A Bend in the Stars

by Rachel Barenbaum

  “Up here!” Cook screamed from another room. She sounded hysterical. “They ran that way!” The soldiers stopped shredding sacks. Then there were heavy steps on the stairs. “Out there,” Cook yelled. “By the laundry.” She was leading the men to the back of the hospital. But had they left guards behind? Zubov could have forced Cook to yell like that to draw them out. Even so, she felt Sasha take a deep breath. His shoulders collapsed forward. And she was aware now that they were both shaking. Suddenly, someone heaved the bag of flour off of Miri. It was Anya. “Use the coal chute. It leads to the alley.”

  As Miri crawled out, her legs weak, Anya pulled her close and kissed her. Miri whispered a thank-you. Sasha was at the far end of the kitchen, already inspecting the chute. The bins were mostly empty. They had been since they’d arrived. Miri could hear Zubov yelling from the courtyard. Anya grabbed Miri’s hand as she moved to follow Sasha. “There’s one more thing,” Anya said. She spoke quickly. “A boy came yesterday asking for the lady surgeon…” She stopped. “I’m sorry. I should have told you. But I wanted you to stay.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The boy, he gave me this.” Anya held out a slim silver cigarette case. Vanya’s cigarette case. The equations, the etching, Miri would know it anywhere. “He said your brother saw your photo in the paper. He can’t come because he’s been injured.” And then: “It could be a trap.”

  “Where? Where is my brother?”

  “Brovary. Dacha Lavroskavo.”

  Where’s Brovary? How far? Miri couldn’t picture the map or calculate the distance, but it was too late to ask any more questions. They needed to run. Anya helped Miri hoist herself up and through the chute. She rolled out onto the cobblestones, covered in soot. She and Sasha disappeared into the maze of the slums.

  V

  Miri and Sasha didn’t stop running until they were both so out of breath they needed to stop. They slumped against wooden walls in an alley near a market. Behind them vendors called out prices. Chickens clucked. Sasha’s face was black with coal dust, striped by sweat.

  “You heard Anya?” Miri asked, still catching her breath. Sasha nodded. “How will we find Dacha Lavroskavo?”

  “Zubov will be looking for us. Everywhere.” Sasha was also gasping for air. “We can’t go. We need to find a hole, a basement, and hide. Find your brother later.”

  “No. We have to get to Brovary. Now. Vanya’s injured.”

  “What if Anya’s right? If it’s a trap? Maybe they told Vanya the same to lure us all there at the same time.”

  “It’s our only lead so far. I can’t ignore it.”

  “It’s what you want?” he asked. He came closer and pushed a curl away from her face. She knew he wasn’t asking about Vanya, but Yuri.

  “I have no choice,” she said. “You know that.”

  They washed off as best they could in a rain bucket and waited an hour, and then another, until they were sure Zubov and his men were gone. Then they sneaked out of the alley and sat on the steps of a burnt-out synagogue around the corner while they tried to come up with a plan. They went back and forth until a woman approached from the side. Neither Miri nor Sasha saw her coming. And her grip was so tight, her appearance so sudden, Miri cried out. Sasha reached for his knife, but in that instant Miri recognized her. “Magda,” Miri said. She’d brought her sister and the baby with ankyloglossia to the hospital. She still wore a skirt made of scarves folded on a diagonal and pinned to her waist. She took Miri’s hand and kissed her palm.

  “You saved my sister’s boy. He’s fat as a pig and just as pink. I can never thank you enough.” She grinned and then pointed to Sasha. “This man gives you trouble?”

  “No.” Miri shook her head.

  “But you look unhappy with him.”

  “Since when do men make us happy?”

  Magda laughed. Miri, too, felt the tug of a smile. “You’re lost, then?” She winked. “In love? In life?”

  “We’re looking for a guide to help us to Brovary.”

