They had set out on foot, as before, a loose band held together by a common purpose: to find their men and, somehow, to live. Someone had heard of a high-level meeting—America’s Roosevelt, Britain’s Churchill, and the despised Stalin segmenting Germany like an orange, creating zones of influence and administration while they began to dismantle the Nazi regime. It was up to them now, the women, to discover where these zones lay, and to determine where they might be safe.
When Galina’s pregnancy was near term, she and her mother had first heard the word asylum. It was balm to their dispirited souls, a source of strength they could draw on to dispel the perpetual weariness with which they moved their feet along the road. Keeping the Danube on their right, they tramped ever south, scavenging or begging for food and shelter from the chilly spring nights, their efforts met with hostility or indifference as often as with acts of ordinary kindness. Bread. A boiled potato. A cup of milk.
Little by little, in ones and twos, the other women fell away, each following her own path, whether by guesswork or calculation, to the rest of her life. By the time they reached the outskirts of Regensburg, they were alone. It was time to stop for the birth of the child.
Ksenia found work in a beer hall kitchen, scrubbing pots and washing dishes. “My daughter, she can also help in the kitchen,” she ventured cautiously, eyes lowered, knowing she might compromise her own job by asking for more.
“We have enough cooks now,” the beer hall woman, middle-aged, red faced, her complexion chapped by a chronic skin condition, snapped. “She can clean the guest rooms and help with the laundry. One meal a day, no pay, and she can share your room until the baby comes. Then, raus. No screaming baby in my house.”
The room was an unheated garret space with sloping walls that revealed rough aged roof beams. The women took turns sleeping on the narrow cot, using their coats on top of their own thin blanket for warmth. It was more than acceptable. They had shelter and food, and work, not charity. They were in a town filled with activity, people coming and going, busy rebuilding their world, trading information. And they were near the hospital.
*
“Bist du . . . ?” The nurse repeated her question, to which Galina, still uncomprehending, offered a puzzled smile. The nurse turned on her heel and walked away.
“Du. T’y, as we say,” Ksenia, who had just arrived, echoed. She sat down on a straight-backed wooden chair near the bed. “Such a simple word. And yet . . .”
Galina passed a finger over the baby’s downy head, as if exploring a curious new object. “We’re less than nobody here. Did you think they would address us any other way? V’y or Sie, as if we were respectable strangers? Why do you bring it up?”
“Because it’s changing. After the revolution, anyone could approach you on the street and address you rudely, the way landowners once spoke to their serfs of any age as if they were children.” She took a pair of knitting needles from her cloth satchel, the wood rubbed to a dark sheen by years of handling. “But there’s more to it than that.”
“What are you talking about?” Galina yawned. Who cares? she almost said. We have more urgent things to worry about.
Ksenia picked up her knitting, winding the pumpkin-colored yarn around her fingers to even out the tension, working the little sweater sideways, all in one piece. “When I was a young woman,” she began, in a tone that promised a story, her voice soft, as if eroded around the edges by the passage of time, taking her back to the clear center of a reminiscence. “I was only a few years married. Your brother was a baby, not two years old, and you were not yet born. We lived in Simferopol, where your father worked as a clerk in a shipping office and practiced his craft at every opportunity. If he had a day or two free from his job, he traveled to nearby towns, following the mountain tourist trade, selling his pins and carvings. He made a decent living, and I was busy with the house—the garden, the hens, my little child.”
“I wish we had a better color for Katyusha’s first sweater,” Galina interrupted.
“We use what we have, my dear. It’s soft and clean, and I’m grateful to Frau Herzen for giving me her old vest to rework, and for allowing me to rent her room. She is a good woman, gruff but not unkind. Just today she told me of a room nearby for you and Katya. She agreed to pay you a little for working mornings while I watch the baby.”
“Oh, Mama. Thank you.” Galina sighed, her body relaxed as if eased of a crushing burden; the worry lines around her mouth smoothed out. “Thank you.” She looked up with renewed attention, captivated by her mother’s narrative in spite of herself, caught up in the description of bygone times. “Weren’t you lonely then, with Papa away?”
