Daughters of the Night Sky(3)
“Talk to him, Mama. I’m sure Comrade Dokorov will listen to you,” I said, wishing the words would make it so. If Papa were alive, the grimy old man that ran the schoolhouse would have to listen. Here no one cared that she had been the wife of a celebrated professor; they only knew her as a simple laundress with an extra mouth to feed. As though the life we’d had in Moscow never existed. The voice of a washerwoman carried little weight. I could see that burden, among others, in the dark circles under her weary eyes. I cleared the table and handed her a teapot brimming with boiling water.
“Play for me, Katinka,” Mama said, adding tea leaves to the pot from her little tin. “It’s been too long.”
I went to my little room and fetched Papa’s violin, which I kept propped on the table next to my bed. It was no grand instrument. Old when it had come to him, its russet varnish was fading to a tawny yellow at the edges and the middle, and the strings were well beyond the need for replacement. I handled the instrument as though it were made of paper-thin glass and played just as gently. If a string broke, it would remain so.
I scurried back to the table and pulled my chair out to the center of the room. I placed the violin under my chin and touched the bow to the strings. I played one of the folk tunes Papa had loved. Sweet, but with a hint of melancholy, like the violin itself. Like much of our folk music.
Papa was barely proficient as a musician, but Mama and I loved to listen to him play simple tunes after dinner. He had begun to teach me before he was killed, and Mama had taught me to read music. I had no real talent, either, but my playing made Mama smile when little else did.
I used to tell Papa that Russia was too cold for too much of the year for anyone to be truly happy. “There is truth to that, my Katinka. And music, if nothing else, must be true if it is to be beautiful.”
I plagued Mama all summer until courses resumed, and in an act of utter capitulation, she spoke to Oleg Dokorov. The schoolteacher was a tall man, with a long, pointed nose. His greasy black hair and yellowed teeth repulsed me, but Mama insisted that I always treat him with the respect his position commanded. Mama addressed him firmly, but respectfully, in front of the entire class before lessons began on the first day of school. I stood a pace behind her, my clasped hands shaking behind my back. If he refused her, I would never fly. Most of my classmates were boys, as many families in the area still chose to teach their daughters at home. This largely meant the girls were taught enough reading and arithmetic to do the marketing and keep the family accounts in order, and little else. In Moscow, girls had to go to school along with the boys, but no one paid attention to us here. The presence of a handful of girls was accepted because people assumed our mothers needed a place for us to stay while they worked. It wasn’t entirely untrue.
“Comrade Dokorov, I insist you provide my daughter with the same lessons as you give the boys,” Mama said, placing my primer from the previous year with a thud on his polished desk. “I have no wish for my daughter to be reading these fairy stories when she should be learning geometry and physics.” She stood tall and wore her best dress, which was no high compliment to the worn frock.
“Comrade Ivanova,” he replied, “you have not had training in education. I must insist that you leave the classroom and let me begin the school year without further disruption.” He stood to his full height, as though to intimidate Mama into hasty retreat to the laundry. He clearly had never had extensive dealings with my mother.
“I’m afraid you misunderstand me. This was not a request. I may not be a trained teacher, but I am an educated woman. My husband, a loyal and true patriot of this country and decorated hero of the European War, was an honored professor. I will not see his daughter given a second-rate education by the likes of you. You will teach my daughter, and the rest of the girls, the same material as the boys, or I will speak to the party officials. Do I make myself plain?”
“I hardly think it’s appropriate—”
“But Comrade Stalin does, Comrade Dokorov. Your quarrel is with him, not with me. Nor is it with my daughter or any other member of this class. Know that I am a woman who makes good on her promises. Good day.”
My mother turned heel and exited the classroom without a word to me. I was grateful, at least, that she hadn’t given me a parting kiss or any sort of endearment. I would never have lived down the shame. It wasn’t her usual practice, anyway.
“Well, Ekaterina Timofeyevna. It seems your mother wants you educated like the boys. Is that right?” His lips curled into a sneer around his putrid, yellow teeth as he addressed me with mock formality. I wasn’t aware he’d even known my father’s name to address me by my patronymic.
“Yes, Comrade Dokorov. I wish to be a pilot. For this, Mama says I will need a proper education.” I tried to summon my mother’s moxie and succeeded in not running from the room in tears. It was victory enough.
“She is not wrong about that. But it is hardly a profession for a woman. Russia needs women to build families. Aviation is a man’s field.” He spoke as though he made the final pronouncement on my career path. The matter dismissed in his mind, he placed my antiquated primer back on my desk and returned to the blackboard.
“I disagree.” My tone was hardly louder than a whisper, but the boys on either side of me sucked in their breath. This would mean the strap, if I were lucky.