“Is it junior lieutenants named Alexei, then?”
“The man I married at fifteen is a junior lieutenant named Alexei, Comrade Lieutenant, and I’m not very fond of him.” I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Alexei Pavlichenko since arriving in Sevastopol—no surprise given that he’d be up to his elbows in blood and disinfectant in the hospital battalion. As long as I didn’t get wounded, surely I wouldn’t have to see him again. Now there was an incentive to dodge German bullets.
“My nickname is Lyonya,” Kitsenko pointed out. “Because my mother wanted to name me Leonid and not Alexei, and Lyonya was how she got around my father. If you’d use that, there shouldn’t be any negative associations with my name.”
“Nicknames are for—”
“Comrades in arms, yes. Do I need to rustle up a battle for us to march into by tomorrow noon?” My company commander squinted at the sky as if checking the hour. “The timing’s tight, but—”
“Comrade Lieutenant, I prefer not to fraternize with officers,” I said firmly. “I mistook you for a civilian when we first met, but that doesn’t change the fact that regulations—”
“I prefer not to fraternize with sergeants. Just exceedingly lovely hedges. I dated a hawthorn for a while; oooh, she was prickly. I had better luck with a viburnum, but her affection withered. A garland thorn, now—”
“Good afternoon, Comrade Lieutenant . . .” and I marched into the latrine where he couldn’t follow, before he could see that despite myself, I was smiling.
“DEATH BY DRONING.” It doesn’t matter whether you’re attending a Komsomol discussion of “The Communist Youth of Tomorrow” or an Order of the Red Banner presented in honor of the gallant defense of Odessa: any meeting of officials held anywhere in the motherland always includes speeches. I used to think that no one could beat Soviet men for endless speeches, but when I came to America, I realized men of all nationalities like the sound of their own voices, especially the kind of man who spends long hours behind a podium. Whether in a Washington park or a Sevastopol battle zone, it’s all the same: after the first speech you’re afraid the boredom will kill you; after the fifth speech, you’re praying it will.
To keep awake at the awards ceremony the following day, I mentally thumbed through the pages of my dissertation and wondered if there was any way, here on the front line, to get it retyped. Too many trenches and sniper nests had left the pages soft and creased, and my section introducing the Pereyaslav Council had been splattered with blood when Kostia took a splinter wound across the back of his neck. He hadn’t been badly hurt—he stripped off his jacket and offered up his neck so I could stitch the cut myself, disinfecting the needle with vodka so he wouldn’t have to register at the medical battalion—but my poor dissertation, like Bogdan Khmelnitsky, had been through the wars . . . I snapped out of my musing when it came time to deliver my own （short!） speech of congratulations on behalf of 2nd Company.
Lieutenant Kitsenko delivered a longer speech, just the right combination of official language and wry wit, which brought grins to faces. He was good at that, as I’d had a chance to observe by now. It was a rare officer who could be friendly without losing his authority, and I was willing to concede Kitsenko had the gift. I’d seen him break up a brawl between a cluster of soldiers with fast efficiency, and rather than put them all on punishment duty, he delivered a combination lecture of scolding and joking that had them half laughing, half cringing, and vowing like naughty children that no, Comrade Lieutenant, they’d never do it again, Comrade Lieutenant.
The speeches were over at last, and then it was just watching ribbons and stars being pinned to tunics. One of the decorated soldiers was a woman, a pretty machine gunner who had helped five hundred fascists into their graves. Good for you, I thought approvingly, watching her beam as the Order of the Red Banner was fixed to her breast. Then the line shifted, and I saw Alexei Pavlichenko in line to be honored. I wasn’t sure what ribbon or star they were pinning to his tunic, but there was something about exceptional efficiency in the restoration of the wounded to the front lines and I saw the pleased curve of his lips. Of course he’d been decorated. Men like Alexei always got the right kind of awards. He’d climbed fast at his hospital as a civilian; he’d climb fast in the hospital battalion as a lieutenant.