Night Witches

  Since I have been here no one has visited Rufina.

  I have begun to help her with chores around the house and in the vegetable garden. I clean out the chicken coops and weed the garden. I even climb a ladder to nail a loose shutter for her. She is very grateful. But she still doesn’t want me to walk very far. One day when I mention that I feel fit enough to hike to where my plane crashed, she becomes very upset.

  “It is only across the meadow there at the edge of the forest. I can do it. My leg is so much stronger now,” I say.

  “The meadow is full of holes and turns marshy with swales. It is not easy. And the forest is full of wolves. You hear them howling at night, don’t you?”

  I shake my head. I haven’t heard a wolf howling since I have been here. “But, Rufina,” I argue, “you walked across the meadow and back, dragging me on a sledge pulled by a donkey.”

  “Donkeys are sure-footed.”

  “What about the wolves? They didn’t eat you.”

  “I am a tough old lady. Nothing juicy.” Her eyes turn misty. “I feed you. I tend to you. I do not want you injuring yourself again. That is too much for an old woman. You know doctors don’t grow on trees around here.”

  I promise I won’t walk to the plane, but a strange unease begins to set in. Our jokes about the hen become rather brittle. There are fewer cooking lessons. Rufina seems to be waiting for something, and this makes me nervous. She seems to watch me constantly. If I disappear around the corner of the chicken house, she shouts out, “Where are you, dearie?”

  I look at the sky longingly. I feel trapped—trapped in this Eden where the meadows are dotted with wildflowers. I don’t care if it’s surrounded by a wolf-ridden forest. I am determined to go to my plane. It’s the womb where I was reconceived as a fighter. I am a fighter. That is what I do. Fight.

  I decide I’ll go to the plane at night. I can tell there’s a storm coming, one of the ferocious electrical storms with forks of lightning sizzling overhead, which will keep anyone in their right mind from venturing out. I know weather now. We Night Witches have learned it. We feel the heaviness in the air. We have a sixth sense for dew points, an uncanny sensitivity for air pressure and humidity and the critical moment when water begins to condense into droplets. I know weather, and tonight a storm is coming in from the east. By the time we sit down for supper, the pitter of the rain begins. When I fetch the teakettle I see Rufina yawning. “No tea for me.” She yawns again. “I don’t know what it is, but summer rainstorms make me sleepy.”

  “Would you like me to help you to bed?” I have to repeat it twice.

  “Oh, yes, how kind. I am feeling especially tired tonight. You are a good girl.” She pauses as if she wants to say something more but dares not. I help her from the chair and take her to her room. It is the first time I have seen her bedroom. There is a picture of a young man on a shelf. It must be her son, for he too has the rounded little crab-apple chin. Above the picture is another icon, the archangel Mikhail. I guess that her son is named Mikhail.

  Funny, I think, how such distinct traits run in families. I have a dimple in my cheek. “Very flirtatious! Just like your mother,” my father used to say. “It certainly caught my attention the first time your mother made eyes at me.”

  “I didn’t make eyes at you, Peter. You chased me, if you recall,” my mother had said.

  “I didn’t chase you. I strolled alongside of you casually. Like a Parisian boulevardier.”

  “What’s that?” I had asked.

  “A man about town,” Papa said.

  “Man about Paris. Your father was just back from Paris.”

  These fragments of conversation float through my mind as I help Rufina take off her shoes.

  “Thank you, dear. I can do the rest.”

  The rain is pounding down now, and a fork of lightning snags the darkness, illuminating the bedroom for a split second. Rufina lies down, and soon her snoring reverberates throughout the small house.

  I have it all planned out. I’m not going to wear my clothes, but will go in my undergarments. If she finds wet clothes she’ll know. I also plan to go barefoot. I don’t want a trace of mud on my boots.

