Among the Red Stars Page 11

  The growing certainty that we won’t see each other again for a very long time and the growing suspicion that we might not ever see each other again emboldens me to say things I would never tell you to your face. Like how beautiful you are. You’re going to say I’m remembering wrong, but I can still picture your face perfectly. The brightness in your eyes and the color in your cheeks when you’ve just finished flying. That image kept me going in the days after I lost Rudenko, when everything seemed pointless.

  It was hard for me to accept that, in the eyes of the Red Army, Rudenko was insignificant and his death meant nothing. But Pashkevich simply assigned Vakhromov to carry the battery pack and that was all.

  Over here, our supply lines have finally caught up with us. At last we have enough to eat, and hot meals, too! We’re getting mysterious British food in unmarked tins, but we couldn’t care less what it is as long as it’s edible. The food put us all in good spirits, even Pashkevich, who demonstrated how to drink tea the old-fashioned way with a sugar cube between his teeth.

  With full stomachs and a new supply of ammunition, we pushed to the other side of the still-frozen reservoir. For once, we actually won a fight. We drove off the Germans and claimed their campsite with only a few casualties. One of them was our commissar. He was shot in the face. I won’t miss him much, but it was an ugly way to die and I don’t think he deserved it.

  Around the rough log barracks we found rows of hastily dug graves, graves of men defeated by General Winter. “By the power of God,” Rudenko would have said. It feels odd occupying their old barracks, even though they’re warmer and cleaner than ours were. Vakhromov says he feels like the dead Germans’ ghosts are watching us. But for me, being here brings back memories of the barracks in Stakhanovo. Do you remember? I was only three or four when they burned down. The way my parents tell it, the coking ovens were built first, but the construction crews never got around to building the rest of the town. A one-room apartment sharing a bathroom with the entire floor felt like luxury after that.

  Along with our rations we got a special treat: good Russian apples, shriveled and wrinkly, but apples nonetheless. I ate mine immediately. Pashkevich hoarded his for later. But he soon regretted his choice. The next morning he threw his pack aside in a fury and yelled, “Which one of you stole my apple?”

  Of course everyone denied it. That only made him angrier. He had everyone searched, which devolved into confusion as three people had apples that they claimed were their own and nobody could remember who else had eaten his and who hadn’t.

  Going through our supplies, we discovered that Pashkevich’s apple wasn’t the only thing missing. One man lost a tin of milk. Vakhromov lost the most: a piece of bread, two tins of unspecified British meat, and, worst of all, his entire packet of sugar cubes. Just what we needed, as if we weren’t stressed enough already: a reason not to trust each other. We’d starved together, shared the last slimy beets salvaged from the despoiled fields, but now that we had all the food we needed, someone had gotten greedy.

  When we had worn ourselves out with accusations and finger-pointing, cooler heads observed that, since we hadn’t found the stolen items anywhere around the barracks, most likely the thief was an outsider. Pashkevich switched from berating us for stealing to berating us for keeping such a lax watch that some fascist deserter could sneak into the middle of our camp and rob us.

  That evening, Vakhromov and I were at work patching cracks in the walls of the barracks. I’d left my half-full mug of tea on the windowsill along with my sugar cubes. A moment later Vakhromov was lunging through the open window and grabbing someone by the collar. There was a high-pitched scream and a light green hiss as hot tea hit the snow and then Vakhromov pulled the thief in through the window and it wasn’t a fascist deserter at all.

  It was a boy. A skinny, untidy child with a very dirty face. He was dressed in a ragged quilted coat fastened with twine because it had lost all its buttons. He had four permanent front teeth but was missing a couple of back teeth, which I noticed because he was howling like a wild animal. Vakhromov let go, sat down cross-legged on the floor, and said, “You can stop that. We’re not having an air raid.”

  The boy shut his mouth and looked up at us, wide-eyed and trembling. He crawled backward into the corner of the barracks. When his back hit the wooden wall, his eyes darted to the left and right, looking for a way to escape.

  Vakhromov said, “I won’t hurt you, I promise. Look, I don’t have any weapons.” He held out his callused hands, palms up. “My name is Vakhromov. Why don’t you tell me yours?”

