Daria whipped around, about to tell them that this was neither the time nor the place, that they were dawdling, wasting precious energy that could better be spent elsewhere; that they were drawing dangerous attention to themselves, risking their all being caught; that they were driving her mad.
Except that, before the words were out of her mouth, Daria saw Edward and Alyssa, their heads bent together. Her husband was smiling, actually smiling as he looked approvingly at their daughter. Edward told Alyssa, “Yes, remember, the music inside, they cannot take that away from you, not unless you let them.”
“I won’t let them, Papa,” Alyssa promised.
They were back in the barracks in time to report for work.
“She’s dead,” Daria told Adam. For reasons she couldn’t explain, not to Edward, not to herself, Daria felt compelled to return and let Adam know what had happened. “Thank you for getting her the medicine. But it was too late.”
“My sympathies,” Adam said. Much to Daria’s surprise, she felt that he meant it.
“I am grateful to you for trying.”
“The medicine.” He looked almost embarrassed. “It might not have been any good. They ship it from Moscow, and everyone along the way, they stick their hand in, take a share. By the time it got to us, it might have been no more than sawdust, chalk, and colored water.”
“I thank you in any case, Adam Semyonovitch.” This time, she didn’t wait for him to show her the door. Daria paused, half facing him. She asked, “With the kind of influence you’ve accrued here, couldn’t you get them to send you home?”
“What’s for me at home?” Adam mimed sweeping a courtyard.
She had one final question. “Why did you help me?”
“Because. You were the only one who ever looked me in the eye.”
By May, the temperatures rose above freezing. In July, it was possible to go without rags stuffed into your shoes or wrapped about your face and head. Everything melted. They attempted to salvage what little food had managed to grow before it was swept away, crushed, or stolen. The women who’d tended the fields weren’t allowed to keep any of their meager bounty. All produce was collected for redistribution, with Party members getting first pick, then bureaucrats, then employees, and so on down the line. Exiles were reminded how lucky they were not to be at the utter bottom of the food chain. Those would be the prisoners they never saw but were always in danger of being sent to join.
By August, the thermometer began dipping again and, in October, it was impossible to remember what those few golden weeks of reprieve had been like. Their day-to-day lives didn’t change. The single variation came when Daria arrived back at the barracks one evening to find Edward already there, lying on his bunk, eyes blank and staring at the wooden slats above him, fingers twitching. Alyssa, hovering, pointed to Edward’s right leg. A huge chunk had been torn from his thigh, then bound in a few rounds of now-blood-soaked gauze.
“Dr. Kholodenko says we were lucky it didn’t hit any major arteries or he would have bled to death,” Alyssa said. “She put something on to keep it from getting infected.”
“What happened?”
Daria asked Edward, but it was Alyssa who answered, repeating what she’d been told. “Batch of logs got loose and rolled free. They yelled for everyone to get out of the way, but Papa didn’t move fast enough. He just stood there. Like he wanted to be hit, they said.”
“You said you could go home, but you don’t want to,” Daria challenged Adam, having left Alyssa to watch over her father.
Adam continued tending his stills, adjusting the glass tubes and wooden buckets, wringing every last drop out of the magic elixir pervach, meaning first one, that made his life of relative comfort possible.
“Does that mean you could get someone else out, instead?”
He didn’t stop moving, but Daria thought she detected the shadow of a shrug.
“You could!” She pressed on. “My husband, Edward. He can’t live like this. He’s not like you.”
Adam turned his head in Daria’s direction. She thought he might finally say something. But after a look Daria couldn’t quite decipher, except to suspect she’d said something catastrophically wrong, Adam returned to his task.
Unable to take back her words or discern how they’d caused offense, Daria tried to drive them from Adam’s memory by speaking faster. “You know important people; they owe you favors. We’re here because of a mistake. You could get the charges against us dropped. Please. Please, I—I’ll do anything.” Daria made her offer without any forethought to what it could tangibly mean. But as soon as she heard herself, Daria also felt herself taking a step, tentatively resting her hand on Adam’s shoulder.
Her hand. It still shocked Daria every time she saw it. The lily smooth skin her mother had dipped in buttermilk (which she then used for cooking because nobody needed to know) was covered in half-healed, pus-filled abrasions, her nails torn to the flesh, blood clots dotting the cuticles, limp flesh hanging from each joint. If that’s what her hand looked like, Daria could only imagine the rest of her. Her hair felt greasy and thinning, and when it fell out in tangled clumps, she spied streaks of gray. Her cheeks had sunk to where it was tricky not to nick the inside of her mouth with her loosened teeth as she perfunctorily worked her jaw to keep her face from freezing. Her lips and nose were always chapped, red, and peeling. She made a point of avoiding her reflection if assigned to work near any clear body of water but still couldn’t help catching an unwelcome glimpse here and there. Purple rounded her eyes. Ochi chernye, indeed. How in the world could Daria hope to appeal to a man, looking the way she did?
And yet, she had to. Daria ignored what she saw in front of her and what she felt inside and, instead, called up the girl who’d stood by the Odessa Opera House seven years prior. And the mother who’d convinced her she was desirable enough that a single stroll would bait the hook. They would reel in the man of both their dreams by making him work for it. For her.
Daria’s impulse was to throw herself at Adam, hideous as she was. To peel off her clothes and stand in front of him, making it clear he could do anything he wanted, any way he wanted, for as long as he wanted—if he would just promise to get her family out of this hell.
But Mama’s training ran deep. Daria fought her instincts. The moment Adam turned his head to look at her hand on his shoulder, then trail his gaze up her arm and finally to Daria’s face, Adam’s eyes expressing an interest she was certain had never, ever been there before, that’s when Daria smiled coyly. And took a step back.
Her heart was beating so violently, Daria felt certain Adam could spy her feeble rib cage rattling from the impact. Was she out of her mind? Was she honestly playing hard to get while her family’s lives were at stake? Who did she think she was?
Daria kept walking toward the door, away from the room with the still and toward the bedroom. What would she do when she got there? She had no idea. Daria didn’t even know if he’d follow her.
He followed her.
Adam rose from his knees, dusted his palms off one against the other, then against the front of his shirt and pants, and he followed Daria. Into his bedroom.