A Bend in the Stars

by Rachel Barenbaum

  Suddenly, something outside the train crashed, and both Miri and Sasha stopped. They were out of breath. Her lips felt swollen and delicious, still touching Sasha’s. But she was frozen, not moving, only listening, afraid to move in case the shift in weight made a board under them moan. The music outside was gone. A familiar voice, the head engineer, swore and groaned only steps away from the mail car. Miri would have stepped back but Sasha held her too tight to let her move. And he was right. They couldn’t risk a stumble or sound that might give them away. All the men had returned. They were drunk, falling and slipping. In that pause, while she should have been thinking of a way out of the mail car in case they were found, she thought about Yuri.

  She shouldn’t have been there with Sasha. Not like that. She unwrapped her fingers from his neck. She shouldn’t have kissed him. Shouldn’t have been feeling anything like what she was feeling. Yuri was risking his life for her, to help Vanya. Kir was likely guarding Baba or at least after her—and her brother. She, Vanya, and their grandmother were spread across the country. How could she be doing this, betraying them all at once?

  “I’m sorry.” As she spoke, her lips brushed Sasha’s and he only held her tighter. And if she was being honest, truly honest, she didn’t want to move.

  A man outside stumbled. He couldn’t have been more than one car away. Another threw up. It felt as though it took years for all five men to clamber back inside the engine car. Then the train jerked forward. The wheels rolled through one revolution, two. Miri backed into a stack of mail. “We shouldn’t have,” she said. Her voice was so quiet. “I’m marrying Yuri.”

  “He could be dead.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Was it the same when he kissed you?” Miri was grateful for the dark, that he couldn’t see her face. After a long silence, Sasha finally said, “I won’t kiss you again. But I won’t stop you if you try.”

  XXIII

  Two days before the eclipse, while Vanya, Yuri, and Dima were eating breakfast at a table on the veranda, under an already hot sun, Dima noticed Cook’s arm. She was a round woman with hair so thin there were bald patches around her ears. She’d served them dozens of times, but this morning her sleeve was pulled up. She placed a pot of tea on the uneven table, and just before she turned to go back to the kitchen, Dima reached for her hand. “That mark, there, on your wrist.” He pointed to the underside where she had a large, red, circular birthmark. “What is it?”

  “A witch’s mark,” Cook said with a wink. “At least saying as much makes people think twice. Are you a believer?”

  “In dark magic?” Dima smiled. “My mother taught me. I respect it.”

  “As do I,” Cook said. “And Stepan and Vadim, they do, too. They left today. Your American will notice soon enough.”

  “Aye, I know. They warned me,” Dima said.

  “Left? Why?” Vanya asked.

  “They learned all this work was for an eclipse.”

  “Well what did they think it was for?” Vanya asked.

  “The stars. They thought you were observing stars,” Dima answered. “Now they know it’s an eclipse, they’re terrified. They think you’re here to make the eclipse.”

  “That’s impossible,” Vanya said. “How could we make an eclipse?”

  “They’re farmers, Vanya,” Yuri said. “They’ve never seen technology like this.”

  “Is it true, then?” Cook asked Dima, pointing to Vanya. “Is he bringing an eclipse?”

  “Of course not,” Vanya answered. “I can’t control the sun and the moon. We’re here to observe the eclipse when it comes. When the universe brings it.”

  “An eclipse is dark, there’s nothing to see,” Cook said. “You’re bringing evil and when it comes, I’ll hide.” She spit over her shoulder and hurried back to the kitchen.

  The three men sat in silence. “What are you thinking, brother?” Yuri asked.

  “Someday, she’ll understand. They’ll all understand there’s nothing to fear about science.”

  “Maybe,” Yuri said.

  “Did you finish the duplicates?” Vanya asked. Dima had been working on mockups, wooden photographic plates that fit Clay’s camera, but without glass, so they could practice.

  Dima sighed. “I left them next to the camera.”

