As soon as the trucks stopped, Galina felt Filip pull at her, moving deeper along the sidewalk, away from the curb. They stopped with their backs up against the buildings, with nowhere else to go. “Let go of me,” she protested. Annoyed at his new bossiness, she yanked her arm free of his grasp, then stared at him in amazement.
Filip had somehow managed to shrink, as if he had reversed several years’ growth and retreated into a younger version of himself. Shoulders hunched, face pale, he looked small, frail, childlike. Weak. This is my husband, she thought. My man. And he is afraid.
“Achtung!” she heard, her attention snapping back to the scene on the street. “Halt!”
She watched a young officer spring down from the passenger side of the first truck, barking orders at the soldiers, who blocked the street quickly and efficiently at both ends. Franz? she almost said out loud, clapping a hand to her mouth just in time to keep the word from slipping out. No need to reveal to everyone around her that she knew the enemy by name.
But this was a new Franz. This was not the homesick youth who liked carved toys and hummed romantic love songs. Gone was the gentle manner, the aesthetic sensitivity. This was a man in command—a little man, she saw—a martinet, strutting, issuing orders. “I need men for one or two days’ work,” he announced. “You will receive extra rations. You and you and you over there.” He scanned the silent throng, pointing, while the soldiers rounded up the chosen ones and pushed them onto the waiting trucks.
When his eyes found her, she stopped breathing but did not lower her gaze. She felt Filip shrink even more at her side, as if deflated by Franz’s piercing glance. “I will take women, also. Strong ones,” he said, lifting his chin and smiling a little. “They can help the men.”
This is it. We are finished. He will take his revenge. To her surprise, she felt not fear but a numbing, hopeless acceptance. She steeled herself for the inevitable mocking finger, resigned to the rough shove that would change her life, now, forever.
It did not come.
“We are finished,” Franz echoed, climbing into his seat while the soldiers hustled the last workers, including several women, into the trucks. “Schnell, schnell,” he shouted. “Move faster. We are wasting time.”
It was Galina’s turn to feel deflated, while Filip slowly regained his full stature and touched her hand. “That was close,” he said softly. “I thought he had me picked out for sure. Let’s go, Galya.” She walked with him, not trusting herself to speak. She felt—what did she feel? Relief, of course; they had both escaped who knew what unpleasant, perhaps dangerous outcome.
Betrayal. Not only Filip’s. She already knew he did not have the strength to defend himself, let alone anyone else. In his hapless self-absorption, he was not remotely aware of the threat that had brushed so close to her, and she would never tell him. She had naively expected Franz to simply accept her refusal and fade gracefully into the past, becoming a nostalgic anecdote she might share with a granddaughter, perhaps, in the unimaginable future. Visiting her in the toy shop, listening to her performances, he had been sweet, almost tender, boyish and attentive.
Now, she had seen him at work, carrying out the duties delegated by his superiors. Which was the real Franz? How could a person change so completely, living like a chameleon, blending in with this twig, that leaf? She understood that the overarching issue for everyone, at every level, was survival. But even a chameleon has an essential nature, a basic chameleon-ness that defines its true state. With Franz, she saw that she knew nothing of what that true state might be.
But how dare he? How dare he play with her like that? Flaunting his power, choosing not to choose her, holding the threat over her like a blade arrested in midair, taunting her with his discretionary authority. She let the rage wash over her, burning away the last vestiges of sentimentality.
* * *
“What did you say?” Ksenia faced her daughter, her wide hands continuing to work the ball of dough as if of their own accord.
“I said, guess what we did today.” Galina pulled Filip forward so they stood side by side. “We got married.”
“Really? Hand me that towel. No, the clean one, over there. Is this a joke?” Ksenia stopped kneading. “I have enough to worry about without your schemes and pranks, like how to make bread with only half the yeast it needs to rise properly.” She placed the dough gently into her favorite cracked bowl, covered it with the towel, and moved the bowl to the back of the stove.
