by Amber Lough
A woman selling kielbasa smacked the hands of a little boy who’d reached out at her cart, and I jumped involuntarily. Her quick, violent movement and the boy’s yelp had startled me. Both of them looked up at me.
The woman surveyed my uniform with a smirk, but the boy ran up to me, skidding to a stop before he collided with my knees.
He pointed at the Battalion of Death skull embroidered on my shoulders. “Why do you have the face of the devil up there? Are you a bad man?”
“It’s a soldier, Misha,” the kielbasa woman said. “And can’t you see it’s a woman?”
The boy squinted. “No. He has his hair cut.”
I bent down, conscious that this was the first child I’d spoken to in months. “The skull is to scare the enemy. And you know what?”
“What?”
“It worked.” I stood back up, feeling better now that I’d spoken with the boy. His face was round and smooth, free of any shadows or pain. His mother had done well by him, so far.
“Then why did you jump when Mama slapped me? You shouldn’t be afraid of anything.”
He was right, but I didn’t know how to explain to a child of four that my nerves were as shattered as a tree struck by lightning. “It just surprised me. Tell me, are you a brave boy?” He nodded. “But when you hear a bang, does it startle you?” He nodded again. “It doesn’t mean you’re afraid. Just that you weren’t ready for the noise.”
He gave me a sharp salute, which I returned before crossing the square. As I left, I heard him say, “It was a girl, Mama. Didn’t you hear her voice?”
All around me, the city pulsed and breathed as it always had. Other children chased after the pigeons, the old bookseller leaned against his kiosk with his nose in a magazine he didn’t sell, and the even older man stood on the corner, watching it all with the eyes of a crow, holding a greasy cup of black tea. As if nothing had changed while I was gone.
The city kept on, its people laughing and crying, haggling over a pair of knitted socks even though their Tsar had been removed from power and the future was about as clear as the brackish waters of the Neva.
The gruesome nature of war had not weakened Petrograd’s heartbeat. Part of me wanted to scream out into the market, to tell people to take more notice. Didn’t they know there were people dying for them every day?
But there was another part of me that took my heart in its hand and, with a gentle squeeze, said this was how it should be. That child by the kielbasa should never know what I had seen. Only a fellow battle-scarred soldier could share my pain.
It was right that the city and the world keep turning. This was what the fighting had been for—for them, for this city that never faltered, never paused its Saturday market even in the face of revolution and war.
Papa remained at the front, ever loyal to his men, but now I wondered if he stayed partly because the city never slowed. As long as he was away, he wouldn’t have to face the revolution of life. He could continue to send money to his wife, hoping she’d return. He could imagine his son still recuperating, still preparing for an honorable return to war. He could pretend I was his dutiful girl sipping tea with the army’s matrons.
I understood him for this. It was tempting to lie to myself, to pretend my best friend hadn’t died or that the war we fought in would preserve this sacred land. And yet I couldn’t help but look the world right in the face. When Papa finally did come home, I’d show him how to do it, too.
And if I ever heard from Maxim . . . well, we would have a lot to discuss.
I reached the flower seller. The clumps of bright yellow and pink, the spears of purple and green, and the soft peach-fuzz petals of an orange bloom were like a balm to my nerves.
“Buying some flowers for your girl—oh! You are a girl. I’m sorry, in that uniform, I just assumed.” The flower seller covered her mouth, but her fingers couldn’t hide her blush. On such a wrinkled woman, the flush of color was more charming than the array of roses behind her.
“It’s all right.” I ran my fingers along the edges of the fuzzy blossom, scanning the buckets filled with fresh-cut flowers until I spotted what I’d come for. With a shaking finger, I pointed. “I’ll take twenty of those, please.”
“Were you one of those women that fought a few weeks ago?”
“Yes, grandmother.”
“Then you’ll pay for only half.”
It was what anyone would have haggled her down to, but it was nice not to have to do it. “Thank you.”
