Mila Pavlichenko was finally home.
Epilogue
Eleanor Roosevelt Arrives in Moscow
October 10, 1957
Mrs. Roosevelt, may I present Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Hero of the Soviet Union.”
We looked at each other for a long moment—long enough for whispers to ripple through the Committee of Soviet Women clustered around us in the airless public hall. Fifteen years since the former First Lady and I had set eyes on each other. I took in the plain suit and black hat, the lines of grief that the loss of her extraordinary husband had carved on her face, and knew she was absorbing the changes time had wrought in me. I was forty-one now, no longer the angry young lieutenant who had eyed her so warily over the White House breakfast of eggs and bacon. My dark hair showed wings of gray at the temples, and my medals were pinned to a businesslike suit instead of an olive-drab uniform.
But I could feel my face cracking in a huge smile, a smile that mirrored in her face under the white hair. “Darling Lyudmila,” she said, coming forward.
“Eleanor,” I breathed, leaning into the embrace, and there was a ripple of applause as the two of us beamed at each other. Perhaps fifteen years was not so very long, after all. We had met once more during my English tour when Eleanor came to visit the Churchills, and we had corresponded when I returned to the Soviet Union. I’d sent a letter of condolence on the death of President Roosevelt （“Eleanor, I remember the press of his hand as though it were yesterday”）; she’d congratulated me after the war on the news that as a fifth-year student of the Kiev State University history faculty, I’d finished my dissertation with a grade of Excellent （“Lyudmila, I confess I do not remember who Bogdan Khmelnitsky is, and I pray you will not tell me!”）
And here she was in Moscow, a First Lady no longer but still a diplomatic force to be reckoned with, our positions reversed: now she was the one on a goodwill tour of my country.
There were speeches to sit through （there are always speeches）; there were hands to be shaken （there are always handshakes）; there were commemorative plaques to be presented （for the love of Lenin, no more plaques—where is a Hero of the Soviet Union to put them all?）。 But at long last the former First Lady and I were permitted to retire to my Moscow apartment, sitting with our feet up, drinking tea from the samovar in the corner, security details and NKVD minders alike waiting outside.
“You have a beautiful home, Lyudmila.” Her eyes took in the apartment I’d been awarded: four whole rooms near the center of Moscow, not far from the Soviet Navy department where I’d worked, an entire wall filled with nothing but my books. “Does your son live with you?”
“He has a place of his own now. Graduated with distinction from Moscow University’s law faculty.” My Slavka, a young man now, so steady and kind, his dark hair and stocky build marking him a younger version of my father. Nothing, fortunately, like his own.
“He must make you proud.” Eleanor studied me, stirring her tea. “You look happy, Lyudmila. I confess I worried that it might make you bitter—the fact that you never returned to the front, after your goodwill tour.”
“It was determined that I would be of more use as a sniper instructor.” Yes, I’d been bitterly disappointed at the time . . . but as Kostia pointed out, if I’d returned to sniping, I would probably have died in Stalingrad with so many other sharpshooters, and that would have been a great propaganda victory for the Germans. Instead I was assigned to train new snipers—and not just boys. Girls passed through my hands, cherry-cheeked girls like I’d once been, so fierce and burning bright. I’d poured my skills into them, told them how to manage the shakes in their hands when they made their first kills, and that shaking hands didn’t mean they lacked courage. I taught them how to camouflage themselves and care for their weapons; how to scavenge battlefields for spare cloth, because the Red Army would never give them enough for their monthlies; how to avoid amorous officers and how to cross no-man’s-land on lynx feet so silent that the long-dead Vartanov would have blinked tears of pride.