  “Petya,” whispered the boy, his voice a faint trace of cyan.

  “Petya, it makes me sad when a little boy doesn’t know any better than to take things that are not his. Did you take some of our food?”

  Petya adamantly shook his head.

  Vakhromov asked if he wanted to be a Young Pioneer when he was older.

  Petya nodded.

  “Young Pioneers must be good boys and girls and they mustn’t lie. If they do something wrong, they admit it and say they’re sorry. Now, did you take those things?”

  A pause. Finally Petya gave his head the slightest nod.

  Vakhromov told him, “Admitting that is very brave of you.”

  About then Pashkevich arrived. He was unimpressed. “An eight-year-old managed to sneak past all of you?”

  Vakhromov said, “Petya, this is Sergeant Pashkevich. It was his apple that you took and he’s angry because he only had one. Why don’t you apologize to him?”

  Petya silently studied his rope-soled shoes.

  “Later, then,” said Vakhromov. “But you couldn’t have eaten all that food at once. Do you still have some of it?” At Petya’s nod, he said, “I’ll tell you what. If you show me where you hid it, I’ll scrounge you up a proper hot dinner.”

  Petya put away a bowl of our squad’s signature watery cabbage soup with a speed that put even us half-starved soldiers to shame while Vakhromov tried to figure out where he had come from. When he offered to take Petya home to his parents, the boy’s brow trembled and he clung to Vakhromov’s waist.

  Vakhromov asked his superior officer if they could have a word alone, so they stepped outside. I was expecting a loud exclamation of “No! Absolutely not!” from Pashkevich, but none came. They came back in and Vakhromov told the little boy, “You shouldn’t be out here all by yourself. I think you ought to come with us.”

  Later I asked Pashkevich about it. I told him, “I thought you didn’t like children.”

  He grunted. “You think there weren’t any kids in Minsk?”

  His expression did not invite any questions as to what that meant.

  He added, “He needs someone to take care of him and Vakhromov needs someone to take care of. This’ll keep them both out of trouble. But if there’s ever another shipment of apples, that kid is not getting any of them.”

  Yours,

  Pasha

  12 March 1942

  Dear Pasha,

  Yes, I remember the barracks and the fire. Do not mention them again.

  If your last letter was insinuating that I should send a picture, you’re overestimating how attractive I look. I’ve got a terrible secret for you: I’ve kept my hair short. It’s easier to manage. You wouldn’t call me beautiful if you saw me in my shapeless uniform with my wind-chapped face and my eyes red from lack of sleep.

  Engels is finally showing the first signs of spring. The airfield is no longer covered in slick black ice. Wherever there are patches of bare earth, opportunistic early wildflowers are popping up. Lilya keeps bouquets in the cockpit of her plane. Neither Kazarinova is amused by this!

  Yesterday I remembered that I had promised to report to Major Raskova about Iskra, so I got up early, which is late for people on a normal schedule, and went to find her. She’s usually the last person up, but this time there was no light on in her office. Captain Kazarinova, who was locking the door of her own office down the hall, told me briskly,
“She isn’t here, Koroleva. She told me she was going into the city, meeting with some Party officials about getting better planes for the day bombers. She won’t be back for another few hours.”

  But then Zhenechka caught up with me. She told me quietly, “I know where Marina Raskova is.”

  “Captain Kazarinova says she’s not here,” I said.

  “And Militsa Kazarinova knows everything that goes on in Engels?” replied Zhenechka. She led me off to a part of the base where I’d never gone.

  As we were winding through the halls, I heard something I’ve never heard here before: Someone playing piano. I didn’t even know there was a piano here. It was coming from a little side room. Zhenechka cautiously opened the door and we peered through, and there I found Raskova, still in uniform, playing something beautiful that I didn’t recognize but you might have. We slipped into the room and sat down against the wall, hugging our knees. Iskra and some of the other girls were already there.

  Raskova must have noticed us, but she kept playing, her tapered fingers moving smoothly across the keys. I realized for the first time how tired she looked. She’s poured her blood, sweat, and tears into Aviation Group 122 and it’s beginning to show. When she finished the piece, she looked at us sadly and said, “Such dear girls. How can I send you off to be killed?”

