C Taylor - Nadya's War

“What’s that?”

“This,” she said, smashing a handful of snow into my face.

We still had a couple of hours of daylight left by the time we finished everything needing to be done. We would’ve had more had the second round of our snowball fight not lasted so long. Rounds three and four didn’t help either, especially when we were supposed to be chopping wood. Pounding slush was exponentially more fun than hacking away at the trees, and my cramping hand made me take breaks from work, and those breaks turned to good excuses to pelt Alexandra in the face with a ball of ice. Despite the cheery nature of our fights, in the back of my mind, melancholy thoughts of all the fallen girls who could no longer enjoy such things lingered.

With all our mundane tasks behind us, we made for town, frigid, exhausted, and thoroughly looking forward to a good steam. I hummed along the way to keep my mind from my aching palm, and it wasn’t long before we passed through the banya’s imposing wood door and into its sitting room.

Alexandra and I put our clothes and towels on one of the high-back chairs and left our boots on the stone floor before entering the steam room. As we did, we passed by a local woman, with twenty years and at least as many kilos on us both who left without a word.

Birch panels lined the steam room’s walls, and moisture clung to all of them. At the far end was a small window looking out over the Volga River. I only knew because of my sense of direction. The glass pane was fogged and only let in a blur of hazy light.

“It was kind of her to have it ready for us, don’t you think?” Alexandra said. She sat on one of the benches and began using a nearby cloth and bucket to wash off. “When I’m rich and famous, I think I’ll like getting use to that. I wonder what it costs to have a maid tend to me all day.”

“What are you going to make your fortune from? Cheating at snow fights?” I said, laughing. “Besides, I thought your family was already rich.”

“Just because our bread isn’t moldy doesn’t mean we’ve got hoards of gold,” she replied.

I took to another bench and started cleaning. At first, I shut my eyes and enjoyed the hot cloth gliding across my skin, taking with it equal amounts of grime and stress. I ran it time and again over my face and down my neck, shoulders, and arms.

“Can’t believe you’re ahead of me in kills,” Alexandra said. “Well, I can, but I’m jealous you’re going to make ace before I do.”

“What makes you say that? We both have two.”

“Kazarinova robbed you of your first,” she replied. “You should be at three, not counting the one you gave to Valeriia, which would be four. Face it Nadya, you’ll score three more before I do and become famous.”

“I don’t want to be famous.”

Alexandra straightened and raised her eyebrows. “Surely you jest. Who wouldn’t want to be an ace?”

“I’m not kidding,” I said. “I’ve been thinking since we lost Tania. I don’t want my life to be measured by how many people I’ve butchered.”

“They’re the enemy,” Alexandra said. “They deserve to be shot. They invaded us, remember?”

“I know,” I said. “I’m not saying they aren’t or they haven’t. What I’m saying is at this point I do what I do because that’s my job, because it’s necessary. I don’t want it applauded, no matter how boring that makes me.”

Alexandra laughed. “You’re crazy and hardly boring. You’re a damn fighter pilot, Nadya. It doesn’t get any more exciting than that. Besides, how long did you dream of your first kill?”

“A long time, but that’s changed now,” I said.

“Well, I’ll be wing leader then, and you can watch my tail so I can make ace first,” she said. “Seems like a win-win to me. Yes?”

“Sure, why not?” I paused the conversation as I worked the washcloth between my fingers. The dirt there was stubborn, and it took some effort to clean under my nails as well. When I was finished, I looked at the scars on my palms. It had been a while since I’d studied them. The spots on my hands and arms were dark and shiny, and looked as if I had some old plaster stuck to my skin that would never come off. There were still faint traces of burns on my leg and neck I could feel, and though they were not as visible, they were as much of a testament to what I’d gone through as the more severe ones.

“Silly, isn’t it?” I said with a snort as I continued inspecting my skin.

“Me wanting to be wing leader?”

“No. These scars. I let them have so much power over me, and they hardly cover any of my skin.”

Alexandra laughed. “I suppose it’s a good thing you weren’t totally covered then. Think how much under their spell you’d be then.”

“I’m being serious,” I said, feeling put off. “Why do we let such small portions of our lives define us?”

“A lot can happen in a moment. A birth. A death. A first kiss or a broken heart. It makes sense those things would shape us.”

“I think I’ve been shaped more when nothing happens.”

I wondered if Alexandra would know what I was in reference to, but like the good wingman she was, she followed me close, not missing a beat. “Unanswered prayers.”

“I don’t even want things to be my way anymore,” I said, feeling my gut tighten. “All I want is to understand why the world is so broken, why He’s not fixing it when He’s supposed to be able.”

“Maybe He can’t tell you.”

I tilted my head sideways. “What do you mean? You’re telling me He can’t open His mouth and speak? He supposedly spoke with other people.”

“I’m saying maybe you wouldn’t understand,” she replied. Before I could argue, she went on. “A few years before the war, my baby brother had his first teeth come in. Naturally, we brushed them, and he screamed bloody murder the entire time. He looked at us in terror as we held him down as best as we could and brushed his teeth. As much as we wanted to tell him why we were ‘torturing’ him, we couldn’t, because he’d never understand. But we weren’t going to stop because he hated it.”

Her unexpected insight struck a chord in me I’d never heard before, and the idea of not having answers, not knowing why, became far less scary. “It’s weird to hear you talk about such things, being atheist.”

Alexandra shrugged. “I’ve been trying to come up with an answer for your not-so-silent midnight prayers for a while now. I figured if this life isn’t the only life, if there’s eternity to consider, who can say what’s good or bad when we’ve got such a small view of things? Hell, if anything, dying is going home. That can’t be all bad.”

“I never thought about it like that,” I admitted. “Still, I worry. I lied. I stole. What if He’s silent because I’ve done such things?”

Alexandra didn’t say anything for a while, and for that, I was glad. The last thing I wanted was an off-the-cuff answer, one born from unease and not deep thought. “In the end, I think, if God is God, He’d understand the pain you were in and why you did what you thought you had to. If He doesn’t understand it, well, He’s not God, is He?”

Her words warmed my heart far more than the steam room ever could. I reclined on the bench and stared at the ceiling. “Keep it up and you’ll be an abbess before you’re thirty,” I said with a laugh.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Nadya,” she said. “I’m not pious, nor do I intend to be. The first chance I get, I’m ravishing my fiancé so hard it would take a week for them to hear the entire confession.”

On the morning of November fifth, I lay on my mattress, staring at the frozen bunk ceiling, trapped in the land of exhaustion. Winter had been cruel all night, despite the wood burnt in the oil drum, and my wounds had kept sleep at bay for nine hours now. I could barely think. Worse, I was slated for an escort soon, and I was certain it would take a tiny miracle for me not to fall asleep and crash on takeoff.