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That night, Natasha lay on her folding bed, holding her grandmother’s hand and listening to her laboured breathing. She wanted to cry but couldn’t. Only twelve more hours until she saw Mark’s breathtaking face. Would she be able to sleep? Her heart was threatening to break out of her rib cage. This unfamiliar feeling that had her in a vice ever since she’d set her eyes on him filled her with joy and excitement, but her joy was mixed with fear. He was a Hungarian soldier sent to Ukraine to support Hitler’s troops. And she was a Soviet girl, who was completely and irrevocably under his spell. What was she going to do?
She tried not to think of Zina’s words about the Hungarian soldiers. Mark wasn’t like that. He was different.
To take her mind off Mark — as if it was possible — she thought of her brother.
*
June 1941
Mobilisation orders arrived at the end of June, the day after the Germans bombed Kiev for the first time. Men aged nineteen to twenty-two were already in the Red Army, and now that the war had started, men aged twenty-three to thirty-six were being drafted. The family walked Stanislav to the crowded train station. Everywhere, it seemed, there were young men in uniform; alone and surrounded by families, some of them were laughing and chatting, while others smoked solemnly, sipped cheap kvass, and chewed their hastily made sandwiches.
‘Seems like yesterday you walked me to school every day down this road,’ Natasha said to Stanislav. She had always thought she was the luckiest girl in the world to have an older brother. Her best friend Olga wasn’t so lucky. She was an only child.
‘I know,’ said Stanislav, smiling. ‘You always had a mob of young boys following you around. Remember when one of them left a love letter in our mailbox, and I read it aloud at dinner? You didn’t speak to me for a month. You were eight.’
‘A love letter and a chocolate that you ate. I’m still upset about that. You can be so annoying.’ She looked into her brother’s face, fighting her tears. She wasn’t going to cry in front of him. She was going to wait till later.
‘Annoying and protective.’
‘No, just annoying.’
Natasha took Stanislav’s hand in hers. She didn’t want the walk to the station to end just yet, but it wasn’t far, and soon they were there.
In the sea of weeping women and sombre men, Natasha hugged her brother and said, ‘Promise to write. And please, please, please, come back soon. I still need you to protect me.’
Lisa hugged her brother and said, ‘I’m glad Alexei is only eighteen. He’s not enlisting yet.’
Nikolai couldn’t say anything because he was struggling to hold back tears, so he hugged his brother in silence.
Mother wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘It’s so unexpected. I wish we had some warning, more time to prepare.’
‘It’s okay, Mama,’ said Stanislav, putting his rucksack down on the pavement and embracing his mother. ‘It’s easier this way.’
‘On the train, eat the boiled eggs and bread I packed for you. Wear your jumper if it gets cold.’
‘A fine soldier I would make, wearing a jumper at the end of June.’ Seeing his mother’s stricken face, Stanislav added, ‘I love you, Mama. Please, don’t cry.’
‘When are we going to see you again? What are we going to do?’ Mother sobbed.
‘Soon, Mama, I promise. I’ll be back soon. This war won’t last long. A couple of months at most.’
‘Look after yourself, son,’ said Father. ‘We’ll see you when it’s all over.’
In silence they watched Stanislav as he climbed into the carriage and turned around, a sad smile on his face. ‘Girls, look after your mother,’ he said, saluting them once more, and then the train was moving and the Smirnovs were running along the platform to catch one final glimpse of their firstborn son and older brother. Soon he was gone but still they stood, watching the train that carried Stanislav to the front, until the train, too, had disappeared. Then they went home, where they had dinner without their son and without their brother. As they chewed their meatballs and vegetable salad, the girls and their mother and even Nikolai cried quietly into their plates.
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