“Gle-eb!” Polina Abramovna’s voice interrupted their strained silence.
“I should go.” He got up. “Good night.”
She saw him taking two steps toward his house then stop. “Busy tomorrow?”
“I have lectures till four.”
“And after the lectures? Let’s go somewhere together.”
“At four ten, at the University entrance then.” Watching him close the door behind him, she heard a little voice inside her head warning that she, perhaps, should have found a reason for not seeing him again. Was Gleb one of those guys the senior lieutenant Godyastchev was interested in? And at once, she rejected the unworthy thought. Even if . . . Why punish the son for the sins of the father?
The next day, in an instant she was outside, she spotted Gleb pacing along the sidewalk before the entrance. In civilian attire, no one would distinguish him from other students who crowded for a smoke, bumming cigarettes from each other, or hastening away from the building.
He greeted her on the bottom of the stairs. “Here, the tickets to the circus. Begins at six.” Gleb waved two bluish strips of paper in front of her face, slipping his other arm through Ulya’s.
To free herself from the uncomfortable feeling, she offered to stop for a glass of frizzy water and asked for a cherry syrup. A little later, they walked on through the center of the city, talking and laughing, and Ulya couldn’t remember when she felt herself so much at ease with another human being. Even her best friend, Rita, was sometimes annoying with her incessant, meaningless girls’ chatting.
Watching elephants, tigers, the clown, talking dogs, and the tightrope walkers, Ulya thought how enjoyable it could be away from her textbooks, the shooting stand exercises, parachute jumping, and ceaseless doubts that plagued her mind after the senior lieutenant Godyastchev questioned her. Or interrogated her?
They returned to Engels on the last boat and then sat for another hour under the tree talking, Gleb chain smoking. He entertained her with stories of his tanks and how claustrophobic he first felt inside, about his friend Slava and a “Komsomol stoolie” who was planted in the flat they rented after being promoted to lieutenant. He laughed at it, but all of a sudden stopped, his face acquiring that touch of grief she’d noticed in him before.
“Why are you so sad, Gleb?”
He answered in such a low voice she had to strain to make out the words. “I have a foreboding.”
“Can you tell me more?”
He didn’t answer, just shook his head.
Maybe, he needs time to learn to trust me, she realized and resolved to wait.
The following days, she kept thinking of him and now, ironing her and her father’s shirts, she again caught herself wondering what it was he didn’t want to share with her.
A knock interrupted her reflections, and how unexpected it was that Gleb stood at the threshold. “I’m leaving for my place of service. I came to say goodbye.”
“Will you write to me?”
He took her hands in his. “I will. But if you don’t hear from me for a long time, know either they did it to me, or I did it to myself.”
He pulled her into his embrace then spun around and made toward the exit.
Caught off guard, facing the closed door, she said, “Gleb.”
4
Natasha
September 20, 1938
Vitebsk
“Dear comrades! Attention!” The plant’s new Komsomol secretary held his right hand up.
The noise lessened just a bit.
“Let me open our meeting and start by introducing myself. Sergey Vladimirovich Posokhov. I was the second secretary at the Minsk University until recently, and I am glad now we can work together to strengthen the Komsomol and for the well-being of our folk and our socialist country . . .”
He continued talking, but Natasha stopped understanding the meaning of his speech, taken by the tone of his staid calmness. The girls were right. His slicked back fair hair revealing his high forehead and the eyes, big and dark brown, made his appearance pleasant to look at.
“Only together, all like one, can we—”
“What happened to our former secretary, Prokop Afanasyevich?” Anton’s voice didn’t let Sergey Vladimirovich continue his speechifying.
A dead silence ensued.
Sergey Vladimirovich’s jaw tensed but he pulled himself together. “As a Komsomol leader, Comrade Ivashkevich did not fulfill expectations of the Party. He—”
“Well, clearly they—” Anton couldn’t even finish his sentence because shushing whispers interrupted him, “Then it’s how it had to be.” “Idiot.” “Shut up.”
Sergey Vladimirovich shrugged and continued orating about the modern political situation in Europe, about German militarism, the Munich Agreement between Germany, Britain, France, and Italy . . . Imperialists . . . Fascists . . . Aggressors . . . Invaders . . . the forcible partition of Czechoslovakia . . . the just struggle of the Republicans against the fascist Franco in Spain . . . “The Soviet Union is the only state that has remained true to the principles of the collective security.”
Natasha’s thoughts took her far away, to Stepan’s last letter. Forget about me. I am a married man now, and I love my wife.
“Comrades!” The Komsomol secretary’s voice jerked her from her memories. “Who of you is willing to participate in the Agitprop Brigade?”—as though it was ever possible not to—“Come closer to the table and put your name on the list.”
5
Ulya
October 1938
Saratov, Engels
“Are you the last in the queue?” Ulya asked a woman with two teenage boys by her side.
“We are. Though most likely we won’t be lucky to get tickets. One must come two hours earlier to get inside. But how can I if their classes end so late?” Her sons lowered their heads under her reproachful gaze.
Ulya couldn’t help but agree with the woman’s perception. The crowd in front of them, shifting and bickering, all trying
