June, 1941
War had found them, the Soviets. Hitler broke his promise and just around noon Joseph Stalin’s Foreign Minister, Comrade Vyacheslav Molotov’s voice had come through the static on the radio. Announcing how Germany had attacked the Soviet Union on multiple fronts, of the cities that were bombed, and how the enemy, Hitler and his Nazi’s, would be crushed. Ekaterina was excited. W a r, war had come, perhaps she’d volunteer to help the effort.
“Go to the store, buy up all that you can, go, go.” Her father had told her, shoving more rubles than she knew he had into her hand. “Do not stop, go now.” She had smiled when he left with her mother and sister, young and happy. Though instead of doing as she was told, she stayed home and read from her favorite book for a few hours. The stores had plenty, a few hours meant nothing.
Summer was still upon them, it was warm out. Katya scrubbed herself and dressed herself in a short dress that was quickly shrinking as her body became more womanly. If she spun fast enough it created a parachute effect, the way the ballerina’s skirts had when her family had visited Moscow. That was ages ago, when she was all thin limbs and scrapped knees. Now she had a bosom and hips, though it was Irina who seemed the true woman. Going out at night with men, dancing, drinking, falling in love every other week. She smiled as she thought of her sister, stealing away the older girl’s heeled sandals. Katya walked like a child in them, but they made her feel beautiful. One needed to feel beautiful on the first day of war, she thought.
Unfortunately, beauty would not help her find food in store lines. Each one longer than the next. There’s no more canned food. One woman bought seven kilos of caviar and nothing else. People whispered in the street, though Katya wasn’t worried about that. What she worried about was returning home empty handed, instead of doing that as the afternoon dripped on, she decided to take a bus across the river. Surely not all the stores in Leningrad were depleted? She would find one and return victorious. On a bench she waited for the bus, licking an ice cream cone she had bought, for she hadn’t eaten all day. It was there she noticed the man looking at her and there she avoided his gaze bashfully. Irina would’ve smiled and waved, but she was not her sister. She didn’t know how to talk with men, what to say to them, other than those that were her friends. Like the Romanian who had come to live the Communist life, given up his country for the motherland. He was Irina’s age, but he only smiled for her. It made her skin crawl. Perhaps this stranger would elicit the same response, though for now, he brought out only a nervous tightening in her stomach.
{ luka-zalachenko }
