by Alina Adams
Much as she wanted to rush into his arms, Daria was weighed down by her baggage. And by Gosha . . . and his inescapable buzz of red hair.
The earrings. That’s what Adam had meant. She’d had no time to think about the reasoning behind his odd gesture, until now, when the realization crashed into her. The earrings: she could sell them to buy food or find a place to live . . . in case Edward, upon seeing Gosha, refused to take her back.
Her husband approached them both, still smiling.
Edward took his hands out of his pockets. Daria was relieved to see the open sores and gashes had healed, replaced with scars and calluses. He picked up Daria’s bag with one palm, then, just as naturally, reached to take Gosha out of her arms with the other. Relieved of her burden for the first time in weeks, Daria nearly collapsed with exhaustion.
“Let’s go home,” Edward said, leading the way.
Chapter 15
Though Daria had sent the telegram announcing her arrival to the old Odessa address, she hadn’t realized that the Gordons’ two-room apartment had been further cut down to only one room now—the smallest, which had been Edward’s father’s before they left. As they walked through the city from the train station, Edward pointed out recently built sites. He talked to Gosha, too, asking him his name, his toy duck’s name, and if he went quack-quack. Gosha, clinging to this stranger’s neck, would periodically look quizzically at Daria, strolling beside them, but since she seemed comfortable with the man, Gosha was unconcerned. A few blocks from home, the scenery shimmering in and out of focus as Daria’s earlier memories of residences and stores wrestled with the subtle changes of present-day peeling paint and chopped-down trees, a horse and wagon passed alongside them, followed by a dozen children taking turns leaping on board, scooping up a handful of colorless mixture from the back, then being shooed off or, if necessary, pried off and flung into the street by the driver. Daria paid them no mind, but Edward paused and, much to Daria’s surprise, called out, “Alyssochka!”
A skinny, dark-haired child in a threadbare coat and oversized shoes, whom Daria had taken for just another urchin, looked up from where she’d hit the sidewalk on all fours, skinning her knees yet still clutching her precious booty in one tenacious fist. Daria’s stomach opened a chasm as she recognized, between the swinging braids and ancient eyes, vestiges of the little girl who’d once been her daughter.
Edward beckoned her toward them. Alyssa rose, brushed off her legs, and trudged in Edward’s direction, glaring from him to Daria and ignoring Gosha altogether. Was she tall for eight? Short? Too thin? Healthy? Daria had no frame of reference.
“Alyssochka,” Edward repeated, indicating Daria, presenting her to his daughter like a gift.
Daria’s arms twinged to embrace the girl, but Alyssa’s skittishness held her back. Instead, Daria reminded, “I came home as soon as I could. I kept my promise.”
“So did I,” Alyssa said. She looked to Edward. “I took care of Papa.”
Scrambling for something to say, Daria indicated Alyssa’s hand, and the wagon she’d been chasing. “What’s that?”
Alyssa loosened her fist, exposing a gray mash. “Sunflower seeds. From the factory.”
“They squeeze them to make oil,” Edward explained when Alyssa looked satisfied that she’d done her part in keeping the conversation going. “What’s left after goes to make horse feed. But the children, they like to intercept deliveries and grab some for themselves. It’s delicious, right, kitten? Sweet. Like candy.” He indicated Gosha. “Why don’t you share some with your little brother?”
It was the first time he’d made it clear he knew who Gosha was. The shock on Alyssa’s face mirrored Daria’s. Alyssa dropped a minuscule sample into the tot’s palm. She told Daria, “I only have a sister.”
Edward led the way, maneuvering through the courtyard, like the rest of the city, now shabbier.
“The new dvornik”—Edward shrugged—“isn’t as diligent as our previous one.” And then he ruffled Gosha’s hair.
