TEN

5 December 1941

Dear Valyushka,

Today we began an offensive. And I helped. I was the one who received the orders and decoded them and passed them along obediently. This is the turning point, they tell us, when we drive off the fascists and save Moscow. Pashkevich believes it, or seems to, but I think that as long as he’s in the fray exacting his revenge, he’ll be happy.

We weren’t even in position yet when we got into a firefight. I saw the gunfire before I heard it. Not the muzzle flashes—it was daytime—but the yellow-green stripes they painted in the air as they whistled past. I stood there dumbly, trying to place the sound.

Rudenko grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the ditch by the road. I landed hard at the bottom, the edges of my radio jabbing into my chest. I’d broken through the layer of ice in the ditch. Freezing muddy water soaked my quilted clothes.

There was one soldier slower than me. Emelianov, another new recruit. He wavered for an instant, just long enough for another light green streak to hiss toward him and find his neck.

He clutched his throat. It was a bubbling mass of blood. He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t even scream. And I realized with helpless certainty that I was watching someone die.

I was surprised how easily it happened. One moment he was struggling on the road, choking on his own blood, pleading with his eyes for us to help him. Then he wasn’t.

Rudenko’s face turned white and he stumbled away to vomit into the ditch water. I wordlessly handed him my handkerchief. He sheepishly wiped his mouth and chin without meeting my eyes.

There was a cornfield on the far side of the road, the stalks rotten black and frozen because no one had been there to harvest the corn. The Hitlerites were in there somewhere. We crouched in the ice and mud, weighed down by our radio equipment, while the others fired over the edge of the ditch. Rudenko kissed his cross. Eventually nobody shot back.

We cautiously emerged. I tried to pretend I was only shivering because I was wet. Emelianov lay in the road. Otherwise there was no one, no trace of the enemy.

I stupidly asked who won.

“Nobody,” said Pashkevich. “Let’s move.”

I looked down at the body at my feet: Emelianov’s face was frozen in a mask of shock. “What about Emelianov?”

“What about him?”

I hesitated. The thought of crossing Pashkevich gripped me with a fear as intense as the firefight, but Emelianov hadn’t chosen to be drafted and he hadn’t chosen this death and it wasn’t fair to leave him there like garbage. So I worked up the courage to say, “We should bury him.”

“There’s no time. What if the fascists come back?” The sergeant was already turning away.

“All the same, we ought to bury him.” Vakhromov had come up beside me, his big arms crossed over his chest.

Pashkevich curled his lip. “Fine. Make it quick.”

While Vakhromov tried to break the frozen ground, his shovel scraping with a stone-gray sound, I went through the dead man’s clothes. They were already stiffening with frost. I found his identity capsule. He had filled it out. Foolish man.

We put him in the ground and I fumbled for words while Pashkevich muttered about wasting time on some idiot who didn’t know to duck when he was being shot at. Rudenko joined us. He made that sign with his hand and whispered something in Church Slavonic.

I look at him differently now that I know about him. At school, they taught us that there are two kinds of religious people: the deceptive, conniving clergy who use fairy tales of hell to keep the common people subdued, and the common people themselves, foolish and deluded. Opiate of the masses, you know. I suppose Rudenko ought to be the first kind, since he wanted to be a priest, but there’s nothing deceptive about him, unless it’s his use of a beard to make himself appear older.

That makes him the second kind. But he doesn’t seem very, well, opiated. He’s scared and jittery. When he prays, he looks desperate, like he’s begging for his life.

But there’s also a hidden well of enthusiasm in him, carefully buried in the face of the state’s disapproval. I discovered it that day in the tower. Since then, the Znamenny Chant has become our shared secret. Because he carries my battery, we have a perfect excuse to spend time together. I set up the radio in some secluded corner—a fringe benefit of being a radio operator is that if I say “the radio needs to go here,” no one questions me—and then, as soon as we’re alone, we set to work, quietly, on another piece of music.

Even translated, the words don’t mean anything to me, but somehow they encapsulate Rudenko’s whole life. He heard this music at everything from weddings to funerals. Today, after Emelianov, he flipped to a page near the front of his book and said, “I think we should do this one. It goes, ‘Save thy servants from harm.’”

