The Story of Us

by Lana Kortchik

  Was that his big plan? She shuddered. ‘You can’t do that. You’ll die.’

  ‘No, I won’t. I will live with a clear conscience and with you. We can be together. We’ll wait out the war. We’ll have a life together. A happy life.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen after the war, but my grandfather says the Bolsheviks will be back as soon as Ukraine is back in Soviet hands.’

  ‘And what have they got to do with us?’

  ‘It could mean reprisals against those who collaborated with the Germans. What do you think Stalin will do to someone who fought on Hitler’s side? Mark, whether we win the war or not, you and I will always be on different sides.’

  ‘Then as soon as the war is over, as soon as it’s safe, we’ll go to Hungary and take your family with us.’

  She saw it in his eyes – he was dreaming, clutching at straws. Neither of them had a plan. ‘Can’t you see?’ she exclaimed. ‘You won’t last a day in the partisan battalion. Someone will denounce you to the Germans.’

  ‘Natasha, you’re my life. If I return to Hungary without you, I’ll be leaving my heart here.’

  He blinked, and in his eyes she saw his heart. His mind was made up. She knew that no matter what she said, she wouldn’t be able to change it.

  ‘If you stay, I stay,’ he continued. ‘I’d rather risk my life and have a chance here with you than be safe at home knowing I’d left you to die.’

  ‘If you stay here you’ll be condemning yourself to certain death.’ She closed her eyes and prayed for strength. Finally, she forced the words out, ‘You have to go home. After the war we’ll find each other again.’

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  She nodded, teeth clenched.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he whispered. ‘I thought you said your heart would be broken if I left?’

  So he did hear me, thought Natasha.

  Mark lifted her chin, forcing her to look at him. ‘I’m not going anywhere without you. It’s as simple as that. Understood?’

  She shook her head. ‘I won’t let you stay here.’

  ‘And how are you planning to stop me?’

  ‘And who will protect you?’ She raised her voice. ‘Who will comfort me when you’re arrested, when you’re taken to Babi Yar and put in front of the Nazi machine guns?’ She was shaking. ‘How will I live without you, knowing that you died because of me? I can’t let you stay here.’

  ‘If you stay, I stay,’ he repeated, his voice low.

  ‘What about my family? What if Papa and Stanislav come back?’

  ‘Talk to your mother, Natasha. If she had a choice of having you with her or having you safe, I know what she’d choose. She’d carry you against your will and put you on that truck herself if she had to.’

  Somehow, knowing her mother, knowing her selfless love for her family, Natasha knew Mark was right.

  ‘You won’t have to worry about hunger. You won’t have to worry about the Germans. You won’t have to drag yourself out of bed every morning to go to work through burnt-out streets to scrub floors and watch people die. You’ll be looked after. You’ll be with me.’

  ‘Have you even mentioned this idea to your parents?’

  His eyes lit up as if he could tell her resolve was weakening. ‘I don’t need to. They’ll be happy to have you.’

  She realised that there was only one thing she could say, only one thing she could do to save him from a certain death in the Soviet Union. Because in her heart she knew that he wasn’t going anywhere without her. ‘I’ll talk to Mama,’ she whispered.

  *

  Just like Natasha had predicted, there wasn’t much celebration at the Smirnovs’ that New Year’s Eve. Yuri was away on partisan business. Everyone else was in bed. Only Natasha sat at the kitchen window, staring at the falling snow. It was half past eleven in the evening.

  Would the next year bring victory or more humiliation? Natasha couldn’t imagine living like this for much longer. Something had to bring them relief but what? She felt that only a miracle could help them. As the terrible year of 1941 slipped away, Natasha sat in the dark and prayed for a miracle. She was no longer thinking of Kiev and the streets of her childhood. She was thinking of Vacratot, a small village not far from Budapest.

  Would she even be here this time next year? Or would she be in a foreign country, far from her family, alone and afraid? No, not alone, but with him. Wasn’t that all that mattered?

  She walked to the bedroom. ‘Mama! Are you asleep?’ she whispered, even though she knew Mother was awake by the tiny sobs that were coming from her bed. Natasha perched on the bed next to her. ‘Are you okay? I want to talk to you about something.’