Isaak Israelevitch had been watching from the window, anticipating their arrival. His initial delight at seeing Daria turned to confusion at the sight of Gosha. He’d come rushing to the front door from the one room the family still had left, eager to greet her. But once he understood that the child in Edward’s arms wasn’t a mirage, and had such a familiar face—or, rather, head of hair—he pulled back, all but spitting at the ground in disgust. “Mamzer,” he hissed.
“Papa . . .” Edward cautioned, the menace in his voice new to Daria’s ears.
Her father-in-law turned his back on Daria, heading back to their room. “You should have stayed where you were. We don’t need this here.”
Judging by Alyssa’s expression, Daria’s daughter agreed with him.
And yet Daria had no choice but to follow them through the kitchen, where their neighbors, afraid of acknowledging Daria and infecting themselves with trace elements of her disgrace, didn’t so much as scootch their chairs a centimeter closer to the table where they were eating and talking, often at the same time, in order to let the Gordon family pass. Daria had to turn sideways to squeeze through, while Edward was forced to hand her Gosha, and lift Daria’s satchel over his head to keep from getting stuck. They maneuvered along the hallway jammed with strollers, a bicycle, sleds, and an assortment of dripping boots, before reaching the room that had once been Isaak Israelevitch’s alone. Instead of the double bed and chifforobe Daria remembered, there were now two cots shoved against parallel walls, a smaller wardrobe, and a pair of chairs. As well as a noticeable loss.
“Where’s the piano?” Daria looked to Edward in confusion.
“No space.” He shrugged, as if it were a minor matter.
“No money,” his father corrected. “We sold it. Your rehabilitation didn’t come cheap.”
“Not to worry,” Edward soothed. “At the dancing school where I accompany the children’s lessons, they let me use their piano whenever classes aren’t in session.”
“Is that what you do now?” Daria gasped. “That’s where you play?”
“It’s a good job.”
“It’s a safe job,” his father clarified.
“It’s a nice school.” Edward appeared to believe what he was saying. “Our Alyssa should take some sessions. For poise, beauty, art. But not our girl. She would rather run in the streets with the boys.”
There was no judgment in Edward’s voice as he said it, rather a bit of pride. Alyssa had clearly heard it many times before and didn’t take offense. Daria, on the other hand, looked at her ragamuffin of a child and imagined what Mama would think about the way Daria’s daughter was being raised.
Daria asked Edward, “Have you heard from my mother? How is she?”
Her husband and father-in-law exchanged nervous glances, not unlike the one they’d exchanged all those years ago when Daria urged them to tell Mama she wasn’t an embarrassment.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Daria guessed. During her years away, Daria had accepted the possibility that Mama might die before Daria found her way back home.
“We don’t know,” Edward confessed.
This was the only thing she’d been unprepared for. “How is that possible?”
“Your village,” Isaak Israelevitch hedged. “The Ukrainian village next to it was assigned a pipe factory. The Great Leap Forward, you understand. It needed to be built, and it was decided that Valta was the most strategic spot. So all those living there were resettled. We don’t know where.”
“But how?”
“They were wealthy landowners—their property warranted being returned to the people,” Isaak Israelevitch reported dryly.
“But they had nothing. They starved; they froze.”
“This wasn’t like the kulaks,” Edward rushed to reassure. “They weren’t arrested. They were resettled.”
“Except nobody knows where.” Daria’s legs gave out, and she sank onto a chair, still clutching a drowsy Gosha.
�
��You need to rest.” Edward directed Alyssa, “Why don’t we let your brother have your bed tonight? Tomorrow we can try to scrounge up another pair of chairs.”
Her daughter was still sleeping on two chairs, Daria realized. And she was sitting on one of them. But Alyssa was so much bigger now, how could she fit? The answer became obvious when Daria saw her dragging over a solid wooden slat from the corner, to put on top of the chairs. Daria recognized it as the leaf to their old table. Not wanting to take the child’s bed on top of the other upheaval she’d rammed into her life, Daria quickly stood and protested, “No need for that. Gosha can sleep with me. He did it for the entire trip here. Anything else would scare him.”
