“I’m not a speaker.” That was what I told the secretariat, but he just waved my objections aside. People need to be told about this war. Just do it with an optimistic note!
Optimistic. As if there was an optimistic way to tell the story of losing my entire platoon . . . none of whom I’d heard any news of, no matter how often I beat on doors looking for information: Konstantin Shevelyov speaks very good English, perhaps he came out of Sevastopol and was put to work as an interpreter at one of the embassies? Anastas Vartanov, is there any news of an old ranger from the Crimea?
Nothing.
“I think you’ve been doing more than just making speeches and teaching ballistics!” My mother beamed, and for a horrible moment I thought she was going to ask if I had a man in my life. No, I nearly shouted, I don’t have a man. I go to sleep every night aching for Lyonya, and I think I always will. But I caught my angry words before they could spill out. My mother didn’t know about Lyonya; he’d been killed before I wrote to my family about him—I’d wanted to wait until the divorce from Alexei was final before telling my parents about a new son-in-law, and after he died, I couldn’t bear to put his name to paper. Mama didn’t know I was grieving, and she didn’t seem, in any case, to be asking about romance, because she prompted, “The Lavrenyov pamphlet?”
“Oh,” I said. “That.”
That damned pamphlet, commissioned by the Red Army central board of political propaganda, part of the much-read Frontline Library series: the wartime heroics of sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko, to be written by none other than famous novelist Boris Lavrenyov.
“What was he like?” Mama wanted to know. I’d been trying to lay out snacks for her, but she pushed me into a chair and insisted on slicing the salami herself. “I’ve always loved The Forty-First—so romantic! Did he interview you himself?”
Ha. The great man had looked me up and down through his iron-framed spectacles, cut me off in my first sentence, and explained to me his Vision for how to present my life to the masses. （He had a Vision. I sensed the capital letter.） “You’re just like my Maryutka,” he said kindly. “My heroine in The Forty-First, of course you know of her. Just a few details about you, and I’ll finish the pamphlet in a week.”
I admit I didn’t react well. I was hungover, I was tired, and the self-satisfied flashing of the man’s spectacles was making my temples throb. “I’m nothing like your dumb fictional factory girl,” I’d told him flatly. “Your novel’s entire premise is contrived, and if you think I want a hack like you writing about me—”
Things went downhill from there, if not quite downhill enough to cancel the pamphlet. It would release at year’s end and I’d already had an advance look. The girl sniper and I went down the boulevard on Commune Square one fine morning, the wind ruffling her cropped silky hair over her maiden’s brow as we sat on a bench. Her delicate, high-strung face pulsed with a deep passion of character. Her eyes seemed sad, but sparked under my skillful questioning with a childlike eagerness.
I wondered if that part was supposed to happen before or after I told him he was a prosy hack and he told me I was a rabid Ukrainian bitch.
“Before I forget, Lyuda—a letter came last week for you.” Mama fished in her drawstring bag. “I’d have forwarded it on, but when I knew I’d see you so soon . . .”
I slit the envelope, unfolding the square of smudged paper as my heart began to thud. I’d traded family addresses with all my platoon; we swore to write to one another’s families if one of us fell or was separated from the company. I’d dispatched letters to the families of all my men. Who was now writing to me?
Small square writing, familiar as my own pulse.
Mila,
I’m alive. Last evacuation out of Sevastopol, shattered knee. Recuperated in hospital ward in Krasnodar; about to be shipped to Moscow military district for reassignment. Where are you?