  Natasha could just make out her mother’s silhouette in the shady room. Mother’s voice was barely audible. ‘Do you think about them? Wonder if they are still alive?’

  ‘All the time.’

  ‘Natasha, I can’t feel them out there anymore. I can’t feel their presence. They just seem…’ She fell quiet. After a few seconds, she added, ‘Lost.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Mama. Papa has only been gone a few weeks. And Stanislav will come back. As soon as the war is over, they’ll both come back.’

  ‘What if they don’t? What if they never come back? I don’t think I could bear it.’

  Natasha couldn’t bear it either. She remembered Mark’s words. ‘We have to have faith. Without faith, there’s nothing,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll ever see them again.’

  ‘Mama, please don’t cry.’

  ‘Sometimes I think they’re the lucky ones. Death is better than living like this. Anything is better than living like this.’

  ‘Don’t talk about them like they’re dead. They’re still alive, and wherever they are, they’re waiting to see us again, just like we’re waiting to see them.’

  ‘Do you really believe that? Do you believe Olga is still alive?’

  ‘No, not Olga,’ said Natasha in a tiny voice. She reached in her pocket and felt for her brother’s picture. Stroking its smooth edges made her feel a little bit better. It was as if her brother was still with her. He wasn’t lost, nor was he dead. Here he was, in her pocket, on a small black-and-white photograph.

  ‘You know what the worst part is? The uncertainty. I wish we knew, one way or another. Then we could grieve and go on with our lives. But this wasting away waiting for the news that never comes, it’s killing me.’ Mother buried her face in the pillow. ‘At least I still have the three of you. Masha doesn’t have anyone.’

  ‘Did Nikolai tell you?’

  Mother nodded.

  Kissing her, Natasha said, ‘We’re not going anywhere, Mama, I promise. We’ll always be with you. Go to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning. It’s a new year, a new beginning.’

  ‘You wanted to talk to me about something?’

  ‘It was nothing, Mama. Happy New Year.’

  When Natasha returned to the kitchen, with only ten minutes remaining until midnight, she found Lisa sitting at the table. Natasha wondered what her sister was doing in the dark, but she didn’t ask, so glad was she to have someone to talk to. In her superstitious mind, being by herself on New Year’s meant she would be alone, without her family, all year. And she didn’t want that.

  ‘Tell me a secret, Lisa,’ she whispered, perching on a chair next to her sister and reaching for her hand.

  Natasha and Lisa had a tradition. Every New Year’s Eve, just before the clock chimed twelve, they would exchange secrets. The person with the most outrageous secret won. The loser had to do anything the winner wanted for the next week. Natasha had never won, because no matter how good her secrets were, Lisa’s had always been better. Even if Natasha suspected her sister made them all up. One year, when the girls were nine and ten, Lisa had claimed she’d surprised Zina kissing a man who wasn’t her husband on the stairs of their building. The next year, she had told Natasha their history teacher fell over on the way to the cafeteria
and split his pants. Now, as they waited out the last minutes of 1941, Natasha desperately needed one of her sister’s made-up stories to transport her back to her childhood where she’d been safe.

  ‘I don’t have any secrets.’ Lisa’s voice was dull, sleepy. In the light of the street lamp outside, Natasha could make out her stooped shoulders and downcast eyes.

  ‘I don’t believe you. You always have secrets.’

  ‘Not anymore. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t go on as if nothing is wrong. There are times when I’m numb inside. I go through my days like an apparition, and in the evenings I don’t even remember what I’ve done. Does that sound normal to you?’

  Mutely, Natasha shook her head.

  ‘But then there are days when everything inside me is burning with pain, with heartache. On days like that I long for that numb feeling. It makes life so much easier.’

  ‘You are hurting. It’s understandable. We’ve all been through so much. Too much is broken. But it will get better, Lisa. The war will be over, and everything will get better.’

  ‘Yes, but Alexei won’t come back. Not after the war, not ever.’

  Natasha had nothing to say to that.

  Lisa continued, ‘If you could see what’s inside my head, you’d be horrified. Do you know how I know? Because when I look inside my head, I’m horrified at the darkness I see.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be horrified, Lisa. You are my sister. I’ll always love you, no matter what.’

