That air raid lasted for almost an hour. Fortunately, our building was spared. But when she returned to her apartment Mrs. Kudaschova finally found her cat. It had escaped onto her balcony, where it had killed one pigeon and frightened away the others. It had eaten its victim, leaving nothing left over for Mrs. Kudaschova but blood and feathers. At that moment Mrs. Kudaschova stopped loving her cat. It stopped being a companion and started being a nuisance. By that evening, it had become a meal. She added its meat to her bread rations in order to make up for her loss of the pigeons.
That’s the real world, the world that I live in every day. I spent seventeen years living in peace and only a few months living with war. But it’s the war that feels real, not the peace.
You’re the only part of the dream that I know was real. You’re the one who makes me realize that it’s the war that’s temporary, not the peace. One day the hunger will be over, the war will be over, and I will see you again. It’s that knowledge that helps me get up every morning, that helps me get dressed and walk through the bombed streets and stand in the bread lines. If it weren’t for you, I’d probably be as dead as Mrs. Krudashova’s cat.
Among the letters, this one was remarkably untouched by the censors. Perhaps someone had been lazy that day. In any case, comparing the letters helped Bobby piece together a history of what Karen was going through.
He put that letter down and picked up one she had written just a couple of months ago.
I don’t know how I’ll get through another winter without you. Whenever the clouds gather, I try to remember that first snowfall, when we walked together in the park, and we took off our gloves to hold hands. But soon we won’t be able to take our gloves off here. It will be too cold. And our neighbor, Mrs. Kudaschova, says this winter is going to be even colder than last year. I asked her how she knows and she said she can feel it, feel it in her bones. I’m not sure whether to believe her or not, but the others seem to trust her. They say she’s never been wrong before. And they think it’s a good thing, a cold winter. A cold winter will defeat the Germans, they say. Russians thrive in the cold. It’s how they stopped Napoleon. But I think—
The rest of the paragraph was covered in black ink, redacted by the Soviet State censor. So Bobby moved to the next part.
Classes have been cancelled at the Conservatory, but father still spends all day with Mr. Shostakovich. They aren’t writing a symphony together, not anymore. Instead they’re digging trenches and learning how to put out fires. I think it’s silly. If the Germans are coming, we should leave Leningrad, go home. We’re not Russian. This isn’t our war. But father says I’m just looking for an excuse to go back home and see you again. Maybe he’s right. I miss you.
Bobby put down the letter and picked up the next.
Dearest Bobby,
A little girl stands on the roof of our apartment every single day, watching the sky. I told her to come inside, but she insists. She says she is watching for German airplanes—
A large portion of the letter was blacked out with the black ink. It began again on the next page:
The air raid sirens go off day and night. We take every precaution, keeping the entire street dark so that the German pilots can’t see where to aim their bombs. I have learned to walk in complete darkness, all the way down three flights of stairs into the basement. That’s where we huddle, listening to the bombs drop, until we hear the all-clear signal.
The rest of the letter was almost all redacted. Only three words remained, isolated on the next page:
…the city granary…
What had she been trying to say about the city granary? Bobby could not know. But this one was the first letter, written in September.
The third letter had even more black ink, and the fourth, more still. Each letter got blacker and blacker, until eventually he couldn’t read anything but “Dearest Bobby” and “I love you, Karen.”
Bobby desperately wanted to try to find out what Karen had written under the black ink, and it unsettled him knowing that Russian censors had been reading her love letters. But it didn’t matter, really, that he couldn’t read much of what she’d written. He could read the dates of each letter, so he could organize them chronologically. Doing so proved to him that she was still alive, or at least she had been until Christmas Eve.
That was the date of the last letter. “All I want for Christmas,” she had written, “is to escape from Leningrad. If I could just do that, maybe I could find my way home. Alaska is not really so far, is it?”
“Hey, the major wants to see you,” Jack said.
Bobby looked up to see Jack ambling through the door of their Quonset hut in Palm Beach. Jack leaned against his bunk bed and glanced down at the blacked-out letters strewn across Bobby’s bed. “Makes you proud to be an American, don’t it?”
“What does?”
“Getting your girlfriend’s letters like that. At least our postal service doesn’t read other people’s mail.”
“It’s what we’re fighting for,” Bobby responded with a wink.
“I could do with a little fighting.”
“We’ll be fighting soon enough.”
“I hope so. I’m sick of the navy hogging all the glory.”
In truth, none of the American armed forces had seen much glory. The Japanese had followed their surprise attack at Pearl Harbor with the successful conquest of the Philippines and Wake Island. They defeated Allied forces in Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, and Burma. They were even threatening Australia from New Guinea. Like the Germans in Europe, the Japanese appeared invincible in Asia. Every American military campaign against them was a disaster. But at least the navy was fighting back. A task force led by the USS Lexington was having some success with hit-and-run tactics in the Coral Sea. Her aircraft had even managed to bomb the Japanese at Rabaul.
The navy sailors and pilots were heroes. Meanwhile, the Army Air Forces pilots were sitting on their hands. They weren’t even flying secret supply missions anymore.
As a result, Palm Beach was turning into a navy town. Girls were more interested in sailors than soldiers. The sailors, after all, were the ones about to see battle, shipping out first to Hawaii and then who knew where. They were the ones to receive the attention and the sympathies of the local women. Even someone as romantically accomplished as Jack found himself constantly competing with ship’s officers or navy pilots. More than once he’d kissed the wrong girl, and the night ended with an army-navy brawl.
“The major? What about?” Bobby asked, forcing his mind back on course. Major Bovington had been preoccupied lately, constantly reviewing intelligence reports and consulting with the higher brass. He hadn’t spent much time with the squadron outside of their training sessions, so it was a bit of a surprise that he’d asked to see Bobby.
“How should I know?”
Bobby folded up the love letters and put them away.
Five minutes later Bobby was sitting in squadron HQ, staring across a small metal desk from Major Bovington.
The desktop was a mess of papers. Tall filing cabinets flanked the major. He leaned back in his squeaky chair and folded his arms across his stomach. “What do you know about Russia?” he asked.
Bobby was slightly taken aback. This wasn’t a question he’d expected from the major. “I don’t know, same as everyone else, I guess. Communist dictatorship. At war with Germany. Enemy of my enemy’s my friend, that whole bit.”
“Isn’t your girlfriend there?”