They continued to laugh for a long time while the rest of us watched and even tried to join in, though the thing between them, their brotherhood and their memories of orphan times, was impossible to penetrate. And this act of theirs was perhaps their way of gearing up for the journey ahead.
As they spoke of the war, Uncle Pasha was on edge. This was because though his city of Kharkov had been recaptured by the Red Army, the Germans, though depleted, were knocking at his city’s door yet again. My grandmother tried comforting him about his adopted city, putting a hand on his knee, but he just shook her off. He didn’t address her directly until the very end of the night, as the adults were preparing for bed. “Exhausted, Mother?” he said with a cruel smirk, and she told him that indeed she was.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I tried reading Tsvetaeva by candlelight, but it did me no good, reading about another woman’s obsession with the abyss and sleeplessness. I snuck into Mama and Papa’s room, where Mama and Uncle Pasha were sound asleep, while Papa was missing from his bed. I went to the balcony and spotted him outside, standing under his favorite linden tree, staring out at the dark woods. I threw on Mama’s coat and stepped out. I didn’t realize it was still so cold in the middle of the night, this far into the spring.
My father looked small from a distance, not like anybody’s husband or father. His breath clouded around him and for a moment I thought he was smoking, though Papa did not smoke. He did not look like he wanted to be disturbed, but I could not help myself.
“Larissa,” he said. “You should be in bed.”
“I’m having trouble sleeping.”
“Your father is also having some trouble, I’m afraid.”
He put an arm around me and kept staring into the woods like there was something in there I couldn’t see. Papa had aged considerably since we arrived in the mountains. He looked at least ten years older than he did on the day when we arrived and he compared our new home to his orphanage. He looked almost like a grandfather, the gray roaming in his still-thick hair and the skin sagging under his eyes and neck.
“Papa?”
“Yes, darling,” he said, his voice heavy.
“Are you all right?”
“Of course,” he said, but then he lowered his head in his hands.
“Lara, dear,” he said. “When I look back on my life, do you know what makes me the most proud?”
Papa’s eyes made me think I was not expected to answer. What, that he rose out of the nothing of the orphanage to become second in command to the most powerful engineer in Ukraine? That he did not let his mother defeat him? That he married a strong woman like Mama?
“It is not my work on the T-34, I will tell you that,” he said. He patted the top of my head. “You,” he said. “You and Polina. Of course your mother is my world, but I am most proud of the girls we have raised. Everything else is just wind through the trees,” he said, repeating his favorite expression.
“What if I’m happy on my own, like Uncle Pasha?” I asked, this time unafraid to challenge his declarations about family life. My dear uncle, who was peacefully sleeping inside while my father fretted, always seemed lighter on his feet than Papa.
Papa stopped in his tracks. His eyes brimmed with terrible longing. “Your uncle is missing the greatest joy of life, dear Larachka. One day, you will have a family of your own, it’s no question,” he said. “And you must be true to them. And when it comes down to it, you must forget everybody else. Life isn’t long enough, the heart isn’t large enough, to contain love for all of humanity, even if that makes you a bad Communist,” he added with a lowered voice. He nodded toward the apartment. “Your sister is struggling,” he said. “She needs you. You may not see it, but she does.”
“Why can’t you and Mama take care of her? She hates me,” I said, crossing my arms, but he already looked so defeated on the eve of his journey that I didn’t want to complicate matters. I wanted to take him by the hand and lead him back to the stove, where I could nestle against his chest like I did when I was a little girl, drifting off to the sound of his calm, even breath.
“She loves you deeply, Larissa. She’s your sister. It’s plain as day. Just do your best to be kind to her, little dove. Do you promise?”
“I promise,” I said, though I didn’t mean it, not truly. I squeezed his hand and added, “You’re doing all you can for our family, Papa. And so much more.”
But this brought him no comfort. He just shook me away and lifted his head back up, in the direction of the forest. I wondered if he, too, wanted to run away like the partisans, but begging him to stay would do no good, I knew. I kissed him on the cheek and gazed into those woods one last time, as if I could see whatever it was out there that haunted him so much, but there was nothing, just dark pines under the moonlight, clouded by Papa’s white breath.
I fell into a cold panic after the third day passed without Papa and Uncle Pasha’s return. I was certain they were not coming back, that they had contracted a fatal illness or got killed by Nazis or hit by bombs or had met their fates in some other tragic manner. Misha and I were revisiting Onegin during that period—by then we had memorized most of it—and while imagining a frivolous life of country soirees and petticoats had helped me through the dark winter months, it felt like an absurd indulgence after Papa had left. After a night of distracted reading, Misha put a hand on my wrist and said, “We don’t have to do this right now.” I thanked him and got up, and when he tried to follow me, I told him I’d like to be alone. I kept seeing Papa at the edge of those woods, wondering if there was anything I could have said to dissuade him from making the journey, to keep him at home, with us, where he was needed.
After Papa had been gone for five days, I went out in the middle of the night, after Baba Tonya and Polina had finished another round of nonsense. I stood under the linden tree and stared at the dark sky. I did not believe in God, of course. Nobody in my family or in the apartment believed in God or anything ludicrous like that, but I could not help but wonder where people go when they are no longer on Earth. It seemed cruel and unusual for us to turn to dust and corpses, to be reduced to memory and anecdote, and I longed for something more. I wondered if my father and Uncle Pasha were somewhere up with the moon and the stars, not with gods, but just, I don’t know, floating around.
“What are you thinking?”
Bogdan materialized beside me. I wasn’t really surprised to see him. He was coming back from one of his late-night exploits. I tried not to get close to him, to avoid the scent of another woman’s sweat or perfume.
I sighed. “I can’t take any more of this waiting.”
“I can’t imagine,” he said. He moved closer to me, but I did not smell the smelly ladies of his trysts. He grabbed my hand and said, “If you need anything, I am always here.”
“How so?” I said. I could not take his kindness. “What, you think I am one of your middle-aged ladies? I don’t have any eggs for you.”
He was quiet for a beat. I had never acknowledged his ladies before, though I assumed he knew I knew by then. He said, “I am only doing what I need to do to help the family. You think I enjoy myself out there?”
“I don’t want to think about what you do out there.”
“Well, it’s not exactly something I look forward to,” he said, shaking his head. Then his face broke into a playful smile. “Just very occasionally. There is one number—” he began, and I punched his chest. He had so much vigor I did not expect him to be so bony. He saw I was in no mood for jokes and continued on. “If we make it out of here alive, I’m getting the hell out of Kiev.”