Alex sat at the end of the table watching their banter, grateful to be involved in it, if only peripherally. Lilya seemed radiant.
“Hey.” Klavdia landed another soft punch. “I got another package from home in the last mail and was saving it for something special. I think this is it. But you have to promise not to devour everything in five minutes.”
“Agreed.” Lilya clapped her on the shoulder, and the six of them left the mess hut as a group and gathered in the First Squadron hut.
Raisa ignited the paraffin lanterns that served as their light, while one of the other women fed more wood into the stove and stirred up the ashes. When the chill was off the hut, they sat in a circle around an ammunition crate. Klavdia opened the cardboard box with great drama and drew the items out, one by one. First the inevitable package of hard black bread and the more welcome tin of herring. Then she passed around a cloth bag of sunflower seeds, as a sort of appetizer. A few small cakes of pine nuts baked with dried apples and berries provided a bit of the sugar they all hungered for.
While they nibbled on the food, all eating as slowly as possible, one of the women began to sing, and soon the others joined her. A song about snow falling, tragic and unbearably poignant. It was as if the women, scarcely more than girls, were anticipating their own deaths.
While they sang about flowers, young love, patriotism, Lilya circulated around the shed, leaning now on one comrade and then another. Casually, inconspicuously, she ended up next to Alex, who perched on the edge of a cot next to Katia.
The touch of her hip and the occasional accidental brushing against her arm was exquisite.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it, how much we accomplish with an incompetent commander,” Katia said suddenly.
“You know how she was chosen,” Lilya reminded her. “She’s one of Osipenko’s cronies. Both of them are rotten to the core. They’d denounce their mother if they thought it would gain them something.” She shook out a few sunflower seeds and handed the bag on to her neighbor.
Katia crossed her arms. “It’s true. It’s outrageous that we—the best female pilots in Russia—are under the command of a woman who can’t fly. Of course we said all that in our letter to the division commander. Eight of his best pilots signed it, so he can’t ignore it.”
“It really breaks my heart that we lost Major Raskova.” Across from them, Klavdia drew up her legs and rested her chin on her knees. “You knew she really cared about us. She was ten times better than that stick of wood we have as commander.”
The sound of a hinge creaking caused them to all look toward the door. Major Kazar stood there, stone-faced.
“Lights out, all of you.” She directed her attention toward Alex. “Miss Preston, I believe you are in the wrong hut. I will accompany you back to your quarters.”
The women grumbled obedience, and Alex, puzzled by the infraction, followed the major out into the night.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize the first squadron’s hut was off-limits to me.”
Kazar walked stiffly beside her. In contrast to their vodka-filled evening weeks before, the major laid no arm over her shoulder, or even looked at her, her demeanor as glacial as the air around them.
“I am disappointed in you, Miss Preston. I understood you to be an intelligent woman. I’d hoped we’d get to know one another. But it appears you’ve chosen to socialize instead with the lower ranks. These young women are inexperienced, naive. They have nothing to offer you but girlish cheerfulness.”
“Under the circumstances, Major, cheerfulness seems welcome. What do you have against it?”
“Do not mock me, Miss Preston. I am charged with maintaining an efficient regiment of fighters, and I will remove anything that interferes with that.”
They were at the door of the Squadron 3 hut now, and Alex replied. “I understand. Good night, Major Kazar.”
The major marched away without replying.
*
Late November 1942
The morning mission, Alex learned, was to escort three Tupolev bombers and their tethered gliders from Moscow to the Anisovka base. By the time she was awake, pilots from both squadrons had long been in the air. She knew, without asking, that Lilya would have been one of the women assigned.
Within three hours, they’d returned. Inna, in her padded jacket and breeches, and Alex, in a sweater and winter parka, crunched through the frost-covered snow of the airfield to meet them. In spite of the slippery surface of the field, the two bombers landed smoothly, towing the slender, motorless gliders. “Looks like they’re using the G-11s,” Inna remarked.
“Why are they stopping here?”
