A Bend in the Stars

by Rachel Barenbaum

  “You have stitches.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I won. That’s what’s important. I paid the bastard barkeep. He didn’t know anything.”

  “But he said…”

  “I know. I don’t think he expected me, didn’t think there would be consequences for lying to a woman—he must have thought you were alone. But I talked to him for a while and he’s going to send us a midwife who might have seen Yuri. Or heard of him if he’s been working in these parts. Lvov will bring her here soon.”

  “Lvov,” Miri repeated. It gave her an idea. “Can we send him to the university for us? To ask about an American?”

  “Of course. Why hadn’t I thought of it! He’s a child. He won’t draw attention or suspicion.”

  “Do you think we can trust him?”

  “I don’t know. But he’s not getting any of our money unless we’re satisfied with what he finds.”

  XV

  The midwife knew nothing, but she gave them the name of a man who worked as a mystic. “He’ll tell your future,” she said. “And he knows when new faces come to Podil.” But it turned out he knew nothing about Vanya, Yuri, or an American. Soon, Lvov discovered the university had been closed because of the war—another dead end.

  How long would Vanya and Yuri stay in Kiev? Miri’s impatience grew. She paced their room in the dark while she and Sasha tried to come up with a plan. Her brother wouldn’t risk sending another telegram, which meant he wouldn’t expect her and Baba to be at Klara’s until spring. “Start with our assumptions,” Miri said. “I assumed they’d run soon after the eclipse, but it’s possible Vanya and Yuri will find a safe place to hide in Kiev, like us. Vanya can’t change his plans. He doesn’t know where we are, or even that I’ve left Baba.”

  Sasha nodded. “It does seem likely they’d hide here for a while.”

  “Yes, he could still be hard at work with the American.”

  “Or perhaps they’ve already left. We can’t be sure.”

  “If they’ve left, we’ll never find them. Are they on a train somehow? If they are, to where? The best thing we can do is keep looking here for a little longer, in case they stayed.”

  Sasha nodded his agreement and rolled out the blanket. He sank into his bed on the floor. Miri slid under the sheets on her cot. She heard Sasha turn, pictured him pulling the covers the way she’d seen him settle in on the train, in the woods. She thought about the hayloft.

  “Are you okay, Miriam?” Sasha asked. “Why can’t you sleep?”

  “Vanya.” And you. You’re both keeping me awake, she thought. And Yuri.

  “Tomorrow we’ll visit the rabbi the mystic told us about. He might know something.”

  But he didn’t. Nor did the half dozen other leads they tracked down after him. It seemed no one knew anything. Still, every night they went out, looking. Spending more and more time together, talking and sharing.

  “You tell me about Birshtan often,” Sasha said one night on their way back from questioning another midwife.

  “I guess I miss it more than I thought. Vanya and I used to race to the lake. He always took the route in the grass. I ran the other way, up to a rock ledge overlooking the water. I dove off, while Vanya walked in.” She smiled, imagining she was back standing over the lake.

  “I wish I could go to Birshtan with you,” Sasha said.

  “Me, too, but we can’t return to our childhoods. Just like you’ll never go back to the farmers who took you in. Tell me more about them.”

  Sasha told her about learning to use all the different traps the farmer had hanging in his barn and then about learning how to make and set his own. He explained that the farmer’s wife taught him to pray like a proper Russian, in a church, in case he needed to prove his faith. He talked about railroads, train engines, tracks—all the lines in Russia. “Why do you love the trains so much?” Miri asked.

  “They’re the future,” he said. Perhaps if she were in Kovno the friendship wouldn’t have been proper, but this was war. Besides, there was nothing she did with Sasha that she couldn’t share with Yuri. And she felt a newfound freedom in these circumstances. She performed appendectomies and amputations and whatever else was necessary, filled with a new confidence that made her an even better surgeon. Yet all the while, she watched the doors, scanning every new face for Vanya, conscious that Yuri faded with each patient she cured on her own.

