“What a nuisance. Snow, yes,” he started to say, then spun around. “Give me those! Ai, Mama, when will she learn not to touch my things?”
Galina relinquished the notebooks, raised her arms in surrender. “Just trying to help. Tell me about snow.”
“Cold and wet. Walk in it without galoshes and you ruin your shoes. Turns to filthy slush in the road, ice on the sidewalks. Causes train wrecks.” He placed the notebooks on his desk, aligning the corners with methodical precision. “You would tire of it in a week.”
“Well, you can have it. I like the beach, the sun, the sea birds. What do you have in Kharkov, pigeons?”
“Who cares? I’m not there to look at birds. Besides, pigeons are tastier than seagulls, and much easier to catch.” He turned away from her, began arranging books on the shelf his mother had nailed above his narrow desk.
“As if you have ever tried,” Galina muttered. She watched him slide the books this way and that, shifting them in an exacting order known only to himself.
“You must have something else to do,” he said without looking at her. “We are finished here.”
“Thank you, dear sister, for all your help,” she prompted, mimicking his cool tone.
He sighed, took off his glasses, polished their already clean lenses on his shirt sleeve. “Thank you. Now go.”
8
Kharkov, 4 October 1940
Dear Mama,
I have moved out of the dormitory, where there are simply too many distractions. You know I do not care to discuss politics, or the war in Europe, or the state of the world, especially with people I barely know. Too much chatter gets in the way of my studies, even if people talk among themselves and not to me.
Professor Zorkin, my anatomy instructor, helped me find a room in a private apartment, very close to the university. My landlady is a widow, about your age, I would guess, with two sons in the service: one in the army, the other a sailor. In exchange for my weekly meat ration, I receive a plate of soup for my daily dinner and the use of a very small but quiet room. Along with my full bread and tea rations, which I keep for myself, I get by well enough.
Please send some warm clothing and socks, if possible.
Your loving son,
Maksim
PS: My greetings to Father and Galya. I trust you are all well.
Kharkov, 10 December 1940
Dear Mama,
Thank you for the package. Miraculously, it arrived intact just this morning, along with your letter. The coat, alas, was too small, but I was able to trade it for a proper fur-lined shapka, with earflaps—a little moth-eaten but quite serviceable. At least my head will be warm and dry.
Please thank Galya for the socks. It was clever of her to unravel my old blue vest and reuse the yarn. They are a little snug, and I might have chosen a different color, but I can see they are well made and I am grateful for her efforts.
I have secured a little employment, tutoring the young son of a prominent Party member. The boy has fallen behind in mathematics and his family is afraid he will not pass his exams. I will do what I can, but he is lazy and not too bright. The army may turn out to be the best place for him. But the money is welcome, so tell Father not to worry about me on that account.
Do not respond to this letter; I am not likely to receive your reply before the holiday recess, when I expect to be home with you.
Your son,
Maksim
9
UNLIKE FILIP, WHOSE FAMILY lived just two streets in from the sea in a government-issued three-room apartment, Galina’s home was inland, too far to walk. In the last year, they had started to spend time together, strolling down to the embankment after school if the weather was clear, watching the waves break against the concrete seawall, talking or not, as the mood struck them.
“Why do they call it Black?” Galina wondered aloud, leaning over the iron guardrail to peer into the water. She had been singing “Chernoye Morye” softly to herself. The new sentimental ballad about the Black Sea had quickly become a popular hit. “It’s so blue, blue, blue.”
“You have to go out on a boat, where the water is deeper,” Filip replied seriously. “Then it looks black.”
“How do you know?” she challenged him, laughing.
“My uncle took me once, on a fishing trip.”
“But that’s not allowed! My papa says no one can sail or fish without special permission.”
“It was a few years ago, when I was small. Maybe he had permission, or maybe it was not required then. I don’t know.” Filip shrugged, impatient with the question. “We went out at sunrise, with a couple of my older cousins.”
