“Not yet.” I had to swipe at my eyes, to my shame. “I hope to be posted back to the front as an officer.”
Petrov’s aide glanced meaningfully at the waiting car, but the general turned back to me. “An officer?”
“Yes. I think I’ve earned it by now.” I shouldn’t have been so blunt, but I was too drained to be anything but honest. “I’ve learned over this last year how to command troops, Comrade Major General. To think about them in combat, to be responsible for them. And I still haven’t got even with the Nazis for the deaths of my friends.” Lena, Fyodor, Lyonya. Oh, Lyonya. If I were an officer at my next posting, responsible for giving more of the orders, perhaps I could save more of my men next time. “The Hitlerites are still advancing. The things I saw done to civilians at Odessa and Sevastopol . . . The earth should burn under their feet.”
The general surveyed me for a moment. “In three days, I’m leaving Novorossiysk for Moscow. You will accompany me—to receive your new posting.”
Chapter 23
My memoir, the official version: Moscow was the perfect incarnation of the Soviet imagination encapsulated in stone and steel.
My memoir, the unofficial version: Moscow was huge, austere, and hellish. But my mother’s eyes were the size of saucers when she laid eyes on it—and me.
“LOOK AT YOU: a war heroine, a lieutenant, and a Moscow girl!” Mama was skinnier than ever on wartime rations, but her long plait and bright eyes were the same as I led her into my quarters at the Stromyn Street hostel. I’d been living here since arriving in Moscow—more than a month now. “You should have seen your father when he heard about your Order of Lenin. He strutted to work like a rooster.”
My eyes pricked. I wished my father could have come to Moscow too, but there was a pass only for one—and he couldn’t have taken so much time from work, to travel more than a thousand kilometers simply for a visit. Nor could a child take that journey, and I took a deep stabbing breath before asking, “What did Slavka say?”
“Proud as punch.” Mama stowed her wicker traveling case under the table. “And before you ask, he thinks I’m off visiting a cousin.”
“Good,” I jerked. If he knew I was back from the front, he’d plead to visit me, and I couldn’t inflict that on him. I’d heard from other soldiers that it was devastating trying to visit your children if you could stay only a short while—they went completely to pieces when it was time to leave again.
“Oh, malyshka, don’t cry. It’s the right thing to do.” Mama gave me the hug I was craving, folding me into her arms like a child. I leaned into that hug, and I felt the moment she gave a quick inhale, catching the scent of vodka I hadn’t quite been able to scrub away from last night.
That was the other reason I’d asked her to leave Slavka home: I didn’t want him to see that his laughing mamochka, the woman who checked his schoolwork and told him stories of Lady Midnight running errands for Baba Yaga, had become a woman of hard shining boots and pitiless brass stars, a woman without smiles. A woman who managed to sleep the night through only because of vodka.
But my mother didn’t mention the vodka. “Such luxury,” she said instead, admiring my room. “Sixteen square meters all to yourself! How long will you be here?”
“I don’t know. They’re giving me a sniper platoon in the 32nd Guards Parachute Division, but I don’t have orders to the front yet.” I’d had to bottle my frustration since coming to Moscow; now it spilled over as I began pulling out sliced black bread and pickles. “Mama, I’m stuck doing instruction duty at the local training center. When I’m not at a chalkboard, the secretariat of the All-USSR Young Communist League’s central committee wants me doing speeches.”
“And why shouldn’t they?” Mama smiled. “You’re a heroine, aren’t you?”