“Mama,” Galina said, blushing deeply and releasing Filip’s hand. “We got married.”
Ksenia brushed a floury hand over her thin graying hair, sat down slowly at the kitchen table. “Ilya? Come here. I need you,” she called into the inner courtyard, from where they could hear the rhythmic sound of careful sawing.
“Minutku. One moment,” he called back. After a few more whiny strokes, and the sharp ping of wood hitting the tabletop, he appeared at the door, brushing sawdust off his shirt before entering the room. “Galya, shto s toboi? What’s wrong?” He stood behind Ksenia’s chair. “Hello, Filip,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
“Tell your father,” Ksenia commanded.
“We . . . Filip turns eighteen today. He could be sent away, to work in Germany. So . . .” Galina hesitated, overcome with sudden shyness in the face of this cold questioning.
Filip moved forward. She felt his hand on her waist. “We are married, Ilya Nikolaevich,” he said, looking at the older man directly, without fear.
Galina stiffened. She had been unprepared for that touch, that hand on her waist. It was so light she could barely feel it, but it was unmistakably intimate and proprietary. What have I done? How much have I given away, no, lost? She advanced into the room, moving out of the circle of Filip’s arm. “It’s just a formality, Papa,” she said. “Nothing will change. I will still live here, and Filip with his parents, right? We just wanted him to be safe.”
“Nothing, no one is safe in wartime,” Ksenia said, her voice dull. “But this idea of yours, this living apart, it is childish. It will not do. The Germans are not fools. Do you think you are the first to try this ruse?” She looked squarely from one to the other, her gray eyes holding the question until both young people faltered and lowered their heads.
“No,” Ksenia continued. “It will not do. If you are married, you must live as man and wife. But for me and for your father, Galina”—she gestured toward Ilya, who stood in stunned silence at her back—“there is no union until you receive the Church’s blessing. So go home, Filip, and tell your parents. I will arrange things with Father Gennady.” She stood up and moved toward the stove, lifting a corner of the towel to check the bread dough’s progress. Filip turned to go, but Ilya’s voice stopped him.
“Wait.” Ilya grasped the back of the chair with both hands. “Wait a moment. What about love? This piece of paper means nothing, less than nothing, to me. It can be annulled. This is a fine gesture, Galya, a selfless, generous act. But marriage, as your mother says, is not a game. So tell me, is there enough love between you to understand each other, to live in harmony, and to forgive the mistakes you will both inevitably make? Is there enough love?”
Galina and Filip glanced at each other; each caught the same surprised expression on the other’s face. “We never . . . that is, well . . . yes,” she faltered, blushing fiercely. Then, regaining some composure, she spoke more firmly. “Yes, Papa, we are friends. Of course we love each other.”
“Those are not the same thing, friendship and love, as you will see,” Ilya replied kindly. “But it is a good beginning. And you?” he addressed his new son-in-law.
“Of course. Of course I love her, Ilya Nikolaevich. Since first grade, at school.” He said it quietly, with confidence, but not without a trace of derision, as if stating something obvious to everyone that only Ilya could not see. Ilya caught the inference, raised his head, but let the challenge pass unanswered.
“All right. Horosho. I will make the arrangements,” Ksenia
said.
“But where . . . ,” Galina began, sweeping her hand in an arc that included the kitchen, the front room, the tiny bedrooms, and the sheltered yard. She felt everything spinning away, the sense of control rapidly becoming an illusion, an imaginary exercise made real, to which she and Filip had come entirely unprepared.
“Here. You two can take your brother’s room. Maksim is not likely to return from university before this occupation ends.”
Urgent knocking at their door interrupted their conversation. “Sosed! Neighbor! Come quickly.” Ilya went to answer the summons. In a moment, he returned with an older man who lived across the common yard on the other side of the compound.
“Such a tragedy,” the man wailed, shaking his head in disbelief. “Such a tragedy.”
