by Amber Lough
How did the machine gun miss me?
I was staring at the trees, at the scorch marks on the bone-white trunks, wondering all of this when Bochkareva punched me hard in the upper arm. Her face appeared between the trees and me, and her smile was gone.
“Save it for tomorrow, Pavlova.”
“Save what?” I rubbed at my arm, amazed at how much a simple punch could hurt when the rest of me was numb.
“Your broken heart. When we get back to camp, you can stare off into space all you want, but right now, you need to be a soldier. Don’t turn into a schoolgirl now. It’s too late for that.” She adjusted her belt, tugging her tunic down because it’d ridden up and bunched over her pistol harness. “Make sure your platoon stays alert. They’re sure to attack at dawn, if not before.”
I saluted and started to head toward the copse of trees Alsu had taken for our platoon, but Bochkareva stopped me by squeezing my arm, right where she’d punched me. I winced. “I know what you’re feeling. I’ve been through it before. I can’t say it will ever go away completely, but it does get better. It will for you, at least. You’re a survivor. It’s why I chose you as platoon leader.”
She must have seen something in my face, because she shook her head and that smile was back. “No, not because of who your father is. You know I don’t give a dog’s tail about that. My platoon leaders are survivors. All four of you are the sort to keep your heads on in battle and come out on the other side. Like me.”
She released me and marched off between the others, heading toward a cooking fire someone had set up.
I was halfway to Alsu when I realized that I could breathe deeply again. Bochkareva’s words had affected me.
For so long, I’d worried that I’d prove to be gutless in the face of real danger, that I’d crumble when I most needed to steel my nerves. But I hadn’t. I hadn’t even thought to run away or cower.
But none of it mattered, either way, because bravery couldn’t keep my best friend alive.
19
July 10, 1917
The attack came shortly after midnight. The first of them.
Combined with the men—many of them barely sober enough to pick up their guns and take aim—we managed to hold our ground, and there was a pause for half an hour. The silence was broken only by the moans of the wounded, who’d been told to shut up by at least three different people. Including me.
It wasn’t that I didn’t have sympathy for them. I just couldn’t stand the sound, knowing there was nothing anyone could do for their pain. Short of dying, they would have to wait until we got to the nurses.
We endured three more attacks, each one stronger than the last, before the Germans broke through our first line. Pointed helmets glinted in the moonlight like an iron fence weaving through the trees. I drew a grenade from my bag, pulled the pin and launched it at the first line of soldiers. They shouted and tried to jump out of the way, but my aim was as true as ever. I knocked down five in a burst of splintering wood. The women of my platoon spread around me, taking positions behind whatever solid piece of machinery or fallen log they could find. The cover was scarce, and most of us were left standing in the open.
“Take them as they come out!” I shouted while I fumbled with my magazine. It was jammed, probably because I’d rammed it in so hard during the last battle.
Pop! Pop! The sharp cutting sound of a rifle shot pierced through the ringing in my ears. It was coming from the women. Frustrated with my rifle and tempted to toss it down, I paused with the bolt still open and threw another grenade. Muravyeva was to my right, pulling off her bag of grenades and handing them to me.
“You can still stab with it,” she grunted, meaning my rifle.
I was tying on her grenade bag when I heard screaming down the line. Two German infantrymen were dragging one of my soldiers into the trees. She was kicking hard, so she couldn’t be severely wounded, but I couldn’t tell who it was. One of mine, though.
I told Muravyeva to watch the line and then went after the men and my soldier. Crouching, I stepped over the prone bodies of my platoon, all of them ready and aimed in case someone should come from the trees.
Something in the back of my mind told me this was too dangerous. The soldier was gone, and going after her would only result in my death, too. Or worse, capture. I fingered the capsule hanging around my neck, then dropped my hand and used it to keep my balance over the earth.