  “Thank you. Yuri, let’s practice.” Yuri nodded and they walked out together, toward the camera. Yuri, Vanya decided, was the one most likely to keep calm, to have a surgeon’s precision in his movements under pressure. He would take the photographs. Vanya would act as his assistant. As they started learning the steps, Dima and Clay did the same, started practicing. They were in charge of measuring the Zeus cluster’s intensity and spectra during the eclipse.

  XXIV

  August 21. The day of the eclipse. Miri opened her eyes at dawn when thunder hammered her awake. Sasha was across from her, against the wall, nestled between mailbags. His hair was rumpled. He hadn’t slept, and Miri found she had to resist the pull of him, the urge to be closer than she was. The train pounded toward Kiev, the wheels sounding louder than they’d been. “Once we find Vanya, I’ll be off,” Sasha said.

  “You said you’d wait to leave, until I was back with Babushka.”

  “I’ll use the coat to secure your papers and then put you on a train to Peter with your brother and your fiancé. By then you won’t need me.” She was surprised to hear how cold his voice sounded. “I don’t want to see you with Yuri.”

  Miri looked down and bit her lip, felt her cheeks turn red. Of course he didn’t. Nor did she want Yuri to see her with him. Sasha must have known that, too.

  They ate most of their remaining food for breakfast under icy drops of rain that wound their way through cracks in the ceiling. Wild plains gave way to organized fields of red wheat. The sweet smell of fall gave way to rot. A field that may have been barley lay as jellied decay. A woman stood with a shovel in her hand. Her hip bones jutted out like hangers. A girl no older than ten struggled to drive a plow.

  “Didn’t the czar know to leave at least enough people to work the farms?” Miri asked.

  The train rumbled over a switch that directed them east. “The czar doesn’t care how many people starve. His belly will always be full.” Sasha kept his eyes on the dying fields. “There will be a coal depot soon. We should jump there. It’s risky to pull into the station in Kiev. There’ll be too many soldiers, and we’re only a day’s walk or so to the city from here.”

  “A day’s walk?” Miri asked. That meant she had no chance of finding Vanya before the eclipse. And even though she had known it wasn’t likely she could locate him in time, she had still been holding out hope. “Are you sure?”

  “Fairly certain.”

  “I wanted to watch it with Vanya.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “But there is a chance. We have hours. We could get lucky.” Even as she said it she knew it would never happen. She took a breath. Slow and even. “And all these clouds, they could clear. There’s a chance Vanya could see it. Really see it. The eclipse won’t happen until closer to noon.” She thought about her brother coming down to breakfast with his shirt unbuttoned, his tie askew, announcing the timing of the eclipse down to fractions of a second—based on the clocks Einstein had set in Bern. But for Miri now, there was no precision. Time was a guess. Even if they had a watch, what would they use to set it? Or check it? And wasn’t that Vanya’s point all along? Time is unreliable.

  She felt the tug of the brake and they jumped into a field. The landing was soft but Sasha groaned. He pulled his jacket down, unbuttoned his shirt to check on his wound. He seemed certain the edges had torn open, but Miri knew it was healed on the surface. The deeper tissue, the cause of the pain, would take longer.

  XXV

  Approximately three hours before the eclipse, in Brovary, Vanya stood on the great lawn, assessing the skies. “Damn the clouds,” he said, looking up at the gray that seemed to never end. But it could clear. There was tim
e, if Dima’s chronometer was correct. The sailor said he’d used a good clock to set it—what did that mean? If only Clay had something better.

  While Vanya waited and watched, the skies opened with a drenching rain. Vanya started pacing the lawn. In minutes, his shoes and clothing were soaked through. “Please,” he said to the heavens. He’d come too far to be stamped out by rain. Or even by Clay. He was resigned to sharing his work, to thinking of it as the Clay Abramov theory of general relativity as a means to an end, the final price for a ticket to America. For Baba. For Miri. For Yuri. He just needed to catch the photograph. And solve the math. He’d been so sure he would have it by now. And he was close, he knew it. He could tell Eliot he had the equations knowing he’d have them before setting foot in America. Was that right?

  “Brother, come inside,” Yuri said.