Ksenia picked up the thread of her story. “Sometimes, yes, I may have been lonely. Maybe so. I did not think about my life that way. We were young; so much had happened. Your father had suffered gas poisoning in the war, so we had made our way south, for the mild climate and healing waters.”
“And the revolution? That had just happened?”
“Yes. Who knew what would come next? We wanted no part of it, just wanted to live in peace. Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, they were all scoundrels, angling for power, using the people’s suffering as a way to advance their own ambitions. We just wanted to live, and to worship in freedom.”
Galina began to see where this was going. She didn’t remember those early years, before Stalin ordered most churches closed and services outlawed. Her parents had refused to participate, would not join the Communist Party, and had paid for that decision: precarious employment, sporadic pay, lower food and clothing rations—these were part of the cost of standing with their beliefs. But if there was a church, they found it, and the icons in their own home had always remained defiantly on view.
Katyusha finished nursing and slept. Galina settled the baby in her basket and laid her own head back against the pillow. “What does all this have to do with t’y and v’y?” she asked. “We were talking about forms of address and how conventions were changing.”
“I remember. How impatient you are! A few years before, when we wanted to marry, we lived in Kostroma. It was too far north; we needed to be closer to the sanatoriums where your father could begin treatment for his condition. We had filed our civil marriage papers already, but it was unthinkable to travel together unless we were man and wife in the eyes of the Church. Do you see?”
No, Galina thought, but kept silent.
“My Ilya went to see Father Matvei, the new priest assigned to the one church left open in our part of the city. It was early spring, I remember, but still cold, with snow on the ground.
“‘You must wait another month,’ the priest said. ‘It is Lent now; no weddings are permitted without dispensation from the bishop.’ He was our age, recently ordained and married according to our Orthodox rules; his matushka was expecting their first child.
“‘Even now, in these times?’ Ilya protested.
“‘Especially now. If we let ourselves stray from the right path, ignore the laws set down by our holy fathers, then we are no different from the atheists.’
“Then your father did the unthinkable: he told a lie. ‘Father Matvei,’ he said. ‘We are believers, Ksenia and I. We live by Church law as much as we can. But, you see, it is important to Ksenia that we marry now.’ And he cast his eyes down, unable, as he told me later, to continue in his deception. Clearly, he did not think he could convince the priest that our immediate need to travel together was enough reason to bend the rules.
“‘Have you two sinned?’ The young priest sighed. ‘Well then, I’ll see what I can do.’ In truth, we had only allowed ourselves the briefest of intimacies—a chaste kiss, a quick embrace—but Ilya admitted to me that he was not free of lustful thoughts and that, too, was a sin, if only of a lower order. So we were married, with my brother and his wife as witnesses.”
Galina stretched, her fingers loosely curled, arms resting on the pillow behind her head as if in imitation of her daughter’s sleeping pose. She smiled to h
erself at having used the same excuse to expedite her own marriage, the stranger on a Yalta street using almost exactly the same words—Have you two sinned?—before accepting their bribe. But her mother did not need to know. “I just can’t imagine you or Papa telling a lie, for any reason,” she said instead.
“Was it really a lie? Perhaps in the strictest sense. It was a bad time, civil war. And he was sick, my Ilya. I was afraid that if we parted, if one of us went on ahead, we might not see each other again. We were in love.” Ksenia put down her knitting to unwind some more yarn for the baby’s sweater.
“But you wouldn’t travel together unless you were married? What difference could that have made to anyone?”
“It made a difference to me. As it was, I suffered over the suggestion of impropriety. I worried that Father Matvei assumed I had lapsed into irreparable sin, like so many others had done.”
“Oh, Mama. Even Mary Magdalene was forgiven, wasn’t she? Besides, you were leaving the area. You wouldn’t see this priest again.”
“So I thought.” Ksenia took up her needles and resumed knitting, the little garment taking shape beneath her fingers. “So I thought.”
“Tell me then, before Katyusha wakes up. I need a nap, too.”
