Daughters of the Night Sky

I found the little handbag I used before the war, and placed a few bills and coins inside. Grigory smiled broadly from the kitchen table as he saw me emerge from my bedroom fully dressed and looking equal to facing the world. I let the corners of my lips turn upward. I let him think this was more than a farce I was putting on for my mother’s sake. And his.

I descended into the world below. The July sun only made the ice in my veins pulse a few degrees colder. The crowd looked both weary and jubilant, as one would expect of a people worn down by war. Many of the shops were empty, a few buildings still in shambles from raids and stray bombs, yet there was a buzz of excitement in the air that I never remembered of the Moscow of my youth. I was happy for my people. I had fought for this very thing.

It took nearly a half hour to find an open bakery, and the first one I found was the very shop where I had purchased my illicit matryoshka pryanik as a girl. The shopkeeper handed over the loaf of bread for our evening meal with a smile. There were no matryoshka cookies in the case that day. In honor of our victory, the cookies were all shaped like stars, helmets, and tanks. In the corner was a pile of the spiced cookies shaped like tiny airplanes.

“A dozen, please,” I said, pointing to the case. So many promises I had made since the start of the war, but this was one I would be able to keep.

I did not eat my fill of the still-warm cakes I had sworn to eat in the depth of my hunger at the front. The spices smelled alluring, but even they could not awaken my appetite. Instead I wandered. It was less than a block before I came upon my first hungry child. The little boy’s features were coated in a layer of dirt. His teeth seemed shockingly white as he smiled at the gift. Three more children emerged when they saw his prize. Within moments the cookies were consumed, and at least there would be four children not sleeping on empty stomachs that night.

I couldn’t help Klaus or Veronika. I couldn’t help the children Oksana tried to protect. But I had done something small for these children.

I returned to Mama and Grigory’s apartment to give Mama the bread. She would begin cooking soon, and I would offer to help. I entered noiselessly into the apartment, the door and latch too new to have a telltale creak. I was greeted with the sight of my mother and Grigory sitting companionably on the sofa. She was mending a pair of his uniform trousers while he read the newspaper. He leaned over to kiss her temple as he turned the beige-and-black pages. I took a step back, as though I had witnessed them in the deepest throes of lovemaking. I turned my head and placed the loaf on the kitchen table.

I darted to my room, where I found Papa’s violin. I grasped the handle and walked through the parlor without looking back at Mama and Grigory.

“Katya?” Mama called. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I’m going out again, Mama. Please don’t hold supper. I’m still full.”

“Be home before too late, dear,” she called after me. “It isn’t safe, even now.” I wanted to rebuke her but remembered I had neither my service pistol nor my band of sisters in arms at my side.

I found myself on the warm stone steps of the university, which appeared to be slowly coming back to life, though many of its scholars were forever lost in the war. I fussed with the violin case for a moment but then set the instrument beside me, still ensconced in the love-worn leather case.

I could not make my father’s music anymore.

I watched the bustle on the streets thin as the light grew weaker, but could not rise to return to the relative safety of the apartment. When I had seen Mama and Grigory together that afternoon, I saw the contentment and tranquility they shared. I was casting a shadow on the sunshine of their newly wedded bliss. They deserved their happiness unmarred by my bereavement.

The prospect of retreating to Miass, living in Babushka’s cabin, was enough to cause me to shake, despite the July sun.

Could I live as a bird in a gilded cage in Korkino, doted on by Vanya’s family? It wasn’t the life he’d wanted for himself, nor could I imagine myself spending my days with such a constant reminder of what I had lost.

I had to find a way out. Today I had ventured as far as the bakery. Tomorrow I had to venture far enough to find a life.

CHAPTER 27

August 20, 1945

The celebration shook Moscow with a jolt nearly the equal of the bombs that had cascaded down on her four years earlier. Ten Polikarpovs—one piloted by Polina and navigated by Renata—flew overhead, overshadowed by the massive bombers and sleek fighters. I’d been asked, as the commanding officer of the regiment, to lead the honor guard, but ceded my place so that Renata and Polina could go up together. Polina never got her chance to pilot her own plane during the war, and though she never complained, I knew she was happy for the chance to take command.