“Did you catch anything?”
“Not me. I did not like the fishing. Too messy and smelly, and kind of boring.” He made a face, remembering the ingrained odors that permeated the weathered wood, odors unrelieved by the steady breeze that seemed to blow from all directions at once. “But I liked being on the boat,” he added. “One day I want to really go somewhere, have an adventure, see more than our own shoreline from an inland sea.”
“Let me know when you’re ready to sail to America. I will come see you off.” Galina laughed again, her hair and lashes adorned with beads of sea spray, making her look magically iridescent.
Filip smiled. “How beautiful you are,” he blurted, amazed at his own courage.
“I have to go now.” She was suddenly serious. “It’s washing day. I have to help Mama with the laundry.”
They walked in silence through the shopping district, looking absently in nearly empty store windows. The famine years were over, but since Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine, goods had become scarce; strict rationing was a fact of daily life. What merchandise there was—toys, household goods, books—seemed to be for the benefit of Yalta’s visitors, who still trickled in, drawn by the salt air and sunny climate. They, and the newly arrived German troops, were the ones who had money to spend in shops.
After Galina boarded the tram that would take her home, Filip walked aimlessly, his hands deep in his pants pockets. His senses were filled with Galina—the open, spirited look of her, the way she smelled faintly of starch and rosewater, the little joyous skip in her step, the curve of her neck when she bent her head over her schoolwork. Filip had stopped offering to help her; she was not troubled by her mediocre grades, moving from one class to the next with just enough effort to get by. “You want to go to university, to be an architect. I only want to sing,” she would say. “Do I need geometry to sing?”
And she sang at every opportunity: traditional folk songs and the new jazzy tunes and romances introduced by popular performers at Sunday bandstand dances in the park. Her voice was pure and sweet; it never failed to tug at his heart. It had an ephemeral beauty but also a concrete quality, as if you could pluck it from the air and hold it in your hand, sift it through your fingers like fine sand. Even now, the fading refrain of “Chernoye Morye” lingered in his ears.
Not knowing quite how he got there, he found himself in front of Avram’s shop. The usual crates of cherries and apricots rested on rough wooden trestles beside the open door, but something was different. The battered, peeling sign (HOUSEHOLD GOODS, PRODUCE, FLOUR, TEA), with its hand-painted whimsical teapot, was gone. In its place hung a garish red board, THE PEOPLE’S STORE spelled out in large white letters. A short, round-faced woman in a dingy brown smock leaned against the doorway, cracking sunflower seeds with her teeth.
“Shto nado?” she asked brusquely, popping the last few seeds into her mouth and brushing her large square hands down over an ample stomach. “What do you need?”
“I—I,” Filip stuttered. “Where is Avram?”
“No more Jew store,” the woman said, spitting sunflower shells onto the sidewalk and crossing arms plump as unbaked dough across her bosom. “No more Jew boardinghouse. Rooms for officers only.”
“But where is Avram?” Filip repeated dumbly. “I—I owe him some money.”
�
�Gone,” she shrugged. “I don’t know where, and I don’t care. Nor should you,” she added, nodding at the Young Pioneer pin on his collar. “If you owe money, you can pay me. The motherland needs you, young man.”
“I . . . don’t have it with me.” Filip backed away, feeling assaulted by the slogan; it sounded glib and hollow coming from this peasant. Who was this baba anyway? The Pioneers were young and energetic, led by schoolteachers and government clerks. Even the factory workers’ children among them were striving for a better future. From each according to ability, to each according to need. He had repeated the words countless times, thinking he knew their meaning: you serve your country, make your contribution to society, you receive education, wages, housing, food, a pension when you retire. That made sense. But this woman, this crude, seed-crunching uneducated usurper, who was she? She must be the embodiment of “the people,” an amorphous, faceless entity Filip had always assumed had nothing to do with himself and his world. Then where did Avram fit in, and Laila? They had served the neighborhood since before Filip was born, making a modest living in exchange for tireless and cheerful labor. There was room in the Soviet future for them, too. Wasn’t there?
