Daughters of the Night Sky

We packed our meager belongings, Vanya covertly transferring them to the cab of the truck so we would make less noise as we departed in the morning. During the preceding days, Vanya had spent his time acquiring rations, blankets, and plain clothing for us, all of which had left us at risk every moment the supplies lingered under my hospital bed.

At the first sign of light, Vanya motioned to wake me, but I had never fully entered sleep. German tanks. Russian guns. None would be our friend now. As we walked over the gravel in the courtyard that had been our sanctuary these past days, I felt each crunch of our feet betray our location and scream our treachery. The truck was a hulking green thing that looked as though it would travel reasonably well through uncertain terrain. It had a canvas top that extended over the bed, which would be our shelter at night. Our home for days until we reached neutral ground.

Vanya had us on the road leading away from the outskirts of Stalingrad. He followed Osin’s suggestions, keeping to the main road as often as he could but diverting onto the side roads whenever we encountered large numbers of army vehicles or patrols that might examine our papers too closely or question our orders.

“Are you well?” Vanya asked hourly. The roads were cratered by constant bombardment over the past months. I smiled and assured him all was well, despite every bump and jostle having me clutching the door handle as pain radiated up and down my side like current down a wire.

Every kilometer we traveled was a kilometer away from duty. I pushed down my feelings of guilt and regret with only moderate success.

By the time night fell, the thin civilian blouse Vanya had procured for me was drenched in sweat from my efforts not to cry out as our wheels found every rock and crater on the ruined roadway. We parked off the road, moderately well protected by some obliging bushes and shrubbery. I stepped down out of the truck, grateful to be motionless. I leaned against the side of the vehicle and clutched my side as Vanya set about making the bed of the truck into a nest.

“Come have some dinner,” he called. I wiped the perspiration from my forehead with the back of my hand, glancing in one of the mirrors to see if I looked as wan as I felt. Still rosy cheeked. Nothing that would cause him alarm in his distracted state.

“It isn’t much; I’m sorry,” he said, handing me a chunk of hard bread the size of his fist and some tinned meat on a metal plate along with a cup of water. “I wasn’t able to get much from the authorities, even by dropping all the names I had in my possession.”

I looked down at the offering, neither offensive nor appetizing under most circumstances, and felt my stomach roll. “It’s more than enough for me tonight, dearest,” I said, taking a bite and chewing slowly, as I’d learned to do when rations were scarce.

“We’ll see if there are any camps along the route tomorrow. I can don my uniform and use my real papers to see what I can get for us.” He’d finished his meal, eating slowly, but the hunger hadn’t dissipated from his eyes. “This isn’t all bleak, though. Close your eyes—I have a treat for us.”

“Children, are we? Isn’t this when the class bully pelts the smart girl with a mud pie?”

“You sound as though you might have some experience with that. If I ever find the bastards who taunted you, I’ll thrash them until their mothers cry. Now close your eyes and open your mouth.”

I felt him drop a firm square onto my tongue. I kept my eyes shut as the chocolate dissolved into cream and sugar laced with earthy cocoa on my tongue.

“A lieutenant had a soft spot for an officer escorting his hero wife home,” Vanya explained as I emerged from my reverie.

“A blessing on his family,” I said.

“A whole host of them. There’s nothing that gives me as much pleasure as seeing you happy, my love.”

He lounged on the makeshift bed in the back of the truck and motioned for me to lie out beside him. The aching in my side subsided as I lay prostrate, relieving the pressure it had been under all day.

“You’re hurting,” Vanya said. “I should have had Osin smuggle us some morphine.”

“The last thing you need on your hands is me in a drug-addled stupor,” I said with more venom than I intended. I didn’t mention the thousands of other injured soldiers who needed the medicine more than I. With the thought of my sisters to the southwest, I knew I wasn’t deserving of any such escape from my pain.

With no chemical relief available, I did what I could to ease the ache by focusing my eyes on the stars that glinted, constant and true, through the dirt-splattered plastic window in the back of the canvas bedcover, and on the more immediate comfort of the sound of my husband’s steady heartbeat below my ear.