Aimie Runyan - Daughters of the Night Sky

“I know.” He heaved a short, weary sigh. “It’s not mine, either.”

I sat up, vertebra by vertebra, respecting my tender side. Our little stroll was enough to show me how much healing was left to do.

“Tell me about after the war,” he whispered, still lying prone and rubbing my back.

I hung my head. Guilt and fear tangled in my gut like serpents in a pit. I took in a breath, hoping to quell the slithering. “We’ll find a little house south of Chelyabinsk. Maybe not too far from your parents in Korkino?”

“You would want that? After everything?”

“They gave me you. I want to give them a chance to know me.”

“You’re a gracious soul, dear wife. Kinder than I am.”

“If I lose my kindness, I’ve lost the war, no matter what the outcome is.”

Vanya traced designs on my back with the tips of his fingers, causing the hairs to rise on my flesh. “Tell me more, my love.”

“Maybe Mama can move into town. We can have a family dinner once a week. I’ll teach young, arrogant pilots some humility while you cover the world in beauty. No children for a couple of years. Just us for a time.”

“I thought you might want to live in Moscow. To be in the bustle of the city,” he mused as his fingers danced on my skin.

“I might have once, but Moscow will need to be rebuilt. The whole western part of the country. I’ll do my part to save Russia from the Germans, but others will have to put her back together.”

“More than fair.” He slid down and kissed the flesh on my back, just before the swell of my buttocks, then returned to his fingertip-dancing.

My own fingers slid along the chiseled lines of his bicep, delighting in the truth of his form curled around me. “What are you doing, love?” I asked, unable to sense any real pattern in the movement of his fingers.

“I’ve neither proper canvas, nor brush, nor paint. I am using what I can to create a painting for you on the pristine canvas you’ve given me.”

“What are you painting, then?” I asked, leaning more heavily against him as my side began to ache.

“Your little dacha. Snug with a little fireplace, perfect for cozying up next to in winter. Well built. Wooden with cross timbers like they used to build. A little garden so we can enjoy the summer sunshine. Acres of evergreen trees surrounding it. A small lake that freezes in winter so I can teach the boys to skate.”

“The girls, too,” I corrected. “I spent more of my winters in skates than shoes when I was a girl.”

“You were raised properly, then.” His fingers paused in their tracing, my skin longing for him to continue. “You do want children, yes?”

“I do,” I said. “But I worry that I won’t be able to care for them like a mother should.”

“How can you doubt this?” Vanya abandoned his landscape and sat up next to me. “From the moment I met you, I could see that caring for others was the very center of who you are.”

“I’ve always thought myself to be rather selfish,” I admitted. “Instead of taking a job and helping Mama at home, I went off to flight school. Every decision since then has been more of the same.”

“And your decision to go to flight school was, if I am not mistaken, meant to help give your mother a better life, no?”

“It doesn’t help her much now, does it?”

“You’re protecting her, just as your father would have done. I can only imagine how proud of you he would be.” He kissed my temple and pulled me against his chest. “You will be an amazing mother.”

“Can we please… not talk about after?” I asked. “It seems wrong—thoughtless—so soon after Taisiya. She and Matvei had their plans, too.”

“Of course,” he said. “I understand.”

As his arms circled me, engulfing me in warmth and love, I felt a rock of ice forming at my core.

“I have to go back to the front, Vanya,” I whispered. “They need me.”

“No, they don’t, Katya. I promise you.”

“You don’t understand how it is for us. Oksana just took over command. She needs me. She offered me a place as her deputy.”

“And she can find someone else.”

“Please, don’t. She needs me at her side in this,” I repeated.

“Bullshit. This is just you wanting to feel like you’re indispensable. Wise up. We’re all replaceable. Our commanders know it. Stalin goddamn well knows it.”

“You said you would let me make my own decision.” I swiveled in bed, standing faster than I should have, and reached for my blouse and slacks, which had been discarded on a nearby chair. I gritted my teeth at the exertion but would not show him my weakness.

“That was when I thought you would make the right one.”

“Vanya, if you were given the chance, would you abandon your brothers at the front? Would you stay behind and let me fight?”

“That’s a ridiculous question. I’d never be given the choice.”

I turned around to face him, my shaking hands abandoning my buttons. “Because you’re a man. But now imagine those rules didn’t exist. Imagine you were injured and had the chance to return to Korkino for the rest of the war. Could you do it? Could you stay home and sleep soundly in your own bed? Look yourself in the mirror each morning?”

His face went slack; his shoulders drooped.

“No,” he admitted.

“Good. Otherwise you’re not the man I married.”

August 1943, outside Stalingrad

The grounds surrounding the convalescent hospital weren’t as picturesque as the rugged fields outside the academy in Chelyabinsk, but the August light was such that Vanya couldn’t help but lose himself in his paints. He had me posed on the lawn behind the crumbling building, lounged on a battered old chaise in such a way that my side wasn’t irritated by long sessions lying still. My uniform didn’t lend the same grace to the picture as my turquoise dress, but I was happy enough to have it committed to canvas.

“I worried about running out of paints, but canvases have been so few that I needn’t have worried,” he said, his brow furrowing momentarily, his eyes staring somewhere over my right shoulder. The cast of light perhaps? “I shouldn’t have bothered hauling my paint case with me, but it seemed wrong to leave it behind.”

“I haul Papa’s violin with me everywhere I go,” I said. “It gives me comfort to have it near, even if I don’t get to play it often. I expect it’s the same for your paints.”

“Probably,” he said, eyes fixed on the canvas. “There hasn’t been much worth painting, but it’s nice to know I could.”

We sat wordlessly for what had to be at least an hour, likely more. I was doing precisely what the doctors would have wanted—lying still without disturbing my injuries—but I found the lack of activity maddening. My mind wandered to the front, and I wondered how Oksana was managing in Sofia’s stead. If her brusque nature and biting tone could inspire the same enthusiasm as Sofia’s ebullience.

“Well, it’s a start,” Vanya said at last. “I’ve managed to capture something of that spark in your eye, at least. It’s not the face I painted back at the academy.”

“You wound me, husband. Are you saying I’ve aged?”

“We all have, and quickly, too. Yours is the face of a woman now, not a girl. A lovely woman at that. At least I can keep this with me even if I can’t—”

His hands balled into fists, and he hurled his paintbrush off into the patchy lawn.

“Goddammit. What kind of a husband am I if I can’t even keep you safe?” He buried his face in his trembling hands. I hobbled to his side and wrapped my arms around his broad shoulders.

“My love” was all I could murmur.