“All right,” Edward agreed, as he had to everything. “Papa to your bed, Alyssa to yours. Daria and Gosha can take mine. I’ll make myself comfortable on the floor.”
His bed. Of course Edward had expected her to sleep in his bed. She was his wife. And now she had taken it for herself and another man’s child.
He saw the worry on her face and reassured, “Sleep now. We will have plenty of time to settle everything in the morning.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “For everything.”
He kissed her lightly, almost as if it were the first time, and they were still the people they’d once been. Younger than anyone had a right to be. “Welcome home, my Daria.”
They were all gone by the time Daria woke up the next morning. To work, to school. Gosha sat quietly, waiting for Daria to stir. As soon as she did, however, he jumped on top of her.
“Papa?” Gosha wondered.
Daria sat up, already rolling to get out of bed. Prison ingrained productive habits. “Papa isn’t here. Time to get up, wash, and find out who is.”
The answer to her question was: the same neighbors who’d ignored her last night. Spending the day with women who’d looked down on Daria as common and provincial even before her political disgrace made venturing out seem less intimidating. Daria took Gosha by the hand and offered him an encouraging smile to prove that Mama wasn’t afraid, so no reason for him to be. In the courtyard, wrenching her eyes from the spot Adam had described Alyssa and Anya burying their treasure, and torturing herself with the thought that some remnant of her Anya might still be there, Daria instead fixed her gaze on the garbage dumped out yesterday, now more sodden, more spread out, and more putrid. The dvornik was making a token effort at poking through it with his broom, as if it were an animal that might be coaxed into fleeing of its own accord. He was a scrawny man, perhaps half Adam’s height and width, with a bald head that he attempted to cover by looping a single lock of hair from ear to ear. He moved so slowly, he might have been treading through tar. Daria wondered who in the world had decreed such a man a fit replacement for Adam. But then she remembered that competence was not the most important part of the job description.
He glared up at Daria, making it clear he knew who she was and where she’d been. And then he sent the sloppy pile of refuse he’d been pretending to contain straight at Daria’s feet. The goal was to intimidate her, to remind her of her place. But he wasn’t her first dvornik. Daria bent to pick up the scraps of day-old newspaper wrapped around her ankle. Did he really think petty tyrants like him still had the power to frighten her?
“You defaced the image of Comrade Stalin!” Daria pointed to the front-page photo, smeared with mud. The dvornik turned pale and scurried away.
Arrests had been made for much less.
Since she was already holding the discarded Pravda in her hand, Daria gave it a glance. Comrade Stalin was pictured with the Austrian Daria recalled ruling Germany, alongside a new face, a Romanian military man called Antonescu, who’d deposed the royal family. Comrade Stalin was praising the end of King Carol’s rule, even as he welcomed the crown’s generous ceding of the Bessarabian territory to its rightful owners, the Soviets, following the wishes of its people, who’d been so cruelly conquered by Romanians following the Great War.
News took a long time to reach Kyril, and as Daria read, she learned for the first time of a non-aggression pact between the USSR and Germany, their joint purging of saboteurs in Poland, complete with parades to commemorate their success and the establishment of free elections in the Baltic States, which resulted in a triumph of Communism that led to a petition to join the USSR. Daria read that an unjust, imperialist war had been going on for two years now, between Germany and the capitalists of England and France. Comrade Molotov was quoted as saying that Germany had a legitimate interest in regaining its position as a great power, and the Allies had started an aggressive war in order to maintain the Versailles system. They were using the pretext of defending democracy as a way of exterminating any political position with which they did not agree.
Just reading this nonsense left Daria exhausted. In Kyril, life had been simpler. You did what you were told. No thinking was required. In fact, it was actively discouraged. Just do what everybody else did, agree with what everybody else agreed. Unlike the dvornik, Daria neatly folded the newspaper before depositing it in the trash, in case anyone was watching. She took Gosha by the hand and turned back to wait for Edward, his father, and Alyssa to return for their midday meal.
