Antonin looked at me indulgently and shot his wife a silencing look. “We’ll see what can be done in the next week or so, dear,” he said. “It is right for you to pay respect to your comrade’s family. And when you return, you can give more thought to your plans.”
Plans. Russia needed to be rebuilt, and I needed to find my place in this new world.
After luncheon Natalia showed me the press clippings she’d collected of Vanya’s accomplishments in the war. She’d even gathered a few of mine, though each entry for me was put in as E. Solonev. The reader would read of what I’d done and imagine an Erik or Eduard Solonev, fighting bravely for the Red Army. Any mention of Ekaterina Soloneva was relegated to the few articles in women’s magazines they’d used to drum up patriotic fervor among the idle peasant women in the east. Surely if this woman can fly a plane, you can work in a factory for the glory of the motherland.
I never wanted to be a show pony for the army, but it was clear the opposite was the case. I didn’t need to see my face in all the papers or my name on every page, but they minimized all we’d done. As I read my mother-in-law’s papers, it seemed the contribution of the women in mixed regiments was almost entirely ignored. My own regiment had a few mentions, but nothing like the male regiments, who had achieved half as much. When the women were released from duty, we were expelled from the military altogether in most cases. They wanted to pretend they’d never needed us. How I wished that had been true. Fine thanks for our sacrifice from a grateful nation.
Perhaps Oksana was more noble than I was. She had wanted to do her part to rebuild the country and see it thrive again. I felt no guilt in leaving that task to others who had not already paid the same price we had. It seemed just.
Later I wandered about the house, looking idly at the impressive collection of books, wishing any one of them held the answer to what path I ought to take. I removed a dusty tome from the shelf. An antique atlas. Some of the countries pictured in it no longer existed; others were yet to be formed when the maps were printed. Even now borders were being erased and redrawn. Men like Hitler and Stalin had great plans to conquer the world and divide it up for their own purposes. The rest of us merely longed for our place in it.
CHAPTER 28
May 1946, Aix-en-Provence, France
Over the course of a week, I saw what remained of Europe. Western Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine were starved and gray, but rebuilding. Poland, Germany, and Austria were attempting to emerge from the cinders. When we descended into what had been the “free zone” in France, we seemed to be entering a different world. There were patches of damage from Allied bombs, but the cities remained mostly intact. The vibrant blue of the sky seemed something from an artist’s palette instead of something born of nature.
The train rattled into the station in Aix-en-Provence. Before it came to a complete stop, I had gathered my worn suitcase and was standing by the exit, waiting for the conductor to open the door to the platform. Though the chill of spring had yet to give way to summer in Moscow, I was warm as the southern French sun caressed my bare arms. I wore the simple turquoise dress that had belonged to Mama, remembering the day in the lush meadow when Vanya had painted my likeness. The ache in my heart reassured me he was still there.
In addition to travel papers, Antonin had verified the address of Oksana’s family and that they had, in fact, survived the war. I would have gone to find them even without the information, but now that the long journey was behind me, I was glad I would not have long days—possibly even weeks—ahead of me to track them down, nor did I have to worry that the trek had been in vain.
I clutched the paper with the directions to their home, a small villa on the outskirts of town. I’d been told I would be able to hire a car to take me as far as their house, but I’d spent too much time cooped up in trains to be able to contemplate entering another vehicle. A few kilometers by foot in shoes that weren’t four sizes too large and on a road that wouldn’t have me ankle-deep in mud seemed as close to paradise as I could dream.
As I strolled down the streets, some of the shops shuttered and cafés nearly empty, I could still easily imagine the city in its prewar glory. The residents glanced sideways at me with downcast eyes, suspicious of those they didn’t know. I considered smiling at them to ease their disquiet but wondered if the gesture might make me seem even more suspicious in their eyes. I decided to let them find their trust in their own time.
It was less than two hours before I found the little villa belonging to Oksana’s mother’s family, the Lacombes. The sun hung low in the sky and haloed the house in the vivid orange glow that could only come from a late-spring sunset. It was an inviting home, painted a buttery yellow with rust-colored shutters. Two small children played in the garden while a woman in her late forties plucked stray weeds from her impeccable garden. I could see Oksana’s high cheekbones and large eyes on the woman’s face. It had to be her mother’s sister. A man, presumably Oksana’s uncle, repaired loose terra-cotta tiles on the roof.
I stood for a moment, not wanting to call attention to myself and shatter this vision of domestic tranquility. It wasn’t more than a few seconds before the older child, a boy with thick brown curls who was perhaps five or six years old, noticed me standing at the garden gate.
“Grand-mère! There is a lady!” He pointed his spindly finger in my direction, and she raised her head to assess me.
“Who are you?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron and approaching the gate but not offering me a hand to shake. Her lips were drawn in a line, and she looked at me as if I were the tenth salesman standing with a long line winding behind me, all ready to peddle our shoddy wares. The man climbed down the ladder and jogged to his wife’s side, his expression even less welcoming than hers.
“I was a friend of Oksana Tymoshenko. I believe she was your niece?” I hadn’t used my French since before the war but thought I found the words well enough, even if my accent was clumsy.
The woman fumbled to open the gate and escorted me into the house, muttering apologies for the cold greeting and performing hurried introductions. Her name was Eliane; her husband was Marcel. The children, Didier and Violaine, belonged to their son, Philippe—Oksana’s only cousin—who spent his days rebuilding the vineyard now that he was returned from the war. Eliane explained in whispered tones that her daughter-in-law had fallen ill after the occupation, and with medical supplies so scarce, she had not recovered. Eliane ran off to brew coffee, ordering her husband to make me feel welcome. Flustered, he offered me a chair at their large kitchen table and commanded the children to play upstairs.
“How do you know our Oksana?” Eliane asked, placing a mug of coffee before me, the steam rising from the cup in thick spires. Before I could answer, Philippe, a towering man with tanned olive skin and black curls, entered the room. He was covered in a good amount of dirt and was clearly surprised to find a guest at the table.
“I was Oksana’s navigator in the war,” I explained as Eliane placed a mug before her son, kissing his temple before she took her seat.
“Navigator?” Marcel asked. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Oksana was a pilot, and the commander of our regiment for many months. I had the honor to serve with her for nearly three years. I was with her when she died.” I didn’t tell the full truth, that she had ordered me from the cave and had died alone and at her own hand, but they deserved the comfort of knowing she had been with a friend in her final moments. Not for the first time did I wish I’d ignored Oksana’s orders and held her hand in her last moments. I would have likely suffered no worse than my day’s trek in the woods, and I would have been able to look at her aunt without hating myself for the half-truths I told.