“That’s my wife,” Filip said once, almost in disbelief, while Galina sang of faded chrysanthemums and of love gone cold.
“I know it. You’re the envy of all the guys at school.” Borya lit a cigarette.
“Including you?”
“Everybody loves Galya. Can you do this?” He inhaled deeply and blew out a perfect smoke ring. They watched it float, growing larger and thinner, its shape shifting this way and that before dissipating into the air.
“No. You’ll have to show me how.”
Most days, Borya would be at the house when Galina returned from work. She would find them playing chess in the yard or poring over Filip’s stamp albums at the little table in the parlor, their heads, the dark and the fair, almost touching.
She envied them their bond, wished she, too, had a friend of the heart. But she had never been one to share girlish confidences; in the troubled times of their existence, everyone lived the same marginal, hardscrabble life. There was nothing to confide.
She was sure Filip and Borya never talked about their inmost feelings—what man would do that? Theirs was an easy, companionable friendship, born of shared interests and aspirations, unfettered by excess sentiment or unreasonable expectations.
Once, Borya brought firewood, dragging the roughly sawed logs from a young tree behind him like a sled on a rope. Filip, seated at the chess board, studying yesterday’s unfinished game, looked up. “Why?” he said, his hand hovering over a pawn, then moving it decisively to block Borya’s rook.
“To repay your mother-in-law for some of the meals you share with me.”
“Huh. Where did you get it?”
“Where the trees grow.” He stood at the board, took the pawn with his knight. “Check.”
Filip groaned. “In the park?”
“No, city boy. In the forest. Trees grow in the forest.”
Ksenia entered the yard from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron before reaching for the ax. “Let me do that, Ksenia Semyonovna.” Borya took the ax from her hand. “You go have a cup of tea.”
“How nice you are, Borya. No news?” They knew his parents had been arrested weeks ago, without a word of explanation.
Borya shook his head and went on chopping, expertly splitting the logs into stove-sized wedges. “Give me a hand here, Filip. Stack these over there.”
Filip rose reluctantly from the game. He stacked the firewood near the door, handling the rough edges gingerly to avoid splinters. “Ai, holera,” he swore, when the inevitable happened. He regarded the wobbly woodpile with malevolence, sucking the side of his thumb. “My queen took your knight. It’s your move.”
A month or so after Borya turned eighteen, his visits stopped, as did his school attendance. His name did not appear in the list of examination results posted on the announcement board. Maybe he forgot to wear his lucky green tie, Filip thought. He realized that with all the disruptions in his friend’s life, he no longer knew where to look for him.
He missed his chess partner, the easy banter they had enjoyed. Galina was sweet, and he loved being married to her, but she was always busy. His in-laws treated him well enough, but he certainly couldn’t talk to them. He saw his own mother two or three times a week, in the afternoons, and his father only on special occasions. He’ll turn up, he told himself, trying not to imagine all the things that could have caused Borya to vanish. It was not an uncommon occurrence.
And then he saw him.
Filip had had an especially pleasant day. Rising late, he’d made his way to his mother’s apartment. She gave him tea and baklava, then surprised him with a small square of Swiss chocolate.
“Mama, where did you get this? How?”
“Your father brought it. I don’t ask,” Zoya replied. “More tea?”
She gave him a little money, “for the house.” He happily spent it on a tiny packet of Australian stamps. Even Galya will like these, he thought, eager to get home and examine his treasure, the animals in their curious exotic oddity, the sere desert landscape so alien to his own.
On the streetcar, he got a seat next to the open window, away from the crush of people, with their parcels and their children, in the aisle. He raised his face to the warm breeze and thought again about the chocolate, how it had felt on his tongue, how the melting richness had filled his mouth with something like ecstasy, leaving behind a nugget of hazelnut, a delicious surprise.
And then there Borya was, threading his way through the crowd on the sidewalk, wearing a dark shirt, looking a bit disheveled, his hair longer than Filip had ever seen it.
“Hey, Bor’ka!” Filip shouted, his joy at seeing his friend making him reckless. “Hey! How are things in the woods? Finding any mushrooms?”
Borya’s head snapped back as if he’d been slapped. He froze, then ran, elbowing people out of his way, turning out of sight around the next corner.
Filip felt a sudden chill. Nu, durak, he scolded himself. What a fool. How could anyone know he’d been remembering the firewood Borya had brought, like Father Christmas dragging a tree through the streets to delight happy children? What a stupid, stupid thing to say.
He got off at the next stop and walked the rest of the way home, trying to shake off the echo of the hastily shouted words. “Balda. Durak. Idiot,” he mumbled, then stopped. I only wanted to talk to him, he thought. That’s all. Maybe no one had noticed; there were so many people, all busy with their own concerns. No doubt he was berating himself for nothing. Forget it, he decided, and told no one.
Two weeks passed. Filip and Galina, making their way home in the early evening, were caught in a roundup, herded along with dozens of others toward the main square.
“What do you think—” Galina started to say.
“More regulations. As if they don’t already have us by the throat,” he replied. “Be quiet.”
In the square, backlit by the descending sun, two men hung from the lampposts, their necks broken, their bodies rotating slowly in the air. A gasp swept through the crowd, sharp and instinctive, followed by nervous, expectant silence.
“When did this happen?” Filip asked of no one in particular.
“About an hour ago,” said a voice from the crowd. “They went away, but they won’t let us leave until they’re done with us. All the streets are blocked.” This tragedy was clearly not over.
“Kakoi uzhas,” Galina whispered, blanched and trembling at the horror. But Filip did not hear, nor was he aware of her hand, the fingers digging into his arm in panicked recognition.
One of the men was short and stocky. He had Tatar features, with silky hair black as crow’s feathers that glinted in the sun. He was dressed in green sharivari, the cloth of the loose trousers flapping in the evening air. The other one, long legs dangling closer to the ground, wearing scuffed and muddied cheap leather shoes, was Borya.
“No,” Filip breathed, denying the evidence of his eyes. He felt the blood drain from his head, then rush back in, thundering in his ears; his body shuddered with ice and fire in a fever of contradictions. For a moment, all went black, but he did not fall, supported by helping hands of strangers on every side. He opened his eyes.
A dozen black-shirted SS men entered the square from a side street, swastikas emblazoned on the doors of their truck. The crowd parted to let them through. Two held the swaying body still while a sergeant, standing on the vehicle’s roof, his legs spread wide for balance, lettered the word PARTISAN in thick, rough brushstrokes of red paint across their shirts, first on one and then on the other.