10
FILIP HURRIED. It had not been easy to slip out of the house with his mother’s favorite records; even finding a spare pillowcase to hide them in had taken some doing. But the clubhouse door was not locked, and he was able to hide his package under a table in the vestibule, concealed by a red cloth someone had draped over it in honor of the holiday.
What holiday was it again? He could not remember which fearless leader’s birthday or pivotal struggle was being celebrated. Now he was late for the Young Pioneer meeting at school, and was sure to catch a reprimand from the unit leader. The reprimand did not matter to him as much as the attention—he dreaded being singled out before the group, everyone a witness to his shame.
“. . . and this is why we have called a special meeting today. Good morning, Comrade! Did you sleep well?” Every head turned to watch Filip, red-faced, sink into the nearest seat amid general laughter.
The leader, a young schoolteacher, held up a restraining hand. “Some may think that a patriotic holiday is a time for personal relaxation. Not so. What the motherland expects of you is personal reflection and ever-greater vigilance. What have you observed this week?” She scanned the room expectantly.
“My mother was up very early to iron a fresh blouse for the ceremony. But my grandfather grumbled, saying he would miss his walk in the park,” a girl in the third row offered.
“Good work. We must help our older citizens to overcome their outdated thought habits. You must do this. And remember, we are all here to help you, to help one another recognize the greater good, and to fight against weakness and negativity.”
Filip squirmed in his seat. When had things changed? He missed the innocence of the earlier meetings, the stories of valor and leadership, the lessons from history. He had loved hearing about the downfall of Napoleon’s prideful exploits, about the heroes of the French Revolution, unafraid to spill the blood of aristocrats in the streets along with their own. He had loved learning how, even in America, the fearless revolutionary George Washington had triumphed against imperialist evil, only to see his efforts sabotaged by greedy capitalist interests. And had not the great Abraham Lincoln, a humble man of the people, laid down his life to lift his black brethren out of bondage? Most of all, Filip missed the songs of his childhood, the songs of brotherhood and hope in a shiny new future, a future as unequivocally pure, true, and logical as a mathematical equation.
Now the meetings had acquired a different character. There would still be a song or two, but the words were harsh, impatient, militant. The rest of the hour was given to sharing—what have you heard in your neighborhood, your building, your home? Who has extra rations, and how did they get them? Every bit of information, no matter how small, was praiseworthy. One child after another rose to report on intimate domestic activities, ridiculously harmless in themselves, that took on a sinister cast in the leader’s cynical suspicious interpretation.
In this, Filip’s efforts were deemed to be nearly worthless. He could see no danger to the state from his mother’s love of opera, even if some of the recordings she treasured were sung in decadent foreign languages. If his own father, a Party member, could tolerate her participation in clandestine religious meetings, from which she returned calm and visibly happy, he could see no reason to expose her to ridicule or punishment. By his early adolescent years, he had gained a reputation as the least observant of dreamers, content to spend his time with books and stamps, deaf to any amount of increased pressure to do his share of reporting on the activities of others.
So he kept quiet, or, when pressed to the limit, made his remarks so vague as to be entirely useless.
“I heard someone say the Bolsheviks were becoming as bad as the old regime,” he’d disclosed at an earlier meeting.
“Where did you hear this? At home?”
“No, in the street.”
“Who said it?”
“I don’t know.”
“A man or a woman?”
“It was a gruff voice. I can’t be sure.”
“You did not see them?”
“No, it was dark, and they were a few people behind me in the bread line.”
“When was this?”
“Last Tuesday, or maybe the week before . . .”
Dismissed, finally, with a disgusted wave of the hand, he knew he would be safe from questioning for some time to come.