Her screaming hadn’t stopped. My stomach lurched while my mind raced with every possible thing they could be doing to her. I followed the sound to a little hollow surrounded by thick trees. There were just the two men, kneeling on the ground. Their captive was still kicking and twisting, but the men were holding her down by her shoulders and knees.
I circled around the trees until their backs were to me. I was exposing my own back to the rest of their army, but there wasn’t any other option. The sounds of the battle were muffled, penetrated by the occasional shell explosion. While I tried to get my bearings, the horror of the war drew away like the tide, pulling the sounds and smells away from us. And yet, this was what humanity had become: two men dragging a woman into the woods while she screamed and kicked.
She turned over and I caught a glimpse of her face. It was Alsu. Her cap lay crumpled on the ground, trodden by the men as they tried to wrestle her.
She reached for her capsule, but one of the men caught her wrist. Strangely, no one was talking. She screamed, but she didn’t say anything, and the Germans had resorted to grunting and gesticulating like cavemen.
If I waited any longer, they’d have her trousers down, so with one shaky breath, I stepped forward and stabbed the first man in the back with my bayonet. It went through his ribs and, hopefully, right through his heart. The other man looked up in surprise, but I kicked him in the chin, hard. When he stumbled back, I pulled the bayonet out of the first man and lunged at him, but he was quick and managed to roll onto his knees. He scrambled to the side and grabbed Alsu. He’d gotten a knife out and held it against her neck. Her eyes bulged.
If I went after him with my bayonet, he’d slice her throat. I avoided Alsu’s eyes and stared instead into his. They were dark, furious. I’ve killed his comrade. I could tell he was thinking about that because his eyes flicked over to the fallen man.
Slowly, I reached into my bag and wrapped my fingers around a pin. Once I pulled it, I’d only have three to four seconds to get it in the right spot.
“Alsu, don’t move,” I said.
“Du blutige Sau!” he shouted. Harsh and crackling, his accent took on every stab of pain I’d felt over the past twenty-four hours.
There was just enough space behind him to make this work. Slowly, I slid out the pin, grateful I knew every millimeter of this weapon like it was a part of my own body. Then, still holding the level down, I pulled it up and out.
His jaw slackened, but he didn’t drop the knife from Alsu’s neck. He barked something that probably meant if I planned to use that, we’d all die. But he was wrong. I knew this weapon. I knew precisely how large of a blast radius it had, and I was good at throwing it.
I raised my arm and let the lever pop up.
One.
Two.
I threw it.
Three and BOOM! A fountain of dirt exploded behind them. The man flew into Alsu, and the two of them fell. I, too, stumbled backwards, but I caught my balance, choking on the dusty air. I couldn’t wait long because any of his comrades could come running this direction.
I bent over them. The man’s back was shredded, impaled by dozens of metal shards, a collage of muddy blood and torn uniform, pink skin and bright, white bones. Dead.
Alsu whimpered as I pulled the man off of her. She crawled onto her knees and staggered to her feet, wiping dirt from her eyes and pale cheeks. She took one glimpse at the man and shuddered.
I didn’t say anything. I just took her hand and pulled her after me. We ran, death and the enemy at our heels.
We emerged into our p
latoon’s clearing to find that our comrades were gone.
In their place were nearly a hundred Germans. They looked up, surprise and alarm written across their faces. Before they had a chance to react, we turned and ran back through the woods, weaving between the trees until we reached the edge of the forest. Ahead, our soldiers were fleeing.
“Retreat!” The call came from everywhere. It was in the vodka-soaked blood of every man I saw stumbling into and out of the trenches.
“Come on,” I said to Alsu. She nodded at me, determined as always.
Together, we ran at the first trench. It was narrow, and I leaped across easily. Behind us, the enemy shot their rifles and yelled, jubilant. They followed us, but only as far as the first trench. Alsu and I raced across the field, stumbling over the bodies from the day before. The enemy had gotten their artillery back, and the proof of it raced over our heads and pounded the fields. Dirt sprayed like geysers, and ahead of me three men fell.