“They’re picking up some fuel tanks, ammunition, antifreeze, food. It all comes by train from the factories south of here. But from what I hear, the trains haven’t arrived in Saratov yet, so the gliders will have to wait.”
“Where do they go from here? The supplies, I mean.”
“To Stalingrad. The Tupolevs tow the gliders filled with supplies and bring them back filled with wounded.”
Alex was about to reply when two more Yaks arrived. One of them buzzed low overhead, wobbled its wings, circled around, and made a smooth landing. Inna laughed. “Lilya, of course. It must have been a good morning. She only wobbles her wings like that when she’s knocked out a plane. It irritates the hell out of Comrade Kazar.”
The two Yaks landed, and Katia and Lilya reported in at the hangar. When they appeared again outside, Lilya yanked off her flight helmet. “I don’t know about you,” she said to Katia, “but I’m off duty now, and I need to wash my hair.”
“Great. I’ll get the buckets.” Inna was suddenly enthusiastic.
“Be discreet.” Lilya smiled conspiratorially. “I’ll meet you in our hut.”
Puzzled, Alex followed Inna, certain something was going on that wasn’t allowed. How could they wash hair with no hot water and in the middle of winter?
Inna led her to the supply shed, where she hauled out a wrench and three buckets and handed one of them to Alex.
“Buckets, for a shampoo?”
“Yep. It takes too long to boil water on our lousy little stoves, and it uses a lot of wood. But we have another source of hot water.”
By then they were in front of Lilya’s Yak Number 44, and Inna handed her a bucket. “You hold this up while I unscrew the valve. Be careful not to let the water touch your hands. Even with gloves, you’ll get scalded.”
Inna reached up overhead and first unscrewed the engine cover, then the radiator valve. After the first turn, hot vapor spurted out, and after the second a thin stream of steaming water began to flow out in a curve. Alex lifted the bucket over her head and stepped under the stream. The superheated water hissed and sputtered as it struck the cold metal. She could feel the heat through her leather gloves, and when the weight of the bucket grew too great, she stepped aside and set it down at her feet, where it sent up a plume of mist.
“I think there’s another half a bucket in there,” Inna said, holding up the second bucket until the radiator flow became a trickle and then a drip. “In cold weather we empty the radiators anyhow, so they don’t freeze up at night,” Inna explained.
On the way back, they filled the third bucket with clean snow and joined the group of pilots gathered inside the hut. Both Lilya and Katia were kneeling on the floor over an empty bucket, with blankets around their shoulders.
Inna scooped snow into the half-filled hot water bucket and tested it with her hand. “Perfect,” she announced. “Ready, girls?” she asked the two pilots and, at their signal, tipped the bucket over their bowed heads.
Katia held up her disc of military soap, and Inna rubbed it over her hair until a slight lather appeared. Lilya, meanwhile, held her soap toward Alex. “Would you be so kind?”
Amused, Alex imitated what Inna had done, scrubbing the curly blond hair until the gritty soap produced a foam. Together she and Inna massaged the two scalps, warm from the radiator water, until the bathers seeme
d satisfied.
Like a cartoon chemist, Inna concocted another pail full of snow and radiator water and did the rinsing. With steaming heads, both pilots stood up and rubbed their scalps dry with their blankets.
“What’s going on here?” Tamara Kazar was suddenly at the entryway, righteousness itself.
“We’re just washing our hair, Comrade Major,” Katia answered, clutching her blanket around her shoulders.
The major swept her glance across them, as if she was measuring how far she could push them.
“Misuse of military equipment.” She nudged one of the still-warm buckets with her boot and tugged at Katia’s blanket. “You could get a penal battalion for that. As it is, I’m putting you in five days’ detention, starting tomorrow.”
“What? You mean the blankets?” Katia was indignant. “They’ll be dry in an hour. The buckets aren’t damaged either.”
“Be careful, Lieutenant Budanova. I can also write you up for insubordination. Get this equipment back into its shed, and don’t let me catch you at this nonsense again. The rest of you all have duty assignments. Get to them.” With a final scathing look at Alex, she marched away.