  Sasha grew into his own role as guard and administrator. He kept order, tossed out drunks until they were sober and men who came after their women until their tempers subsided, watched for Vanya and Yuri and even the American. Miri had described her brother so many times she was sure Sasha would know him. And as Miri’s reputation grew, word spread that she was searching, and patients started coming to her with leads, but still she and Sasha found nothing.

  XVI

  Waiting for Yuri to return made the dacha feel like a prison to Vanya. The house that had been brimming with energy so recently, before the eclipse, was now empty. Vanya started wandering around upstairs and found dust covers over chairs and beds and furniture. Candles were gone from candelabras. Most closets were empty. There weren’t even footsteps in the dust accumulating on the floors. Making it all worse was the terrible silence. Since all the trees in the front and side of the house had been cleared to make room for Clay’s equipment, there wasn’t even a leaf rattling or a bird chirping.

  Could Vanya find Miri and Baba on his own, if Yuri didn’t come back? What about Clay? What would he do with the photographs? And Dima, how could Vanya have been fooled by the sailor? For that betrayal, Vanya felt shame. And sadness. He’d been so certain Dima had become a friend. Was he really so wrong? One night, Vanya thought he was well enough to go downstairs and check. It took him nearly an hour, a rest on every tread, but he made it. He found the first floor to be just as deserted as the second. An enormous white sheet covered the table and chairs in the dining room. Vanya made his way into the sitting room. He was surprised to find Clay’s texts were all still there on the bookshelves above the shrouded desk. The American ran and left everything, Vanya realized. With a rare burst of energy, thinking about Dima, he tore at them, toppled the tomes onto the floor and clawed at the back wall. There was the cutout, the smuggler’s hole the sailor had described. Plaster dust crumbled around Vanya’s fingertips and easily slipped to the side.

  His notebook. It was just where Dima told him he’d left it. Along with a letter. The paper was still crisp. The handwriting wasn’t elegant but it was clear.

  Vanya,

  I gave Clay a fake notebook when he ran. You’ve found your original, as promised—safe and sound. If you need money, sell Clay’s equipment. There are other things to say, but not here.

  Your devoted friend,

  Dmitry

  XVII

  It was night. The Sabbath had just ended, and Miri and Sasha were walking up the stairs when a man barged through the hospital’s front door. His face was black with soot and his clothing was singed. The smell around him wasn’t burnt sugar, it was death. “A fire. A terrible fire.” He tried to yell but his voice was hoarse. Sasha carried him to the men’s ward. “Synagogue.” The man gasped. “Okhrana.”

  By the time the man settled onto a cot, another burn victim trickled in. Then another. A wide stream began to bleed through the door, men and women flayed black and coughing. Dr. Orlen appeared just as Miri finished cutting a man’s shirt from his back. He shooed Miri away, toward the women. “It’s just as bad there, worse because of the children,” he said as he straightened his pince-nez.

  Even before Miri entered the ward, she heard the babies and women crying, the clatter of feet running and surgical tools being set on trays. Just inside, she stopped short. She’d never seen anything like the scene in front of her, not even when the mill collapsed in Kovno. And the smell. Charred flesh. Never had Miri lost control in front of a patient, but here she couldn’t help herself. She vomited straight into the washbasin. Anya rubbed her back. “I know, ch
ild, but you’re all they have.”

  Miri wiped her mouth, moved to a woman charred in every crease, who still clutched her child. Not a flame had touched the infant and yet she screamed as if she already knew she’d lost her mother. Miri eased the baby away, unwrapping her from the mother finger by finger. Then she scoured the woman’s body for flesh she could save. It didn’t take long to see there was no point. Miri forced herself to smile, to keep her face as calm as she could. “Rest,” Miri said, knowing if the woman closed her eyes she wouldn’t wake.

  “Cold water,” Miri whispered to the nurses. “It’s all we can do. Wet her lips.”

  “And the others?”

  “Cut off their clothing and wash the burns, only the light ones. If the skin’s black, or blistered, leave it. Give them morphine. Anything we have.” Which Miri knew wasn’t much.

  A young girl would lose her leg. A mother’s face would be scarred, but she wouldn’t lose her sight. Miri washed and stitched a gash on a child’s arm. But those were the lucky ones. In truth, the most she could do for too many was offer comfort.