“Tell us what you know,” Ilya prompted.
“The bastards—excuse me, sosedka.” He nodded to Ksenia.
“What has happened?” She waved away his apology with an impatient gesture.
“They are cutting down the trees. I saw it with my own eyes.” The man swayed from foot to foot, kneading his cap in his hands.
“Who?” “What trees?” “Where?” The choir of questions assaulted the distraught messenger from all sides, making him stop in maddening silence.
Galina was the first to react. “Here, Gavril Gavrilovich, sit down.” She offered the man a chair and poured water into a glass from the ceramic pitcher they filled daily from the pump in the yard. He declined the chair but drank the water. “Thank you, my dear,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Now please tell us, what trees?” Galina asked gently.
“The palms, along the seawall,” he replied, his eyes filling with tears. “The pride of our beautiful city.”
“Who?” Filip cut in. But they already knew the answer.
“The Germans,” Gavril Gavrilovich whispered. “That is, our people are doing the work, but the Germans are giving the orders.”
“But why?” Filip persisted. “Do they think we will climb the trees like monkeys and send distress signals to the Caucasus? Or pelt them with stones from above while they stroll on the beach?”
“Who knows why,” Ilya said. “There may be some strategic reason, or it may just be an act of malice, a way to deface the enemy’s homeland while keeping their own troops busy supervising the work.” He paused, sighed deeply. “I am more worried about our people. Not everyone who serves on a work detail returns home when the job is done.”
Ksenia crossed herself. “God’s will. But maybe you should go see, Ilya. It may be possible to help someone. Now everybody out of my kitchen except you, Galya. Bread dough can’t wait.”
After the men left—Ilya and the neighbor to witness the destruction, and Filip home to inform his parents—the women worked in silence. Galina sliced vegetables for soup while Ksenia punched down the dough, which had risen nicely, in spite of the meager amount of yeast. She formed it into a loaf of respectable size and covered it with a towel, leaving it to rise once more before baking. “Here, let me finish with the soup. You do some of this mending. You know how I hate to sew,” Ksenia said, pointing to a dilapidated wicker basket, itself so full of holes it was a wonder it could hold anything and still retain its shape.
“It is true, what your father said about love,” she said. She opened a corner cupboard and took out a jar partly filled with barley. “When we were courting—we lived in Kostroma, where his family is from—we would go for walks along the river. Those were terrible times, worse than now, for everyone.” She measured some grain into the palm of her hand.
“After the revolution?” Galina offered. She worked her deft needle around a hole in a pillowcase, joining the threadbare fabric to a bright patch of scrap cloth.
“Yes. I know in school they tell you it was glorious, freedom and brotherhood, work and bread and land for everyone. But it was a nightmare; people were angry, hungry, suspicious of each other, and no government in place with enough experience to restore order.” She stirred the barley into the soup and covered the pot. Silently, she appraised the remaining grain with a calculating eye before returning the jar to its place on the shelf.
Galina went on sewing. Her mother almost never talked about her life. Oh, there were the childhood stories, the virtues of country life lived close to the soil under the blue skies of peace and merchant-class prosperity, stories tinted with nostalgia and prone to the pitfalls of selective memory. This was something different, something precious and personal, an intimacy with her mother she did not want to lose any more than she knew how to handle it. “Which river?” she ventured at last, hoping to keep the narrative going.
“The Volga. That’s what your father called me, ‘my Volga.’ We had nothing to offer each other but the work of our own hands. He said, ‘You are like this river to me, strong and constant and sure, ever flowing through me, dearer than my own blood.’”
“And so you are,” Ilya said, coming in unexpectedly from the front room. “I forgot my cap,” he apologized, smiling.
Galina did not know how to describe the thing that passed in that moment between her father and mother. It was something powerful and tender, silent and primal. She only knew that witnessing it had reduced her to insignificance. She was neither child nor woman, but something becoming, her essence submerged in some vague process she was only beginning to understand.
