When the driver had found a place to put the car, Aftasia ordered the Didchuks: "Wait here." She was gone nearly an hour, but when she came back she was triumphantly waving a boarding pass that let the Didchuk child into one of the newest cars on the train. Such passes were not for everyone. But not everyone had a Party card originally issued in 1916, and even an old woman had friends of friends who could do a favor. Even now.
When the child was settled, surrounded by her boxes and neat little traveling bag and sausage and bread for the long ride, the Didchuks thanked Aftasia. Businesslike, she brushed their thanks aside. "You can do me a favor in return if you will," she said. "I must take my American relatives to the airport. If you will come with me to translate, Didchuk, I am sure your wife can stay here with the child until the train leaves."
"To translate?" Didchuk asked. "But surely at the airport people will speak English—"
"I want to show my cousins something first," said Aftasia harshly. "If it is not too much of a bother?"
Of course it was not too much of a bother, though it was certainly not no bother at all, either; Didchuk would really have preferred to stay with his wife on the platform, waving and smiling at their daughter as needed until at last the train pulled out. Aftasia would not be denied. So the two of them got back in the car, its windows shut tight (as all windows were ordered to be) against the outside air, and the driver took them through the crowded streets to the hotel.
The Garfields were waiting just inside the door, guarding their pretty pale blue matched luggage from California. "A moment," said Aftasia, and got out to explain to the hotel porter that (if he would not mind) he should send the Gar-fields' luggage to the airport on the Intourist bus, since there was no room in the car for all of it. He, too, agreed not to mind, or not to mind much, and Aftasia ordered the Americans politely to hurry into the car. "But can't we have the windows open, at least?" Candace Garfield asked, and when Didchuk translated the driver exploded:
"Of course not! We have been told to keep out the air as much as possible and it is, after all, only May! We will be quite comfortable in here if no one smokes. If," he added, glancing at Aftasia Smin, "it is really necessary to make this side trip instead of going directly to the airport."
"It is necessary," Aftasia said flatly. When the driver had surrendered, the old woman began to engage her American cousins in a polite conversation through the teacher. It was wonderful, she said, that they had had a chance to meet, after all. She hoped that they had not been too frightened with this difficulty of her son's power plant. They would be all right, she was sure, because they had been exposed to whatever it was for no more than a few days. It was perhaps more dangerous for those who must remain in the Ukraine, but in just a few hours they would be in Moscow, and then the next day on their way to — where were they going first? Paris? Ah, how wonderful! She had always dreamed of seeing Paris — and, oh yes, especially of California, which (she said) she had always thought of as a sort of combination of Yalta, Kiev, and heaven.
With the snail pace of polite conversation relayed through an interpreter, it took half an hour for all these pleasantries to be exchanged, while the car crossed the Dnieper bridge, snaked through the traffic, and drove along the streets of the suburbs.
Aftasia fell silent, watching the streets they passed, and Didchuk took up the burden of conversation for himself. "This part of Kiev," he said proudly, "was only open countryside as recently as the war — did you manage to see our Museum of the Great Patriotic War while you were in Kiev? Yes? Then you know that there was much fighting around here. Now it is all very nice homes, as you see. The people who live here have the bus or the Metro, and in the morning it's twenty minutes and they're at work." He glanced ahead, and frowned slightly. "This particular area," he mentioned diffidently, "was in fact quite famous, in a way.. . Excuse me," he said abruptly, and leaned forward to talk to Aftasia.
Candace Garfield looked around. They were passing a tall television tower, surrounded by nine-story apartment buildings. "I don't see anything that looks famous," she told her husband. "Unless it's that little park up there on the right."
Her husband was dabbing sweat off his brow. "What I'd like to see," he said, "is an airplane."
"Think of Paris," his wife said good-naturedly. "Paris in the springtime? The sidewalk cafes?"
"Those long, romantic evenings," Garfield said, perking up. "Dinner in our room, with plenty of wine—"
"Down, boy," his wife commanded, as Didchuk sank back and smiled nervously at them.
"This is the place," he said. "Mrs. Smin asks me to ask you if you have ever heard of Babi Yar?"
"Well, of course we've heard of Babi Yar," said Garfield, and his wife, concentrating, added, "I think so. During the war, wasn't it?"
"Yes, exactly. During the war. Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote a very famous poem about it, and there has been music, books, all sorts of things about Babi Yar," Didchuk confirmed. He seemed ill-at-ease, but waved toward the park. "Do you see the monument there? It is quite beautiful, don't you think? Many people come here to pay their respects, even leaving flowers— but," he added sadly, "Mrs. Smin does not wish to stop here. Still, you can get quite a good look at it as we go by."
By craning their necks, the Garfields could see a statuary group on a heroic scale. From directly in front it was only a crowd of stone figures, packed tighdy together like subway riders, with a mother holding her child despairingly aloft. Then, as the car moved slowly along, Candace said, "What are they doing? It looks like the ones in back are falling into the valley there."
"That's it," Didchuk agreed. "They are falling into that ravine. I thought we would stop there, by the scientific institute, so that we, too, could pay our respects. But Mrs. Smin wants to go just a little farther — ah, yes, we are stopping here. She says this is the real Babi Yar. She says she does not care much for the monument," he finished unhappily.
The car stopped. The teacher looked at Aftasia Smin for instructions, then shrugged and opened the door. "Mrs. Smin would like us to get out and look around here."
"I thought she was afraid of radiation or something," Garfield said doubtfully.
"She is not," the teacher said, and trailed the old woman meekly up a grassy slope. Candace Garfield followed with her husband, perplexed. "I don't have much film left," Candace fretted, taking her camera off her shoulder.
"Please," said Didchuk hastily, glancing back. "It would be better not to take any pictures. Because of the television tower. A transmission tower, after all, is a legitimate military objective in case of war, and such things may not be photographed."
"Well, I'll just take a picture of the apartments, then."
"Please," he said abjectly, looking at the cars whizzing by along the road as though he expected a troop of soldiers to leap out and arrest them.
Aftasia stopped at the crest, looking out over the little valley. Then she turned and spoke rapidly to Didchuk, who translated. "In September of 1941," he said, "Hitler decided to put off taking Moscow for a few weeks while he conquered the Ukraine. He ordered his troops to take the city of Kiev. Stalin ordered the Red Army to hold it. Hitler won. His armies passed to the north and the south of the city, then they joined together. Four Soviet armies were surrounded, more than half a million men. Most of them were killed or captured, and the Germans entered Kiev."