TWELVE

7 January 1942

Dearest Valyushka,

I can only imagine what you’re going through right now. I know there are no words I can put in this letter to make the pain go away. I wish I were there. Then I wouldn’t need to use words.

I’ll admit I was jealous of Iskra when she first showed up in Stakhanovo. You were so taken with her. She was so smart and sophisticated, and somehow you two seemed to have more in common from your one visit to Moscow than we did from our entire childhood. How could a kid like me compete? But Iskra was always sweet to me and she doted on my little sister, and whatever we were doing, she always made sure I was included. Pretty soon it was like having an extra sister.

Now I know that I didn’t need to worry about losing you as a friend. There are friends who come and go, but then there are friends who are your second family, and those friends you never lose, no matter what happens.

I know it’s no consolation, but it needn’t have been Zhigli or Lilya or anyone who turned Iskra in. It won’t make you feel better to take it out on your friends. There’s a purge going on in the Red Army. I keep hearing about it on the radio. The other operators’ voices are on edge as they report this comrade or that suddenly hauled off by MPs.

Our commissar stalks around, his sharp eyes narrowed, looking for any sign of dissent among the ranks. Rudenko and I had to stop learning liturgical music for fear that he would catch us. It’s a tense time for everyone.

But it isn’t over for Iskra. You must keep hoping for her. You talk as though Iskra has already been sent to the camps. But I believe in her. Iskra is smart and resilient. Four years ago, she was in a tight spot. Her parents were gone. She was under suspicion from the NKVD. And she lived in the biggest, most heavily policed city in the Soviet Union during a time when anyone could disappear without notice. She could have been arrested and shot. She could have ended up in a state orphanage. When she fled to your family, she could have dragged that suspicion with her and brought all of you down.

Instead she graduated school with a gold medal, earned a pilot’s license, and got a seat on the Komsomol committee. And she made it look easy. I don’t mean to downplay the seriousness of her arrest. I know how much danger she’s in. But don’t underestimate Iskra.

I’m not one to talk, though—I worry about you. You’ll say I’m silly, but I do. You’ll be in combat someday and I have no illusions about how VVS pilots fare.

Whatever happens, please, please don’t do anything stupid. Asking for Iskra’s release was a big risk, even with someone as kindhearted as Raskova. If you get arrested, you only strengthen the case against her and make her chances of release that much slimmer. Keep yourself safe. That’s the best thing you can do for her right now.

Yours,

Pasha

13 January 1942

Dear Pasha,

The navigators began flight training a few days ago. Iskra and Zhigli know how to fly, but most of the others are students with no aviation experience at all. Some of them have never been in an aircraft before. It was a little bit satisfying seeing Vera wobbly and miserable with airsickness. She is undaunted. She says that she’ll go up in that transport plane as many times as it takes for her stomach to settle down.

Major Raskova is rotating us so that every pilot gets a chance to fly with every navigator. Yesterday I did a night flight with Zhenechka. I didn’t think I would like her at first. I lost my temper and yelled at her because she misread our altitude as 9200 meters instead of 2900 meters, a mistake only a silly college student who’s never flown could make. I could just hear Iskra’s voice in my head saying, “The big hand is the hundreds. . . .”

But as the flight went on, my misplaced anger faded and Zhenechka began to grow on me. She’s a dreamer who tells fairy tales and jots down poems among her notes and is nearly impossible to dislike. She pointed at the sky and said, “Look, Valka, there’s Sirius.”

Still, it’s hard not to think of the navigators, no matter how clever they are, as “not Iskra.”

Everyone is trying to be nice to me because of what happened to Iskra. I admit I’m not taking it very well. It turns out the only thing I’m worse at than giving sympathy is receiving sympathy. Partly it’s that I hate being coddled. And partly it’s that nobody wants to be too nice. No one will say, “It isn’t fair—she did nothing wrong and everyone knows it,” because they’re all too conscious that they might be next.

The worst part is the lack of news. If I knew she’d been sent to the camps, I could come to terms with it. I could get properly angry. But for now I’m just anxious. Don’t worry, I haven’t asked about her again. I’m acutely aware that I’m on shaky ground myself. I think I may have squeaked by because I wasn’t a Party member. Nobody gets the Order of Lenin for denouncing a teenager from the Urals.

Bershanskaya, bless her heart, kept Iskra in the rotation with the other navigators, rescheduling her when her turn came as if she was having an endless string of sick days. Captain Kazarinova upbraided Bershanskaya for that and informed her that Iskra Koroleva was no longer a member of Aviation Group 122. And then that trace of my cousin, too, was gone.

Yours,

Valka