I paid, waited for her to wrap the flowers, and retreated from the bustling market. I turned down a narrow alley that few would think to enter, grateful for its silence.
—
The cemetery was a field of fresh stones.
“You’re here,” Masha’s mother said when I approached.
“One of my doctors at the front had me discharged,” I said quietly. “He said I can re-enlist once I fully recover.” If you fully recover was what he’d really said.
Sabina Andreyevna did not smile, but she nodded appreciatively at the bouquet in my arms. She wore a black kerchief that hung low on her brow. It hid her hair, but I knew it was just as dark, just as shiny, as Masha’s own.
I didn’t know what to say to the mother of my dead friend. I couldn’t bear to tell her how much Masha had meant to me, that she’d died saying she wasn’t afraid, or that she’d traded her life for mine.
Sabina Andreyevna knelt at the gravestone and wept without noise. “She loved you,” she said.
“I know.” I got on my knees beside her and laid the flowers at Masha’s grave. They were the prettiest blush-pink peonies I’d ever seen, each bloom a declaration. The moment I saw them in the market, I knew they had grown for Masha. “She had this hat,” I began, but I couldn’t finish.
“That silly hat,” she said. “It cost her an entire month of wages. I was so irritated.”
“It made her happy.”
“Yes. And that was why I smiled every time she put it on.”
With the tip of my finger, I traced Masha’s name on the headstone, letting the granite dig into the skin.
“There’s an award ceremony tomorrow morning,” I said after a while. “Some of us are being given the Cross of Saint Georgi.”
“Yes, I’ll be there. They’re giving the mothers of—of—I’ll be there.” What she couldn’t say was that the mothers of the dead were receiving medals in their stead.
I pushed myself off my knees and stood, then tugged my uniform tunic down and readjusted my brother’s belt.
“Till tomorrow, then.”
After another quick glance at where Masha lay, I left her mother standing there alone, her feet blanketed with flowers.
—
Sub-Lieutenant Maria Bochkareva marched down the line swinging her sharp, shining sabre. She stopped in front of each of us, her expression severe but her eyes soft, and pinned a medal to each of our chests. When she reached me, I looked beyond her, through her, at the horizon, as we’d been taught to do—but also because I couldn’t bear for her to see how much I did not want this.
“Private Pavlova, for bravery on the field and for daring to rescue a soldier taken by the enemy, I award you the Cross of Saint Georgi. May the gold and black ribbon declare to all your proven valor in battle.” She slid the metal pin through my blouse, expertly avoiding my skin, and snapped it closed.
When she was done, she went to the front of the entire battalion and turned to face us all.
“Our sisters in battle,” she said, her voice ringing across the courtyard, “those who stand among us now and those who have sacrificed themselves for Russia, will never abandon us. We have a bond that cannot be broken. And it should never be forgotten. Go! Enjoy this day with your families.”
Masha’s mother found me standing alone on the crushed grass of the parade ground. It seemed as though everyone else was surrounded by husbands or fathers, mothers or sisters, and I had no one. Not here.
“She would have liked all
this fuss, wouldn’t she?” she asked.
I snorted. “She would have pinned her medal on her newest hat.” Part of me was shouting at me not to joke about Masha, but another part had to. Because to not laugh meant I had to cry, and I was dry.
“Her father wanted to be here,” said Sabina Andreyevna. “But he’s not strong enough yet to stand for long stretches. He’s proud of you too, though. Sometimes in the night I fancy I can still hear him and Masha talking about economics, or reciting poems, or just laughing. There was so much laughter.”
Then it came to me, that although Sabina Andreyevna had not been there in the battle, had not seen the nightmare I had seen, she understood what I had lost. In that, we were the same. My friend, her daughter, had left us gasping for meaning, our memories filled with the laughter and mischief of the tall girl who’d bought silk peonies in winter.
