AT THE POST OFFICE, THERE WAS A LETTER FOR ME FROM the VVS.
I hesitated before sliding my thumb under the flap of the envelope to rip it open, suppressing my own eagerness. As long as it remained sealed, the letter might not be a rejection.
“‘Dear Valentina Sergeevna,’” I read aloud. The letter addressed me formally by my first name and my patronymic middle name, which seemed promising because the writer was talking to me like an adult, but my hope quickly withered when I read the body of the letter. “‘Thank you for your repeated interest in serving in the Red Army Air Force. While the VVS appreciates your extensive aeronautical experience, we are pleased to inform you that the state of the war effort is not, at this time, so dire that we need to put young girls at risk in dangerous front-line positions. We encourage you to put your admirable patriotism to use aiding the war effort in another way. The women of the Soviet Union are urgently needed in the work force to keep our brave fighting men supplied. This role may be less glamorous, but it is every bit as important. Additionally, we urge you not to neglect your most vital contribution to the USSR, that of a future mother. You will someday be responsible for raising the next generation, and that alone is reason enough to keep you away from the dangers of combat. . . .’”
“At least it’s a polite letter,” said Iskra as we left the post office and entered a gloomy summer drizzle. “Very personal.”
“I’m about to get personal,” I grumbled. I pulled a pack of cigarettes out of my shirt pocket, but before I could take one, Iskra grabbed the pack and tossed it into the canal.
“Hey!” I said, resisting the impulse to jump into the scummy water after it. “I waited in three lines for those!”
“And that makes you a bad Soviet,” said my cousin loftily. “I won’t let you pick up that filthy habit. We need to set an example, you know. For the adults.”
“You mean the adults who won’t let me join the VVS?” I asked. “‘Future mother.’ Ugh.”
“Mother Russia you are not,” said Iskra. She snapped her fingers. “I know who you should write to: that airwoman from the Rodina, the one who’s always talking about getting more girls into aviation. Marina Raskova.”
“Raskova?” I scratched my neck nervously. “She’s really important, Iskra. She has better things to do than talk to a kid from Stakhanovo.”
“As opposed to the commander of the VVS, who has nothing better to do.”
I had written to Raskova. Over the month since the war had broken out, I’d spent hours sitting cross-legged on the mattress that Iskra and I shared, using Notes of a Navigator as a writing surface. I wrote and rewrote, rubbing out mistakes with a dirty eraser stub until I wore holes in the paper. I just never mailed it.
We found Pasha sitting on our building’s concrete steps, heedless of the rain. His forehead was cradled in one hand, his hair sticking up at angles where he’d raked his fingers through it. I stopped abruptly, the importance of my letter shrinking away as I realized that something was wrong, really wrong.
“What’s the matter?” I asked softly.
He didn’t reply.
A slip of yellow paper was crumpled in his other hand. I reached down and unfolded his unresisting fingers, one at a time. I didn’t need to read the paper to know what it said. “Did you just find out?”
He nodded.
“When are you leaving?”
“Monday.”
Three days.
Iskra and I sat on the step on either side of him. Unsure what else to do, I took his hand in mine. It was soft and delicate. Not the hand of a coker. Not the hand of a soldier. Pasha had beautiful hands and I had never noticed them before.
Pasha’s quiet presence had been a constant in my life since we were toddlers stacking blocks at the state-run day care. After Iskra’s arrival, he became the tagalong kid, although he was less than a year my junior. I had taken it for granted that when I made it big as a pilot, I would leave him. It had never occurred to me that he might leave me first.
A flat-nosed towboat chugged sullenly down the canal, pushing a line of rusty rectangular barges lashed together. Pasha sat on the deck of the middle one, leaning against the side of the hopper with his arms wrapped around his knees and a battered rucksack resting beside him. The pale mountain of coke that rose above the rim of the coaming made him look very small. It was a humble way to leave for war.
I waited at the corner where the lead barge passed close to the edge of the canal, and when it appeared, I jumped onto its low, flat deck, holding my arms out for balance. I walked along the outside edge of the tow until I reached Pasha.
He said, “You weren’t at the dock. I thought you weren’t going to say good-bye.”
“Not with all those people around,” I said. I couldn’t put my finger on why that made me so uncomfortable. I didn’t have anything to say to Pasha that I couldn’t say in front of everyone, did I? “I passed your sister in the hall. She was crying.”
“She thinks I’m not coming back. It’s as good as a law of the universe for her: People who leave never come back.”
“You’ll come back,” I said with more conviction than I felt. “You’ll go. You’ll fight. We’ll repel the invasion. And then you’ll come home.”
“That’s what Iskra said too. But not everyone will.”
I wanted to point out some trait of Pasha’s that would help him survive the war, but I couldn’t think of any. Instead I sat down on the edge of the deck. The barge rode so low that I could trail the tips of my toes in the murky water. There was no one else on the line of barges except the sailors in the towboat far behind. I wondered how much of our lives Pasha and I had spent sitting side by side while the world passed us by.
Pasha told me, “You can listen to my radio while I’m gone.”
“I don’t know how it works.”
“My dad can show you.”
Uneasy silence enveloped us again, the knowledge of what lay ahead hanging over us like a storm cloud. A half-submerged tire floated by, trailing weeds and trash like an industrial-age jellyfish.
I said, “They won’t let me enlist, but they draft you. Soviet efficiency, huh?”
“Soviet efficiency,” Pasha echoed.
“I saw a story in the paper this morning. Two girls wanted to fight so badly that they stole a fighter and flew it to the front. Didn’t end well, but I’m a little jealous anyway. Maybe we could just take the old plane and fly away.”
“Where to?”
I shrugged. “Who cares?”
Ahead, the canal curved away around a ridge and out of sight. I nodded in the direction of the bend. “This is where I get off.”
Pasha looked up at me out of the corner of his eye. “Do you have to?”
There was no Iskra around to tease me, none of the aeroclub guys who accused me of joining to meet boys. So I turned toward him. His face was suddenly close to mine. I reached out to touch his cheek, then hesitated. It was long enough that we both blushed and dropped our gaze. I gave him an awkward hug.
“Valka?”
“Yeah?”
Pasha fumbled with his hands. “Is it okay if I write to you?”
Of course I said yes.