  ‘Do you have a secret to tell me?’ asked Lisa, her hand limp inside Natasha’s.

  After a long pause, Natasha said, ‘No, Lisa. You know me. I don’t have any secrets.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ asked Lisa, pulling her hand away.

  Natasha nodded, even though Lisa couldn’t see her in the dark.

  The clock chimed midnight, ushering in 1942. Natasha turned away from her sister and thought of Mark, thought of his arms around her, his smiling face, his lips on hers. She didn’t want to welcome the New Year without him, so she felt for him in her thoughts and imagined him holding her close, whispering how much he loved her.

  Chapter 12 – A Beacon of Happiness

  January 1942

  Natasha was making her slow, drowsy way to the water pump, an empty bucket hooked on her arm, a scarf wrapped around her head. It was early, and the winter sun peeked timidly through the cloud, illuminating the city half hidden away by snow. It wasn’t fresh snow anymore. It wasn’t white or pure or soft like feathers. It was all grey ice and brown slush, muddy, dull and deflated. Natasha looked at the familiar streets of her childhood, damaged by bombs, blackened by fire, but so infinitely dear to her heart. If she followed Mark to Hungary, would she ever see Kiev or her family again?

  Natasha was just about to fill her bucket with water when she heard mortar shots. The unexpected noise made her stop in her tracks, drop the bucket and, not pausing to catch it as it rolled down the hill, she ran back home. Mother, Nikolai and Lisa were already by the kitchen window. Natasha was just in time to see a tiny dot of a plane as it vanished into the distance, its machine guns popping and cracking long after the plane had disappeared.

  It was at this plane that the mortars were firing.

  ‘That was our plane. A Soviet plane!’ exclaimed Nikolai, his voice raising a few octaves too high and then falling to almost a whisper.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Natasha. She had a sudden desire to hug her brother and twirl him in a mad tango around the kitchen.

  ‘Positive. I saw a red star on the fuselage.’

  ‘You imagined it, silly,’ said Lisa. ‘A Soviet plane! What nonsense.’

  Nikolai glared at his sister. ‘You think you know everything, smarty-pants? Then explain why the Germans were firing at their own plane.’

  Lisa had no answer to that. Four pairs of excited eyes stared out of the window at the quiet street. For a minute, no one spoke.

  Natasha said, ‘We haven’t seen a Soviet plane since—’

  ‘Since September,’ interrupted Mother. ‘And the paper said yesterday that the Soviet Air Force was destroyed.’

  ‘You still read the papers, Mama? It’s all lies, every last word,’ said Natasha.

  ‘The Red Army must be closer than we think,’ concluded Mother.

  The plane was the first sign of life from the territories unoccupied by Hitler that they had seen in a long time. Once again, the electricity had been cut off a while ago. No electricity meant no radio, which meant that the Smirnovs had no way of knowing what was happening in the outside world. Yuri’s radio remained hidden on the roof, under a pile of bricks, concealed by half a metre of snow. Mother finally noticed Natasha’s boots, and her smile vanished. ‘Shoes in the house? Take them off immediately and sit down. Breakfast is almost ready.’

  ‘What’s for breakfast?’ Nikolai wanted to know.

  Mother pointed at two large beetroots and a potato. The vegetables were wrinkled like an old man’s face, as if they had spent not just three winter months but a number of years hidden away in the cellar. Mother proudly brought them home from the market earlier that morning and was slicing them into wafer-thin, almost transparent portions. She looked around for something to cook them in. The shelves were empty. ‘I don’t understand. Where did all our pots go? We had at least half a dozen.’ She looked under the table and in the compartment behind the long bench where Olga’s mother had stored carrots, potatoes and aubergines in their other, pre-war life.

  ‘Mama, stop,’ said Lisa. ‘It’s just beetroot, we can eat it raw.’

  ‘It’s half frozen. You’ll get a terrible stomach ache.’

  ‘I like the crunchy noise it makes in my mouth,’ said Nikolai, reaching across for a piece of beetroot.