  “Doctor,” Anya said. It was hours later, when the women had received the most treatment Miri could give. The sun was just poking back up through the other side of Podil. “Did you hear what happened?” Anya asked. Her hair, usually neat, fell from under her scarf. Her apron was stained and crooked.

  “A fire,” Miri said. Her voice sounded exhausted. “The Okhrana. A synagogue.”

  “But did you hear more?” There was something in Anya’s voice that made Miri freeze. “The synagogue caught fire when the flames spread. The Okhrana set a medical clinic, a free clinic they accused of harboring deserters.”

  “Who was the doctor?” Miri asked. “Whose clinic?”

  “Dr. Listoken. I don’t know him. Someone mentioned he’s from Kovno. Dr. Orlen is…” Miri didn’t hear the rest. She ran. She didn’t even realize she was screaming until Sasha stopped her at the entrance to the men’s ward. He held her so tight her ribs ached.

  “Let me go,” she said, kicking and squirming. Listoken could have been a fake name. Surely, Yuri wouldn’t use Rozen, not as a deserter.

  “It’s not them,” Sasha said. He held her tighter.

  “How do you know?”

  “Miriam, you must stop yelling.” A nurse stood across the hall, staring. A group of men, huddled over prayer books, were watching. She didn’t care.

  “I have to see him. Dr. Listoken. I have to see him.” She willed herself to be still. She blinked. “I can be calm. I can be calm,” she repeated. Sasha eased his hold and walked with her.

  The men’s ward was as shocking as the women’s. Blackened bodies moaned. The smell of burnt flesh made Miri’s stomach turn, but this time she held it down. Dr. Orlen was in the back corner. Miri wanted to move quickly, but there were too many patients packed on the floors to manage any speed. The man on the cot next to Dr. Orlen moaned. Dr. Listoken. “Oh, God, oh, God,” she said. Her throat went tight, she tried to breathe. She doubled over. “It’s not him.” The man on the cot, Dr. Listoken, was old and bald. Surely not even from Kovno, or she would have known him. But what if one of these other patients was Vanya or Yuri? Or what if they’d burned beyond recognition? Someone said Kovno for a reason.

  She started jostling through the patients. From man to man. She checked every face, and when the face was too badly burned, she checked the hands for ink stains. Not Vanya. Not Vanya. No, none of these men were Vanya or Yuri.

  Finally, Miri wrapped her hand around Sasha’s and they walked up to their room. She sat on the bed, on his lap, sobbing.

  XVIII

  Sasha unlaced Miri’s boots. He was so gentle she didn’t feel him slip them off. He helped her out of her doctor’s coat. The white had turned gray, matted in red, and he unwound her braid so all her curls hung loose over her shoulders. She’d cried for as long as she could, and now the sun streaked bright through the window. The bustle from the market kept the room from being silent. “Do you want water?” Sasha asked.

  “It wasn’t them,” Miri said. How many times had she repeated herself?

  “You should sleep, Miriam.” He reached for the blanket and she grabbed his arm.

  “I need to say it.”

  “What?” Sasha asked.

  A woman outside yelled after a child. “I—I realized I didn’t want to find Yuri.”

  “Of course not. That poor doctor downstairs will be dead within hours.”

  “No.” She held him tighter. “It’s awful to think it. Now. When there’s such horror downstairs. But I can’t help it.” Sasha sat there, on his knees in front of her. The stubble around his lips blazed red in the sun, and she could feel him trying to figure out what she meant. “I didn’t want to find him. Not yet. And I feel so guilty.” She took a deep breath. “Yuri, I know he loves me. And I’ll marry him. But I didn’t want to find him.” She put a hand on Sasha’s cheek, over his scar, and then she leaned in to kiss him. His tongue was sweet the way she’d remembered, now tinged with the sugar that seeped through the cracks in the hospital. Sasha seemed unsure, but Miri pressed closer and he stopped holding back. This kiss was different from the kiss on the train. Here they had privacy, a locked door. They were slow and deliberate, but with a need that kept her out of breath. The tragedy had them both starving for life.

