Her eyes caught the light in silver crescents. We stared at each other, unblinking. Her yellow irises had become milky, and the sleek dark grey of her wolf coat was patchy, peppered with white hairs. When I had first seen her the day after my grandmother’s funeral, her coat had bristled with shiny fur that glowed a dusky red against the patina of moss-covered boulders at her back and the curtain of willow submerged into the river’s depths beside the bank. Her presence had been startling. When I heard her footsteps, I assumed Jakob had followed me, thwarting my desire to flee into the forest to be alone.
At that time, I had not wanted to believe the truth; that my beloved grandmother had finally gone. Nothing would be the same again and I wanted to join her, in the deep, damp earth.
My cheeks were flushed from running. I had followed a twisted path all the way to the river, where the rushing of water over stones would drown out my sobs. When at last I looked up, I had seen the wolf watching me from only a few yards away. Her eyes were a brilliant yellow–green, the same colour as the leaves that wavered and danced in the wind. For a moment, we were frozen in time. I was aware of her body, the taut muscles below the flesh, her warm heart beating within its bower of bones. But I was not afraid. Hadn’t my grandmother warned me she would return?
After some moments, the wolf turned and disappeared into the trees, and the colours of the world seemed to bleed back in. She did not return. Since then, I had seen her a handful of times – always at a distance. Once, picking her way along the ridge of trees at the edge of our field. Another time, during winter, shaking the powdered snow from her coat as she followed the frozen path of the river into the forest. But she had never come so close again.
‘Here.’ I opened my parcel and scattered the bones at her feet. She fell on them, her eyes never leaving mine. As we stood taking the measure of each other the wind died down, falling away until there was only empty silence and the crunch and snap of her jaws grinding up the bones.
Fear gripped me. What would happen if my wolf perished, too? I would be all alone. The knowledge that she was out there had always comforted me, her appearance so soon after my grandmother’s death too coincidental to be anything but saatus: fate. Yet here she was before me. Not a spirit: flesh and blood. She was as real as I, as fragile and fallible as the heroes of old tales.
Suddenly, there was a rustle and a frightened squeak in the hedge bordering the path, followed by a desperate thrashing. An animal – probably a rat – had caught itself up between the gnarled tangle of twigs. In one fluid movement, my wolf launched herself across the path towards the sound with the grace and agility of a much younger animal. I watched her streak into the darkness, heard the scuffle of battle and then a satisfied crunch.
I waited a few moments longer, but she did not emerge again. The barn doors were heavy, the hinges rusted with age. I braced my shoulder against the timber, grunting with the effort. Slowly, the doors heaved closed.
‘Farewell, Elina.’
Mystery Stitch
Lydia
June 1941
I stood inside the entrance of the Volga Cinema, waiting for Joachim. The wallpaper of the lobby was dull, the ceiling stained yellow like the ivory piano keys in the Kremlin’s musicians gallery. Faded posters plastered the walls, showing advertisements for films released a few years before: Volga Volga and Alexander Nevsky The Shining Path, one of my favourite films, a Cinderella story about a humble servant girl who astounded her superiors with clever cleaning methods and rose through the ranks to become head of the factory.
A few patrons milled about, slurping ice-cream cones or flicking through the latest edition of Pravda. None of them glanced my way. Beneath the glass doors, the sounds of the street trickled in: the chime of trolley-car bells, the hum of traffic from Stalinskaya Parade.
The lobby looked exactly the way it should; a little shabby and careworn from its former life as a theatre for Bolshevik stage plays. It was neither the grandest nor the most popular cinema in the city; instead of the latest films, it showed re-runs of old favourites, which was why we had chosen it.
Nothing was odd or out of place. There was no reason to be afraid. I was just a young woman waiting for her beau on a typical spring day in Moscow. So, why could I not shake off the sensation that something was wrong?
Mamochka, I whispered. Are you there?
Nothing. I squeezed my gloves hard in my hand. Some might think it odd to speak to one’s dead mother, but I liked to imagine she was still with me. It seemed as if everyone else had forgotten her, apart from Olga, my once-nursemaid and now companion in the strange existence I occupied as a ward under my uncle’s care. It was a dull life enlivened rarely by official party functions and visits to State-sanctioned entertainments on my uncle’s behalf like the ballet or the theatre. I was not only my father’s representative in Moscow but my uncle’s. It had been pressed on me since I was a child that it was my duty to fulfil the role my mother had once occupied. To smile and feign interest, to amuse visiting dignitaries with poems and songs I had learned by heart; those of Pushkin and the great speeches of Lenin. To be winsome and charming. Although I did my best, I was not sure that I always succeeded. I was too shy. I did not have a sparkling wit or a quick sense of humour. Mama had been a wonderful entertainer, Olga said, with an uncanny ability to make her guests feel comfortable. Strange, then, that nobody ever mentioned her name now, especially in my uncle’s presence.
Was it the talk of war that made my stomach clench? War was on everybody’s lips these days. It was impossible to sit in the trolley car without overhearing somebody mention it. ‘Did you hear about what happened in Greece?’ the old woman in front of me had said to her friend as I took the tram earlier that morning from Red Square. ‘Yes,’ her friend had replied. ‘A whole factory destroyed by the Germans in under an hour!’ War was the flavour of the month and had been for some time. People wondered aloud if the treaty between Russia and Germany would hold. And yet despite these musings, things were not as terrible as one might fear. People went about their lives. There were some shortages. That was to be expected. It was more difficult, according to Joachim, to find matches and salt. The queues for shoes were always lengthy. Joachim complained about having to line up for hours to buy tinned peaches only to find when he reached the front that the shop was selling caviar he could not afford.
Everyone knew that if war did come, it would end swiftly. I, along with many people, still remembered the film If War Comes Tomorrow, released four years ago but quietly shelved since the signing in 1939 of the non-aggression pact. Its depiction of the Red Army driving back Germany’s troops, of German peasants rising up to greet the victorious Soviet soldiers as their saviours had stayed with us. There was no reason to think that life would change so much. War meant sacrifice. It might mean wearing the same evening dress half a dozen times or arriving a little late at functions because there were not enough workers to drive the State’s fleet of cars. It might mean doing my hair myself, instead of going to the salon to let them style it for me.
I’d already begun practising in secret, with mixed results, trying to coax it to resemble the glossy waves modelled by my favourite American film star, Greta Garbo. Olga insisted my hair was deep brown, almost black, but I liked to think it was more of a dark red, the same shade as the amber liquor she sometimes slipped into her coffee after meals. It was so long and thick it took an hour to separate and a dozen attempts to smooth down each section and clamp it to the curling spring. Beauty treatments aside, things would get much worse if the war playing out across Europe drew in the Soviet State. But the Russian people were strong. Endurance was in our blood. If it was war Germany wanted, Russia would comply but there was no doubt at all that the Soviets would triumph.