For two days, Ulya and Bagdan’s cousins, Oksana among them, helped Rita to clean the house, to peel, and cut, and prepare a meal and tables for the wedding.
II
Everyone Has His Own War
Vitebsk
21
Ulya
June 22, 1941
A beam of sun penetrated the closed window shutters through its cracks. Ulya stretched herself and, at once, her head, still swimming, brought back the snippets of remembrances: the guests around the big table, the bride and groom at its center, the abundance of the local delicacies, bottles of Garelka, Krambambulya, and something else, perhaps a home-distilled vodka. The insistent cheering, “Bitter! Bitter!” encouraging the newlyweds to kiss each other. Loud singing and dancing followed. Later, two men argued till they had to be hustled to separate corners by force. And above all of that, the happy faces of Rita and Bagdan.
Ulya jumped from the side-oven bench but taken by nausea threatening to disgorge the bacchanalia of the previous evening, fell back. Was it what they called a hangover? With nostalgia she found her mind drifting back to her birthday, the last one she had celebrated with her Vati. Then, she had rejected Armenian cognac and instead preferred tea. What would he say to her drinking yesterday?
Somebody banged at the door. “Open! Open!”
“What’s that? Can’t they leave me alone on my first married day?” Bagdan’s groggy voice came.
“Uncle! The war’s started!” Oksana’s terrified shout.
There was a long silence then a sound of the radio crackling, and Yuri Levitan’s, the radio announcer’s familiar voice, solemn: “Today, with no declaration of war . . .” Like a treacherous punch to the gut.
So, the Germans broke the Treaty of non-Aggression between our countries. Ulya threw herself to the window that gave a good view of Nikolskaya. The sun-streaked street was alive. Some inhabitants gathered at the loudspeaker affixed to a pole, heads up to it, old women pressing the corners of their kerchiefs to their eyes time and again. She turned on the sound. Rita was fully dressed. Bagdan, behind her back, too. Their countenance immobile.
“What shall we do?” Ulya cut the silence.
“I must go to the city, to my plant. Bagdan to his Kolkhoz. You stay put here. Don’t worry if we don’t show up for a day or two.” Their heads down, they strode past her as though to prevent Ulya from asking more questions.
She stepped to the window, and after Rita and Bagdan disappeared from view at the bend of the street, made haste to wash herself from the washing stand in the yard. Upon returning inside, a whiff of a stench, akin to vomit, drew her attention away from the shock of the news. Her eyes darted around the room to find the origin of the stink and observed the signs of drinking from the day before. She’d take care of that later, she resolved.
While she dressed, a little unconvincing voice kept saying in her head, It’ll end soon and, with this soothing belief, she headed to the bus stop. She could ask for another public phone in closer proximity, yet her gut told her not to, so she drove in the company of the silent and stunned passengers to the railway station.
Above the molten pavement, the air seemed to tremble. Despite the open windows, sweat beaded her forehead.
At the train station, the crowd moved toward the platform as a cohesive mass only to be stopped by an invisible power or perhaps because it just couldn’t hold any more arrivals.
Ulya made her way to the building, catching snippets of indignant conversations. “No, they say only the military trains.” “They don’t care about people.” “Shut up, they know what to do.” “Herods, they attacked us on the Feast of All Saints whose light shone forth in the Land.” Some retorting, “All will be well.” “Our army is strong.” “It’ll be soon over.”
People mobbed at the telephone booth. Ulya joined the uneven line.
“Gena, Gena!” a woman cried into the receiver. “Do you hear me? Gena! Gena!”
“Citizen, if you don’t hear, leave the phone for others,” hissed discontented voices from the queue.
“Gena! Sonny!” Her face wet from tears, the woman stepped away.
“Father! Father! I won’t be able to—” The young man pounded on the phone with his fist, which swallowed the coin, but not for long. Strong shoulders forced him aside.
“Daughter! Daughter!”
And so on and on. At last, her turn came. She dialed the number. A click. Half a ringtone, and the familiar voice, clear crisp, “NKVD.”
“Hunter here.” To her relief, a whistle of a locomotive burst into the hall, drowning her code name from the ears of the people around her. She pressed the phone more closely to her ear, trying to block from the strangers the words she expected to hear.
There was a moment’s silence and then, “Stay put where you are. You’ll be contacted. The same password. Clear?”
“Yes.”
The line went dead.
In the city, people rushed about, and it was not obvious if they were buying what was available or robbing the stores. The blue hats of militia popped here and there. Whistles shrilled.
The bus did not arrive for so long, Ulya decided to walk. Passing the column of the Red-Armisten—Red Army soldiers—she watched a woman who ran along shouting, “Take care of yourself, sonny.” An enthusiastic response followed, “Don’t worry, Mother, soon we’ll be back with victory.” “We’ll chase them away,” someone from the convoy confirmed. “Men, sing!” sounded an energetic order. Tired, discordant voices started the Katyusha song. The last words Ulya could hear were, “And to the warrior on a faraway border.”
Two days passed without a sign of Rita or Bagdan and the tight feeling in her chest didn’t let up. In hopes of finding out about Bagdan, Ulya left the house to see his niece. She was feeding the squealing piglets, throwing into a smudged, battered trough some shapeless, viscous mass she scooped from a deformed rust bucket.
“Oksana!”
The girl craned her neck to see who it was. Her