  Sasha trailed his lips down the side of her neck, to her chest, along the seam where her dress ended and the curve of her breast began. Miri fumbled with his belt. He helped and then stayed still while she eased his shirt up. When he stood there, bare, she ran her hand over his abdomen, over the ridges and along the pale scar she’d seen the very first night in the cellar. She kissed the wound she’d stitched so carefully.

  He unlaced her skirts and ran his tongue over her knees as he rolled her stockings down, one leg at a time. And he left a soft, lingering kiss on the scar where Zubov’s knife had nicked her arm. He guided her, and what she imagined would seem awkward felt natural, with Sasha. When he pushed inside her, she cried out as much from the shock of pain as from the unexpected sensation of him. While she’d imagined this moment, she’d never anticipated what it felt like to hold him there, in that way. “Should I stop?” he asked.

  “No.”

  Miri woke first, after noon. She tried to untangle herself from Sasha, but when she moved he held her tighter, pulled her closer and smiled, revealing that dimple she adored. In the new morning light, she noticed a scar just below his eye that she hadn’t seen before. It was so faint, barely even there. She ran a finger over it lightly, and he smiled again. “I need to check on my patients,” she whispered.

  Sasha kissed her ear and she smelled him, his delicious smell that had drawn her in even that first day they met. She opened her mouth to say something, and he kissed her raw lips. Feeling him was exquisite. He ran a finger down the length of her spine.

  “Doctor!” There was a rap on the door. Anya. “Doctor, we need you back in the ward.”

  Miri grabbed for her stockings, her skirts, and her surgeon’s coat as Anya clopped back down the hall. Another second and Miri would have stayed with Sasha, in bed. His skin, his taste. She wanted it all. But how could she do that with so many burned and dying downstairs? And Yuri. How could she do this to Yuri?

  “Please, don’t regret what happened,” Sasha said.

  “So many people are suffering. And look at what we did.”

  “We were honest with one another.”

  “I’m engaged.”

  “You said you don’t want to find Yuri.”

  “A promise is a promise.”

  “You’re Dr. Petrov. Why shouldn’t a man and wife sleep together? Love each other?”

  “We’ve never stood under the chuppah.” She pulled her skirt up over her shirtwaist.

  “Miriam, if that’s what you want, I’ll find us a rabbi today.”

  She sat down on the edge of the bed, gripping the stethoscope. Sasha wrapped his arms around her. Next to them, staring
up from the white sheets, was the bloodstain that marked the end of her virginity.

  “We need to change the sheets.” She untucked them quickly. Sasha was on his feet, naked, in front of her. She kept her eyes down and realized he made no move to cover himself or to help. If anything, she could feel him holding himself back, keeping himself from reaching for her. And if he had reached for her, was she so sure she would resist? Why not find a rabbi in Podil? Didn’t Baba tell her that paths change?

  Baba. What Miri had done was reckless. Shameful. Baba might approve of her marrying Sasha but not of her giving herself to him before they were married. And Yuri? He was protecting Vanya for her. Risking his life for her. Miri ran down the stairs, terrified one of the nurses would see the sheets she carried and know what Miri and Sasha had done.

  XIX

  Miri found her patients were not much improved, but at least some were sleeping. She walked cot to cot, checking bandages and stitches. Yet with every step she thought of Sasha, felt the soreness he’d left behind and how she loved that. Hated loving that. Shivered when she imagined him touching her. But it couldn’t happen again. Never.

  Later, Miri escaped to the kitchen and made herself a cup of red raspberry leaf tea with evening primrose oil, a concoction that prevented pregnancy. Just a precaution. Baba had told her years ago that women in their family had always struggled to conceive. Miri was fourteen the first time she’d seen her baba prescribe the tea. Babushka had just made a match between two families. At the announcement, the bride began to cry. The families assumed it was happiness, but Babushka pulled the girl, whose name was Oksana, into the kitchen. Babushka put a kettle on the stove and waited for it to whistle before she spoke. She stroked Oksana’s hand. “You’re with child?” Baba asked.