that for her too, but the NKVD will always watch her because of her father.”
“If she could be safe living in another country, what would you think?” Alex asked tentatively.
“You mean…defection?” Anna looked alarmed.
“It’s only hypothetical. Would you be disappointed in her?”
Anna thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Nothing she could do would disappoint me. I’d miss her horribly, but if I knew she was happy, I’d be content.” She stood up and slipped into her coat again. “But we’ve never had this conversation, you understand?”
“I understand.”
“I’ll stop by again next week, before I go to work.” She bent over and placed a quick kiss on Alex’s head, and then, gathering up her pot and towels in one hand, she let herself out with the other.
Alex lay back and stared at the ceiling, drowsy from the warm soup. She quite liked this intelligent woman. Could Anna ever understand Alex’s love for her daughter? She dozed off, thinking probably not. She scarcely understood it herself.
*
Another knock awakened her. Who was it this time? Too early for breakfast. And struggling to her feet was much too painful to do for anything other than the toilet.
“Who is it? The door’s open.”
Henry Shapiro poked his head through the opening. “An open door? Isn’t that a little dangerous?”
“Better than having to rip out my shoulder to get up. Hi, Henry. What’s new downstairs?”
He stepped into the room. “Oh, now look what you’ve done,” he said, raising his hands in feigned lamentation. “You go off without us, and first thing you know, you get banged up. What happened?”
“A genuine war wound. Stalingrad, actually.”
“Ah, a real Frontovik,” he said. “Well done.”
“It’s a distinction I’d rather have missed. What kept you? I’ve been lying here for five days.”
He pulled over the only chair in the room and sat at her bedside. “I was at the front myself. Leningrad.”
“Ah, my father’s city. Is it as bad as I’ve heard?”
“Whatever you’ve heard, it’s worse. Bomb damage, of course, of the royal palaces and great houses. But the worst is the starvation. People died in the thousands last winter, huddling in their houses with no fuel, no light, no food. This year, more supplies are coming along the ice road across Lake Ladoga, and foreign journalists are allowed in now, too. I got a great story, if the censors let me file it.”
“If it’s about death and starvation, they definitely won’t. Why don’t you bypass the censors and send it through the embassy?”
“Too dangerous. Their Press Department reads all the journals we write for. They’d see the article under my byline and I’d be expelled.”
“What a pain, eh? Sometimes, when I miss my luxury existence in New York, I think expulsion wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”
“It’d be a disaster for me. I have a Russian wife and two children.”
“What? A family? Then why do you live at the Metropole?”
“Convenience. Our house is outside Moscow. Safe from bombardment, but too far to come and go every day. I go home on the weekend.”
“I thought Russians were forbidden to fraternize with foreigners.”
“Not expressly forbidden, but it does expose both sides to the charge of espionage. Publishing an account of the Leningrad siege might get me expelled, but my wife could be arrested and our children taken away. Loving a Russian isn’t for the fainthearted.”
She rubbed her shoulder, which had begun to ache again. “I’ll remember that.”
“So you were at Stalingrad. I heard terrible things.”
“Yes, I was in the thick of it for only one day, but it shook me. And a dear friend was killed flying me out. She died because of me. That hurt much more than the shoulder.”
He shook his head. “That’s the danger of caring about them. Combatants, I mean. You can only lose so many of them before it ruins you. You can’t do your job.”
She nodded somberly. “On the convoy that brought me here from Iceland, I met a radio operator who said almost the same thing. When you see too much carnage, you die inside and victory doesn’t mean anything. When the enemy surrenders, it’s over, but you don’t get to sail into the sunset.”
“He’s right. I stopped believing in happy sunsets a long time ago.”
*
With the help of a good constitution and regular meals, Alex slowly regained the use of her right arm. She developed the Stalingrad photographs and ventured out to submit them to the Press Department censors, grateful to be active again. To her surprise, they approved almost all of them. They were long overdue to the magazine, so she hurried to the embassy to have them shipped in the diplomatic pouch. The deputy ambassador welcomed her as always and, impressed by her war injury, allowed her to use the embassy phone to telephone Century magazine in New York.
