She picked up a half-liter jar with a removable lid.
“You’ll get my assignments from here. Leave yours here too. Report the progress of your actions. Till the next contact.” He turned around but she grabbed him by the elbow. “Stop. How is it there?”
“Challenging. The Germans blocked Leningrad. Our troops hold the attack against Moscow. Kiev is lost to us,” he said with light bitterness and only after Ulya released her grip on his arm, disappeared in the darkness behind the spruces.
His visit took hardly ten minutes.
No doubt, the people who stood behind him were prepared for war. Words from a popular pre-war song came to her mind: “We strengthen the defense for a reason. And on the enemy’s land, we will defeat him with mighty blows.” The words that some time ago sounded assuring and even cheerful, now left her with a sense of irritation.
Though the morning was at its beginning, sun flooded Nikolskaya Street on one side while on the other shade prevailed. A perfect day to start a new life.
After her everyday morning exercises, a thorough washing, and light breakfast, Ulya got dressed smartly in a knee-length dark gray skirt and a white collared long-sleeved blouse she’d ironed so not a wrinkle was in sight. She covered her head with a white headscarf and before leaving, checked herself in the mirror. Something was wrong. She took the headscarf off and fixed her braided hair helix-style over her ears, careful not to leave a strand out of place. The previous night, she’d found a little jar of black boot cream and shined her battered heelless shoes, deciding not to touch the fancy footwear intended for her deployment to Germany. Germany. An uncomfortable sensation like a fleeting cloud swept over her. No regrets, she steeled herself. Before heading outside, she looked in the mirror one last time and found her appearance out of place. So be it, she thought and, swinging her black purse over her left arm, she stepped out of the front door.
Despite the early hour, the day promised an afternoon of heat. She was about to turn toward the city center when she caught the noise of a cart behind her back. “Hey, girl,” a male voice hailed her. “To the market?”
“To the City Council.”
“Right on my way. Hop up.” The peasant, who she would put in his sixties, motioned to the back of the cart.
Ulya settled on the sacks and inhaled the air infused with fresh hay, still smelling of the field.
Her carriage-driver seemed impatient to strike up a conversation. “So, you decided to work for Germans?” And without waiting for her answer, continued, “That’s shrewd. With them, we’ll have a better life, not like under the Bolsheviks.” He added a juicy swearword. “Have you heard our liberators are re-opening churches? But maybe you don’t believe in God, I surmise. Like all the youth. The damned Communists forbade my grandchildren going to church.” Again, he seemed unable to help adding a well-rounded Russian curse then concluded with, “Godless brats.”
Ulya chose to please him. “Why, I believe in God, and I am glad they are opening churches.”
He craned his neck to glance at her. “The way you speak. Are you not local?”
“I am not.”
A bunch of bricks and smashed building parts blocked the street. “See? The Reds. What they did to the city!” Again, he swore. “Detonated the production plants and most of the bridges, the devil curse them!”
“But how do you know it was them?”
As though he didn’t hear her retort, he continued grumbling under his nose, “I saw Germans in 1918. They are a cultured nation not like those Bolsheviks and Yids.”
On one hand, the German sympathizer was right. Some parts of the city lay in ruins, which might be due to Stalin’s order of scorched earth. The man maneuvered his horse as they passed the half-destroyed railroad.
They drove by groups of young men with the round, yellow patches on their shirts who worked clearing, shifting rubble under the supervision of German soldiers with German shepherds, the dogs howling, snarling, tearing at their chains.
From afar, Ulya saw a line to an imposing old two-story building. Red-white-and-black swastika banners dangled on both sides of the high entrance door. The man stopped the horse and, most likely disappointed she didn’t badmouth the Soviet power in agreement with him, waved his hand. “There, the Council.”
At the entrance, a man with the red and white band on his left sleeve checked documents. When her turn came, he demanded her passport. “Not a local? Go to room six. Along the corridor, on the right side.”
She found it and had to wait, six people ahead of her. At last, as the woman who had been in front of her in the line, exited, a voice came through the open door, “Next!”
In the small room, behind the only table, a man bent over the desk with piles of folders, writing something in an accounting ledger. “Name?” he said without lifting his head.
“Kriegshammer.”
His head jerked up. “What?” A face, gray with exhaustion. “Is it a Jewish name?”
“German. Here is my pass. I need an Ausweis.” She took the initiative.
The man cleared his throat and snatched the passport from her hand. Towering over him, she watched him dipping his pen into the inkpot and with a steady hand recording her name into the ledger below somebody’s last name, Grishko, then her date of birth, place of registration. “Engels. Where is it?” He blew on the ink.
“On the Volga River.”
“What is your business here?” The clerk watched her with suspicion.
“My friend invited me to her wedding. I was her maid of honor.”
“I see.” He pushed a piece of paper to her and a pencil. “Here, write your explanation and also what is your education, your profession, what you can do.”
Ulya turned around looking for
