He remembered the old man by the village bridge. He still had the man’s copy of War and Peace and had even been reading it in the cramped confines of the C-47’s maintenance duct.
“I think the Germans have made a mistake,” he reasoned. “I think that if they were here to conquer us, topple the government, and take over, like they did in France, I think maybe they’d have already succeeded.”
“They almost have.”
Petr nodded. That was true. But there was something else, something he wasn’t eloquent enough to put into words. But the concept he was trying to express deserved eloquence, so Petr just described how it had formed in his mind. “That music you’ve been playing, the music your father and Mr. Shostakovich wrote—”
“The symphony.”
“I’ve heard that a lot, during your audition, during our rehearsals, the summit. That symphony’s more than just music. It tells a story.”
“About a dying city.”
“No, not about a dying city. It tells a story about a city that refuses to die.”
Karen gazed at Petr. He wasn’t particularly clever, and he’d never claimed to be. He didn’t think of the world as a chess game, didn’t think three or even two moves ahead, not like Bobby did, not like General Marshall did. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t smart. He’d surprised her before with his astute observations. And he was surprising her again.
Maybe he was the one who could finally solve the riddle that had perplexed her for so long. “There was an old woman,” she told him, “who died, frozen to death in Leningrad.”
She paused, half expecting Petr to interrupt her. That was what Bobby would have done. He would have asked for clarification or an explanation as to why she was changing the subject. But Petr just stared at her, patient and attentive.
Karen continued. “She could have died anywhere. But she chose a fountain. You know, one of those symbolic fountains with a statue of workers building the new Russia.” She painted a picture with her words, of a scene she’d seen every day walking to the State bakery. “I never understood why she did it,” she concluded. “Why she chose to die there, on public display like that.”
“Maybe she just didn’t want to be a burden. Maybe she did it so someone else could eat her bread ration,” Petr postulated.
“I thought of that,” Karen replied. She described the story she half remembered of an old Eskimo walking into the forest to die. “But if the old woman were doing the same thing,” she continued, “she would have died someplace hidden, someplace private.”
Petr nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right.”
“The only thing I can figure is that she did it on purpose. She wanted to be seen. She wanted her death to mean something. But what?”
Petr thought about it in silence for a long time. Karen waited for him. Finally, he said, “Maybe it’s not just one thing or the other.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe it’s both. Maybe she was dying like the Eskimo in that story. So that other people could live. Maybe she figured that since she was going to die anyway, better to die now so someone else could eat her bread. But she also wanted people to see the sacrifice she was making. She wanted people to witness her death.”
“Why?” Karen asked, though she feared she already knew the answer.
“To serve as an example. As an inspiration. Like that symphony.”
“Die so that other people can live,” Karen repeated. She felt ashamed. She’d worked so hard to live. It had been her entire focus. And it had been so difficult. But to what purpose? What had she achieved that Inna and Sasha hadn’t?
Petr nodded. “You know what I saw more than anything during the first months of the invasion?”
“What?”
“Russian soldiers running away, trying to save themselves. We all ran away. I ran away, my unit ran away. And those who couldn’t run, they surrendered. We didn’t know, then—we didn’t understand what the Germans were doing to the villages they occupied. We thought they were just conquering. We didn’t know they were killing and enslaving. How many people in those villages died because we ran away?”
“More would have died if you hadn’t.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” Petr confessed. This notion had been bothering him, especially now that he’d chosen to run all the way to America. “Eventually, I don’t think there will be anywhere left to run.”
“America thinks that when that happens, you’ll surrender.”
“We would, if we could. But Germany’s not offering us that choice.” There was no bluster in Petr’s expression, no blind patriotism—just thoughtful, honest contemplation. “Everyone realizes that now. We’re not France. The Germans don’t want anything to do with us. Leningrad showed that. Your father’s symphony showed that. We fight or we die. It’s a simple choice, really. Makes things easier in a way. Either fight or die.”
“It’s not quite that simple.” Karen used the same argument Bobby had made only moments before. “You need guns to fight—planes, tanks.”
“We’ll have those,” Petr assured her. “Even if Stalin was assassinated tomorrow, the factories would keep running. Even if the workers were under attack, they’d keep building and rolling tanks off the production lines so that drivers could get inside and go straight to battle. Because that’s the way the workers can fight. And everyone realizes now that we have to fight. We fight or we die.”
Petr took the last bite and handed the plate back to Karen. “Everyone but me.”
Karen sensed what was coming next. She wanted to stop him, but she knew that she couldn’t. Because she believed that Petr was right. So she held her breath, dreading the words.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted to do this for you. But I can’t.”
“I know,” Karen replied, the words almost catching in her throat.
They stared at each other for a long time. Karen’s eyes were welling with tears, but she didn’t dare blink. She felt that as long as she could hold that stare, as long as they looked at each other, the spell that united them would force Petr to stay.
“Bobby’s a lucky man,” Petr said with regret. “Don’t ever let him forget that.”
Then he stood up and walked toward the hangar door.
“Wait!” Karen grabbed Petr and spun him around. If she couldn’t stop him with words, if she couldn’t stop him with a look, maybe she could stop him with a kiss.
Maybe it would have worked, too, if Bobby hadn’t interrupted them. He came in through the hangar’s side door, the sound of it clicking open prompting Petr to pull away.
Bobby eyed how close Petr and Karen stood together, and how both seemed out of breath. “What’s going on?”
Then Bobby saw the tears on Karen’s cheeks, and he softened. He went to her, putting his hands on her shoulders, looking at her downturned face with concern. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Karen couldn’t answer; she didn’t want to say the words.
“Tell him I’m leaving,” Petr urged her in Russian.
“Petr’s leaving,” Karen echoed in English. She didn’t know why, but it made it easier that Petr was telling her what to say.
“Leaving? Leaving where?”
Petr said, “You can tell him I’m going back to the Red Army.”
“He’s going back to fight,” Karen translated.
Bobby stepped back. For a moment he didn’t believe what he was hearing. He looked at Petr and then back at Karen. Their expressions confirmed that it was the truth. “Do you need anything?” he asked Petr, knowing he couldn’t understand English but trusting that Karen would translate. “Food? Money?”