My throat constricted, and I had to turn away and bite my lip till it pinched. Then Sabina Andreyevna’s arm was around my shoulders. “You should come to our house sometimes. It’s too quiet there now. When you need to, you come to me.”
—
The next day, I saw Alsu off at the train station; she was going home to heal. She carried everything she owned in a canvas bag slung over her shoulder. I would have offered to help her carry it, but I knew she was strong despite her wounded leg. She looked odd in her civilian clothes, and when I pointed it out, she told me I looked like a boy in his father’s uniform. And we laughed.
“What did you do with your boots?” I asked, noting the absence of lumps in the bag.
She smiled all the way up to her rose-printed headscarf and lifted the hem of her skirt off the ground. “I wore them there, I wore them back, and I’m not taking them off until I get where I’m going.” It was such an Alsu thing to say.
We stepped into the street and crossed over the rail of the trolley line.
“It’s going to take three trains to get home,” she remarked.
“That’s not so bad.”
“No, it isn’t.” I could nearly taste the bittersweet words she didn’t say: I’m lucky to be alive—the number of trains doesn’t matter.
We skirted a clump of people gathered in front of the station and found our way to the platform. While she picked up her tickets, I bought her a sweet roll wrapped in wax paper from the kiosk. And then we were just two women waiting for the train.
“What are your plans when you get home?” I asked.
She bit into the sweet roll. “I told you, remember? I’m taking my girls to Greece. That’s when I’m taking off my boots. When we get to the strand and the sea.”
She had said that, a lifetime ago. One of the nights in the barracks when we thought we’d be heroes.
“I remember. And Masha said she’d like to visit you there.”
I didn’t want to talk about Masha. I never would. And I always wanted to talk about her, and I always would. Alsu took my hand in hers and squeezed it. She knew.
“Did you see Muravyeva after the ceremony?” I asked. “They’re sending her back to the front, to the rest of the battalion.”
“Yes. She said Bochkareva made her platoon leader. It’s what she wanted, and she looked very happy.”
“The battalion isn’t going to fight right away, though. I think they’re being handed over to a reserve company.”
Alsu finished her roll, watching me. “What about you? What is the brave Private Pavlova going to do now? Will she go back to the army?”
I shook my head. In truth, I hadn’t decided. “I’m going to write to you,” I said. “That’s what I’m going do. But you have to write to me first, with your new address in Greece.”
I pulled out a pen and scrap of paper from my pocket and jotted down my address. The train arrived then, all snorts of steam and wails of iron.
“I’m going to convince you to come south,” she grinned. “You’ll get my first letter when winter’s starting to freeze the dew here.” She crumpled the wax paper from her roll and tossed it into a garbage bin. The paper with my address, however, she folded in half and tucked into her little stack of train tickets.
As the train huffed away and she waved goodbye from her window seat, I knew it was the last time I’d ever see Alsu Almas. It was odd to know this. The last time I’d waved goodbye to anyone, it had been to Sergei when I was leaving for the front. The time before that it had been Maxim, at this very spot.
He should have found a safe place by now. Maybe he’d found our mother. Or maybe he’d run off to Europe, or America. I might never know.
I wanted to find Maxim and tell him that I finally understood. He needed to find peace. There are worthy wars fought badly and unworthy ones fought well, and all of them are hell. They may save nations or break them, but they always take more than they give back.
Ilya.
Masha.
And Maxim.
And yet perhaps I could still make sure this war didn’t take everything.
22
July 31, 1917
The Crosses was a monstrous red-brick building that squatted along the river embankment. Four wings met in the center and formed, appropriately, a giant cross. It was notorious for holding political prisoners, as well as murderers and thieves. One last time, I checked that my medal was on straight and then marched to the gates.
The prison guards eyed me curiously.
“I need to speak with the warden. I’m here to release a prisoner.”
One guard, a bear of a man with a beard long gone out of fashion, snickered. “Go on inside, girl.”