  I creep out of the house and shut the door as quietly as I can, and then tear out through the barnyard. There’s a patch of fluffy white directly in my path. I can’t believe it. That stupid hen! What is she doing out on such a night? I stare at her fiercely. “Quiet,” I hiss. She backs off, appalled that her best friend in all the Ukraine would do such a thing. I dodge around her, for she seems stuck to the ground. Another two seconds and I’m out of the barnyard, racing toward the meadow. The sky is splintered with lightning. I could be struck, electrocuted, but this doesn’t deter me. I have flown through flak storms, woven through the searing beams of Nazi searchlights.

  The meadow has become a wind-whipped sea of grass that slashes at my bare legs. At the far edge I can see the forest line, and between the cracks of thunder I hear the creaks and groans of the timber. I stop to catch my breath and open my eyes wide. Through the rain-torn night, straight ahead at the edge of the meadow, I see the hulk of my craft. The fragment of the number three is clear on the tail, and though the fuselage is scorched, I can see the red star. One of the two blades of the propeller is driven into the ground, the other sticks up jauntily, as if giving a crisp salute. I rush to the little craft. I want to hug it. I fold my arms around the prop. Tears stream from my face. I’m crying—crying for the plane, crying for Galya, crying for Mara, crying for Tatyana. Crying for all the broken things in my life.

  I crawl through the wreckage and find the compass. Miraculously, it’s still working. My goggles and leather flight cap have been left on the seat. Rufina must have removed the goggles and flight cap from my head. I continue to look around the plane’s interior. I don’t find our navigation charts, and assume they must have fallen out of the plane when Galya fell. She was flying with the charts on her lap. I find our canteens, which are still filled with water. Not a dent in them. But, oddly, the chocolate is missing. We always flew with chocolate. How did the canteens survive but the chocolate disappear? Wolves? Do wolves like chocolate? I wonder.

  I sit on the crumpled wing of the plane. The rain momentarily ceases and the clouds scuttle off, revealing a black pool with three shining stars. It must be the belt of Orion. I know those stars. We learned their names together, Tatyana and I—Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. As I look up at the three stars glittering in the patch of cleared sky, they seem to pulse, to breathe, and it comes to me like a story whispered in the night. She lives! Tatyana lives. I know this. All doubt vanishes from my mind. I can feel her out there, calling to me.

  The clouds begin to creep back, peeling away the pitch black until the stars are obliterated. But the image of Tatyana alive is burnished in my mind, as glittering as any star. I see her knees jackknifing up as she clears the hurdles. She is running. I hear the beat of her heart, the pounding of her feet on the track. God, can that girl run. She is uncatchable.

  I sit and grasp my own knees. It begins to rain again. Clouds writhe and whorl above me, but my mind seems illuminated. Her spirit fills me. I feel emboldened and get up from the wing to continue my walk around the plane. It is almost as if Tatyana were walking with me. I can hear her voice now. Checklist, Valya. Always the preflight checklist before a pilot takes off. Of course, this plane is not going anywhere. The fuel tank’s broken feed line snakes through the grass, there’s a gaping hole in the side of the fuselage, and one broken wing. But Tatyana’s voice still rings in my ear. There’s always something to learn, Valya. You are young and impatient. Impetuous. You need to be more mature about these things.

  Even in my head, her voice has the same condescending tone, but now I rejoice.

  Still, my situation is dangerous. It’s not the wolves in the woods that I fear, not the ones that Rufina spoke of. There are other wolves—German wolves. And a gun, my gun, is missing. There’s only one person who could have it.

  I
know I must get back to the house. But it’s hard for me to leave this poor wrecked creature, the plane that’s been so loyal to me for so long.

  As I walk back through the driving rain, my apprehension increases. Why would Rufina have taken the pistol? What would an old lady need with one? Did a wolf step out of the forest and threaten her once?

