“You thought your father was Father Frost?”
“He was a Baikal fur trapper . . . He came to Irkutsk only once a year with the first snows, and he sprouted knives from everywhere like icicles. He always left in a huge violent gust like an avalanche.”
“He sounds noisy. Winter is quiet.” It was the first time Kostia had ever said anything about his family. “You’re Morozko, not him.”
Kostia smiled under his eyelids. He picked up my hand where it lay among the scatter of flowers, unfolding my fingers and then folding them back inside his own, and he pulled it against his chest. He didn’t say anything—he just held my hand against his tunic, where I could hear the steady beat of his heart.
Gently I disengaged my fingers and sat back. I didn’t say anything, either, just looked at him with steady regret. This wasn’t like flirting with that fair-haired scout for a lark—I was Kostia’s sergeant, and maybe a difference in rank didn’t stop most officers from fraternizing with their inferiors, but it didn’t sit right with me. Even more important, he was my partner, the one I relied on above all others during the deadly dance in no-man’s-land every night. I didn’t dare introduce any chaotic rush of new passions into that delicate, critical balance, or we both might end up dead. So I just let the silence fall and gave a small shake of my head.
“Let’s get you up and walking,” Kostia said as if nothing had happened, and helped me off the cot so I could totter around the room. By the next day I was standing alone, peaked cap crammed over my battered, bandaged head, limping determinedly outside. The medical battalion had been stationed at what had once been a rural schoolhouse; skirting the cots and the rushing doctors, the stretchers with burned men and unconscious men and moaning men clutching stumps of arms and legs, I managed to find my way to the garden surrounding the schoolhouse.
Just days ago the autumn sun had been shining bright from a blue sky, warming the whole vast surface of the steppe. Now winter was coming in a bluster of lead-colored clouds and cold northern gusts, old man Morozko stealing closer on snow-scented feet. Even here, as far back from the front lines as we were, I could hear the rumble of guns.
I turned away from the sound, inhaling the smell of fresh-turned earth and wild roses. Juniper grew here straight as a green wall; tulips and roses bloomed in the borders—despite all the bombing and shelling, someone was looking after this garden. I gave silent thanks to whatever soul cared enough to nurture this humble patch of flowers in such a living hell. I picked up a fallen red-gold leaf for Slavka, nearly falling in my dizziness, and tried to uncurl it in my hand. It broke, dry and dead. I dropped it, feeling another wave of weakness, wondering why I was fighting so to stay upright. Why not just fall, lie down, close my eyes? I was tired. When I got back to the fight, I’d have to rekindle the rage and carry on, but for now it was ash in my stomach, dead and cold after three and a half months of sorties and battles. I sat on a garden bench and pulled out my dissertation, hoping dear old Bogdan Khmelnitsky would cheer me up, but I couldn’t make my eyes focus on the words. The letters crawled off the page like ants, and the heading that little library researcher Mila Pavlichenko had typed with such pride earlier this year was now half-obscured by a bloodstain.
For the life of me, I couldn’t tell you whose blood it was.
A purring sound slid into my one good ear, and I looked up to see a khaki-colored staff car ooze through the open gates toward the school. A flurry of uniforms; by the time they came marching toward the front doors, I had stuffed my dissertation pages back into my pack, limped up the drive, and drawn myself up at attention. It wasn’t the first time I’d clapped eyes on Major General Ivan Yefimovich Petrov, commander of the coastal army, but this was the first time I’d seen him so close. Perhaps forty-five, red tinges in his hair, bags under his eyes . . .
I expected him to sweep past, but one of his officers caught sight of me, whispering something, and the general halted. “Pavlichenko, yes? I’ve heard your name—the woman sniper.”
I saluted. “Yes, Comrade Major General.”