I didn’t really believe him, but I indulged him anyway. “Where will you go?”
“Far from the Soviet Union. Somewhere more—civilized. This place is shit. Do you even know what’s going on back home? Half of Leningrad has starved, and most of the Jews have been wiped out by our own people. Even the children, they don’t spare anyone.”
I looked out at the empty field ahead, searching for my father’s figure. Of course, in theory, I felt very sorry for the people who were even hungrier than we were in Leningrad, though it was hard to picture them. And I was sorry for the Jews too, especially my downstairs neighbors, if what he said was true, but the fact remained that my stomach was groaning and my father was missing.
But he went on. “But things are taking a turn for the better. I wouldn’t be surprised if we took Kiev back any day now,” he said, and this was so shocking to me that I could not even fathom it. I didn’t bother asking how he knew all this; I didn’t want to hear him mysteriously whisper “my sources,” with an added wink. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking he knew more than I did about anything.
Bogdan put an arm around me and I shook him off. Polina was the one he preferred and touched, not me.
“You don’t have to be nice to me,” I said. “Why don’t you go comfort my sister instead?”
“Has it ever occurred to you that I’m not just being nice to you? That I might even prefer you over your sister?” he said. I was startled by his rising voice. He was finally angry. I was horrified and thrilled that I had managed to produce this effect.
“Why would you do that, now?”
He shrugged. “It’s just a feeling.”
I looked away, my eyes smarting, missing my father, still convinced Bogdan was only saying these things to cheer me up. What gave him the nerve to declare this now? I thought once more of how different he was from his courteous, conscientious brother, who would never overstep his bounds or bring on this emotional assault during such a turbulent time, who was waiting for the perfect conditions to declare his love.
I said, “Your timing is lacking.”
“I say what I feel when I feel it.”
“So you didn’t feel it earlier?”
“Of course I did. But you didn’t notice because you were occupied with your reading companion.”
“I don’t need your pity,” I said.
He sighed and put his head in his hands. “For heaven’s sake, Larissa, I read all of Karamazov to impress you. What more could a man do?”
I laughed, feeling truly flattered, not understanding that this had been his motive. But I quickly righted myself.
“I don’t feel—close to you like that,” I said slowly.
“Are you certain?” he said.
I felt ridiculous. Of course I had always preferred his brother to him—so why did I feel so short of breath, right then?
“I’m not certain of anything right now,” I said.
He gave me a triumphant smile, but I stepped away from him, signaling that our conversation was over. We turned away from the woods, toward the path through the apartment buildings to the center of town, the path Papa and Uncle Pasha had taken to get to the village, and one from which I knew they would not emerge. I knew that none of us would emerge from this place unbroken. And that I would never open myself up to a person like Bogdan. It was too risky. I waved him off and sank against the base of the linden tree.
“Go on, now,” I told him. “I’ve had enough. Please go to sleep.”
I stayed up every night, staring into the woods from my tiny window, as if I could summon what? Papa and Uncle Pasha riding out of the dark abyss? Licky resurrected, crawling back to me like nothing had happened, lapping the dirt off my hands? My former meaty body, the heft in my haunches I had once hated? The curve of my sister’s buttocks? A hearty summer meal? Misha and I plowed through Quiet Flows the Don but I could hardly read a word; all those fighting, violent Cossacks and the poor women, who were either raped or beaten or both, did not suit my mood or level of concentration. I tried to picture my former kind teacher, Marina Igorevna, patiently sitting beside me as I read to help me focus, but I could not summon her.
I tried not to think of Bogdan’s ill-timed declaration. Surely he just felt sorry for me. He continued to favor Polina and I kept reading with his brother like nothing happened. School was the only suitable distraction. At that point, only a handful of students remained, and I began helping Yana Nikolaevna in the classroom, delivering lessons when she was too weak to stand. “Spring can be just as brutal as winter!” my teacher would cry during these spells, though she did not explain how. Nights were harder. My sister started climbing out of bed in the late hours. When I followed her, I found that she would go to Mama’s balcony, to stare into the woods during the brisk nights, awaiting our Papa in her own way.
About two weeks after Papa and Uncle Pasha had left, a figure appeared on the horizon one morning. I spotted him first because I left the building early, to help my teacher clean the schoolhouse. For a few precious moments in the pink near-darkness I hoped and believed I was looking at my father. But as the figure continued his approach, there was no mistaking my father for his brother, whose frame was slighter, and whose careful gait could only mean one thing. His crooked-nosed face and clothes were dark, covered in soot, as if he were already preparing to mourn. He saw me approaching, nodded, and took his cap off his head and held it to his chest, and I howled and sank to the ground.
Mama came running out next, trailed by Polya and the Orlovs, all four of them still thick with slumber, because it was a Sunday and they did not have to report to work. By the time Baba Tonya lumbered out in her nightgown, so disoriented she did not remember to cover her ruby necklace with her boa, Uncle Pasha was convulsing before us, as if he were caught in a windstorm.
“Papa,” Polya kept saying. “What happened to Papa?”
I wanted to smack the girl. Did I have to explain this to her too? I thought the death of Licky had hardened her, but here she was, innocent all over again. Her eyes were wilder than ever, though they had retreated deep into the caverns of her face. Even Baba Tonya understood what Uncle Pasha’s solitary arrival meant, and she grabbed Polya and pulled her into her dirty skirts, and my sister was the first of the group to sob. She whispered that she was her princess, her angel, all the useless epithets, but they fell on deaf ears.
Misha put an arm around me, and Bogdan kept looking at me, waiting for a reaction. But I turned to Mama for inspiration. Mama was a statue, and I tried to mimic her.
“Out with it, already,” Mama told Uncle Pasha.
“I am so sorry,” said Uncle Pasha. “So profoundly sorry.”
“Come inside,” Mama said. “I will make tea.”
He nodded and followed us in like a sleepwalker, and Aunt Tamara even took over making tea and let Mama sit down. We sat around Uncle Pasha and he began to speak once he clutched the warm cup in his hands, which had stopped shaking quite so much.
He told us what happened. They spent a day just getting to the village because they had to stop so often to rest their tired horses. At last, they arrived in the village, but something was off. An eerie quiet hung in the air, followed by a massive noise in the distance that made them fall to their knees. Finally, an old woman emerged from her hut and told them they were crazy, they needed to run away. She said some of the villagers had caught the plague and the Soviet soldiers were going to burn down the place. “You’re still healthy,” she said. “You get out while you can, find a way to escape!” They tried to turn away, but at that point the flamethrowers had the village surrounded, and they would burn down with the sick ones if they did not find another way out. They dropped their horses and followed a path on the outskirts of the village until they found a cave.