  “No. I have to watch. I’m so close.”

  “Please. The temperature is dropping. Miri would want you inside.”

  “I need to be ready if it clears.”

  “You will be.”

  Every time he finished three circuits across the grass, Vanya rechecked the calibrations on the equipment. By what he estimated to be eleven a.m., the downpour was so hard he couldn’t see the trees across the way. Dima stood by his side. “Your notebook,” Dima said. “I’m going to hide it for you.”

  “Why?”

  “I just think it’s better to be safe.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  Dima leaned close and whispered, “I made a cutout in the wall, behind Clay’s books. That’s where I’ll hide it.”

  “A smuggler’s hole?”

  “Exactly.” Dima winked.

  XXVI

  By midmorning, Miri and Sasha stood in a dry spot under a tree, looking up at a blanket of clouds, trying to figure out in which direction they should travel. They had no map. No one to ask. Just the train tracks leading to Kiev. And it was too overcast to see even a dim outline of the city.

  “Maybe if I run I can make it. Find him.” Miri started toward the road. By the third step, she slipped in the mud. By the fifth step, Sasha had her. “Let me go,” she said.

  “I can’t let you risk it.”

  “He needs me.”

  “He needs you alive. All this rain. It means floods. And even if it was clear, how could you possibly find him now? In time?” Sasha helped her back to the tree, to where they were sheltered, and they sat huddled on an oversize root. As much as she hated to admit it, she knew he was right. Wet now, she felt the temperature dropping. Sasha wrapped Grekov’s coat around them both, and slowly she began to feel warm again.

  “I know it sounds ridiculous, but every time I pictured this day, I was with my brother.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “We know where they are today, at least roughly, because of the eclipse. But what if they have to run? How will we find them afterward?”

  “I’m not sure. But we will. They can’t leave right away, can they?”

  “No. They’ll need to help the American pack, develop the plates.”

  “Then all is not lost.” Was Sasha right?

  She sat staring at the sky, waiting for it to clear. Every minute ticked past feeling like ten. The first shadow should have already started to come into view. It would take nearly an hour and a half for the sun and the moon to collide, and if the day were clear, they would have seen it happen in slow motion. But with the rain, they couldn’t even sense darkness growing. “Please clear,” she said. “Please.” She imagined Vanya poised over a telescope. His hands shaking. Dripping in rain. Yuri would be at Vanya’s side. Steady. Reliable. Yuri.

  XXVII

  When the chronometer read 12:16 p.m., the rain stopped in Brovary but the clouds were thick. Vanya stood in the middle of the front yard with his arms held up and out to the sky, begging for it to clear, but he didn’t have much hope. He couldn’t see a speck of blue and it terrified him. All he’d done. All he risked. He was being beaten by clouds. And he wasn’t the only one scared. The farmers and townspeople, he understood from Cook, were all terrified, too. Hiding from the eclipse and the evil it would bring.

  “There’s still a chance,” Dima said, pacing with Vanya now. “Still time.”

  “This weather can’t clear quickly.”

  “I’ve seen it happen.”

  A folktale centered on an eclipse and its darkness ran through Vanya’s head. His favorite. The myth of Prince Vseslav. Many Russians knew it and recited it in different forms, but Vanya loved the original. He never met anyone else who did. The old language was clunky, hard to understand. He’d dug it out of a library and read it for Miri and Baba at the hearth in Birshtan so many times he’d memorized it. Miri loved it, like she loved all stories. Vseslav was a prince born during an eclipse with a caul over his head—the mark of evil. By day the prince grew to become a fearsome warrior who never lost in battle. By night he turned into a werewolf, torturing and killing without remorse. It was said he was reborn on the eve of every eclipse.

  “Might it not become us, brothers, to begin in the diction of yore the stern tale of the campaign of Igor, Igor son of Svyatoslav. Let this song begin according to the true tales of our time.” Vanya called out the twelfth-century epic across the lawn in a voice as loud as he could muster. A bird, in the distance, took flight.

  “Your eclipse will come. We’ll see it,” Dima said.

