"Nadya! Nadya! Come in now!"
"Mama! The soldiers are coming!" Shouting from the gate, I stood at the bottom of the hill near the road. I could hear the rumbling of the tanks before they rounded the bend to pass our house. It was so exciting when they drove by on their way to the Volga River. There they would board barges and travel south from Saratov, through Stalingrad, and on to ships waiting in the Caspian.
"Suppertime! Get your brother and set the table before your father comes home!"
She never liked me to watch the soldiers. I liked how they goose-stepped alongside the tanks, their arms swinging to a half salute at their chest in time with the step. Father was a soldier back in Moldavia, a part-time soldier. Most of the army then was part-time, called up only for emergencies.
"Yes! I'm coming!"
Running up the hill I picked up my brother from his little sandbox and carried him up to the house. I suppose she had her reasons regarding the soldiers, but at the time all I saw was the show. And quite a show it was; the impression never left my mind.
We had left the Moldavian prefecture of eastern Romania when I was very young, just as Hitler's army was rolling in. Migrating northeast into southern Russia with the rest of our kindred band of Gypsies, we settled in Saratov, where the Volga River meets the Penzian mountain range.
There, my father found work in the copper mines, as he had in Moldavia. He also worked on his own as a coppersmith. Since free enterprise was forbidden in this Russia, he traded his services for barter, obtaining needed heating oil, flour, vodka, and oats for the horses.
We had prepared our weekend meal, the one that contained meat. We had
kotmis satsivi
—roast chicken with walnut sauce, Moldavian potato salad served on lettuce leaves, and a vegetable borsch. My grandmother had very few teeth left and only ate the borsch. She drank quite a bit—tea during the day and vodka in the evening. She was always making me laugh so. She could drink more vodka than my father. The more she drank, the funnier she was. My mother would be upset with her, saying that she drank like a Cossack.
After dinner she would tell stories of the Old Country. She grew up in the village of Romany, in eastern Carpathia. Much to my mother's dismay, she spoke to the children of ancient Roma rituals handed down to each generation from the time of Roman Emperor Valentinian, when our Moldavian land was called Raxolani of Dacia.
Years later, after my grandmother had passed and I was of age, my grandmother's younger sister, Great Aunt Larisa, gave me my grandmother's books, books filled with cultural legends and tales complete with methods of communication to distant ancestors, fortune-telling, and palmistry, as well as ancient rituals practiced in the mountains of Carpathia for well over a thousand years. They were priceless. Some were written in Rom, our native tongue. It is a language of Indo-European origin— about one thousand years before Christ—and was commonly used in the steppes of southern Russia just north of the Black Sea. I read them all as best I could.
I enjoyed Saratov very much. Near the water the view was wonderful, and one could go into the mountains quite easily. Word spread through the town that I was quite knowledgeable about herbs and roots used for medicinal value. At age twenty-one, I began working as a midwife; later, Great Aunt Larisa and I opened an apothecary in the center of Saratov. Although it was officially owned by the people and most of the profits were placed in a cooperative fund shared by our clan. It was a small enough enterprise that we were allowed to be the primary benefactors.
There I met many others from Saratov and nearby Engels and Volsk. I was most surprised when a busload of gypsies traveled all the way down the mountains from Penza just to shop in our store. My aunt made them some tea and we talked about the customs of our people and how difficult it was to keep them alive, since many of us nomadically travel through so many areas. We all agreed that the few who live a more sedentary lifestyle should practice the Old Ways together and pass them on.
So I began traveling up to Penza once or twice a month, learning old rituals and customs as well as teaching ones that I learned from my grandmother and my aunt. We were deep in the forest because not only were the rituals kept secret and known only by kin but also the authorities need not be aware of our practices, as they would not be well received.
II
To keep some of the profits from the store, the local party leader required that I perform community service at the local military hospital. I did not complain about this. Not only because it would be unwise, but I looked forward to seeing more of the soldiers. I still watched the soldiers marching down the road, especially the officers. The younger ones were quite dashing—going to opera and ballet performances in formal dress uniform, medals on their chest, a beautiful girl on their arm.
The hospital is where I saw Dmitri. Brought into the emergency room in the middle of the night, he had been wounded in the leg. There was no war going on at the time; many of the soldiers were on maneuvers in the streets and in the forests practicing for the military demonstrations honoring the funeral of Josef Stalin, who had died just a few short months ago, and for Soldier's Day, fast approaching on February 23.
Dmitri's wounds were from an attack by an animal in the forest. He had been bitten several places on the leg and once in the arm. The doctors had stitched most of his wounds, but he had lost a good deal of blood and was resting when I came to assist.
The hospital was only about two-thirds full, as most were veterans from the second war with Germany that were returning for continued treatment. Since many beds were empty and officers were given preferential treatment, Lt. Dmitri Kirov was in a private room.
Entering quietly, I approached the bed to dispense his antibiotics and pain medication. The room was kept warm for early February. The steam from the water-filled radiator hissed. He was on his back reading
Pravda
. A reading lamp hanging over the bed dimly illuminated most of the room.
"Good evening, comrade," I said to see if he would put down the newspaper.
He turned down the paper and strained to see me through the light of the reading lamp. "Hello—"
"I'm Nadya. I volunteer three nights a week to help the nurses," I said as my heels clicked across the hard wood floor toward the bed.
"I have medication for you."
He grumbled, "It's only seven o'clock. If I take it now I'll fall asleep and wake up in the middle of the night. Do you know what it's like in this place at three in the morning with no one to talk to and stuck in this bed?"
"Oh…well, I suppose you could take it a little later," I said placing the pills on the nightstand. "It says here you were bitten by an animal?"
"Yes, a wolf," he replied while placing the newspaper on the nightstand. Turning the lamp to shine on the wall, the light diffused around the room. It was very soft. We could see each other without glare. I sat in the chair beside the bed.
"He took a chunk out of my leg. I tried to push him off and that's when he bit my arm. I fired my weapon in the air and he ran. He just came out of nowhere. I was leading a small squad through the mountains. It was pretty routine—a training exercise. That's probably why I didn't see him until I was right on top of him. We were all pretty lax."
"The mountains…near Penza?"
