Someone at the top of the stairs opened the door, and everyone filed out, avoiding each other’s eyes as if they had shared a guilty secret. Outside, a bony black mutt still howled, its muzzle raised to the now empty sky in a classic folkloric silhouette.
“Molchi, Satanah,” a man’s rough voice broke the spell. “Shut up, son of Satan. It’s all over.” He picked up a loose stone and lobbed it at the dog. The stone caught the beast in its emaciated hindquarters, making it yelp and slink away.
“Is that your dog?” someone asked.
“Who can afford to keep a dog? This one looks too skinny to eat and too mean to die. Lucky, in its own way.”
The air smelled acrid. Yellowish smoke, licked with receding flames, circled and spiraled up from a shallow crater in the sidewalk. The street had turned to rubble where the bomb had hit, missing a furniture warehouse but damaging the facade on several limestone government buildings. Galina held the back of her hand against her mouth and nose, trying to avoid breathing in the fine ochre dust that seemed to float on the sunbeams of a heedlessly fine Yalta afternoon.
“Watch the glass,” Filip said, his voice muffled by the edge of the Pioneer scarf he had pulled up to mask his face. “Do you want this?” He offered her the immaculately pressed handkerchief his mother had left on his dresser just that morning.
She shook her head, crossed the street to where the air seemed to have cleared a little, and faced him. “Have you no sense? To stand there gaping like a country fool on his first trip to the city, watching a bomb”—she stamped her foot, repeating “a bomb” in a voice edged with total exasperation—“fall on your head. You would be dead now!”
“I . . . ,” he started, but found he had nothing to say. To admit that he had not recognized the bomb for what it was sounded too stupid, even to his own ears. He shrugged, pressing his lips together, then took the scarf off his neck, folded it neatly, and tucked it, along with the pristine handkerchief, into his pocket. “I thought my father said the Germans are north of here, near Moscow,” he finally managed by way of explanation. “Can we still go to the clubhouse?”
“It’s not the first time they have turned to fly in our direction. You must have had your head buried in your stamp collection,” Galina said grimly, but with the hint of an indulgent smile. “We may as well go to the clubhouse. It may be gone tomorrow.”
The clubhouse was buzzing with excitement. Those who had witnessed the bombing took center stage, describing the experience to the less fortunate ones, who had only heard the explosion. The room resonated with questions and speculations. Why was there only one bomber? Why not a squadron? Was this an isolated incident, or a warning? Maybe it was just an inexperienced pilot who had lost his bearings and needed to lighten his aircraft to conserve fuel so he could get back home. Well, what are we, then? Pieces on a game board? Filip thought. What does it matter whether the attack is deliberate or accidental, to a dead man?
“My uncle says the Germans have moved south, through Czechoslovakia and Ukraine. Crimea could be next, Odessa and Yalta, while most of our troops are engaged to the north, defending the cities,” one boy said soberly.
“Why would the Nazis want Yalta? For the mineral baths, or the figs and melons?” another challenged.
“Durak. For access to the Black Sea, you fool, with Turkey on the other side.”
A dark-haired girl in a faded blue dress jumped up and cranked the phonograph. “Let’s dance. Pomirat’ tak s mouzikoy. If we must die, let’s at least have music.”
It was a sentiment everyone agreed with. Soon the room was alive with energetic bodies moving to a jazzy polka beat, laughing and twirling, making up new steps, singing along with mindless lyrics that spoke of love and hope and more love and love again. They moved in the moment, their joy as irrepressibly desperate as it was spontaneous.
They took turns cranking the machine, playing tune after tune without stopping, changing partners midstep, as if the only thing that mattered was to keep moving until they dropped, exhausted and happy, into the nearest chair. No one spoke while the music wound down, the last notes contorted into a weird, slow rendition of the original sprightly tempo.
After a few minutes, two girls went to the kitchen to brew tea; through the open door, the others could hear them talking as girls do, in easy camaraderie, assembling the mismatched cups and saucers each young person had contributed to the communal cupboard.