  Magda nodded. “I can help,” she said without asking any other questions. She returned half an hour later with a boy of perhaps eleven or twelve, who said he could show Miri and Sasha the way. They followed him along the road out of Podil, sticking to darker alleys and looking over their shoulders every few steps. Once the alleys broke out to wider roads, they spotted soldiers and had to hike along smaller trails to avoid them. Miri was as terrified as she was elated. Yes, it could be a trap, but it could also be true. They could be walking to Vanya. She hated thinking what shape she might find him in. Had he been injured by the czar’s men? Had Kir found him? And each step closer to Vanya, of course, brought her to Yuri, too—away from Sasha. She was caught in a vise. Miri stumbled, slipped in ruts of frozen mud. She walked so close to the boy that she stepped on his heels, bumped into him when he stopped.

  By dusk, they started down a narrower dirt road, and Miri spotted the rise of a slate roof. It was the only non-thatched construction they’d seen, and there was no mistaking it for anything but the grand house of Dacha Lavroskavo. The roof gave way to sand-colored stone and the full outline of an imposing manse set back from the road.

  As they got closer, Miri saw tree stumps and swaths of pummeled mud. The lawn had been trampled, bushes destroyed. Only a singed, ancient oak still stood. A single window was illuminated on the ground floor. Inside, a man walked in front of the glass. His silhouette was thin but she recognized him. Yuri. She started to cry out his name, but the word was only half out of her mouth when she thought of Sasha next to her. She turned and put her hand on his cheek. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “I love you,” he said. His head was bowed down so his chin was at her neck.

  “I promised…to marry Yuri.”

  The front door cracked open. “Mirele!” Yuri shouted. He must have heard her. Silhouetted by light coming from the house, she saw Yuri walking toward her, but she could tell from his squint that he couldn’t see her.

  She looked at Sasha, slipped out of his arms, and started walking to her fiancé.

  Yuri came at her fast and slow, young and old at the same time. In the puddle of light coming from the open door, he stopped just short of her. “Yuri,” Miri said. Why was he hesitating? “Yuri. At last! Where’s Vanya? What’s happened?”

  He reached for her, but before he touched her, he paused. “Are you married? Is it true?”

  “Married?” She shook her head. “Of course not.”

  “I saw the photo. The soldier?”

  “He kept me safe. I’m here to marry you. To find Vanya.” At that, Yuri took her in his arms but didn’t hold her close or tight. He searched her face. Could he see her guilt even in that poor light? After a moment his face softened. He reached up to touch her hair and finally kissed her cheek. Where he’d felt strong when they’d said goodbye in Kovno, now he seemed fragile. Yuri had left dressed in a new, spotless uniform. Here he stood tall in a suit that was too large, bedraggled in a way he would never have let himself be before. His bones jutted out from under a thin layer of skin. And where his hair had always been pale, now it was closer to white. Yet he smelled the same, like tobacco and, somehow, still like brick clay from the factory next to the hospital in Kovno. “Where’s Vanya?” she asked again. “The messenger said he was injured.”

  “You’re even more beautiful than I remembered, Miri. I missed you. I missed you so much.” He looked at her again closely. “You’re different. You’re wearing your hair down.”

  “Were you injured?” she asked at the same time.

  “It’s only hunger. Like all Russians. But, Miri. Something’s different in you. Not just your hair.”

  “Where’s Vanya,” she interrupted, and tried to peer over his shoulder.

  He nodded finally and cocked his head toward the house behind him. “Vanya’s inside.” She didn’t wait for him to say more. She ran. “It’ll be a shock,” Yuri called after her.


  “Vanya,” she yelled, following wisps of light coming from a hearth. She navigated down a hall, around a corner. “Vanya?” she yelled again.

  There he was, slumped in an armchair with a blanket around him. She dropped to her knees and grabbed his legs, started to cry as she repeated his name again and again. His hand was on her head, smoothing her curls. His blanket wasn’t soft and worn like Baba’s. His eyes were hollow and he was skeletal, even thinner than Yuri. But he was here. Now. Here with her.

  “I knew you’d come,” he said.

  Miri reached for her brother’s hand, and that was when she noticed his nails, or the expanse of raw skin where fingernails should have been. Now they were gashes rimmed in scabs. She wiped her eyes. “What happened?”

  “Who’s the soldier?”

  “Aleksandr Grigorevich Petrov,” Sasha said. He stood in the doorway next to Yuri. Neither man looked happy. She knew them both well enough to know they’d met outside and already had words between them.

