“Revolutions talk big about women being the same as men,” Nina said. “Now when you ask permission to join up, they tell you to go be a nurse.”
“There’s your trouble. Asking.” Her father leaned toward her, and Nina smelled the feral reek of his breath. “There’ll be a chance, Nina Borisovna. Don’t ask, when you see it. Just fucking take it.”
“That shows a calculated antisocial disdain for the collectivist principle.” Nina quoted the kind of rubbish Tania was always parroting. “Antithetical to the principles of proletarian life.”
“Fuck proletarian life.”
Despite herself, Nina winced. “Keep saying things like that on a city street and you’ll be in trouble, you crazy bastard. You’ll end up with a bullet in your ear.”
“No, because I’m a Markov. Trouble always finds us, but we eat trouble alive.” Her father rummaged in his pack, tossing her something soft and bulky. Nina caught it, surprised. A lake-seal pelt, and it was a beauty—steely gray with a sheen like new ice, soft as snow. “Make a new cap if you’re going to go fly fighters,” he said, twitching an eyebrow at her old rabbit-fur cap. “That one looks like shit.”
Nina smiled. “Thank you, Papa.”
He shouldered his pack. “Don’t come back to the lake,” he said in farewell. “Next time I get a skinful of vodka I’ll drown you for good, little rusalka.”
“Or I’ll cut your throat this time and not your hand.”
“Either way.” He nodded at the razor’s edge, still showing between her fingers. “Kill a German for me with that.”
She waited till he was out of sight, that tall shaggy form sliding into the crowd as noiselessly as he vanished into the taiga around the Old Man. Will I ever see you again? she wondered, and somehow thought not. There was some relief in the thought, some regret, some pleasure. No need to rank one over the other.
She was sitting cross-legged on her bed that night, cutting carefully into the seal pelt to fashion herself a new cap, when Tania turned on the radio. “They’re broadcasting a women’s antifascist meeting in Moscow.” Nina barely listened, cutting away at the sealskin. A proper flying cap with flaps to tie down over the ears, just the thing for open-cockpit flights.
“. . . The Soviet woman is the hundreds of drivers, tractor operators, and pilots who are ready at any moment to sit down in a combat machine and plunge into battle.”
Nina paused. “Who’s that?”
“Marina Raskova,” Tania said. Nina glanced at the cutout newspaper photograph on her mirror. The woman on the right, dark hair, sparkling eyed, very easy and capable in front of her Tupolev ANT-37. Nina had devoured every word about Raskova, but never heard her speak. Her voice came through the radio warmly intimate, clear as crystal. Nina would have followed that voice off a cliff.
“Dear sisters!” Marina Raskova cried. “The hour has come for harsh retribution! Stand in the ranks of the warriors for freedom!”
Tell me how, Nina thought.
THE ANSWER CAME, not that night but in a matter of weeks, the day Soviet troops were driven back to the Mozhaisk Line only eighty kilometers from Moscow. The day another piece of news swept over the air club: Comrade Stalin had ordered the formation of three regiments to be trained for combat aviation under Marina Raskova, Hero of the Soviet Union.
Three regiments of women.
“The local Komsomols have been asked to screen and interview volunteers,” Nina heard a fellow pilot saying. “I’ve submitted all my paperwork already. Only the best recruits will be sent to Moscow—”
How can I make them choose me? Nina thought. A little barbarian from the taiga with patched-together schooling and a record of individualism, when women everywhere would be clamoring to join—women with university backgrounds, impeccable records, Party connections.
There’ll be a chance, Nina Borisovna, her father had said. Don’t ask, when you see it. Just fucking take it.
She didn’t bother filling out paperwork. Instead she went home to collect her essentials—passport, Komsomol membership card, certificates for completing pilot training and glider training—then crammed a few clothes into a bag, stuffed her hair into her new sealskin cap, and went running under an iron October sky for the train station. She threw every ruble she had onto the counter and said, “One way. Moscow.”
Chapter 10
Jordan
May 1946
Boston
The day after Jordan’s father escorted Anneliese off on their honeymoon, Jordan took Ruth to the Public Garden. Nothing like ice cream and a swan boat ride to get a little girl smiling . . . and talking.
“Chocolate or strawberry?” Ruth chewed her lip in indecision. “Both,” Jordan decided. “You deserve it.” That got a shy smile from Ruth, who was still hanging on to Taro’s leash like a safety harness, but who seemed to be unfolding into something like trust.
Which you’re taking advantage of, Jordan thought grimly, but pushed that aside. People aren’t obliged to drag out their old hurts or dirty laundry just because of your need to know, her father had told her not long ago, but he was off on his honeymoon with a woman who had carried a swastika down the aisle, and Jordan’s need to know was burning her up.
Licking their ice creams, Jordan and Ruth wandered down to the duck pond, Taro wagging between them. The water reflected the summer tourists throwing bread down from the bridge, but for once Jordan had no impulse to capture the moment on film. “See that flicker, Ruth? That’s a dragonfly. Did you see dragonflies at the lake in Altaussee?” Ruth looked puzzled. “That was where you were, wasn’t it? Before you came here.”
Nod.
“What else do you remember, cricket? I’d like to know more about you, now that you’re my sister.” Squeezing Ruth’s hand. “What do you remember before coming to Boston?”
“The lake,” Ruth said in her soft voice. Her trace of a German accent was already fading. With her blond braids and blue jumper, she could have been any little American girl. “Seeing the lake every day through the window.”
“Every day?” Anneliese hadn’t said they were in Altaussee very long. “How many days?”
Ruth shrugged.
“Do you remember your father? How he died?”
“Mama said he went east.”
“Where east?”
Another shrug.
“What else do you remember?” Jordan asked as gently as she knew how.
“The violin,” Ruth said even more softly. “Mama playing.”
Jordan blinked. “But she doesn’t play the violin.”
“She did.” Ruth’s eyebrows pulled together, and she reached for Taro’s soft back. “She did!”
“I believe you, Ruthie—”
“She did,” Ruth said fiercely. “She played for me.”
Never had Anneliese said she could play an instrument. She never asked to turn on the radio to listen to music either. And she didn’t own any violin—Jordan had seen her things carried in to be unpacked after the honeymoon, and there was no instrument case. Maybe she had to sell it?
Jordan looked down at Ruth. “Your mama said there was an incident by the lake in Altaussee. A refugee woman who, um, wasn’t very nice to you both.”