“Mrs. Tarasenko talked about the expression on her husband’s face,” said Mrs. Kharms, “but I’m not sure I should say it with the children here.”
“They’re old enough,” said Grandmother. “If they were not before today, then they certainly are now.”
“Mrs. Tarasenko said it was the face he used to make, when they were younger and they used to…”
One of the young men of the village failed to stifle a laugh. A round of chuckles passed through the small crowd, Grandmother included.
“Then the soldiers gathered the two boards and left,” said Mrs. Kharms. “All this over some crude hunks of wood.”
“It’s never as simple as that,” said Grandmother.
“The boards were all they took from this cottage, but before you arrived, we were trying to inventory everything that was taken. All the carts we hauled to the train station. The plows from our fields. The goats. A few sacks of grain. If they had brought more sacks, I suspect they would have taken it all. We may not know everything that was taken for days yet, not until we go to look for something and it’s not there.”
“She can’t stay here tonight,” said Grandmother, pointing through the hole in the wall.
“Mrs. Shvets already offered her home. They have room for one more.”
“It seems as if we are always making room,” said Grandmother. “Come, boys.”
She walked away, not down the path, but up into the forest, where the ground was bedded with leaves and the sun shone down in specks.
“I THOUGHT SOLDIERS were supposed to be heroes,” said the older Leonid. They were deep enough in the forest that the Tarasenko cottage was out of sight. “Father was a soldier, and you always tell us how brave he was, but what’s brave about shooting Mr. Tarasenko? Is that what Father did in other villages?”
“Your father never did such a thing,” said Grandmother. “His enemy came with guns and tanks and planes, and if not for men like your father, they would’ve destroyed everything in their path. One of the villagers who returned from the war had been in Stalingrad. It was not even a city anymore after the battle there, just a pile of stones that used to be buildings. That’s what your father fought against. If he ever killed a man, then it was a man who also wished to kill him.”
“Stalingrad’s far away. Why did Father have to go there, and why do soldiers from there come here?”
Grandmother slipped on a mound of brown leaves, stumbling up the slope. The younger Leonid reached out to steady her.
“Have I ever told you about the man our village was named after?” asked Grandmother.
Neither brother responded.
“After the Battle of Cecora, Bohdan Zinoviy Mykhaylovych Khmelnytsky was captured by the Ottomans. He was sold to an Ottoman admiral as a slave, set to work on the oars of the admiral’s boat. Forty oars, each manned by two slaves. The wound on his chest had healed, but on cold nights it ached, and it ached when he thought of his father. There were many cold nights. He lay awake on the wooden bench, an infinity of stars above him. When waves rocked the boat, they slid him to and fro, slivering splinters into his back. Each morning, the slaves pinched the splinters from each other’s skin.
“Khmelnytsky was one of the few Cossacks, and they were forbidden from speaking to each other. How dizzying it must be to be surrounded by people but to still be alone. Instead of speaking, Khmelnytsky listened, picking up the Turks’ language a word at a time, practicing the shape of the words in his mouth even as he rowed and rowed and rowed. Years of Khmelnytsky’s life passed like this, uncountable splashes of the oar against the Black Sea. His skin darkened and his muscles turned to ropes like the ones used to moor the boat.
“The Ottomans were not a people to know peace. As often as not, Khmelnytsky rowed toward battle, archers arrayed along the sides of the boat, bows drawn, like statuary around a church. The old churches in large cities used to have statues of angels and saints. Khmelnytsky had seen these in his youth, not knowing that one day the statues would be of him.
“The admiral commanded his boat and dozens of others, and he usually led them to easy victories, overwhelming the small boats that seaside villages sent out in futile defense.
“It was early morning, the Black Sea as calm as a pond. The Ottoman fleet sailed straight for a small village, barely more than a fishing camp. It seemed like it would be a short battle and an easy victory. Two dozen skiffs launched from the village. The smaller boats weaved so quickly through the Ottoman fleet that the archers missed target after target, their arrows sliding like sleek divers into the water. The skiffs carried archers of their own, and the tall, proud Ottomans proved to be easy targets. The first archer felled on Khmelnytsky’s boat collapsed across his lap, and he shucked the body overboard. More archers fell. The boat lurched, and then turned hard to port, carving a circle in the water. The rudder-man had been killed, his body left leaning hard against the tiller. More archers fell. All around, the Ottoman fleet scattered in different directions.
“Khmelnytsky bounded to the back of the boat, running in spite of the shackles around his ankles, and hauled the rudder-man out of the way. He gestured to the oarsman in back, just a boy, all long limbs and sinew, to take up the post. The boat straightened out, facing away from shore. The admiral, at the prow, screamed orders to his men and waved signals to the other boats. The admiral was a formidable military man himself and managed to regroup his boats into a defensive posture even as arrows slashed the air around him. He was about to organize a retreat when Khmelnytsky spoke, his voice ringing loud and deep. Months in the sun had creased the corners of his eyes. His hair, after the battle where he’d watched his father die, had gained early streaks of silver. It was impossible not to listen. He told the admiral to sail toward the beachhead, as fast as the oarsmen could manage, grouping bowmen at the stern to fire at the enemy skiffs. The admiral obeyed. By the time the Ottomans landed, the enemy boats were far behind, the bulk of the village’s men on them. A small contingent took the village while the Ottoman archers held the beach, decimating the small boats long before they got close to shore.
“Imagine, a slave speaking such a thing to a man of prestige and power. Had Khmelnytsky spoken at any other time he would have been beaten. Maybe even slain. But Khmelnytsky waited for the right moment to act, as he would again later, and so the admiral listened. The Ottomans took the beach and then the village. Defeat had been turned to victory.
“That night the Ottomans dined on plundered food around great fires, and even the slaves were given a feast. Khmelnytsky’s shackles were removed, and he was brought to the admiral’s own table, allowed to eat with the officers. They patted him on the back and got drunk and told crude jokes that he could only understand the half of. He laughed with the others, I’m sure. Not because he understood the jokes. He laughed because he had not been in a position to laugh for so long. He had oared and oared and his only feelings were for his lost father, his only thoughts on learning the enemy’s language. Imagine the release of being surrounded by laughter, of having to neither feel nor think. You are boys, so you cannot yet imagine the release of that first sip of drink after so long without.
“I think that’s when Khmelnytsky remembered freedom. He’d lost so much, had been wounded deeper than the blade had cut him. If he hadn’t asserted himself when the opportunity arose, he might have stayed a slave forever, oaring boats around the Black Sea for his enemy until the day he died. Freedom is the possibility of happiness, and there with fresh meat and flowing wine he remembered it.
“Back on the boat, he was allowed to remain unshackled. Before battles or landings, the admiral would call him to the prow and ask his opinion. Khmelnytsky’s Turkish was almost perfect by this point, only a slight accent preventing him from passing for a pale Ottoman. He studied the admiral’s maps, and from the prow saw every beach and inlet they passed. Over two years, he memorized the whole coastline of the Black Sea.