  As I approach the house, I stand and look at its inky shadow spread across the barnyard. The house seems ominous now. Clouds rumble across the sky, and the slender limbs of two pear trees bicker in the wind. Another flash of lightning strips away the darkness, and for just a fraction of a second the world is too bright. The little house stands like a weirdly mute shriek in the night. A warning. It is a house with too many secrets. I want to run. But what can I do? I’m standing in the middle of the Ukraine in my underwear. I have no pistol, no shoes; my plane is wrecked. I have no choice. I have to go back inside. I have to find my pistol. And in order to do this, I have to become an actor in a drama. But I’m not even sure of the plotline, let alone the ending.

  When I’m inside I hear the raucous snores still issuing forth from the bedroom. I’m careful not to track in any mud, or even a blade of grass from the meadow. The next morning I come into the kitchen to find Rufina busy getting the fire started in the wood-burning stove.

  “Small fire this morning. I should have gotten in more wood before that storm,” she says. “It is enough for one pot of tea.”

  “Oh, you drink the tea,” I say. “I don’t need it.”

  “Eh?”

  “I said you drink the tea; I don’t need it.”

  “There is enough for two mugs at least, dearie.” The hairs on my neck stand up a little bit when she calls me “dearie.”

  “It’s going to be a hot one today. I’ll stay cooler if I don’t drink hot tea.”

  “Now, you know what, dearie?”

  “What, Rufina?”

  She shakes her finger at me. “What you just said about keeping cooler is nonsense. Quite the opposite is true, in fact. If you drink a hot drink on a summer day, in the morning …”

  I force a smile. “My babushka told me the same thing.”

  “And you are going to say it is an old wives’ tale.”

  I seem to be able to summon up a true blush. “No, I am just going to say that you remind me of my grandmother.” She seems to melt a bit. What an actress I am! But the entire time I’m thinking about the pistol. Where could she have hidden it? What is she fearful I will do? I am under surveillance. And now I not only feel it in Rufina’s eyes but in others that are watching me from afar. Why does no one ever come to visit her? We are like far-flung planets in another solar system, and yet there are alien eyes pressed to telescopes observing us.

  It is, of course, impossible for me to search for the gun during the day. At night I make several forays around the tiny house as she snores away in her room.

  The next few days grow hotter. It is a throbbing heat that seems to glaze the air. We have dug a great number of the little thin-skinned potatoes that the Ukraine is so famous for. Suddenly big sledgehammer clouds swim across the sky. Everything turns dark and raindrops the size of cherries begin to splash down on us.

  “Quick!” Rufina shouts. “To the root cellar with the potatoes.” Even I know that these potatoes are delicate. They can’t endure being wet except in a pot of boiling water for thirty seconds.

  I pick up our baskets and begin to run. She follows with a dozen or more potatoes in her skirt. I set down the baskets to swing open the root cellar door. “Over there in the corner.” She points. “Spread them out. Right on the floor. They mustn’t be in piles or they’ll rot.”

  I do as she says, and before I know it she has grabbed the baskets and gone for another load. “I can do that,” I say. “You needn’t get all wet.”

  “We’re both all wet already, dearie. But sure. You get wet. I’ll let you do that.”

  I am back within a couple of minutes. She takes the basket from me. “Now go upstairs and change.” There’s a strange urgency in her voice.

  As I turn to go, my eye falls on something chilling. The corner of the cloth that I spread the potatoes on is turned up just a bit, and I recognize the pattern. It’s not a random piece of canvas. It is a zeltbahn cape. A Nazi zeltbahn cape. I recognize the camouflage pattern. I saw it in Stalingrad. Dread and clarity wash over me in equal measure. I know why Rufina has been keeping me here. And I have a strong suspicion about where she hid my pistol. My heart is beating so hard I think that even in her deafness Rufina can hear it. I am thankful for the dim light, for I know I am turning white with rage.

  * * *

  Rufina is exhausted from the heat of the day and the work. By suppertime she can hardly move. She pours herself a tot of vodka and offers me some. I pretend to drink it. Before the sun sets she is snoring away in her bedroom. “Dearie, you are a good girl. Too good … ,” she mumbles as she drops off to sleep.