Pop! Pop! A bullet whizzed past me, and I risked a look over my shoulder. Not all the Germans had stopped at the trench. Four of them were running at it from the side, their greatcoats flapping in the dawn light. We’d been flanked! They were nearly upon us.
Then, as if time stopped, one of them paused, raised his rifle, and aimed at me. In that moment, I saw the way his dirty fingers gripped the trigger. There was a hint of light on the fingerboard of his rifle, a beam of sunlight that had broken over the forest. I turned away, picked up my pace . . .
Time raced forward like a train, slamming into my back. I flew forward and my whole body erupted into burning, sharp pain.
The ground hit me in the face.
I couldn’t move, but I was breathing heavily and tiny grains of dirt kept rolling into my mouth, then out again.
There was a bright, screaming light, and then everything was gone.
20
July 10, 1917
There was no gradual awakening. One moment I was deep in darkness and the next I was in a hospital tent, my chest aching to breathe, daylight gushing through the open tent-flap, and my ears full of a chorus of moans, cries, and pockets of heavy silence.
I joined those who moaned for a moment, then clamped down on the weakness. My back radiated with a throbbing pain so intense the rest of my body seized up to protect it. I tried to drag a hand up to cover my eyes from the bright light, but that movement made the pain worse. I would have to accept the light, for the moment.
One cot lay between mine and the tent’s canvas door. It was covered in a stack of blankets and black cases. On the cot to my right lay Muravyeva. She looked more asleep than dead and, as far as I could see, did not have any obvious wounds. Beyond her, the large tent was full of the wounded, both men and women. Nurses weaved among the cots with their trays and glass bottles. My memory of Maxim’s hospital stay in Petrograd overlaid this vision, merging the two, and for a moment I had to squeeze my eyes shut.
“Private Pavlova?” a woman asked from the foot of my cot. After another blink, she came into focus—a field nurse with a long, honey-blonde braid draped over a shoulder.
“Yes.”
“You’re in the infirmary.”
It felt like a lifetime since I’d seen a woman with such long hair, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of it, remembering how Masha had saved hers for her mother. It would be with her kit still, in the barracks.
“You were shot in the back, just below your ribs,” she continued, pulling me back to the moment. “The surgeon was able to get it out, and it looks like you’ll make a full recovery.”
I had been running across that field, between the second and third German trenches. I hadn’t even made it to no-man’s-land yet. Alsu was beside me—
“Where’s Private Almas?”
The nurse had been holding a chart, and ran her eyes down it. “I don’t have anyone here by that name. She must not have been wounded as badly as you.”
“Is she alive?”
With a frown, she nodded. “I believe so. They told us the names of your dead, and I don’t recognize that one.”
I was about to ask her what day it was, but suddenly it didn’t matter. Masha was still down there beside broken vodka bottles. Her life, extinguished for an advance that had failed.
Our first goal had been to encourage the men to fight.
Why hadn’t they come to help? I didn’t believe the men were cowards. Some of them had seen years of battle.
“The women in your battalion amaze me,” the nurse said. “You’re so brave.”
I rolled my ankle because it was the only thing I could do that didn’t hurt my back. “My friend is—she’s dead.” I swallowed, and my throat stung. “Do you know what they do? Has she been brought here?”
“A team was sent out last night to gather the dead. You must not think about that now. Rest. Do you need anything to calm your nerves?”
I shook my head, and the nurse continued to the next patient, her walk somehow both light-footed and solemn. I watched her make her way down the row of cots, mesmerized by the sway of her braid. She’d tied it with a red ribbon.
Gingerly, I pulled my arm up and brushed at my scalp. My hair had grown as long as my fingertip, and it was damp. Someone had recently washed it.
“Ekaterina.”
A man stood silhouetted in the tent’s bright entrance, his face too dark to see clearly, but I would know my father’s shape anywhere. He came closer, moving stiffly, until he was an arm’s distance from me. Too far away to touch.