  ‘Either way, I would still like to know what happened to the pots. Not a single one left. How strange.’

  Lisa coughed. ‘I traded our pots and pans, Mama,’ she said. ‘And one of our knives.’

  ‘You traded them?’ asked Mother. She sat down, watching Lisa through narrowed eyes.

  Lisa turned as red as the beetroot juice on Nikolai’s fingers. She withered under Mother’s probing gaze. Finally, she looked away and said, ‘I gave them to the Germans.’

  ‘You did what?’

  Lisa muttered, ‘Didn’t you see the notices outside? They were offering bread for our metal.’

  Mother’s face deflated as if all the air had left it. ‘What were you thinking?’ she exclaimed. Nikolai, who was stretching for another piece of beetroot, thought better of it. Mutely he glanced from Mother to Lisa.

  ‘It’s not like we have anything to cook. We haven’t used the pots in weeks. They gave me bread, Mama,’ pleaded Lisa.

  ‘Where is this bread?’ asked Natasha eagerly. Her stomach was rumbling. Even the thought of tasteless German-issue bread made her mouth water.

  ‘I ate it,’ mumbled Lisa. ‘I was so tired after the long walk, I didn’t think I could make it back. I needed it.’ She contemplated the unsmiling faces around her. ‘I was so hungry.’

  ‘Typical,’ muttered Nikolai.

  Natasha watched her sister for a second or two and then said, ‘We’re all hungry. You were tired? It’s not like you even have a job. What do you do all day?’

  Mother slumped in her chair as if Lisa’s admission sapped her of all her strength. ‘We all saw the notices, Lisa. Yet not one of us had even considered giving them anything. You should be ashamed of yourself.’

  ‘But what harm can it really do?’

  ‘What harm, did you say? What harm?’ Mother repeated, blinking fast. ‘Before you rushed to get a piece of stale bread, did you perhaps pause for one second to think why they were asking for our metal?’ When Lisa shook her head, Mother continued, ‘They are using pots and pans to make weapons.’

  Lisa cowered in her chair, her face paling. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think.’

  ‘You never think. I hope you enjoyed your bread because it paid for bullets that might kill your bro
ther and father. What a bitter piece of bread that must have been.’

  Lisa opened her mouth as if to say something but no sound came out. She closed her mouth and ran out of the door. ‘Where is she off to?’ asked Nikolai. Mother shrugged.

  An hour later Lisa returned. She sat down at the kitchen table next to Mother, next to Natasha, all tears and tangled hair, twisted mouth and twisted arms. ‘I tried to get our pots back. The collector didn’t want to hear. I’m so sorry, Mama.’ She sobbed hysterically, rubbing her face with her clenched fists until it looked bright red.

  ‘No use crying over spilt milk,’ said Mother. ‘What’s done is done. Here, we saved you some food. Next time I hope you think twice before doing something so stupid.’

  ‘That’s likely,’ muttered Nikolai. Natasha pinched him and he poked his tongue out, which was still red from beetroot.

  After Mother and Nikolai left, Natasha sat next to Lisa. ‘Don’t cry.’

  ‘It’s just all too much, you know? Everything is too much. Alexei and Babushka and Olga. This life, always scrambling for a piece of bread. I can’t take it anymore.’

  ‘Remember what you told me before the war? Let’s take it one day at a time. Today we had food. Let’s not worry about tomorrow just yet.’

  ‘I didn’t mean any harm, you know. And now everyone hates me.’ Lisa’s shoulders heaved.

  Her arms around her sister, Natasha whispered, ‘I don’t hate you, Lisa. And they don’t, either. They will get over it soon enough, you’ll see.’

  Sobbing, her head in her hands, Lisa muttered, ‘I still miss him, you know.’

  ‘Of course you do. But time will help.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with time,’ said Lisa. Her voice was no longer quivering and her eyes were dry.

  *

  That afternoon at the cafeteria, Natasha was surprised to find a piece of real meat in the soup she was given for lunch. It was such a long time since she had seen meat, she had almost forgotten what it looked like. Yet, she could swear that this meat tasted like nothing she had ever had before. Its texture was rough and it was difficult to chew. She poked it uncertainly with her fork.