Daughters of the Night Sky(24)
Taisiya, as was her custom, was making friends with all the other women, learning who were the viable contenders and who was likely to be sent home. I had done my share of small talk, though, and sought the freedom of the streets, subdued by the great crowds of gathering troops. It wasn’t the safest decision I’d made, but who knew when I would have the chance to see the city again or what would be left of it when I did? Taisiya agreed to explain my absence as an urgent errand in the unlikely event my departure was noticed.
I grabbed Papa’s violin and wandered the streets of Moscow until I found the university. It had been more than a decade since I had seen the crumbling brick buildings that my father had so loved. They were full of his history—that which he lived, and that which he taught—and I wanted to be near them, just for a few hours before I left for training or returned to Miass. I removed the instrument, the finish faded so that only hints of the lovely russet color remained. I sat on the steps in front of the building where I was reasonably certain Papa had done the bulk of his teaching, and played his favorite tunes.
I paid no heed to the cold stone steps that chilled my spine, and very little to the scant crowd that buzzed about the campus that seemed unnaturally, uncomfortably quiet. I remembered the buildings humming with life and passion from both instructors and pupils. The war had claimed most of the youth and some of the staff; most of the rest had been evacuated to continue their studies in Turkmenistan. The grounds had taken on an abandoned feel—just as I imagined the old mining towns in the north looked like when the supply of ore was depleted. The conditions weren’t much different. The university had been stripped of its most precious commodity and was now left a haunted ruin.
A few passersby stopped to listen, some offering polite applause between songs. I smiled for them on occasion but mostly lost myself in Papa’s music. I’m not sure how long I played; it could have been an hour or three. By the time I placed the instrument back in its case, my fingers were numb from the exertion. But for a short time I felt just a little closer to my father and the life that should have been.
It was three days later that the rosters for the female regiments were posted in our makeshift barracks. Against all odds, Taisiya and I were both assigned to the 122nd Aviation Group, where we would presumably serve out the duration of the war.
“I knew they’d keep us,” Taisiya said, gripping me in a hug after we cleared the throng of pilots straining to see if they had been assigned.
“Easy to say so now that we have our answer,” I said, returning the hug, relief pulling the corners of my lips upward. “But we seemed to have more training than most. I’m hoping that means I’ll get a plane of my own.”
Taisiya narrowed her eyes for a moment. “Not just training—military training. That’s worth months, if not years, of civil experience,” she said, her face rapidly turning somber. She’d spent the past three days performing her own interviews on any recruit who would speak with her. She knew the rest of our division as well as Major Orlova by now. “But I’m glad it’s worked out for both of us. Serving without you, or being sent home while you got to serve, would have been awful.”
The thought of being stationed away from her caused my breathing to grow shallow. I’d considered being sent back while Taisiya got selected—she had more hours as a pilot than I did—but never the possibility that I would be placed in a regiment without her.
We reported to the lieutenant, the wheezy one who had assisted Orlova in interviews, for a short briefing, which concluded with instructions to relocate to the regular barracks on the other end of the grounds. By the time he dismissed us, the women who hadn’t been chosen for duty were already gone.
“Orlova made good choices with the recruits,” Taisiya said, stowing her things in her duffel as we prepared to move to the training barracks. There wasn’t a trace of self-satisfaction in her voice. “A few times I think she favored experience over temperament more than I might have done, but there were a lot of evenly matched candidates. She had to make more than a few tough calls.”
“That’s good,” I said. Taisiya wouldn’t have offered her praise lightly. “Do you like them?”
Taisiya looked up from her bag with knitted brows. “I suppose they all seem nice enough. Some had heads a few sizes too big for their helmets; some weren’t particularly anxious to chat. Why does it matter?”
“We’ll be living and fighting with these women for no one knows how long. It would be nice to get along,” I said, folding my uniform blouse around the tiny frame that encased the one photo of Vanya I brought with me. That there was a picture of Matvei in the depths of practical Taisiya’s duffel was a marvel to me at times. I pictured her weighing the cost of the extra few grams of the picture in her pack against the benefit of keeping his likeness close. I was glad, for once, to see sentiment win.
“Well, camaraderie is always important,” Taisiya conceded, zipping her bag with one fluid movement.
“I wish we could have had the chance to wish the others well.” I hoisted my duffel on my shoulder, thinking of the women who had suffered bitter disappointment that afternoon. Some would stay and find ways to make themselves useful on the ground—digging trenches, sewing uniforms, building tanks and ammunition—but many would be returning home on the next trains out of the city.