  “How can you be so sure?” The chronometer read twelve twenty. They had eleven minutes left.

  XXVIII

  Near noon, Miri still stared at the dark sky. What was happening in Kiev? She was far enough away that the weather could be different; it had to be. She imagined a small slice of sunshine for her brother. Had he even found the American?

  “There’s always hope,” Sasha said. She was so caught in thoughts of the eclipse and her brother she hadn’t realized Sasha had stayed so close, kept Grekov’s jacket around them both.

  XXIX

  The chronometer read 12:55 p.m. Twenty-four minutes after the eclipse slipped across the sky—hidden somewhere behind the clouds. Vanya had been staring at the face of the clock for the past quarter of an hour as if it would help him turn back time. He couldn’t believe it. He had outrun the Okhrana, escaped the czar’s army only to be defeated by a rainstorm. He clutched his stomach, doubled over from the pain. “No. No.” He fell to his knees, rolled to his side, and closed his eyes. It was over.

  He couldn’t say how long he lay there. Whether he was shivering or still as death.

  “Vanya!” Yuri had him by the shoulders. Shook him. Clay was behind him, a shadow. “Open your eyes. Look. Look!” The clouds had shifted from a thick blanket to gray wisps, like lines on a graph. The sun was out but there was something wrong with it. Its light was weaker—and it was fading. “It’s coming,” Yuri yelled. “The chronometer. It was wrong.”

  As quickly as Vanya had fallen, he was up, staring at the sky. “The eclipse,” he shouted, already running toward the camera as fast as he could. “We didn’t miss it.” Then even louder, “We didn’t miss it.” How light he felt, suddenly, how quickly everything had changed, just as Dima said it might. “Get ready!” he yelled.

  “Vanya. Brother. You need to slow down,” Yuri said.

  “Should we practice one more time?”

  “No,” Yuri said, and Vanya knew he was right. They’d rehearsed so many times they could perform without thinking. And there might not be time anyway. It was hard to tell. They needed to be patient. And Vanya tried. The clouds continued to move, so slowly he wasn’t sure they’d be entirely clear in time. But they might.

  Every second had the weight of hours. Chickens clucked. A cow mooed. No, several cows were making noise. Cook said all the animals would be inside where the villagers thought they’d be safe. Why did it sound as if they were outside? Then the wind kicked up. The barn door clanged on its frame.

  “Closer,” Yuri said when the sun was almost covered. “The clouds are almost gone.”

/>   “Still not good enough,” Vanya said. But it might be, soon.

  “War,” Dima said, stepping under the canopy next to Vanya. “The wind. It blows now because war is coming. The eclipse and this wind mean a war to end all wars is due.”

  “Enough of the superstition. I thought you don’t believe in that nonsense,” Yuri said.

  “A sailor never stops believing in the Fates or the Furies.”

  And as they stood there, second by second, the wisps of cirrus pulled away from the remnants of the sun like curtains. Vanya could barely believe it. Yuri was right. They still had a chance. A small window. The cows were louder now. Through Clay’s equipment, Vanya saw the moon slide so far that only the smallest sliver of sun remained. “It’s coming,” Vanya yelled.

  Like a miracle, a belly of blue sky opened. Babushka would say God had come down on their side. “It’s happening!” Clay shouted. “Man your battle stations!” Dima took off as fast as Vanya had ever seen him move, toward the canopy where he and Clay would work.

  The last shadows fell over the fruit trees in the orchard. Light came through the leaves in the quarter-moon shape of the eclipse.

  Then a black veil slid over to the house and covered the dacha.

  The animals that had been so loud just seconds earlier stilled.

  Day turned to night.

  Vanya was startled by a crash. It took him a moment to realize he’d dropped a photographic plate. The glass had shattered. “Vanya!” Yuri yelled. “Wake up, brother.” He’d already taken two photographs. They’d used three to practice. Only five remained. Vanya scrambled to the table and grabbed a new plate. Yuri made room. Vanya slid the glass into the camera, and Yuri clicked the trigger. He reached for another.