“They told me you’d wake soon.” His fingers brushed over the edge of my blanket. “Are you in a lot of pain?”
“I was shot.”
“Yes.” He looked almost embarrassed that he’d asked.
“Masha died,” I said.
“Yes, I’ve heard. I’ve arranged for her body to be sent home.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the tiny icon of Saint Olga. He held it in the light for a moment and then set it on my knee, awkwardly but gently. “They say she died honorably.”
“She died protecting me, sir.”
“Katyusha.” His voice cracked. “When they brought you off the field, I thought . . . I wasn’t sure. You—you shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have played this game. You’re my daughter.”
“I took my platoon over three trenches. I killed men, I lost my best friend, and I was shot. This was never a game.”
“No.”
For a long time, he didn’t speak, and I avoided his eyes. Talking back to him had sent a rush through my veins, which made my body ache. With a silent moan, I tried to settle back into the cot.
“It isn’t a game. My apologies.” He had never been so quick to apologize.
I wasn’t finished. “You wanted me to be a boy, and for that, I will always be sorry.”
“Don’t be—”
“I’m not sorry I’m a woman. I’m sorry you wanted me to be a boy.”
To anyone else, it would have looked as though he’d relaxed, but I knew what that slight sinking of shoulders meant. “I didn’t want you to be a boy. You’re a lot like your mother—no, let me finish—she was headstrong. She knew what she wanted, and she went after it. It kept me on my toes. It was the thing I loved most about her. It was also something I couldn’t control. By trying to make her do what I thought was right, I drove her away.”
“Papa,” I whispered.
“I don’t want you to be ashamed of her. Did you know, I’ve made sure she is comfortable? All these years I’ve been sending her an allowance. Even now, with the money on hold by the government . . .”
“Where is she? Is that where Maxim went?”
He skirted my questions. “She never writes. But I couldn’t give up on her. I couldn’t keep punishing her for being who she is. When I say you’re like her, I mean it as a compliment. You have your mother’s passion and you used it to do something remarkable, Katya. You are everything I could ever ask for in a child. And in a soldier.”
He rested his h
and on my lower leg. It was heavy but gentle. Then he was gone, marching out into the daylight and leaving my mind spinning with questions.
I spent the rest of the day slipping in and out of painful consciousness. At some point while I was asleep, Bochkareva came by with orders for me to return home with the other wounded, and Alsu hobbled in on crutches to bring me a bouquet of golden chamomile.
In the evening, when I was awake again, Lieutenant Sarkovsky came to visit, bringing me a rose blossom he’d found in the ruins of a farmhouse.
“You survived,” I said to him.
He handed me the rose, then winced when its thorns snagged on my wrappings. “Sorry,” he said. “Yes, I fared better than you, it looks like. We don’t charge across the field like infantry soldiers, but we get shelled quite a bit. I only had a bit of a shrapnel problem.”
His fingernails looked recently scrubbed, and his cuffs told the story of a dip in water. He had cleaned up for me.
“Why have you come to visit me?”
“I told you the first time we spoke: I’d heard a lot about you. I guess I feel like I know you, a little.”
His eyes were kind, and so I told him. “I can’t think of anyone like that, right now. I mean—”
“I know what you mean. I’m not here for that. For now, do you want to hear a fascinating mystery story?” He held up a well-worn book. “It’s quite good, even if the author isn’t Russian.”
I relaxed into my pillow. His voice was rather nice to hear. “All right.”
The lieutenant stayed for two chapters, but my father did not return.
21
July 28, 1917
The Saturday market filled the square, bursting with colors, smells, and sounds I had almost forgotten existed. I was freshly out of the hospital on my first hour of leave from the battalion, and it felt like everyone in the city had come to goggle over all the odds and ends that couldn’t be found at the grocer or shops along Nevsky Prospekt.