Don’t miss.
“That construction site,” our scarred instructor would say, pointing at a three-story building half raised on Vladimir Street. “What positions could you take to neutralize the site foreman running up and down the plank walkways from floor to floor?” I’d list off every doorway, every line of sight, every window, and then feel tears prick my eyes when he pointed out the window aperture, the stairwell, and the third-floor ledge I’d missed. “Be better,” the instructor told me icily. “Come back here in two days and examine how the site has changed: every new wall in place, every window boarded up, every new internal wall that has appeared. Life has a rapid pace, but not through telescopic sights—something is always receding into the background or coming into the foreground, so you must gain the whole picture through the tiniest of details.”
I jerked a nod. The instructor had spent twice as long on my mistakes as anyone else’s—the other two girls just got a nod!—and I could feel the flush rising out of my dark blue collar. He seemed to sense it, turning his back in scorn. I felt my eyes narrow, and two days later I spent three hours memorizing every single change on that building site, not missing one when I rattled them off in class.
Don’t miss. I had those words stamped on my bones, and there were so many chances to miss in this life—to fail. As a mother I was forever struggling to hit on the perfect way to raise my son: not too indulgent, not too strict. As a student I was forever struggling to hit the balance that would keep me at the top of my class: flawless note taker, prepared exam taker, dedicated researcher. As a woman of the Soviet Union, I was forever struggling to hit the ideals of my age: productive worker, happy joiner, future Party member. So many gray spaces between those tiny moving targets, so many ways to fail . . . But when I stormed into the firing range after my latest university lecture, asking myself angrily how I could have only managed a Good on a history exam rather than an Excellent, I could put it aside knowing that here, at least, hitting the target was simple—a matter of black and white, not murky gray. You hit the bull’s-eye or you missed it.
“A game,” the scarred instructor called. He’d begun taking our class into the countryside on Saturdays for lessons on camouflage—how to hide in tangled brambles or stands of trees, or during the wintertime, in drifts of snow. It was winter again now; we’d had a half hour’s break for lunch under a cluster of ice-hung birches, stamping our boots, the boys passing flasks of something to warm the belly. Our instructor produced a sack of empty lemonade bottles and was rigging them on their sides in cleft sticks, narrow necks facing toward us as we scrambled upright and got into line with our rifles. “This game’s called bottle base,” he said, rising from his squat and coming to join the line. He set up his own shot methodically, and when he fired, a series of gasps and whistles went up: he had blown out the bottle’s base without touching its neck or sides. “Can anyone match that?” he challenged, eyes glinting under the scar.
I could have sworn his eyes stopped on me, deliberate and taunting, but I stood leaning quietly on my rifle and let the younger boys scramble forward. I analyzed their misses: they were shooting too fast, eager to impress.
“You don’t want to try, Lyudmila Mikhailovna?” The instructor’s voice came at my shoulder, breath puffing white in the frigid air. “Or are you going to hang back posing like a fashion plate?” I had a new winter coat, dark blue with a collar of black fur my mother had painstakingly trimmed from an ancient moth-eaten scarf and restitched to cuddle around my neck like a friendly sable, and the class had been teasing me all morning that I looked too fine and fancy to be toting a weapon.
I ignored the instructor’s dig, nodding at the boys as they blasted away. “I’m not joining in because they’re showing off. That’s not what a rifle is for.”
“That could spring from a good instinct,” he said. “Showing yourself—that’s dangerous for a sniper. You’re only invulnerable as long as you’re unseen.”
“I’m going to be a marksman, not a sniper.”