“Will it work?” I asked. It was an honest question.

Rudenko turned his face away from me and wrapped his arms around his shoulders. He said, “I . . . I think it would make me feel better. I just have this sense that—”

“No,” I broke in with sudden urgency. I knew what he was about to say and I couldn’t let him go down that road. “Don’t say that. We’ll learn the chant.”

But working on it only reminded me of the danger we were facing.

Maybe we really will win. Or maybe this will become another disaster and we will end up encircled, then silenced. Our commanding officers would throw our lives away for the tiniest advantage, real or perceived. But if we refused to follow them, then we would have no one and no orders. Is a bad plan better than no plan?

If you were here, you would think of an option other than to fight and get shot, or to surrender and get shot, or to desert and face court-martial and then get shot. That’s why you’re the clever one.

Yours,

Pasha

10 December 1941

Dear Pasha,

I ask you to tell me you’re safe and you tell me about a firefight! I didn’t think a radio operator would end up in so much danger. But the shifting front lines don’t make any distinction, not between infantrymen and radio operators, not even between soldiers and civilians.

I saw it in the paper today: You’ve done it. The Germans are retreating from Moscow, the line moving back west except for one stubborn salient, a snaky tongue of fascist-held territory surrounding the town of Rzhev. I read through the whole paper looking for any mention of the Fifth Rifle Division, but there was none. Why do newspapers never report what you actually want to know? Forget about how many tanks we captured—I want to know what happened to Pasha!

What worries me most is the way you talk. No, you don’t have to stop. I want to know how you’re doing, how you’re honestly doing and not what you think I want to hear. But this war has hurt you, and I think that even if you make it through without a mark on your body, you won’t be the same.

Yesterday Raskova assembled us to meet the commander of the fighter regiment. Rumors have been flying about who would get the coveted post, but the woman who came out to meet us wasn’t on anyone’s list: Tamara Kazarinova. The elder one. We thought her days in the air force were over, but there she was, on her feet, though she favored her left leg. She stood before us with her hands clasped behind her back, the Order of Lenin gleaming on her chest, and announced, “There are three kinds of people I do not tolerate. Traitors to the Motherland, sloppy fliers, and cadets who try to get familiar with their superiors. If you can avoid being any of those, we can work together. If you can’t, your career with the VVS will become a cautionary example.”

Iosif Grigorevich called me a sloppy flier all the time, but it’s the first item on her list that has me worried. She didn’t get that Order of Lenin for her flying. She got it by denouncing traitors. Iskra isn’t out of danger yet, and I’m beginning to think she won’t be until we’re safely back in Stakhanovo.

The other girls weren’t any happier. Raskova’s office was immediately flooded with angry fighter-pilot hopefuls, Lilya and all three pyaterka among them. They refused to be commanded by an outsider who, thanks to her injury, can’t pilot so much as a glider.

Raskova, in her firm, quiet way, said that she had made her decision and that the matter was not open to discussion. If anyone absolutely could not serve under Kazarinova, she would be happy to assign her to the night bombers. That shut everyone up.

With all the regimental commanders selected, they can begin deciding the regimental assignments. That means it’s time to put our countless hours of dry theory to use. To prove what we can do.

Raskova insists that there will be no winners and losers. Everyone will get the assignment best suited to her skills and everyone will play an equally vital role in winning the war. As if anyone believes that. There are no world-famous bomber pilots. They don’t become aces or get featured in newsreels or get decorated as Heroes of the Soviet Union. If I want to accomplish anything, I need to fly a fighter.

Today was my big chance: the mock dogfight. All the pilots had assembled to watch, the pyaterka in front following each duel with particular interest. The judge was Major Kazarinova. Armed with a clipboard and a scowl, she watched the planes carefully, noting even the tiniest mistakes.

I faced off against Lilya. She was as small and delicate as ever, but when we shook hands before getting into our cockpits, she met my gaze with the hard eyes of a soldier. She didn’t have to speak to make herself clear: We might be friends on the ground, but in the air we were enemies. No quarter would be given.