  She turned back to her brother. “Sasha helped me find you. And the boy. Where is he?”

  “I sent him home,” Sasha said.

  “Sasha?” Yuri asked. “Not Aleksandr?”

  “She saved me. I owe her my life and so I swore to protect her while she looked for both of you,” Sasha explained. How did his voice sound so clear, even now?

  “You left Baba alone with Aunt Klara, in Peter?”

  “How do you know?”

  “Ilya.” He frowned. “It’s a long story. Why didn’t she come with you?”

  “It was too dangerous. At her age.” Miri stopped. “She’s waiting for us all.”

  “The paper said you were married,” Yuri said.

  “Miriam’s traveled across Russia for both of you,” Sasha said.

  “Why didn’t you wait in Saint Petersburg?” Vanya asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “Your telegram.” Miri held on tighter to her brother. “We couldn’t wait for you until spring. With the war. And Kir, he had guards at the house. He’s after you.”

  “I know.”

  “You know? Is he the one who did this?” Already she could see he’d been beaten badly. And she had so many questions. She was speaking quickly. All of them were.

  “First I want to hear more about Kir,” Vanya said.

  “As soon as you left. He came for your equations. I don’t think he knew anything about Clay. Or Kiev.” She shook her head. “Brovary. He put our house under guard.”

  “And the borders will close soon,” Sasha said. “You won’t be able to escape Russia by spring. If you want to go, you must go now.”

  “How long have you been in Podil?” Yuri asked.

  “We arrived right after the eclipse. Did you see it? Did you get your photographs?”

  “I was a fool to think you could wait for me,” Vanya said. “Did Kir hurt you?”

  “No, Sasha—”

  “What’s done is done,” Yuri said, cutting her off.

  “Why are you angry?” Sasha asked him. “Your fiancée risked her life for you.”

  “It’s just a shock,” Vanya said. “Yuri, you’re in shock, aren’t you?”

  Yuri didn’t answer. He walked away, and as much as Miri wanted to go after him, even more she wanted to be with Vanya. “Tell me what happened,” she said, stroking his arm down to his fingertips where his nails used to grow. “Dearest Vanya, what did they do to you?”

  VI

  Sasha and Yuri retired to upstairs bedrooms while Vanya and Miri unwrapped their stories in painful strips, under candlelight in the sitting room where they were surrounded by shrouded furniture and empty bookshelves. “I survived,” Vanya said. It was deep in the night and they’d talked for hours, with Vanya taking breaks to rest twice. The fire burned low and they didn’t have kindling to build it back up. Miri pulled another blanket over her brother. His bones jutted out like clothespins holding the wool on his frame. “Baba taught us well.”

  “You didn’t just survive. And it’s not over. You could still solve the equations.”

  “But without the photographs, Eliot won’t help us.”

  “We can find Clay. We can track him down. If he has the plates, maybe one is clear enough to use.”

  “Mirele, please. Any good scientist knows when his experiment has run its course.”

  “But it’s not an experiment. This eclipse is more than that. Isn’t that what you said?” Miri dropped her head into her hands, and the room went quiet save for a log that collapsed in the grate. She’d told her brother everything—everything except what happened with Sasha in the mail car and on the night of the fire. But Vanya knew her better than anyone. He had to see she was holding back. “Tell me more about Sasha,” he said. When she didn’t answer immediately, he patted his pocket. “Do you have my cigarette case?”

  Miri handed it to her brother, and he filled it with a supply he kept in a desk drawer, under a dust cover. Even with his sore fingers he was able to light two cigarettes, hand one to his sister. The tobacco, real tobacco, tasted like Vanya, delicious. “How did you get this?” she asked.

  “Dima had his ways. He left plenty behind.” Vanya frowned. “Don’t tell me, Mirele. Whatever it is or was with Sasha, it’s in the past. Yuri is a good man.”

  “You didn’t used to think that.” She smiled.

  “What I’ve lived through with him. I understand now what you’ve always seen.”