George Mankowitz took the call, and her first words to him were “Sorry to be incommunicado so long. I was injured. Shot, actually.”
“What? Where did you do that?”
“At Stalingrad. Well, flying over it, in one of their U-2s and…uh, it’s a long story. But I sent off some great photos to you this morning.”
“Jesus Christ, Alex! I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay out of trouble. We just heard on the news service that the Russians took Stalingrad. Do you want to come home? You’ve done great work, but you’ve stayed longer than anyone ever expected.”
“No, I’m fine. You could wire me some more money, though. The hotel’s a little stingy with the fresh vegetables, and I don’t want to get scurvy.”
“Sure, kiddo. Anything you want. So, what kind of photos are you sending me?”
“One or two aerial shots of Stalingrad, but they’re not wonderful. Better ones of the medics. Incredible what they do there, always under fire, and they’re starving.”
“Great. I love the human-interest stuff. Men saving lives, men eating from their mess kits, polishing their leather boots.”
“It’s women, George. The medics are women. And the boots aren’t leather. In the winter they wear felt valenki.”
“That’s what I mean. The public loves those details. Got any women carrying babies?”
“Sure. And kittens, too.”
“Okay, don’t be a smartass. You know what I mean. By the way, your friend Terry’s in town. He called yesterday wondering if I’d heard from you. I told him no.”
“Is he planning to come back to Moscow? Good. Call him back and tell him to bring socks. Not nylons. Big, thick wool socks. And four cartons of cigarettes. Seriously. I don’t want to smoke them, but the Russians do, and you’d be surprised what you can accomplish with a pack of Lucky Strikes.”
“All right, kiddo. I’ll take care of things on this end. You keep getting me those great photos, and I’ll get you your cash and cigarettes. And socks.”
“Great. Say hello to the gang. I’ll cable you in a week.”
*
Alex crossed Red Square past the stacks of firewood trained in from the woods outside Moscow. Reports were that the Allies were delivering more coal now, but whatever the case was, people were still lined up with their ration tickets and sleds for a load of kindling.
The early February sky was dark
and it was snowing again. She was dressed warmly enough, but her parka was thoroughly stained, frayed at the cuffs, and the dried blood from her old shoulder wound formed a permanent crustiness inside her sleeve. She should have asked George for a coat.
She passed the hotel desk and asked if she had any messages, but the clerk shook his head. Where was Lilya, damn it? If Stalingrad had been taken, she must surely have been reassigned? Why hadn’t she written? In spite of her new mobility and the conversation with George, Alex felt depression settling over her.
Back in her room, she stood at the window and watched the snow fall in thick flakes. She’d exaggerated to George about her health, but only a little. Aside from a twinge when she tried to lift something heavy and a tendency to tire easily, she had basically recovered. And she was bored. If only word would come from Lilya.
She stared through the window watching the people pass in front of the Bolshoi, their heads down in the blowing snow. Bundled in coats and ushankas pulled low on their heads, they all looked the same. Even the two women guarding the rarely used anti-aircraft gun on the square seemed miserable as they crouched over a small bonfire near its wheels. She could see some men in uniform on the Square, a few more than usual since Stalingrad had been taken. Perhaps granted a few hours’ leave as a reward for surviving when a million men had not.
She paced the room a couple of times, then realized she had a simple, completely banal case of cabin fever. She needed to work again. It was time to check with the Press Department to see where they were granting passes.
A knock at the door startled her. Was the hotel still delivering dinner? She’d cancelled that. Faintly annoyed, she threw open the door.
A frontline soldier in a sheepskin coat stood with his ushanka low on his brow. Melting snow still lingered on it and on his shoulders. And then he lifted his head.
“Lilya!” Alex yanked her by the sleeve into the room and embraced her, the melting snow wetting her chin.
“How did you manage to come home? How are you? Why didn’t you write?”
The Witch of Stalingrad Page 17