Daria had considered cooking something, but she didn’t know which food in the communal kitchen might be theirs and didn’t dare risk an accusation of thievery. Back home, Edward told her they didn’t keep their food in the kitchen. Others weren’t as concerned as Daria about taking their neighbors’ supplies. Instead, the Gordons kept their things hidden in corners of their room. A loaf of bread buried at the bottom of a drawer, a tin of sardines atop the chifforobe, a bottle of milk on the cool windowsill, a packet of tea squeezed between the covers of a book. They rarely had enough to sequester. They depended on whatever they could pick up that day. While Alyssa went to school and Edward worked, his father spent every morning moving from food line to food line, an avoska woven of string in his pocket, gathering whatever was available.
“I can do that from now on,” Daria offered, wanting to prove herself useful.
“No,” her father-in-law snapped. “You stay home, watch . . . him.” A nod toward Gosha’s direction. “I’ll take care of my family.”
It was clear he wished to pretend that Daria had never returned. He refused to let her help with the meal, and when he passed the soup pot, it was in the opposite direction of Daria. He spoke to Edward, and he spoke to Alyssa. And that was all. Alyssa had yet to address Daria, either.
Daria resolved to give the child time to get used to her return. And, in an attempt to work her way back into Isaak Israelevitch’s favor or, at the very least, lessen the silent tension simmering around them, Daria brought up what had previously been one of her father-in-law’s favorite topics to expound on. Remembering what she’d read in Pravda, Daria asked about the situation with Germany and the other countries split between Communist and Fascist powers.
“God willing the Germans should come to Odessa,” the older man prayed. “Free us all.”
“I saw in the newspaper that it won’t happen. Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.”
“Germans signed a pact with England. France, too. Look at them now. We should be so fortunate. No one else has the power to save us.”
“So you think there will be war?” Daria noticed Edward had been keeping his eyes down the entire time his father prognosticated.
Her husband now shrugged. “I don’t worry about things I can’t control.”
Chapter 16
“I don’t worry about things I can’t control,” Daria soon learned, was her husband’s response to everything. Resigned, stoical, passive, compliant. Her playful, opinionated, teasing, passionate Edward was gone. Not merely in public for fear of censure, or even in private, where he knew the walls still had ears, but also in moments where it was just the two of them. After a few nights of sleeping with her, Daria had evicted Gosha from the bed, tucking him into a two-chair setup like Alyssa’s. She’d feared he’d fuss, but Gosha wa
s thrilled to be like his sister—even as she refused to give him the time of day. Daria wondered if Alyssa remembered when it had been her and Anya’s beds set up in identical fashion. Daria didn’t know whether acknowledging it would show that she was sympathetic to Alyssa’s loss, or whether it would open up old wounds and push her daughter further away. So Daria kept silent. The first night Gosha was squared away, Daria indicated that Edward should be the one in bed with his wife. Edward climbed in dutifully, which was no less than Daria expected. But when she reached for him once she was certain the rest of their household was asleep, Daria had to admit she did expect something of the old Edward to show itself. Surely, when it was just the two of them, like this, he would no longer feel compelled to keep up his facade—he could feel safe, he could feel free . . .
But as in all else, Edward did what was required of him, no more, no less.
No passion.
No heart.
No life.
For the first few weeks, Daria racked her brain, convinced there must be some magic word she could say, some magic act she could perform that would break Edward out of his stupor; perhaps a kiss that, in an ironic role reversal, would awaken the handsome prince from his sleeping spell and set the kingdom right. Her first instinct was to ask him to play the piano for her. His deft, limber fingers were what had made Daria fall in love with him. She hoped to reignite that spark. But then Daria remembered the last time she’d heard Edward play. The Blue Danube. For her and Adam. Surely, Edward remembered it, too.