“I’m Private Ekaterina Pavlova.”
“Private,” the other one said. Surprisingly, his tone held an ounce of respect. “You can ask the warden for your man, but it’s not likely they’ll let you have him. Depends on what he’s here for.”
Clearly, they were hoping for more information, but I wasn’t going to give it to them. I passed through the checkpoint and made my way inside. After that, a few strategic names and a letter from General Yudenich got me to the cell.
Before the jailer unlocked the door, I peeked in through its little window and caught a glimpse of Sergei. He was pacing, but when the door started to open, he crossed his arms and tucked his hands inside his elbows.
He was an age older. His hair was greasy, his beard had grown in uneven patches, and his sleeves were ripped at the shoulders.
“You’re being released,” the jailer said, and Sergei’s eyes widened. Then he looked past the jailer and saw me, half in shadow and half in the light of the hallway’s single burning lightbulb.
“Katya?” His eyes traveled over me, pausing at the medal in the center of my chest. He searched my face as though looking for confirmation that I was truly Katya and not some impostor. I wasn’t sure I could offer the proof he sought.
I nodded crisply. “Let’s go.”
I didn’t speak to him again until we’d signed him out and made it to the cab.
As I climbed in, my stitches pinched where my belt dug into them, and I winced.
“What is it?” Sergei asked. “Are you hurt?”
The cab driver leaned back to us. “Where to now?”
“Home,” I said, gasping.
“What’s wrong with her?” Sergei asked him.
“She got shot, and it hurts.” The driver said it so matter-of-factly, I nearly laughed.
Sergei pulled me forward a little, tugging on my uniform and probably looking for signs of blood.
“Not today, you idiot,” I managed. “I’m fine. Just need to get this belt off.” He reached for my buckle and I slapped his hand away. “It can wait,” I growled.
The driver slapped the reins and we rocked back into the seats, grabbing the sides of the cab.
After a moment Sergei asked, hesitantly, “How severely were you wounded?”
“It could have been worse.” I wanted to tell him about Masha, but I couldn’t find the words. How do you describe your friend’s last breath?
“I see y
ou’ve been busy while I was gone,” I said to change the subject.
His jaw tightened. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m sure they would have released me in a few more days. They ‘interviewed’ me again today, and I didn’t have anything more to say. It wasn’t so bad, except I have no idea what happened to the others, or what’s been going on.”
I knew how that felt. “Well, we can stop at my place—Paulina can feed you before you go home.”
We rode in silence the rest of the way home. I paid the driver a small fortune and then took Sergei upstairs to my apartment. He waited in the sitting room while I found Paulina and asked her to bring in a tray.
When I rejoined him, he was busy laying out the chess board. He looked up as I entered and smiled, sheepishly. “I’ve been bored for weeks.”
“And you choose chess to allay your boredom?” I tried to smile, but my lips just couldn’t do it.
“Do you have anything to drink?”
“The cabinet was empty when I got back.”
He frowned. “Your brother?”
I shook my head. Maxim would have gone for the silver, not the vodka. “I still don’t know where he’s gone,” I said, doing my best to sound as though it didn’t matter. I hoped that wherever he was, he felt less haunted now than he had when he was home.
I picked up the white knight and rolled it in my palm. When Maxim and I played chess, we had always called this knight General Pavlov, because someday that’s who our father would be. The black knight always fought against the Tsar’s army, usually as a leader of Turks. I handed Sergei the black knight.
A smile crept up the side of his mouth. “I knew you’d choose the white knight.”
“I should repaint these. White and red,” I said, picking up my knight and tapping it against his black horse.
More solemnly, he said, “Which one will you choose then?”
“Whichever side plays with the most honor.”
He rolled his eyes, dissatisfied with my answer, but I couldn’t give him the one he wanted. I couldn’t be like him, a Bolshevik through and through—no more than I could be like my father, blindly loyal to the past. “You were wrong before,” I said.