I grinned. Just the way I wanted it.

The rules were simple: The first pilot to get on the other pilot’s six (that means on her tail, six o’clock according to the clock-face system) was the winner. We took off in opposite directions in our little biplanes. It was a beautiful, clear winter day. Sunlight glinted off the wings of the planes on the airfield. With sharp air on my face and adrenaline coursing through my veins, I felt—there’s no other way to put it—I felt like myself. Like I was doing what I was born to do.

Lilya did a barrel roll (show-off) and headed away from the aerodrome at full throttle, teasing me to follow her. I didn’t take the bait. Since our planes are the same speed, the only way to catch her would be to dive, which would place her above me and give her the advantage.

Dogfighting, you see, is all about managing energy. As you climb, you gain altitude but lose speed. As you dive, you lose altitude but gain speed. If you perform each maneuver precisely right, you come out with as much energy as you began with. But if you’re sloppy, you waste energy, a little at a time, until you’re too slow to fend off attacks.

Proud that I’d seen through her trick, I climbed and did a slow circle over the aerodrome, waiting for Lilya to come to me. Sure enough, she turned and came back. And the dance began.

A good dogfight is like a dance. Each move is precise and carefully planned. We circled each other, now close, now far, now crossing each other’s paths, each of us waiting for the slightest mistake to give her an opening. I was immediately on the attack—what you’d call the lead in dancing. I would try and get on her tail and she would execute a countermove to try to switch positions.

The whole thing only took a few minutes. At first I was excited. I had the advantage and I was sure that in a moment I’d close in on her and claim my victory. But after every maneuver, Lilya’s position was slightly better and mine was slightly worse. Soon she was on the attack. Whenever I thought I’d shaken her, she appeared behind me again. My temper flared. I attacked the controls like they were my enemy. My maneuvers became less accurate and I lost speed. Lilya was all over me.

Out of airspeed and ideas, I put the little biplane’s nose down and went into a steep, circling dive. The world spun around me. Lilya followed. She was trying to get on my tail and win the fight before I could finish the dive. The ground loomed. I belatedly realized that I could crash and die if this maneuver went wrong, but I don’t recall being afraid. Blood pumping hard through my veins, my mind was dominated by a single desire: to win.

I pulled up out of the dive so low that the girls on the ground scattered. When I’d leveled out, I looked around for Lilya.

There was no sign of her. She’d pulled out early, while I was looking at the ground.

My pulse raced. Suddenly the dogfight felt very real. I went into a tight climb. I had to spot Lilya before she pulled off whatever attack she was planning—and, more importantly, before everyone on the ground realized that I had lost her like a stupid rookie. I looked left and right, trying to see if she was in the blind spots blocked by the big double wings. And then, too late, I spotted her, diving down on me out of the sun, nearly invisible against the glare. The falcon punch. A Russian fighter pilot’s favorite maneuver. She was on my tail before I could do a thing. I could only land, burning with humiliation.

Lilya hopped out of the cockpit, her face red with cold and bright with pleasure. Unable to look her in the eye, I grudgingly held out my hand to concede the victory, but instead she pulled me into a hug and said, “You were great. I had such fun. We must do it again sometime!”

I was completely disarmed. It’s impossible to resent Lilya, even if she just beat you at something. Besides, I had to admit it was a fair victory. She hadn’t broken the rules or played any dirty tricks. She was just that good.

We excitedly talked over our favorite parts. I said, “That was quite a dive at the end. I wonder if you could make a U-2 do a loop.”

“These crop dusters? Not a chance,” said Lilya.

I told her it depended on how talented a pilot was at the controls. She laughed and shoved me.

My spirits recovering, we headed over to face the major’s evaluation. A few of the younger pilots broke into spontaneous applause for us. I allowed myself a small daydream. Maybe someday I’d fly as Lilya’s wingman. Given what she was like as an opponent, imagine having her as an ally.

Kazarinova frowned at us and then at her clipboard. She said, “That was an adequate performance given that you’re both rookies. But it’s nowhere near up to par for a pair of real fighter pilots.”

My mouth dropped open.

