“I’ll make you a trade. I’ll write to your father if you tackle Alexei.”
I took a long breath. Yes, I could do that. I’d faced down far worse in this war than Alexei, so this heel-dragging was inexcusable. “I’d like a chance to write to Slavka first, get him accustomed to the idea. You haven’t even met him, and he’s part of any decision I make.”
“I may not know him yet, but he’s yours, so I’ll love him, too.” Lyonya quirked an eyebrow. “You don’t think I’d refuse to raise a boy I hadn’t fathered?”
I’d run across men before who felt that way. And Alexei hadn’t even wanted to raise the boy he had fathered. But no, I didn’t think Lyonya was like that. “Alexei left us,” I said slowly, “and it hurt Slavka to grow up knowing his father didn’t want him. If I bring someone else into Slavka’s life and it goes wrong, he’ll be hurt all over again. So you need to be sure, Lyonya. Are you?”
He plaited his fingers slowly with mine, one finger at a time. “I’ve been sure since the moment I met you, Mila. Why?”
“Because it’s wartime. This isn’t normal, this life we’re leading.” The only time we saw each other was a few hours in the evening: Lyonya was long asleep at midnight when I was tugging on my boots to head out into no-man’s-land; by the time I returned with my rifle by noon or so and tumbled yawning into bed, he would be long gone on his lieutenant’s duties. The only time we really saw each other was after twilight, when he came in from the command post and woke me up with “Dinner’s here, milaya.” We might have a few hours in bed after eating, but when he dropped off to sleep tonight I’d be climbing into my uniform and heading off to hunt with Kostia. “This isn’t real life—yet we’re talking about making a real life together.” I made myself say it, the thing I feared. “What if we find out we don’t suit each other in ordinary times? What do ordinary times even look like?”
“Well, I’ll tell you.” Still plaiting my fingers with his own. “I’d find work in Moscow—I have my electrical certification, technicians like me can always work. You’d finish your dissertation, get your degree, become a historian or a librarian. We would live on the same clock, go off to work at the same time every day. I’d put jam in your tea for you every morning while you packed us lunches, and if we worked close enough together, we’d meet on our lunch hour. And when Slavka comes home from school, he and I will bash hockey sticks around in Gorky Park.” Lyonya smiled. “The only real difference in our lives, Lyudmila Mikhailovna, is that instead of asking ‘How many Nazis did you kill today?’ I’d be asking ‘How many footnotes did you annotate today?’ ”
I sat up, pulling the blanket round my shoulders to hide my shiver. Not a shiver of cold—a shiver of yearning. I could see it, feel it, almost touch it: that shared apartment, the tea with jam, the lunches and games in the park. A golden, glorious then on the other side of our bleak, bloodstained now.
If there is a then, my thoughts whispered. Because it wasn’t gone, that fear that still sometimes clutched my throat. The certainty that the next bullet would kill me . . . that all Lyonya’s talk of the future was pointless, because the only future for me was a coffin.
“By the way—” Lyonya kissed the side of my neck. “I’ve rung the sergeant major to find you a parade uniform in the regimental stores.”
“I spend most of my days dressed as a bush,” I said. “What do I need a new parade uniform for?”
“FIRST TIME?” COMRADE Senior Sergeant Onilova condescended to ask. “I suppose I was nervous the first time I made a public speech. I’ve done so many now, I can’t remember.” She straightened her Order of the Red Banner; I wanted to say I’d seen them pin it on her for her machine-gun heroics, but I was too nervous. Nervous or not, my orders were clear: On February 2, 1942, platoon commander Senior Sergeant Pavlichenko, L.M., is to leave the front line and join a conference of female activists in the defense of Sevastopol, where she is to give an address of up to fifteen minutes on the operations and activities of snipers.