  Twilight is thickening as I make my way to the root cellar. I’ve taken a small candle with me, but before I light it I let my eyes adjust to the darkness. I vow not to light the candle until I need to. As I search, I wonder if Rufina even thought of the danger of letting me help her bring the potatoes into the cellar. Even if the gun is not here, there is the zeltbahn. That, of course, is the corner that I go to first. It is indeed a true zeltbahn cape. There’s a name on a patch: Mikhail Popischev, SMSCH 118. This confirms it. Her son, Mikhail, is a member of the dreaded 118th Schutzmannschaft Battalion, an auxiliary Ukrainian police force, known collaborators with Nazis. I am in the belly of the beast here. I have unwittingly surrendered to the enemy and committed a criminal act. According to Stalin, there are no prisoners of war. Only Russian traitors.

  I never even have to light the candle. It takes me less than five minutes to find the pistol and the few last pieces of chocolate. I leave the chocolate and take the pistol, fashioning a kind of holster from a bag of old rags Rufina kept. Luckily my clothes are bulky and I plan to wear the pistol constantly. My plan is to leave tomorrow. I don’t know where I will go, but I do have a compass. I brought it back the night I went to the plane and tucked it into a tree stump at the edge of the field so I could retrieve it later. But I’m not quite sure what to do until then. Every minute of the next day I try to keep up the act, joking with Rufina about my babushka, humming a little tune, and trying to appear cheerful all while the pistol bumps softly against my stomach. I keep thinking that her son, Mikhail, will show up any minute. I swear someone is watching me. I just feel it.

  Everything seems to go well until just before suppertime. I come into the kitchen. Rufina’s back is toward me as she cooks, but I can tell from her posture that something is wrong. Water is boiling and in a bright green bowl are a dozen or so of the little potatoes!

  She’s been to the root cellar! She’s discovered my theft.

  We eat dinner in near silence. My jokes fall flat. Rufina does not have a gift for improvisation under stress. She begins to yawn elaborately. Too elaborately. She makes an excuse for going to bed as soon as it is dark.

  “Yes, I’m tired too,” I say. She looks at me narrowly. There is a pinched darkness in her eyes. “Let’s have some tea. Then we’ll go to sleep.” I get up to get the kettle going.

  “No, let me fix it,” she says in a very insistent tone.

  She’s going to poison me. Or drug me at best. I am Gretel without Hansel and I have stumbled into the witch’s candy-encrusted house.

  “Dearie, would you go out to the henhouse and fetch an extra egg? I think I will mix one in with my tea. It is strengthening, you know.”

  “Another old wives’ tale?” I joke. She tries to laugh but it doesn’t work. Only a harsh gargle noise issues forth.

  I go to fetch the egg. I have been in much worse danger, I tell myself. I can fly out of this. I have the pistol strapped beneath my skirts. I could simply come back and shoot her. But would that be the end of it? There are those eyes out there, watching me. I feel them.
There are not wolves in the woods but the police, the Schutzmannschaft, and if they hear the crack of a pistol shot … well, I dare not think what would happen. The Schutzmannschaft will come for me the way they came for the Jews and marched them to the ravine at Babi Yar to be massacred. I can hear those mute screams as the dusk settles over the hills like a shroud.

  I have to get out. But night hasn’t fallen. If I run now they will chase me. Why are they waiting? I realize I am trembling. I carry Mara’s scarf in my pocket and touch it, as I would touch it when I was flying for courage. My brain clears and I return to the kitchen and give her the egg.

  “Thank you,” she mutters but barely looks at me. Her hands tremble as she cracks the egg into her mug. A minute later she comes to the table with both mugs. Now her eyes are fastened on me. How will I do this? I begin with a little sip. While the cup is still at my lips, I dip my chin and let the liquid spill into my scarf. Will she notice? While she bends over her cup I raise mine again. This time I take a larger “swallow.” She has put a lot of sugar in the tea. Again I let it dribble into the scarf. Perhaps it’s not poison but a sleeping draft.