Soon, when he turned sixteen, he would be too old for Young Pioneers. He had already decided not to sign up for membership in the Komsomol, the next level of youth service intended to complete the process of indoctrination, turning out fully formed Soviet citizens ready for Party work. Instead, he would focus his energies on his studies, making his grades so brilliant that his entrance to university would be assured.
After the meeting, there was a short procession around the schoolyard, a few enthusiastic speeches, two or three songs. Then they were free to spend the afternoon at leisure, following a final reminder to think, always, of the good of the nation.
* * *
The clubhouse had once been a restaurant and had a working kitchen. There was no extra food, of course, but every one of the twenty or so young people who were regular members tried to contribute a pinch of tea to brew in the communal pot. Lemons grew abundantly in Yalta’s Mediterranean climate, and sometimes, if anyone brought sugar, there would be lemonade.
Here young people could play games, listen to music, dance, and enjoy each other’s company. Except for the obligatory portraits of Lenin and Stalin on the wall, the club was not politically oriented and was free and open to all. Someone had found a used phonograph. The city, for the time being, charged no rent, as long as the premises were kept clean and undamaged. Whether the motivation was to provide young people a safe place to be together, or a way for authorities to know where they gathered, was open to interpretation.
Making his way toward the clubhouse after the Pioneer meeting, Filip hoped Galina would come. She had promised, but he knew that her mother could override any plans they made, requiring Galina to help in the house or simply not allowing her to go out at all. Today was an important day, not because of the patriotic holiday, but because he so very much wanted her to hear the records he had brought. He was welcome to visit in her home, but there was no phonograph there, and it was entirely unseemly for her to come to his parents’ apartment, as they all knew. And he did not think he could “borrow” the records a second time.
Immersed in these thoughts, he barely noticed the change in activity around him. People were moving faster, some were running, carrying small children or dragging them by the hand. Had something happened? Filip stopped, bewildered.
He did not register the drone of the engines until the airplane was almost directly over his head. It was a sleek slate-gray apparition, emblazoned with black swastikas
. Dark as a storm cloud, it sliced through the sunlit afternoon sky like a fish through water. He was struck by the power of its inescapable presence; it seemed indestructible, commanding the space around it with total authority.
It was magnificent.
How must it feel to be a young man, not much older than his own fifteen years, in control of such a splendid machine, for all the world to see? He stood rooted, unable to take his eyes off the plane, mystified by the dark cylindrical object that emerged from an open hatch in its belly. What kind of odd robotic birth was he witnessing? What did it all mean? How like a scene from a Jules Verne novel, where strange and wonderful things happened in vaguely futuristic settings created by the author’s prodigious imagination. Only this was real, the object now falling rapidly toward the ground.
“Filip!” He felt a hand on his arm, looked down to see Galina’s flushed face, contorted with anxiety. “What are you gaping at? Take shelter!” The air filled with a piercing whine, moving over and past them like an otherworldly siren. Galina yanked at him; they followed a middle-aged woman into a nearby building, down a steep flight of stairs into the basement. “Have you never seen a bomber before?”
“No,” he admitted. “Only in pictures and on stamps.” Becoming aware of other people around him in the murky room, he dropped his voice to a whisper. “It was beautiful.”
Galina stared at him, speechless. She shook her head and sat down on some kind of trunk or crate. In the dim light her eyes glowed like a cat’s in a coal bin.
“It’s all right if you hear them,” a voice from the other end of the room observed to no one in particular. “If you hear the whine, the bomb has already passed. The one that kills you is the one you never hear.”
There was no more conversation after that, only the uneven breathing of twenty or thirty people and, somewhere in the dark recess of the dusty cellar, a quavery voice reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Then silence, punctured by another muffled explosion, the sound of glass breaking, and, somewhere outside, the frenetic barking of a dog. After a few minutes the barking stopped, and the howling began, one dog joined by a chorus of others in a weird call-and-response of raw animal terror. Filip felt Galina shudder beside him at the primal, eerie sound; the hair on the back of his neck prickled at its unearthly timbre.
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