“We had settled in Kislovodsk. The air was pure, the sun warm, the water rich with healing minerals. Your father’s health had improved. Things had settled down somewhat. Life was tolerable. The years of famine and terror were still to come. We found a little house with a garden, fruit trees—plums, cherries, figs. Your brother was nearly two. I was happy. The only thing missing was a church.”
“Then Father Matvei turned up?” Galina prompted, eager to move the story along.
“Yes. A woman told me about a basement meeting place where a priest, newly arrived from the north, held services. I took little Maksim and went. It was such a relief to have him properly baptized!”
“Did the priest remember you?”
“Oh, yes. And Ilya, too. Given a choice, we might have gone to worship elsewhere, but there was nowhere to go.” She paused. “And he was a righteous man, Father Matvei, an attentive shepherd. He took his calling to heart, at a time when practicing it put him in grave danger. There was no mediocrity in the priesthood then, only devoted servants of the Lord or Communist spies. Nothing in between.”
“What did he look like?”
“What a question! He looked like a priest. Thin, with long reddish hair and beard. He did have unusual eyes, gentle and dreamy, as if he saw things closed to the rest of us. When he prayed with us, we felt comforted, uplifted, and safe.”
Something happened, or you wouldn’t be telling me this, Galina thought. She turned on her side, facing her mother, one hand tucked under her cheek. The baby whimpered. “Sha, little one. Sleep,” she whispered, rocking the basket with her other hand.
“After mass a few of us women would stay. Father Matvei talked to us, explaining the finer points of the day’s scripture reading. He was educated; we knew he read Hebrew and Greek and was well versed in the writings of eminent scholars. But he carried his knowledge lightly, giving us lessons we could take with us, to fortify us for the hard times.”
“What lessons?”
“Humility. Charity. Compassion. Love. But also resistance to evil. He admonished us to refrain from kleveta—gossip, renunciation of our neighbors.”
“And that was dangerous! It still is.”
“Yes. One day he approached me after the others had gone. It was my turn to wipe down the icons and sweep the floor.
“‘Ksenia.’ There was something sad and tender about the way he spoke my name; it thrilled and alarmed me. ‘They will come for me soon.’ I put the broom down and looked at him. ‘Surely not. You are a good—’ but he cut me off.
“‘The woman who stands near the door, you have noticed her? She does not sing the Lord’s Prayer with us, and never takes Communion.’
“‘The one who does not cross herself? We thought she was just ignorant of our customs. But she stays for your talks, and asks many questions.’
“He nodded. ‘I am not afraid. I’m doing the work I was meant to do. But before I go . . .’ He stopped speaking and closed his eyes. I felt a chill of apprehension; I had never seen him so agitated. When he opened his eyes, they seemed to glow with a dark light, like a fire he was struggling to keep under control. We were completely alone in the basement of an empty building. Surely he didn’t think I was, I could be . . . no.” Ksenia stopped, her face a mask of pain at the vivid recollection.
“Oh, Mama.” Galina said, her eyes wide. “You trusted him. How could he take advantage of you that way? Like a common—”
“Wait,” Ksenia resumed. “Let me finish. I found the strength to challenge him, young as I was. Hadn’t we all been trained to guard our virtue, as girls growing up in Tsarist times? ‘You think I was compromised before my wedding,’ I said, looking right at him. ‘But it is not true. Ilya is an honorable man. I was untouched.’ His already pale face blanched completely, then reddened in mottled patches that bloomed on his cheeks like fever. He raised both hands in denial.
“‘No. No! Your husband spoke in a vague way. He never said . . . and it was not my place to draw conclusions. It’s just—’ he raked a hand through his hair.
“‘But that is what you did. Draw conclusions.’
“‘Ksenia. I am a man of God, bound by my own marriage vows. But I am still a man. I cherish your presence, admire your beauty.’
