“Andriy would know,” Solovey said. “He’s from Proskuriv.”
His fingers tugged at Tolya’s elbow. Tolya opened his eyes. Solovey held out a cigarette. Tolya looked at it, wanted it so badly that his mouth watered, fought with himself, knew that Solovey could see him fighting with himself, and turned his head quickly away because he wasn’t going to give Solovey the satisfaction.
Solovey returned the cigarette indifferently to his breast pocket. “How did your parents die?”
He had to get his mind off that cigarette. “My father in the prison at Proskuriv,” he said.
“Political.”
“They said so.”
“Would you not?”
“I mean—he was one of the ones—when the Reds were trying to make us give up our land and go to the kolhosp—the collective farm…” He risked a glance to see whether Solovey understood.
“Yes,” Solovey said.
“He was one of the ones who resisted. But that’s not what they killed him for. Lots of people resisted.”
“What did they kill him for?”
“He confessed to something he didn’t do. So they asked him questions he couldn’t answer. He died under torture.”
Solovey flicked the ash from the tip of his cigarette and blew a soft, smoky breath. “What about your mother?”
Tolya swallowed quickly. “Against our garden wall, because she was Polish.”
He waited. He held the blanket drawn tight in his fists, watching the pistol at Solovey’s belt. The Ukrainian nation is against mixed marriage and regards it as a crime …
But Solovey only pulled on his cigarette and said, “NKVD?”
“Yes.”
“How old were you?”
“You mean when they died?”
“Mm.”
“Seven when they took my father.” The pistol didn’t seem to be forthcoming. Solovey was leaning his elbows on his knees, holding his cigarette in two fingers and rolling it absently between his fingertips, not looking up. Tolya shut his eyes again. “Ten when—when it was my mother.”
“That was in 1937?”
“Yes.”
“And after that—what? One of the state orphanages?”
“My aunt took me to Kyiv—my father’s sister. Her husband wrote for the state paper there. Proletars’ka Pravda.”
“Party members?”
Tolya hesitated. “He was. I think you have to be—to write for the paper.”
Solovey was silent for a moment, pulling on his cigarette and breathing out the smoke. Then he said, “Did he make it difficult?”
“You mean…”
“For you.”
It wasn’t the question he’d expected. He swallowed, remembering Ivan’s voice through the shut closet door. Don’t you understand? He’ll get us shot, the half-breed.
“Sometimes,” Tolya said.
“Abuse?”—quietly.
Tolya opened his eyes. He craned his neck to look up into Solovey’s face.
“You don’t have to answer,” Solovey said. In the glow of the cigarette, the lines of his face were hard and sharp shadowed. “You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“How did you—”
“You called him your aunt’s husband, not your uncle. It was a guess. You don’t have to tell me.”
“She wanted to leave,” Tolya said. “We were going to leave—my aunt and I, together. But she was afraid—because I didn’t have the permission to be off the collective—you’ve got to have a special permission to be off, and I—she had just—”
“She was afraid he’d turn you in if you tried to leave.”
“Yes.”
Solovey rolled his cigarette between his fingertips. “How long?”
“In Kyiv?”
“Under his roof.”
“A year. They took him in one of the party purges—the NKVD.” It had occurred to Tolya only much later that it must have been Aunt Olena who’d denounced him.
“And your aunt…”
“No, she died at Voronezh, in the retreat. We went to Voronezh when the Germans came.”
“Is that where you were conscripted?”
“Yes.”
“Sniper,” Solovey said.
“Yes.”
“I’m told our source spoke very highly of you.”
“He didn’t know about my mother,” Tolya said. There was something bitter on the base of his tongue.
“No,” Solovey said, “I imagine not.” He was silent, breathing smoke out softly through his nostrils. Then he said, “Were you lying?”
“What?”
“About this friend in the Front.”
Tolya was angry suddenly. “Maybe I’m lying about all of it.”
Solovey’s face was blank. “Because I’m going to look like an idiot trying to make another rescue, if you were.”
Tolya blinked at him.
“I owe you that much,” Solovey said.
“It’s no good.”
“What’s no good?”
“Rescue.”
“We won’t be able to pull off the same trick again. That’s all right. I know other tricks.”
“I mean she can’t make a clean break.”
“Family?”
“She’s got a sister in Kyiv.”
Solovey flicked ash from his cigarette. He took a thoughtful drag. “What’s her name?”
Tolya didn’t say anything.
Solovey let out a low, smoky breath—not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh.
“All right,” he said. “Three possibilities. There are more, but let’s keep it to three for simplicity’s sake.” He counted on his fingers, starting with his thumb. “One—I’m NKVD, and it doesn’t make a difference whether you tell me her name or not. If they’re going to take her, they’ve taken her already. Two”—holding his forefinger and middle finger together, the cigarette between them—“I’m not NKVD, and I figure out her name on my own. She’ll probably be dead by then, but at least you know you didn’t betray her. Three—”
Tolya shut his eyes.
“Koval. Nataliya Koval. She’s a junior sergeant with the Hundredth. Second Battalion.”
“Sniper?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll see,” Solovey said.
“I think she’s dead already.” He made himself open his eyes. He looked up into Solovey’s face. “I think she’d have done it herself—before they took her.”
Solovey slipped his cigarette back into his mouth. He was silent for a moment, playing with the cigarette between his teeth. Then he took it out again and stubbed it out in the dirt.
“We’ll see,” he said. “You should eat. I’ve been politely pretending not to hear your stomach growling.”
5
Night came down thick and black. Solovey was gone, and Tolya was alone under the tarpaulin. For a little while, he tried to keep himself awake, but his stomach was comfortably full of sausage, and his body heavy and numb with morphine, and it was no good. He slept. He woke up once, in darkness, to low voices and the crackle of underbrush in the wood. He lay tensely still under the blanket, listening, but now there was only silence and the far-off hooting of an owl. He slept again, and this time when he woke up there was pale, early sunlight slanting through the trees, and the fresh, damp, clean smell of dirt and tree bark and pine needles.