“I can’t protect you from that,” Nina said. The van could come for anyone, for the smallest of reasons or no reason at all. “The van can’t come for you in the air, Galya, so what do you fear up here?”
“Those new German shells, the ones with red and green and white tracers. When they split into dozens of little projectiles in the dark, I think of flowers . . .” Galya shuddered.
“Well, if we see flowers and you freeze, I’ll get you out of it,” Nina promised. “We stall out over water again, you’ll get me out of it. In the meantime, you can fly home.”
Galina brightened. They wobbled home, and it wasn’t till they returned that they learned another U-2 had gone down in the sea, in the same low-rolling overhang of cloud.
Sixteen women died in all, over that summer and fall. Nina hoped all this territory was worth it, this unseen ground they were clawing back from the Germans. She couldn’t even see the gains they were dying for, just that it was soaked in blood.
“Who are these new girls?” Yelena asked in bewilderment when she came back from Novorossiysk in October, looking around the barracks. “They’re so young!”
“New arrivals.” Girl volunteers to the front, every one of them round-eyed at the sight of the gaunt female pilots in their bulky overalls, more and more of which were pinned with Orders of the Red Banner and Orders of the Red Star. Nina and Yelena both had one of each now, and there were whispers that the first set of HSUs were going to be passed down—the gold stars of Hero of the Soviet Union, highest decoration in the Motherland.
“My pilot sleeps with a razor under her pillow and she knows Comrade Stalin,” Nina overheard Galina bragging to one of the new recruits, who looked both terrified and impressed, and Nina would have laughed herself sick if she hadn’t been already sick with worry over Yelena.
“You look terrible,” she said frankly.
“That’s a nice thing to tell a girl.” Yelena made a face, teasing. She was skin and bone, her complexion ashy. The autumn dawn was icy, but cold was their friend; no one now lingered on the airfield when the night’s flying was done. Everyone had retreated to the dugout, warming hands at the oil-drum fire, and Nina and Yelena drifted back out to the Rusalka, lying entwined under the wing. Always the Rusalka, never Nina’s new nameless U-2. She was a nice plane, tough and reliable, but she wasn’t their plane.
“Was it bad, flying over Novorossiysk?” Nina persisted, turning over so they lay nose to nose. Because Yelena’s hands had a fine tremor they hadn’t had two months ago.
“Not so bad. I heard things got rough here—”
“Nothing difficult,” Nina said.
They smiled at each other. Both lying, Nina knew. What else do we lie to each other about? she thought, but pushed that away.
“The war will be done soon.” Yelena sounded more certain than she had in the summertime. “And then we’ll have it.”
“What?”
“Us together in Moscow. I picture it whenever I need something to keep me on course. Don’t you?” She nudged Nina. “Imagine us, sleeping at night again rather than during the day, chasing babies around the floor after breakfast . . .”
“Do I have to tell you how babies happen, Miss Moscow Goody? Because if you think anything we do is going to help on that front—” Tickling Yelena between the breasts.
Yelena laughed, swatting her hand away. “There’ll be so many orphans after the war who need mothers. Don’t you want children?” she asked as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
No, Nina thought. “I never thought about it,” she hedged.
“I know what you’re thinking—”
I doubt it.
“—you’re thinking we won’t be able to hide things out in real life. Hide this.” A little swirling gesture encompassing the two of them, their private world under the Rusalka’s wing. “But we can, believe me. It’s not like when men go together, people being suspicious. There will be so many widows living together after the war, pooling supplies and pensions—as long as we’re raising children for the Motherland and we each have a story about a fiancé who died in the war, no one will look at us twice for sharing an apartment. We could be civil pilots, or teach aviation.”
Her voice was eager, her cheeks pink. She’d been thinking about this a long time, Nina realized with a sinking stomach.
“It won’t be like how we grew up, Ninochka—shortages, queuing for fuel, never being able to get shoes. The world’s going to be different after the war, Moscow’s going to be different—”
Worse, Nina thought. After years of starvation and war, it’s going to be worse.
“—and we’re not just air club fliers anymore. We’re decorated officers of Marina Raskova’s eaglets. You’ve met Comrade Stalin.” That damned awe in Yelena’s voice again. “We’ll have no shortage of recommendations when we apply to join the Party, you’ll see. Then we can pull strings for an apartment we don’t have to share with three other families, get plush jobs at the Zhukovsky Academy or anywhere we like.”
She was gabbling now, all hope. Such good, normal, usual things to want. Probably most of the women in the regiment cherished similar dreams for after this war was done.
“It’s not too much to want, Ninochka. You, me, a home, a baby or two, a job flying civil routes instead of bombing runs.” Yelena leaned forward, brushed her lips over Nina’s. “All we have to do is survive the war, and we can have it.”
“Maybe it isn’t too much to want,” Nina said. “But what if I want something else?”
“What?” Yelena smoothed her cheek. “Do you not want to live in Moscow? We don’t have to, I know you don’t like it—”
I don’t like Moscow, or Irkutsk, or the Old Man, Nina thought. I’ve come thousands of kilometers across Russia, and I haven’t seen any part of it I liked except the skies. She was happy flying over it, because then she didn’t have to look at it: a land of implacable crowds and draped bunting, bread queues and the eternal droning of loudspeakers, ruled over by a wolf.
When the war is over, what do you want? Yelena was still waiting for her answer. Such a simple question, surely the simplest question of all for soldiers at war. Everyone dreamed of what came after the bloodshed was done. Everyone, apparently, but Nina, who could honestly say she’d never given it a single thought. Who had never thought at all beyond the present, beyond a night spent flying and a morning spent kissing Yelena. Who would take this strange, perilous, nighttime life in the regiment over any other in the world, even with all its griefs and its terrors.
What do I want, Yelenushka? Nina thought, looking at her lover’s eager smile. I want to fly missions, hunt Germans, and love you. And the only thing on both your list and mine is you.
Chapter 31
Jordan
June 1950
Boston
You have no desire at all to marry Garrett Byrne. Anneliese’s wry comment still reverberated even as Jordan tried to busy herself behind the shop counter.
Of course I want to marry Garrett, she told herself. I’ve got a half-carat’s worth of sparkle on my left hand proving how much I want to marry him.