September, 1942
Tashkent
“Stalingrad!” Rachel exclaimed.
“Yes,” Igor replied. “Stalingrad.”
The windows were open and the cool night breeze moved across the room, bringing the scent of vineyards. Stalingrad. Rachel repeated the city’s name to herself. Though she, like everyone else in the Soviet Union, was following the daily progress of the battle for the Volga city, the place itself belonged to a different world than Tashkent. Stalingrad. It provoked cold, hard images in her mind of a city on the vast, foreboding steppes made habitable only by the river.
“What would we do there?”
“See it.”
“We might not see anything. Only a lot of smoke and bombs exploding.”
“That’s what others might see. But not us.”
She recognized well the state he was in: total absorption by a creative fervor.
“It’s the first time since we met that I’ve been completely alive! I haven’t felt this way about an idea since my first book. God, it’s been fourteen years and I was beginning to doubt it would ever happen again.”
“I’m happy for you, Igor. There’s nothing in life to equal that surge of creative fire.”
“Then let it engulf you. Don’t analyze it to death. We won’t be going there as reporters, for God’s sake. Let them crawl around taking pictures and interviewing generals. We’re going because we have a vision.”
“It’s your vision, not mine. I can’t share it.”
“You can if you want. Stalingrad isn’t going to be just another battle. It’s a turning point in human history. All of life and death as we experienced it in our time will be encompassed by this struggle. You may see the world differently . . . less personalized and more universal.”
She was touched by his fervor, but the notion of going to the battlefront struck her as unnecessary. All she needed was her imagination and a theme that grew from within.
“You’ve changed my life,” he declared. “Before you came into it I was dead, going through the motions. Nothing moved me. I couldn’t feel. Or create. This will be the great work of my life—if I’m destined to create one.”
He didn’t have to say it; she read it in his eyes, heard it in his voice. Why? she thought, why does he have to have my help?
“Because words aren’t enough,” Igor said, reading her mind. “To accomplish what I want, what I see in my imagination, I need pictures. Not just any illustrations. Only you have . . . the power to do this book. Rachel, I swear that you were born to do this book with me.”
“That might be so, Igor. You also know that if I draw what I see and what I feel they will never publish it here.”
“No! You must not believe that. Stalin won’t live forever. Twenty five, fifty years from now, who can say what will happen? Eventually our book . . . our child, will see the light of day.”
Her resistance crumbled. They had never spoken of love, and were not lovers, yet she felt as if he had broken her open. He had put his life in her hands. She would say yes; but first she had to tell him the truth.
“Igor, we have no future together. I will do the book with you. But when the war’s over, I won’t stay with you.”
“Why not?”
“My future will be with someone else.”
“Michael Orloff.”
She wasn’t shocked that he knew his name. She was stunned to hear him say it. “Zip Uk told you.”
“Only that you were going to bring him to Tashkent with your family.”
“Did he ask you to report back to him if you learned anything he can use against me?”
“Of course. You don’t think I would, do you?”
She studied his face. She had often asked herself the same question and she had never decided one way or the other. Now she knew. Zip Uk had to know that Igor was a homosexual. He could force Igor to tell him whatever he wanted to know. “No.” Tears filled Igor’s eyes. “There’s nothing of interest to the N.K.V.D. anyhow. Michael and I were going to be married the Saturday after the invasion. I don’t know what happened to him.”
“He could have been killed during the bombing. If he survived, and the Germans caught him, they would have executed him.”
It was not often that Igor stated the obvious. She let it go without comment knowing that he was merely expressing his own wishful thinking.
“Igor, even if he’s dead, I won’t remain in Russia once the war is over.”
“You won’t have to. In fact, Paris would be fine with me. I’ll help you leave. I don’t have to live in Russia, as long as I spend enough time in Leningrad.”
His proposal—and that’s what it was—stunned her. She understood what he envisioned and it made perfect sense, for him. She would be his wife, in name only, and he would be free to pursue his desire for men and boys. She imagined that such marriages were common in Paris.
“I can get you out,” Igor said. “Once we’re in Paris, we’ll both have the only thing that matters—our art.”
“There’s more to marriage than art, Igor.”