It got worse. She turned to me. “Koroleva, you were sloppy from beginning to end. You lost energy on nearly every maneuver. And when you lost sight of Litvyak, why wasn’t the sun the first place you looked?”

The humiliation settled back on me. I studied the ground, trying to avoid looking at the other pilots, who I’m sure were laughing into their hands.

“As for you, Litvyak, it’s no great tribute to your skill that you bested Koroleva. You should have been able to get on her six much more quickly, and without relying on the overused falcon punch. Instead you wasted your time with barrel rolls and flashy maneuvers. They were tolerably effective, but fighter pilots are not so concerned with appearances.” On the last word, her eyes drifted onto a stray curl of yellow hair poking out from under Lilya’s flight helmet.

Prokhorova, the captain of the pyaterka, stepped forward. “Ma’am, with all due respect, this is not a fair evaluation. Litvyak’s maneuvers were tight and well executed and they got the job done. And Koroleva—well, she wasn’t perfect, but she did a nice—”

“Officer Cadet Prokhorova. You will not contravene your superior officer!” barked Kazarinova. “What gives you the authority to have an opinion about this?”

“I can fly,” said Prokhorova.

For a moment I thought I was about to witness a murder. But the seething Kazarinova maintained her composure, made Prokhorova do twenty push-ups, and sent her to the guardhouse to await further punishment.

Then she dragged me and Lilya move by move over our every mistake, large and small. By the end, I didn’t even care anymore. If I become a fighter pilot, will every day be like this?

Yours,

Valka

Lilya set her tray down hard on the dented mess table. “And do you know what she said next? She asked me if I was sure I could reach the pedals in a Yak-1.”

“Unbelievable,” I replied. We were both still rankled by Kazarinova’s unjust criticism.

“I see Prokhorova is back among us,” said Iskra, nodding in the direction of the pyaterka pilot, who had just entered the mess hall.

“Raskova let her out a few hours ago,” I told her. “Luckily, Kazarinova isn’t in command of Aviation Group 122. Only the fighters, however that happened.”

“She’s sleeping with someone at headquarters, isn’t she?” Lilya wondered aloud.

“With that face?” I mumbled around a mouthful of noodles.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” said Zhigli.

Lilya amended her statement. “Her sister is sleeping with someone at headquarters, isn’t she?”

I swallowed. “Still seems remote.”

“There are enough rumors about illicit relationships going around without you girls starting another,” said Iskra.

“Rumors? What sort of rumors?” asked Zhigli, looking up eagerly from her navigation assignment.

“The garrison chief called Raskova into his office to accuse us of homewrecking.”

“Seriously? He is vastly overestimating how much fun we’re having,” said Zhigli. “What did she say?”

“She asked him why he was so interested in women’s gossip.”

“What do you have against Major Kazarinova anyway?” Iskra asked us.

“Nothing as a person,” said Lilya. “I mean besides her haircut.”

“And her heinous love of leather pants,” Zhigli added, gesturing with her pencil.

“Lilya Litvyak and Zhigli Zhigulenko, airwomen by day, fashion critics by night,” said Iskra.

Lilya said, “But seriously, how can she give orders to pilots in Yak-1s if she has no idea what the plane is capable of? She wasn’t even a fighter pilot before she was injured. She flew ground-attack aircraft.”

“Bershanskaya flew an airliner,” Iskra pointed out.

“And she’s going to command a regiment of trainers.”

Iskra hazarded, “Maybe if you weren’t all so dead set on being fighter pilots—”

“Speak not this blasphemy,” Zhigli told her, with a look of mock gravity.

“You’re always talking about being a serious airwoman,” said Iskra in a tone of supercilious wisdom. “You know what serious pilots don’t do? Constantly whine about their superior officers.”

“Because their superior officers can do their jobs!” I snapped. She was getting on my nerves.

Iskra said, “You could at least try not to assume that Tamara Kazarinova is the worst thing that’s ever happened to women’s aviation. It isn’t her fault about her leg. Do you think you get top-of-the-line medical care after an air raid? She’s lucky she can still walk, and she’s still in a great deal of pain, even though she doesn’t show it.”