“A game of chess?” Filip’s friend and frequent game adversary Borya inquired lazily, brushing damp, sandy hair out of his eyes.
“Maybe later. I want to play something for Galya,” Filip slid one of his mother’s records out of its cardboard sleeve.
“What?” Galina glanced at the cover. “Yevgeniy Onegin? It’s by Pushkin. We read it in school. We even listened to some of the music, remember? All about love, what else?” She raised her eyes to the ceiling and recited in an expressionless voice: “Onegin scorns the young Tatiana, kills her sister’s fiancé in a stupid duel, then finds, years later, that Tatiana is the only woman he can ever love. But she is married, of course, and refuses to betray her aged husband by indulging the undeniable passion she has felt for Onegin since their first meeting.” She sighed. “It is a good story. I’m just not sure it needs to be an opera.”
“Chai gotov,” one of the girls sang out from the kitchen. “Come get your tea. And we have mulberry jam, too, thanks to Galya’s mother.”
“Where’s the cake?” Borya joked, filling a chipped cup and stirring in a generous spoonful of jam. “You know I never have tea without cake.”
“You forgot to bring it, balda. You numbskull, who even remembers what cake tastes like?” someone quipped, and everyone laughed.
“Galya, I know you don’t love opera, but listen to this one aria,” Filip pleaded in an urgent whisper, ignoring the general banter.
Galina turned away from the group, still laughing. “All right, then. I can see you will give me no peace. Let’s hear your ahhhria,” she stretched out the word, rolling her eyes, setting off a new wave of hilarity.
“No, really, play it for me,” she relented, noting the stricken look on his face, the faint quiver of his smooth cheek, the hurt in his eyes. “You know we’re all friends here.”
Filip hesitated. Was it worth the risk, the possibility of ridicule? But these were his friends, after all, his only friends. He placed the record gingerly on the turntable. With infinite care and complete accuracy, he brought the needle down about halfway across its glossy, spinning surface.
Galina’s face lit up with the first notes. “Kouda, kouda? Kouda vy oudalilis’,” she sang along softly. “Why, this is Lenski’s aria, lamenting the loss of the innocent days of his youth. Then Onegin shoots him. Dead. So sad and beautiful. Everyone knows this.”
“Yes, yes. It is beautiful,” Filip agreed impatiently. “But listen, now. This is Onegin, expressing his own thoughts about what is about to happen. Do we have to do this? Is there a way out? Why do good friends have to threaten each other’s lives over a silly jealous dispute, a meaningless party prank?”
“I know this, too, I have heard it before . . .”
“But here, here . . . ,” he emphasized as Lenski’s limpid tenor mingled with Onegin’s baritone, the lines crossing from unison to harmony. “Do you see? In weaving the voices together, it is Tchaikovsky’s subtle rendering of Pushkin’s brilliant idea. In creating these two characters, these friends and country neighbors, isn’t he revealing two sides of his own nature? He is both Lenski, the soulful sensitive poet suffering the throes of romantic love, and Onegin, the cosmopolitan sophisticate trapped in the suffocating boredom of provincial life. He, Pushkin, is both!”
“Hey! I’m soulful and sensitive, and bored with life in this provincial town,” Borya cut in, striking a theatrical pose. “Does that make me a poet?”
Filip ignored him. “I picture this scene with the two men back-to-back, each lost in his own thoughts, refusing to bend to the bonds of friendship,
unable to see a way out of the imminent tragedy. When Lenski dies, it is the victory of arrogance over decency, not just onstage but also in Pushkin the man, himself. It is brilliant, you see?”
“I . . . think so. I never thought about it like that,” Galina said, her interest aroused by his enthusiasm. In truth, I never thought about it at all, crossed her mind, but remained unspoken, out of respect for the passion of her friend’s revelations. She did not know if what he was saying was true, but she could see how deeply he had thought about it.