“Of course. If you want children, we’ll have children. I’d like to have a family.”
She was touched by his proposal. She had no doubt he loved her, in his own way.
“I can’t make any promises now,” Igor.”
“Of course not.”
“If we make it back alive from Stalingrad, we’ll have all the time in the world to discuss the future.”
She meant it as a jest, but he didn’t smile.
“In that vein,” Rachel said. “When we go I won’t cross the Volga to the west bank.” The newspaper accounts of the fighting had revealed that the Russian artillery and mortar batteries, as well as the bulk of the staff officers directing the fighting, were positioned on the east bank, across the mile-wide river from the city proper. “I can’t take the risk of being killed or seriously injured; that would be unfair to Lily.”
Igor frowned, but seeing that she wouldn’t relent, shook his head. “There won’t be any need for you to cross the Volga. I will. We’ll have two perspectives; landscape and portrait, so to speak.”
“So you speak,” she remarked, gently mocking his stentorian pronouncement.
* * *
As she and Igor were leaving before dawn, Rachel met Lily the night before to say goodbye. At Rachel’s request they went for a walk; she hoped that it would allow her to escape from the doubts that crowded her mind.
Her efforts to reach Alisher had failed and her numerous paintings remained stacked against the wall in her studio. Mitya had promised to protect them if she were killed or injured at Stalingrad, but they still weighed heavily on her mind.
There was something else occupying her thoughts as well: her father. Ever since Avilov’s startling disclosure she had been struggling to resolve her feelings about him. Her conflict had engendered a painting in her mind—a depiction of his execution in Talsi. A myriad of questions, all unanswerable, beat against her imagination, seeking to be asked on canvas. All centered on him; What had he thought and felt during those last few minutes? Had he experienced some great revelation that had resolved the dilemmas of his life or had he died in an agony of self doubt? Had he condemned himself or found deliverance in an expiation of his guilt?
Compared to this painting, Igor’s book about Stalingrad seemed insignificant to her artistic sense. She yearned to be done with it and to be back in her studio doing the work that sprang wholly from her own imagination and life experience.
The night was balmy. Rachel steered them toward the Uzbek quarter, whose winding streets were now more familiar to her than the modern city.
“When you get back—if you live through this—I won’t be here.”
“You won’t?” Rachel said. She had been dreading this news since the concert and had even managed to convince herself that Lily might have forgotten about leaving.
“No,” Lily said, “I won’t.”
“Why now? Has something else happened?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, something did happen. At the gym.”
Rachel waited for Lily to go on. It seemed to her that Lily now spent all her time training. Her body was smooth and hard and every day she took long runs in the morning sun, often more than ten miles at a time. Then she would lift weights, and after lunch, swim laps and then run again in the evening. She was now in better physical condition than anyone Rachel had ever known in her life, even Stephen.
“Someone stole my towel.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I got out of the shower and my towel was gone. I was left naked and soaking wet.”
“But Lily—”
“I know, it could have been an accident. But I don’t think so. There aren’t that many women training on their own. We all know each other. This was no accident—I think Zip Uk was sending me a message.”
“You mean he was trying to frighten you.”
“Yes.”
“But he hasn’t bothered you since the concert, has he?”
“No. But I’ve always felt like people were watching me. He’s probably growing impatient. Stephen hasn’t turned up and because of Igor he can’t get at you. A sadist like him doesn’t have infinite patience.”
Rachel could see from Lily’s expression that she expected Rachel to take the party line—to tell her that she was safe as long as she stayed in Tashkent. But what if she was right about Zip Uk? Somehow, it sounded to Rachel like something he would get one of his agents to do. What better way to make someone feel vulnerable than to strike at them when they’re naked.
“I don’t want you to leave me, Lily. You’re the best friend I have in the world. But I do want you to be safe. If you’ve found a place where you feel you will be safe, you should go. As long as you come back for me.”
Lily appeared to be surprised. She nodded, tried to speak, but couldn’t get the words out.
Rachel took her hand and pulled her close. “I’ll miss you, Lily. But I know we will find each other. All of us—we will get out of this horrible country together.”
“Amen to that,” Lily said.