He didn’t stay to see them off, though Daria urged Gosha to wave bye-bye to Papa through the train’s window. Their designated seat was in the unheated passenger car, the wood benches covered with frayed red velvet, loose springs and stuffing burrowing through the seams. Luckily, the car was sparsely occupied. Daria noted a handful of soldiers either heading home or on leave. An older woman sat knitting in the back, while a man wearing a suit studied blueprints on his lap. At least there would be room to lie down at night. Daria had planned to sleep sitting up if it came to that. What she hadn’t planned on was keeping a toddler occupied for multiple days. Or fed. Or clean.
Adam had attempted to help her, packing, along with Gosha’s clothes, the toy duck he loved, some tins of condensed milk, a loaf of black bread—half rye, half sawdust, all Kyril—and scraps of dried, salted venison. Daria had brought food along as well, but she’d known in advance it wouldn’t be enough. And it certainly wouldn’t be enough for two.
Her more immediate concern, however, was the lavatory. Gosha was mostly toilet-trained, but not at night and, if she were honest, not always during the day. If he got distracted by something, or was frightened—as was the case now—he might forget to warn Daria and soil his pants. This had been difficult enough at home, where he’d had only one pair of woolen tights, but where Daria could repurpose old sheets and torn clothes into diapers, and where she had a tub of water to soak them and a fireplace for drying. Here, there was a public toilet at the end of the row of cars, but that proved too long to ask Gosha to hold it. She was forced to remove Gosha’s tights, leave him wearing only pants, and cover him with her coat for warmth, while Daria wrung out the tights as best she could by hand and stretched them out on the seat to dry. The man with the blueprints wrinkled his nose at the smell.
Their food, despite careful rationing and two tantrums from Gosha about how hungry he was, ran out on the fourth day. Luckily, the train made a stop to refuel, and passengers were allowed to disembark briefly at the station. There, Daria attempted to buy food, but the locals brushed by her. They knew better than to engage with someone either going to, or even coming from, the East.
Desperate, Daria grabbed Gosha by the hand to keep him from running off and, in the middle of the crowded train station, sank to her knees, crossed herself, and began to pray. She didn’t know what she was saying, but she’d heard kulak and German women whispering the words to themselves in the barracks, and she’d memorized enough to give an adequate performance, as long as no one listened closely. That wasn’t a problem. Her actions prompted a majority of those rushing by to give Daria an even wider berth. But after a few minutes, an old woman materialized out of the crowd and dropped a carrot as wizened as she was into Daria’s skirt, before quickly hobbling away. Some bread appeared. A man slipped Daria a tin can of fish.
The bounty proved enough to feed Daria and Gosha until the next stop. As she prepared to get off and hope long-banned Christian charity lived in this town, as well, one of the soldiers they’d been riding with for over a week sneaked away from his compatriots and guiltily, looking over his shoulder the entire time, forced a pair of hard-boiled eggs into her hands.
“For the boy,” he said. Then added, “I’m going home to see my boy. I hope he’s big and strong like yours. I have a photograph.” He showed Daria a black-and-white snapshot of a child with oval eyes and dark hair whom, in that moment, Daria the non-Christian nonbeliever deemed her patron saint.
Procuring food and rushing Gosha to the toilet, then dealing with the consequences of their arriving too late, took up the majority of Daria’s time. Followed by keeping him entertained for the rest of it. There was only so long an active toddler could stare out the grimy window at the barren and dull countryside. Daria and Gosha took endless walks up and down the aisles. She tried to distract him from bothering the other passengers, more and more of whom were getting on now that they’d left the tundra, or from sticking his fingers into every fixture and licking every surface. Exhausted as she was at the end of the day, when Gosha finally fell asleep on Daria’s chest, asking for Papa and home, Daria remained wide awake, listening to the jagged syncopation of the rattling train tracks drawing them closer and closer to Odessa, and wondering how in the world she was going to explain Gosha to Edward.
Everything had happened in such a rush, Daria had barely a moment to consider it the first time, when Adam forbade her from leaving with the child. Before Edward had departed, Daria had told him as little as she could get away with about her deal with Adam. She doubted Edward, in his state, had heard or understood half of it. But now that time had passed, Edward must have wondered about Daria’s life in Kyril. And Gosha’s existence told the whole story. There were women in the camp who’d had no one to protect them, who’d been raped or had prostituted themselves out of hunger and desperation, with resulting children, too. If Daria told Edward the same had happened to her, she had no doubt he would believe her. Daria could even, with certain details left out and others looked at from a different perspective, convince herself that it was true. She was blameless; she’d had no choice. Except Daria knew that, for some things, she’d had a choice. Adam might never hear what she told her husband about him, but Daria still refused to damn him with the lie.
Their train pulled into the Odessa voksal a mere day and a half later than scheduled. Daria had sent Edward a telegram before leaving Kyril, telling him which line she’d be on, but even if the train had arrived on time, she’d departed before he had the time to cable back.
The remaining passengers disembarked. Gosha began jumping with excitement. He grabbed Daria by the fingers, pulling her toward the door. She stumbled after him, attempting to balance her bag and the one Adam had packed for Gosha, without tripping. At the steps, she plopped Gosha on her hip and grabbed the satchels’ handles with her other palm.
Stepping onto the platform, legs unsteady from weeks of train travel, Daria was assaulted by a multitude of impressions. First, it was the noise. She’d forgotten what a city sounded like. Kyril had been a muffled world. It wasn’t the vast emptiness, or the cushioning of snow. It was that no one dared call attention to themselves. They even breathed more quietly.
Next came the bright light. The sun nearly blinded her. She raised her palm to shield her eyes and winced. Gosha was doing the same, rubbing his lids with both fists, unable to understand what was happening. It was warmer, too. She’d been aware of the train car growing less freezing as they traveled southwest, but the sensation of a wind on her skin that didn’t ice on contact startled Daria. She felt a forgotten heat on her face, her neck, the backs of her hands.
And then there was Edward, slowly approaching her across the platform. He looked older, and she realized she’d unreasonably been expecting Odessa not merely to heal the broken husband she’d sent home, but to restore the young musician she’d first met. Edward’s once ebony hair was now salted with gray, his skin fluttering loose off the bones of his freshly shaved face. He walked hunched, with short, shuffling steps, hesitating before he set either foot on the ground, as if asking permission. His shoulders swallowed his neck, hands bunched in his pockets, elbows pressed close to his body to avoid jostling anyone. And yet, when he looked up and smiled at her, he was the same man he’d always been. The one who made Daria’s heart speed up as she realized that she was, at long last, home.
Much as she wanted to rush into his arms, Daria was weighed down by her baggage. And by Gosha . . . and his inescapable buzz of red hair.
The earrings. That’s what Adam had meant. She’d had no time to think about the reasoning behind his odd gesture, until now, when the realization crashed into her. The earrings: she could sell them to buy food or find a place to live . . . in case Edward, upon seeing Gosha, refused to take her back.
Her husband approached them both, still smiling.
Edward took his hands out of his pockets. Daria was relieved to see the open sores and gashes had healed, replaced with scars and calluses. He picked up Daria’s bag with one palm, then, just as naturally, reached to take Gosha out of her arms with the other. Relieved of her burden for the first time in weeks, Daria nearly collapsed with exhaustion.
“Let’s go home,” Edward said, leading the way.