“And then Pushkin the poet gets killed in a ridiculous duel over his wife’s flirtation with a French officer. So you could say it’s prophetic, too,” added a voice out of the group who had gathered around, almost in spite of themselves, to hear what was going on.
“Yes. And Tchaikovsky knows that, and of course, we know it too, so it adds another layer of meaning.” Filip’s head bobbed up and down.
“Or maybe Pushkin just couldn’t resist playing a part in his own drama,” Borya drawled. “I’m sure he never imagined he would be the one to die. It wasn’t in the script.”
“I guess none of us do,” Filip mused, seeing again the bomb backlit by sunlight and feeling, for the first time, a shudder of fear run down his spine in an icy stream. The others must have felt it, too. They grew silent, avoiding each other’s eyes.
“Well, thank you, Professor.” The dark-haired girl jumped up and rummaged through the pile of records strewn across the table. “How about one more dance before we go home?”
The group moved away, began dancing almost before the music started. Filip took out his handkerchief and wiped invisible dust off his mother’s record with care, replacing it gently in its sleeve.
“Come,” Galina said, cupping his elbow and peering into his face. He was still flushed with excitement at the audacity of his performance. “I’ll show you how to fox-trot.”
PART II
Enemies
1
THE LITTLE THEATER GROUP came together almost out of desperation. They were only eight people, local residents who gave their time to this artistic pursuit in affirmation of some measure of free will. Their offerings were modest, of necessity—no one had much money or time, and productions had to be restricted to plays with few characters onstage at the same time. Promotion consisted of two or three small hand-lettered signs placed at news kiosks. But people came, packing the abandoned storage shed for every performance, paying what they could, escaping for an hour or two the rigors and uncertainties of life in time of war.
Three of them had professional training. Fyodor, a grand old man with the abundant white hair and aristocratic bearing of Leopold Stokowski, was director and impresario, drawing on his many years in legitimate theater, on both sides of the lights, to shape the troupe’s efforts into a presentable performance. Luyba, whose promising film career had faded with the loss of her good looks and the genetically inevitable thickening of her ingenue’s figure, could still interpret any female character with convincing and only slightly overplayed finesse. And Mishka, who supported himself with petty thievery and personal-scale black marketeering; he used his native gifts to play a comic role like nobody’s business, counting on his expressive face and beer barrel body for the full range of physical humor while peeling off clever lines as if his life depended on it. As, no doubt, in his frequent brushes with law enforcement and competing operators, it sometimes did.
The others were amateurs, drawn to this activity for their own reasons: exhibitionism, self-delusion, missed opportunity, emotional escape, intellectual curiosity. Filip was among these, introduced to the group by a colleague of his father’s.
“Your boy has talent,” the man had opined, admiring the watercolor landscapes Zoya had displayed on every available wall of their little flat. “The set man they have now at the theater group is an art teacher at the gymnasium who needs to spend more time on paying work to support his family. Filip could paint scenery and learn a thing or two from him while also helping out.”
This time there were no objections from either parent. “Just keep up your schoolwork,” his father admonished with a stern look.
“And don’t stay out too late,” Zoya added, smiling in relief at this nonpolitical use of Filip’s time. It had nothing to do with Young Pioneers, and mirrored her own lifelong passion for theater.
Filip had no interest in performing. In the two years he stayed with the troupe, he successfully resisted most of Fyodor’s attempts to draft him into a speaking part onstage. He would do the occasional walk-on servant or messenger if pressed to the limit, but knew that any lines he spoke would be wooden and unconvincing. He was best as stagehand, moving with feline quickness across the floor, arranging furniture and props with silent efficiency.
“It is the best job,” he told his mother over the late-night cup of tea they often enjoyed together alone, his father having gone to bed to rise early for work. “Every play needs a set—you can’t just have people walking around talking—what kind of theater would that be? So my job is really important. Even if I make a mistake, the actors can fix it by moving something or changing the dialogue on the spot. I don’t have to worry about humiliating myself by forgetting my lines or tripping over a chair.”