“Is that why she acts like such an asshole?” I asked.

“Language, Valka,” Zhigli chided.

I thought nothing of the conversation then. Iskra and I argued all the time. It didn’t mean anything. But later that day, at drill, Iskra wasn’t at her usual place by my side. I wanted to look around and see where she was, but I had to stand at attention.

She didn’t show up for dinner, either. Then I was sure she was avoiding me. In confusion, I went over my words. I’d spent the past four years annoying my cousin and she’d still come all this way to enlist with me. What had I said this time that was over the line?

Then Vera told me that Iskra hadn’t been in class. Confusion gave way to anxiety. Iskra would have had to be literally dying to miss one of her navigation classes. At lights-out, I was forced to abandon all fanciful notions of extremely important errands that might explain Iskra’s absence and admit that she was missing. I spent a restless night biting my fingertips and telling myself that it wasn’t what I thought, that something else had happened, anything else. The next morning, I got up early, dressed, checked that my uniform was as correct as humanly possible, and went to see the chief of staff.

Swallowing hard, I rapped on the door marked “Captain Militsa Alexandrovna Kazarinovna, Chief of Staff” and received a curt “Enter!” in reply. I opened the door and discovered with a start that both of the Kazarinova sisters were in the office. The younger was reassuring the elder, “. . . general hatred of authority, but no particular agenda, certainly none that she’s clever enough to carry out. You know the type. She shouldn’t be a problem. And if she is, you won’t have to deal with her. She’s already earmarked for the night bombers.” She looked up as I saluted. “What is it, Koroleva?”

“That’s the other one?” the elder sister quietly asked the younger. The younger gave her a short nod.

Under the severity of their combined gaze, I found myself losing my nerve. I had never spoken to either of them beyond the requirements of military courtesy.

“Well?” asked the younger Kazarinova.

I finally managed to say, “Ma’am, Officer Cadet Koroleva, reporting a missing person. It’s my cousin. She hasn’t been seen in eighteen hours.”

She looked at me impassively. Smoke curled upward from her cigarette.

“Your cousin,” said the elder Kazarinova. Her voice was deep and coarse, and for no conceivable reason I found myself wondering what color Pasha would say it was. “Officer Cadet Iskra Ivanovna Koroleva.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Daughter of Ivan Grigorevich Korolev and Anna Petrovna Koroleva.”

My heart leaped into my throat. My aunt and uncle. Their names instantly brought back that old defensiveness, the armor I’d worn when I was questioned about them. We’d all worn it in those days. We had to.

The elder Kazarinova continued, her cold words stripping away my last shred of irrational hope. “While I was going over the regimental assignments, I noticed an irregularity in her autobiography. Both of her parents were convicted of wrecking, a fact which she conveniently forgets to mention. Your local Komsomol committees were supposed to screen for anomalies of this kind, but it seems that yours chose to overlook this one. The matter will be looked into.” Her keen black eyes flicked over me in quick movements, sizing me up. “Did you have any knowledge of your aunt and uncle’s actions?”

I scrambled for the right response. “Only afterward, ma’am. I lived in a different city. I was ten the last time I saw them.”

The elder Kazarinova said, “Her parents’ activities cast suspicion onto her own motives for joining Aviation Group 122 and her acceptability as a navigator. She is being investigated.”

“She’s been arrested?” I cried. No. No. No. It couldn’t have happened. I couldn’t have let it happen.

“Yes.”

“Permission to say something on her behalf?”

“Go ahead,” said the younger Kazarinova.

I kept my voice as steady as I could. “Iskra has been an upstanding Komsomol member since she was fourteen. She’s the youngest member of our village committee. She is the most ardent supporter of the Party that I’ve ever known.”

“Her parents were also, to all appearances, upstanding Party members. Your cousin may be following in their footsteps,” said the elder Kazarinova.

“Your opinion has been noted, Koroleva,” said the younger Kazarinova briskly. “You are dismissed.”

I started to open my mouth, but the Order of Lenin on the elder Kazarinova’s uniform caught my eye and I realized in time what thin ice I was treading. I saluted and left the room.

Then I buried my face in my arms and cried.