  I ventured, “We’ll do our best not to be.”

  Raskova smiled. She began playing again while we listened. Iskra slid close to me and put her head on my shoulder. I have never felt as close to anyone as I felt to those other girls at that moment.

  Yours,

  Valka

  SIXTEEN

  24 May 1942

  Dear Pasha,

  Guess where I’m writing from? That’s right—the front! You are now speaking to Junior Lieutenant Valentina Sergeevna Koroleva, pilot of the 588th Night Bomber Squadron.

  Leaving Engels was bittersweet. We’re becoming real combat pilots at last. But we’re also saying good-bye to our friends in the other regiments, which has been all the more difficult knowing that some of us won’t return. Lilya says this isn’t the last I’ll see of her: she promises she’ll be on the front page of the paper soon.

  Major Raskova has left us too. It’s funny how the hero I once worshipped from afar became someone I can’t imagine life without, but today, after escorting us to our new base in the village of Trud Gornyaka, she passed us off into the hands of Major Bershanskaya. The girls are not sure about this new commander. She’s not the sort of person you immediately trust. She doesn’t talk much and she has a way of squinting into the distance as though she’s somewhere else. Plus she has no more combat experience than the rest of us. Captain Kazarinova was dead set against her, but I figure that’s a plus.

  While we were packing, I caught Iskra very carefully wrapping up an aeronavigation book I’d never seen before. I asked her where she got it, but she wouldn’t tell. She didn’t bring it from home—that much I know. I bet one of the instructors gave it to her. Teacher’s pet. She’s probably the only member of Aviation Group 122 who owns a textbook.

  I touched Number 41’s propeller and spat before takeoff. Old habits die hard. We flew in formation as a regiment for the first time. It was exhilarating to see those sets of double-decker wings to my left and right, above and below, and to be in the middle, among all those red stars. We felt like a swarm of bees off to sting the fascists. Twenty of those five-cylinder engines all going at once sounded like a swarm of bees, too. Engels and Saratov, clinging to a bend in the dark ribbon of the Volga, vanished behind us.

  As we neared our new aerodrome, we heard a roar, and the black silhouettes of a squadron of fighters came cutting through the clouds. Iskra said, “That’ll be our escort!” But they didn’t act like an escort. They circled us, then dived straight through the middle of our formation. One passed so close that I could feel Number 41 buffeting from the wind. I couldn’t hear any gunfire, but how could I hear anything over all the engine noise? We had been warned that there were enemy aircraft in the area.

  “We’re under attack!” I yelled in a surge of panic, pulling our plane into a sharp turn and breaking away from the group in the sky slug’s best approximation of a hurry. The other bombers were also scattering. The fighters pulled back to a safe distance. And then we passed through a patch of sun and it picked out the bright and unmistakable red stars on the fighters’ wingtips.

  It was a test. And we had failed miserably.

  Humbled, we managed to reassemble and come in for an untidy landing in the rutted potato field that serves as our new aerodrome. As we formed up, heads hanging with shame and humiliation, the male pilots who had gathered out of curiosity laughed and jeered, “Can’t you tell a star from a swastika?”

  Raskova and Bershanskaya were waiting for us. Bershanskaya sighed and shook her head. Raskova said, “That could have gone better.”

  Unfortunately, that was when we met our division commander.

  At first he didn’t say a word, just stalked around us with his face set in a deep-creased frown, his commissar in tow, examining our aircraft and not even glancing at us. Finally he approached Bershanskaya and said, “You’re in command of these little princesses?”

  She said that she was.

  He asked, “Are they all terrified of their own escorts, or only some of them?”

  She looked helplessly up at her new superior.

  Raskova stepped in. “I had hoped that they would react better to that exercise. But they’ve never been in combat, and we can’t expect perfection right away. They’re good airwomen, though. I know they’ll perform to your satisfaction.”

  He said, “I would be satisfied if I was given another regiment of real night bombers, not girls in U-2s. But I’ve been told that I’m stuck with you.”