“And the painting?” Zoya asked, glancing wistfully at the glass sugar bowl, half-filled with diminutive cubes she had long since denied herself, saving the precious rationed commodity for her husband and son. It was a sacrifice that she suffered with secret satisfaction. Neither husband nor son was aware of her yearning for sweetness as she sipped her bitter tea.
“Oh, Mama, the painting is excellent. I learn more every day. Sometimes I imagine I’m like our famous Ivan Shishkin, painting in the forest.” Filip colored slightly at this immodest comparison; he knew full well that his cardboard trees with their randomly stippled leaves were a far cry from Shishkin’s lush Russian landscapes. “Not that I can ever be that good,” he amended, feeling the need for at least a show of humility.
They talked on a while, until an irritated cough from the other room reminded them that it was time for sleeping. “And I love building the backdrops, too,” he added, rising and pushing his chair against the oilcloth-covered table. He popped a sugar cube into his mouth, washed it down with a last sip of cold tea. “I love to see how things fit together, what makes them stand up, how lines and angles can fool the observer’s eye into seeing what I want them to see.”
Zoya rose, too. She kissed his downy cheek, his face still flushed with adolescent enthusiasm. Who knew what obstacles lay in the path of his youthful ambition? For now, it was enough that he was too young for military service. In a city overrun with German occupation troops, she nurtured the hope that soon it would all be over, Stalin and Hitler would somehow cancel each other out, and life would go on like before, or better. She would be free to go to church, and her boy would attend university and blossom into the influential man his aspirations promised he should become.
She covered the sugar bowl. “Good night, son,” she said quietly to his retreating back.
The question of music came up at the planning meeting for the summer season. The only music they had used, to this point, was an occasional medley of folk tunes Mishka cranked out on his accordion during scene changes, if he was not cast in a major role in the production. For the new season, the group had planned an evening of one-act plays: a serious, if sentimental, emotional piece, and a popular farce bordering on burlesque. Mishka was featured prominently in both, and would be too busy with costume changes to play at intermission.
“In any case, accordion music is not suitable here,” Fyodor mused, raising his teacup to his lips and setting it down again with deliberate grace. “We have a major shift in mood between the two pieces. We need a palate cleanser to help the audience make the transition.”
“You mean like bread and butter between vodka shots?” Mishka pulled on the homemade cherry brandy in his own teacup. “A bit of marinated herring?”
&nbs
p; “More or less.” Fyodor smiled indulgently, remembering evenings in Paris and St. Petersburg, the frosty elegance of sherbet between courses of exquisitely prepared food, the company of lovely ladies, the belief that this enchanted life would never end.
“We could use a gramophone,” Luyba suggested. She leaned back in her chair and laid her lacy knitted shawl across her generous knees. “I have some very fine Chaliapin records. I met him once . . .” She stroked the shawl absently with pudgy fingers, as if it were a favorite lapdog.
“Hm. Chaliapin is very fine, of course, but his basso may be too heavy for our program. I think we need something else. Something light and charming that the audience can get caught up in, to clear the emotional residue and prepare them to receive the second play.”
“I know just the thing,” Filip said, jumping to his feet. “But I have to arrange it.” He had been sitting quietly at the corner of the rickety table they used for their conferences. He wasn’t sure what he could add to the process of decision making, didn’t quite understand what was expected of him, but he had an idea. “I should know by tomorrow afternoon, Fyodor Andreevich.”
*
It was the last week of school. Eighth grade final exams were over; those who passed would have satisfied the mandatory minimal educational requirement and would soon be free to enter the workforce or join the army. Galina was among these. Her father, Ilya, had arranged for her to start working in a toy store downtown in time for the summer season that still brought a few intrepid travelers to this world-famous resort. Some food items were in short supply, and strictly rationed, but toys could be bought for money, and people wanted them. The growing number of German occupation troops quickly became regular customers, too, buying wind-up dancing bears and rosy-cheeked country dolls for children back home.
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