The wedding took place early one Tuesday morning, in one of the two churches still permitted to remain open. Filip’s father, Vadim, had an urgent meeting at work; he sent his regrets and best wishes. His mother, Zoya, was there, along with Galina’s parents and their neighbor, Nina Mihailovna, who served as witness.
Galina wore a borrowed white suit, wide in the shoulders and long in the skirt, but quite presentable if not exactly chic. Zoya had contributed a diminutive pillbox hat and veil. The bride carried a hastily picked bunch of virginal violets.
Filip was in a dark suit, only a little short in the sleeves, the trousers pressed so carefully that the hem marks hardly showed at all. Borya had insisted his friend wear his lucky green tie, even though Filip had two ties of his own to choose from. “I passed all my exams with this tie on,” Borya said. “It will work for you, too.” This is not schoolwork, Filip wanted to point out, but the difference seemed clear and it was simpler to just wear the tie.
The wedding ceremony was shorter than they used to be. Years ago, in a judicial edict that permitted him to keep his post, the Moscow Patriarch had excised all the prayers for the health and well-being of the imperial family, along with other sections deemed toxic to the Communist state. There were no ceremonial crowns for stalwart groomsmen to hold over the heads of the bridal couple. The crowns, along with every other gold object the church possessed, had been confiscated and melted down for the greater good of the state treasury. Filip and Galina held pencil-thin amber candles, spoke their vows, and exchanged rings: narrow brass bands procured by Vadim as his contribution to the festivities. The choir’s part was sung by a lone nun from the convent at the outskirts of the city, the convent permitted to remain in existence solely because of the excellence of their winemaking.
After the ceremony, there was a party for all the courtyard residents and a handful of the couple’s school friends. Even crusty old Uncle Zhora came, and brought his bandura; he consented to provide music as long as his glass of kvass was never less than half full. Never mind that the drink was of his own making; he had traded a small barrel of the bread beer to Ilya in exchange for a whole pack of German cigarettes. There was meat pie (what kind of meat was a question no one asked), pickled vegetables, beet and potato salad, fresh fruit, and whatever anyone else was able to add to the table. It was, after all, a wedding.
8
MAYBE IF Filip had not been so happy, nothing would have happened.
His married life settled into a succession of contented days. At school, preparing for the tenth grade examinations and the university entrance application to
follow, he was as sure of himself as he had ever been.
Galina had no such ambitions. Once married, she had willingly dropped out of school and continued working at Zinaida Grigoryevna’s toy shop. Her earnings made a significant contribution to the household, and her cheerful nature helped lighten the struggle of daily living for everyone in the family. She went about her tasks, sewing, sweeping, cooking, tending the silkworms and the little courtyard garden, humming or singing all the while, filling the house with peace, even if the songs she chose to sing were sad ones.
After school, Filip continued to volunteer with the theater group, sketching backdrops onto both sides of reclaimed cloth for scene changes. Mishka, the black marketeer, had disappeared. There were rumors of capture and execution, of double-dealing between one of the Partisan hideouts in the forest and the Nazi stronghold in town, but no one knew for sure.
A straitlaced woman with a guitar replaced him. Her repertoire was limited to simple tunes, and while she played well enough, she had none of the liveliness Mishka and his accordion provoked by his robust presence. And she had no feeling for comedy at all, only a thin, high voice that could not reach beyond the first few rows of the little hall. Jealous of her art, she refused to play for Galina’s intermission songs. Galina sang without accompaniment, songs of love and betrayal, loss and longing, and people listened; her strong, clear voice filled their eyes with tears and their hearts with joy, in the paradoxical love of suffering that the Russian character is prone to.
Filip usually stood in the wings, listening, often with Borya at his side. Not involved, strictly speaking, with the theater, his friend liked to hang around, sometimes lending a hand with scenery or props.
“That’s my wife,” Filip said once, almost in disbelief, while Galina sang of faded chrysanthemums and of love gone cold.
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