  Unable to get rid of us, he punished us. He assigned us two more weeks of training before he would allow anyone, even our commander, to fly an operational mission. And even then, we’re on probation. “I can’t cross Raskova, but that doesn’t mean I have to put up with you,” he told Bershanskaya when Raskova had left. “Give me the slightest reason to disband you and I will.”

  I would have liked to give him a piece of my mind or to watch Iskra expound to him about Marxist gender theory until he wept with boredom and despair, but apparently I’ve learned self-control after all, because I resisted.

  Bomber pilots are all about objectives. Destroy this bridge. Take out that ammunition dump. So I set myself this objective: We will prove that we can fly and fight as well as any male regiment. No. We’ll prove that we’re the best damn bomber regiment the Red Army has ever seen! And Colonel Dmitry Dmitrievich Popov will admit it.

  There are only two nice parts about our arrival at the front. One is that Iskra and I have put several hundred kilometers between us and the Kazarinovas, and the other is the village of Trud Gornyaka. It’s a cluster of a few dozen log cottages surrounded by collective farms. It was bombed once before the division arrived, but the villagers have repaired their homes and replanted their fields as best they can. We were expecting dugouts, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover that we’re being put up in the villagers’ houses.

  Iskra and I are staying in a split-log cottage with a widowed peasant named Anna Alexandrovna. Faded rugs cover the walls of its single room. There’s no room for a bed, but the big brick oven has a platform on top with blankets piled on it. Anna Alexandrovna told us that we can sleep there during the day and she’ll sleep there at night, and if we ever need to sleep during the night, why, we’ll all pile on there together as cozy as anything and it will be almost like having her own daughters home.

  Right now we’re sitting on the oven with our slipper-clad feet dangling over the edge, and we’re holding sweating glasses of cloudy bitter-sharp kvass made with raisins. It’s difficult to believe that we could be fighting and killing in a matter of days.

  Yours,

  Valka

  5 June 1942

  Dear Junior Lie
utenant Valyushka,

  I am so proud of you! You’re an officer now—if we crossed paths, I’d have to salute you and stand at attention. So would Pashkevich. Wouldn’t that grind his gears? Outranked by a woman.

  Something is going around at our camp. Everyone is sick. Maybe it’s the food, maybe the reservoir water, maybe the bird-sized mosquitoes that pester us now that it’s warm. I’ll spare you the details, but Pashkevich is even more grumpy than usual when he has to visit the trench behind the camp every ten minutes.

  I met an old friend for the first time today. Isn’t that a funny thing to say? The division chief of staff sent a message asking to borrow me, saying that the radio operator in one of the other regiments had requested my help. So I went, trying to ignore Pashkevich’s remarks questioning what I could possibly be good for.

  I’d never seen the other radio operator before in my life, but he threw open his arms and said, “If it isn’t Pasha from the ass end of the Urals!”

  At the sound of his light orange voice, I knew him. It was my radio friend, the football fan who never encrypts his messages. We hugged like we’d known each other our whole lives. He showed me his problem. His radio had gone on the fritz and he remembered that I knew how electronics worked.

  “Why don’t you get the radio technician?” I asked.

  “He ate it last month. Funny story: He wasn’t even shot or anything. He got diptheria.”

  I didn’t think that was funny at all.

  The problem turned out to be simple. The insulation had frayed off a wire and it shorted out. He sighed with relief as I replaced it. “At least it’s only a wire! If it was a vacuum tube, I’d be flat out of luck. You’d have to sell your firstborn child to get a vacuum tube these days.”

  That got me thinking. Was it possible to fix one of these field radios if the vacuum tube broke? My radio at home doesn’t have a vacuum tube, just a pencil and a razor blade. I’ll have to experiment.

  Petya was supposed to be our squad’s little secret, but word got out to the other squads, then the other platoons, then the other companies, and soon the whole regiment knew. A child! A reminder that once we had hoped to start families of our own, ages ago when everyone wasn’t trying to kill each other. I was sure we’d catch hell from our new commissar when he arrived. But he’s fond of children. He adopted his little niece after his brother was killed in combat.