  Miri felt the tobacco rush to her head, and she took a closer look at her brother. There was a dullness to him now, one she had never expected to find. He looked as if he was shrinking. She hated seeing him like that, deflated and beaten. And the house seemed so still, so quiet in the middle of war. “Yuri’s lovesick for you. It’s why he’s angry,” Vanya continued. “He’s jealous and I can’t blame him. This whole time, he’s talked about you, his brilliant fiancée. And now the photo. He can’t stand the way Sasha looks at you. I told him he was imagining things, but he wasn’t, was he?”

  Miri walked to the fire. “There was no marriage. It was to keep us safe, in Podil.”

  “Did you share your bed?”

  “How can you ask that?”

  “Because I’m your brother.”

  “I’ll still marry Yuri.”

  Vanya paused. “Then tell him how much you love him. Make him believe it’s true. You changed him, or filled him where he was empty, he said.” Miri tried to imagine Yuri as happy as Vanya had said he’d been with the rabbi and his orchestra. She couldn’t picture him humming. Would he find that in America? “I risked too many lives,” Vanya continued, so quietly Miri almost missed it.

  “I did the same. I even took a life.”

  “That drunk? It wasn’t your fault, Mirele.”

  “Still, I feel the guilt.”

  “As do I. The guilt for dragging you here.”

  “Vanya, what you’ve done was for science. For progress. And for us. To take us to America. You were right to come.”

  “I’ll never be sure, but Mirele, the eclipse, it was like nothing I’d ever seen or felt. Those moments in the dark, those perfect moments. And then it shattered. I shattered. I questioned myself. I questioned it all. After they beat me, I wondered, was something that powerful truly just science?”

  “How can you even ask that?”

  “Have I cursed us?”

  “No. Those men, they had you at your worst, Vanya. There’s no curse.”

  “Either way, the photographs won’t do it justice.” He flicked the end of his cigarette into the embers. “I survived because Yuri saved me. Mirele, he’s a man like no other.”

  “He may be. And this Dima fellow, too. But you, you survived because of your own strength. Come, we should go to bed. You need your rest so we can run.”

  The sitting room, the house felt safe on the surface, but Miri knew that could shatter in an instant—the moment the villagers realized Vanya was alive, or Kir or Zubov came for them. Miri walked Vanya toward the stairs leading to t
he bedrooms, through a hallway skirting the back side of the house. The floorboards underfoot were bloated with a dampness that pervaded the dacha along with the smell of mildew she hadn’t noticed while they’d sat at the fire. If it were up to Miri, she would have thrown open all the windows and let the walls breathe for a week to get rid of that stale air.

  At the bottom of the grand staircase there were windows, and the moonlight was so bright Miri didn’t need a candle to take in the faded grandeur. Scars along the walls showed outlines of a missing sideboard and the trace of a ceiling medallion. The stairs were slanted. The paper on the walls peeled at the edges. Vanya went up first, but one foot trailed the other. Halfway up, he tripped. Miri kept him from falling backward, but he landed hard on his shoulder and screamed. The sinews in his neck bulged, and he squeezed his eyes shut in pain. She leapt to help him, realizing even in the dark that his arm stuck out to the side at an unnatural angle. His shoulder was dislocated.

  “Miriam, what happened?” Sasha called from the top of the stairs. Yuri was just steps behind him. Miri felt for a radial pulse and began angling the arm as Yuri pushed his way down the stairs toward them.

  “Is he all right? What happened? Is it his rib?” Yuri’s voice sounded too loud in Miri’s ears.

  “The pain,” Vanya cried. His legs twitched on the stairs. “No more pain, please.”

  “Shhh, Vanya, just another minute,” Miri said, bracing herself against the wall of the stairs. To Yuri and Sasha she said, “It’s his shoulder.”

  “I’ve got him,” Yuri said, reaching down to move Vanya.

  “No,” Miri said. “I’ve got him.”

  “But it’s dark here. You need space and light. Dislocations can be complex.”

  “She knows,” Sasha said. Did he bristle?

  Miri concentrated on folding the elbow and straightening the bone in line with the socket. “This will be the worst,” she warned.

  “Ahhhh.” Vanya let out a yelp, and the shoulder snapped into place.

  VII