“Five days’ detention?” Alex was astonished. “How are you going to fly missions when your best pilots are on report?”
“She’ll simply double the duty of the others,” Inna muttered. “It’s just a way to keep us afraid of her.” She snatched up the handles of all three buckets and left the bunker for the supply shed. The other women, who had been watching from their bunks, filed out to their duty stations, and as Lilya passed, she murmured, “Tonight. Twenty-two hundred. At the third bomber.”
Puzzled, Alex caught up to the major. “Why are you so hard on them? They’re dedicated, top-notch soldiers, all of them. This kind of thing simply improves morale. How can that be against regulations?”
“It is unmilitary and inappropriate to a war zone. As is your fraternization with Lieutenant Drachenko. I invited you here to photograph the regiment, and since you have gone beyond that role, I suggest you now arrange your return to Moscow.”
She marched away, leaving Alex stupefied. Did the major appreciate the resentment brewing in the squadron? Something was going to break, she feared, but would it happen at the top of the command or the bottom?
Damn. Wasn’t it enough that the Germans were trying to kill them all?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The winter day was short, and the night, which began already at sixteen hundred, was broken only by the two shifts in the mess shed, at eighteen and nineteen hundred. Alex made sure to eat in a different shift from Lilya and afterward retreated to the relative warmth of her hut.
Her bunkmates always wanted to chat about life in America, about women’s dresses and what the men were like. She marveled at how women who knew how to fly and shoot down enemy planes could care about such girlish things as clothing, hairstyles, and courtship.
By twenty-one hundred, they were dozing off, as she knew they would, and she was glad she was sharing quarters with fighter-plane crews, who worked in the day and slept at night. An evening tryst, if that’s what it was going to be, would be impossible among the night bombers.
But was a romantic meeting possible in subzero temperatures, anyhow?
She pretended to get ready for bed, too. But when the last lamp went out, she drew on her clothes and parka again, and crept out.
The night was clear and the much-too-bright moon was ominous. They were all too visible to the Luftwaffe, and they had only two anti-aircraft guns to protect them.
She strode past the familiar Yaks to the Tupolev bombers and their tethered gliders. They looked enormous in the dark and cast jagged shadows on the airfield surface. A figure stepped out from behind the third bomber.
“Lilya.” She loved to pronounce the name, to feel the way her tongue moved around the L sound. She took her hand, drawing her closer, then pressed her back against the fuselage of the plane. Their padded clothing was bulky, but even sensing the vague outline of Lilya’s body thrilled her.
She buried her face in Lilya’s neck. Her hair smelled of military soap with a faint metallic taint of an airplane radiator, but under it all was the warm, sweet animal fragrance of a young body.
“Why tonight? At this temperature?”
Lilya kissed her ear. “I’m going to be in lockup tomorrow for five days, and who knows what happens after that?” She pulled away. “Come on, follow me.”
She led her past the bomber to the attached glider and ducked under the wing. Shaded from the moonlight, the surface was uniformly dark, but Lilya felt her way along the side until she found the handle to the door. It opened with a creak of hinges.
“It’s pitch-black in there,” Alex whispered. “We’ll crash into things.”
“No, I checked earlier. They haven’t loaded it yet. Come on, don’t be afraid.” She crawled inside the opening and tugged Alex after her.
Alex obeyed but, once inside, was completely blind. It made no difference whether she closed or opened her eyes. She groped around and, with her fingers, traced the outline of a bench along the wall of the fuselage.
She fumbled along the wooden floor until she felt Lilya’s knee and giggled. “This is crazy, you know.”
“I know. Come here.”
“Here? Where’s here?” She giggled again but crept farther in. Tapping her way blindly along the padded form, she lay down alongside it and fumbled for Lilya’s head under her fur hat. She explored now with her lips instead of her gloved hands, sliding them toward the only part of Lilya that was exposed. Finally she tasted skin, fragrant but cold, and snickered.