“‘I am not beautiful,’ I interrupted. ‘I have never been beautiful. I am plain as a clay pot.’” Ksenia pulled, with a rueful expression, at her thin, cropped hair, now dishwater gray, tucked behind large ears, which framed her round face. It was a face that spoke of Ukrainian peasant roots, with a hint of high cheekbones and a barely noticeable slant to her gray eyes suggesting a mixing, generations ago, with Tatar blood. “My nose is like a potato, my eyes are too close together, my teeth uneven.”
“You look beautiful to me,” Galina protested.
“So he said, too. ‘When I look at you, I see your fortitude and the sweetness of your character, the kindness in your eyes. I see how tenderly you care for little Maksim, how conscientiously you carry your work burden.’
“I shook my head, refusing to accept this embarrassment of praise. ‘We are all strong, we women. We love our children. We do our work.’
“His voice dropped to nearly a whisper. ‘Love is a mystery God has not given us the power to understand. I ask nothing improper of you. I only ask, Ksenia, say t’y to me. Just once.’ I was struck dumb. It was the last thing I could have imagined, the most unlikely request he could have made.
“‘I? To you?’ I finally stammered. ‘Vam?’ I was careful to say, formally, not daring to lapse into the familiar for even a moment. ‘That can never be. Never. You are my confessor, the keeper of my soul. Your ordained hands perform the holy sacraments. You have knowledge and profound understanding of the scriptures that we ordinary people can never achieve.’
“‘Ksenia—’ he started to say, but I would hear no more.
“‘Father Matvei, if I did as you ask, if I dared address you in this way, even once, it would be an unforgiveable transgression. To elevate myself to your level, or bring you down to mine, would be a vulgar vanity. Please forgive me.’”
Galina covered her mouth, trying to stifle the yawn that would no longer be suppressed. Is that all? she wanted to say. Are we not all equal before God? Only you would make so much of this chastity of spirit, this earthly protocol. “Were you tempted, though?” she asked instead.
Ksenia looked out the window at the barren yard, her knitting loose in her lap. A pair of trees swayed almost imperceptibly in the faint breeze, their bare limbs studded with buds, refusing to be fooled by the caressing sun into untimely bloom. Birds flitted about, engaged in the urgent business of their own survival. Finally, she spoke.
“There was an instant, when we parted, of hesitation. Later, sleepless, I thou
ght, Why not? What difference would it make to anyone if I did this simple, harmless thing that might touch a man’s troubled soul with a spark of joy? I knew his matushka, of course, the small kerchiefed priest’s wife who sang the responses and read the prayers during services, but I knew nothing about his life.”
She picked up the knitting and worked a few stitches, then put it down again, stroking the half-finished garment with the palm of her hand. “But it does matter. We are not all the same. Even with the new forms of address—comrade this and citizen that—some get more than others: better apartments, more rations, travel permits. If we give in, if we strip away all the conventions of order and respect, then they, the Communists, will have defeated us. We will be nothing but cogs in their new social order, keeping the machinery working for the benefit of a few thugs at the top. We’ll be a nation of serfs again, faceless, nameless, and poor.”
She worked to the end of the row, turned the piece, and gave a quiet, bemused laugh. “What am I saying? I care nothing for politics. These thoughts came to me later, after Father Matvei was gone. They did come for him, within the week. He had not asked me to commit a political act, to play along with the new fashion of equalization. He wanted a moment of intimacy, a clean, brief heart-to-heart connection. T’y. Such a simple word, meaning nothing and everything. I could not do it, Galya. Not then, and probably not now. Do you see?”
Galina, her face pillowed on one arm, mouth slightly open, slept.
3
AND STILL IT RAINED.
How many days now? Four? Six? It hardly mattered. In the rough camp of tented blankets and fallen-branch lean-tos, no spot sheltered enough for a cooking fire remained, or the wood dry enough to light one. The refugees huddled in morose silence, waiting, gnawing raw potatoes, swallowing moldy bread, if they had any.
They were on their own. The war was over, the Nazi labor camps plundered and closed down. Somewhere, victorious Allied commanders were deciding who would rule which piece of Germany, rolling out maps and plans, shifting the now destitute homeless workers about like pawns on a cratered chessboard.
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