Daughters of the Night Sky(62)

CHAPTER 19


August 1943, outside Stalingrad

The grounds surrounding the convalescent hospital weren’t as picturesque as the rugged fields outside the academy in Chelyabinsk, but the August light was such that Vanya couldn’t help but lose himself in his paints. He had me posed on the lawn behind the crumbling building, lounged on a battered old chaise in such a way that my side wasn’t irritated by long sessions lying still. My uniform didn’t lend the same grace to the picture as my turquoise dress, but I was happy enough to have it committed to canvas.

“I worried about running out of paints, but canvases have been so few that I needn’t have worried,” he said, his brow furrowing momentarily, his eyes staring somewhere over my right shoulder. The cast of light perhaps? “I shouldn’t have bothered hauling my paint case with me, but it seemed wrong to leave it behind.”

“I haul Papa’s violin with me everywhere I go,” I said. “It gives me comfort to have it near, even if I don’t get to play it often. I expect it’s the same for your paints.”

“Probably,” he said, eyes fixed on the canvas. “There hasn’t been much worth painting, but it’s nice to know I could.”

We sat wordlessly for what had to be at least an hour, likely more. I was doing precisely what the doctors would have wanted—lying still without disturbing my injuries—but I found the lack of activity maddening. My mind wandered to the front, and I wondered how Oksana was managing in Sofia’s stead. If her brusque nature and biting tone could inspire the same enthusiasm as Sofia’s ebullience.

“Well, it’s a start,” Vanya said at last. “I’ve managed to capture something of that spark in your eye, at least. It’s not the face I painted back at the academy.”

“You wound me, husband. Are you saying I’ve aged?”

“We all have, and quickly, too. Yours is the face of a woman now, not a girl. A lovely woman at that. At least I can keep this with me even if I can’t—”

His hands balled into fists, and he hurled his paintbrush off into the patchy lawn.

“Goddammit. What kind of a husband am I if I can’t even keep you safe?” He buried his face in his trembling hands. I hobbled to his side and wrapped my arms around his broad shoulders.

“My love” was all I could murmur.

“My life,” he replied.

“Let’s not waste our last days arguing this again,” I beseeched him in a whisper. “I couldn’t handle staying home if you were still out there fighting.”

He pulled me onto his lap, as gingerly as if I were made of spun glass. He held me, and in that moment nothing existed but the rise and fall of his chest and the warmth of his arms around me. “If I weren’t fighting,” he said, “would it be different?”

I lifted my head from his shoulder and looked into the depths of his black eyes. “I don’t see why we’re speaking in hypotheticals, love. They would never let you leave.”

“I’m not talking about getting sanctioned leave,” Vanya said, barely audible, scanning the yard for listening ears. “Father has connections. I’ve served long enough and honorably enough he might not object to me using them. Travel papers.”

“You said you couldn’t let your comrades down, Vanya.”

“There are more important things than duty to the motherland, dearest. My duty to you being chief among them.”

I clutched him tighter, weaving my hands in his hair. “I don’t deserve you.”

“We all deserve better than this. Say you’ll come with me. We’ll make an excuse for me to accompany you back to Miass, and we can go to my father’s contacts while we’re there. We’d have to get to Turkey first, then anywhere you like that’s not bogged down in this mire. Portugal or Spain. Ireland. Switzerland if you want mountains. I’d prefer America or Canada if we can get passage, but that might be a tall order.”

“And if they find us out before we reach the border? You’d be shot on sight for desertion. Me, too, most likely.”

“I like my odds better with our own men than the Germans,” Vanya said. “There is no shame in saving our own skins.”

Taisiya’s face loomed in my mind . . . She’d never intended to be a martyr for the cause. She’d wanted to fight, save the motherland, and go home to Matvei. But she’d done her duty willingly.

Vanya blanched at my silence. “Come away with me, my darling. Promise me now.”

There were seventy women to the west who anticipated my return. Oksana was counting on me to help guide her as she led us into battle. Yet, compared to the pleading in my husband’s eyes, my call to duty was suddenly nothing.

“Will there be trouble for Mama?” I asked, resting my head once more on his shoulder. “I won’t save my skin to risk hers.”

“The party is too preoccupied to worry about a washerwoman in the Urals. Besides, you can resign your post without dishonor. It’s my parents who would face any trouble, and I assure you, Father will be fine.”

Remembering Antonin Solonev’s iron spirit, I did not doubt this, nor that Vanya’s mother would be shielded by him.

“Portugal,” I said. “I don’t know the language, but I can learn.”