“It’s like embracing a pile of laundry. Somewhere, deep inside of all this, is you.”
“Be brave. You’ll find me. I’m in here, waiting for you.” Thickly padded arms encircled her neck and pulled her forward.
How strange it was to kiss in total darkness without seeing the beloved. Smells and taste became intense—of wool, sheepskin, military soap, and the salty-sweet moisture of Lilya’s mouth. Then something more basic than perception began inside her, something deep and animal urgent, the need to join, to couple, to melt into her.
Anchoring on one elbow, Alex pulled the glove off her other hand with her teeth. With her free hand she unbuttoned Lilya’s winter coat, then her collar, exposing her warm throat. She kissed it and wet it with her tongue. Button by button, she worked her way down Lilya’s chest in the narrow strip of exposed skin.
The Russian gymnasterka shirt defied her, for the buttons went only halfway down the chest. But she was excited now, and Lilya whispered, “Yes, touch me, please. I want you to do it.”
She fumbled under the gymnasterka from below to the breeches and unbuttoned those as well. While desire heated her body, she couldn’t help but be amused at herself, awkward as a teenage boy. A blind teenage boy.
But Lilya leaned toward her, murmuring encouragement, as Alex rested her hand on her hot belly. Alex caressed gently, cautiously, waiting for her hand to warm, then slid it down the last dangerous distance to the prickling place of Lilya’s sex. She gripped and pressed gently with her palm, as if stroking the breast of a bird, until Lilya’s soft sounds told her she could go on, then traced a line down the widening groove and slipped inside her.
“Ohh.” Lilya moaned dully, covering the invading hand with her own. Still with thick layers of wool between their bodies, Alex kissed her again, more forcefully, joining with her only in the two small hot places she could reach.
Lilya kissed back with equal fervor, the short spurts of her exhalations warming Alex’s cheek. She penetrated more deeply and encountered an obstacle that tore away with the next thrust, and she stopped for a second in shock. She’d just deflowered a virgin.
Whatever pain Lilya had felt at the tearing didn’t diminish her ardor, for her kisses became bites, and Alex stroked now in a rhythm that seemed to excite her. She teased the innocent place as long as she dared, then reentered the hot, eager part
of Lilya that rose to meet every stroke. Lilya thrashed, pounding against her in sightless coupling, a primordial motion, like waves surging toward a shore.
The swell of Lilya’s desire crested and she convulsed, grasping Alex around the shoulders and breathing a long, soft groan onto her throat. They lay still, as if suspended.
A thud on the wall of the glider caused them both to jump. Someone was outside, inches away from them.
They froze, listening.
Male voices, unintelligible but for a few bawdy words. The pilots of the Tupolev. What the hell were they doing on this side of the airfield instead of in their own quarters? Their language suggested they were prowling around the women’s huts up to no good. She would have happily confronted them if she herself weren’t up to no good.
Finally the voices faded as the men apparently moved off, but Alex still sat, blind and motionless, in the dark. She felt Lilya next to her rearranging her clothing. “Are you all right?” she whispered.
“Of course I’m all right. I’m delirious,” Lilya whispered back. “What did you do to me?”
Alex chortled very softly. “You never experienced that before? I’m so happy I could be the first to do that for you. It was new for me too, I mean with a woman.”
“Whatever it was, I want to do it again. But maybe not now.”
“Yes, let’s get out of here before those men come back. I don’t even think I can find the door.”
“It’s down by your feet. There’s a row of benches folded up against the wall, and where they end, that’s where the door is.”
Alex got to her knees and reached forward into the darkness until she touched what felt like a bench bottom. “Yes, they’re right here.” Lilya came up beside her, and together they slid on their knees to the last bench. Alex groped along the wall above and below it and finally brushed against a handle. She turned it slowly, cracking the door.
The airfield, which had seemed so dark when they arrived, held a dull blue-gray light. Enough for them to see the men in the distance, leaning against the tail wing of one of the Tupolevs.
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