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XXXVI Aria da Capo

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February 2, 1983

The connecting flight from Moscow was late and so the Tupolev 134, with every one of its eighty seats occupied, did not reach Volgograd air space until three in the afternoon. In the mid-winter light, the ground below bore little color beyond the white of snow and the nuanced grays of cities.

As the aircraft reduced altitude in its approach, Katherina stared out the porthole, trying to make sense of the landscape below. She tried to imagine Volgograd as it had been forty years before, as the tenacious Stalingrad. Even in its current so far uninteresting form, it held an almost mythical significance for her.

“If you’re looking for the Volga, it’s frozen solid and covered with snow this time of year. ” Her seat mate, a bearded fifties-something man in a slightly rumpled business suit, spoke in thickly Russian-accented German.

“Oh, you speak German, ” she said. “Yes, of course. I should have remembered that it would be frozen. I’m assuming it’s that strip of white snaking along between the gray patches. ”

“I heard you conversing earlier with the stewardess, ” he explained. “Is this your first visit to Volgograd? Perhaps to see the historical sites? Our business visitors rarely include such lovely women as yourself. ”

Katherina glanced briefly at him, reluctant to pull her gaze away from the maze of shapes below. “I’m singing in a concert to commemorate the Battle of Stalingrad. That’s why I’m trying to see the city from the air. Can you tell me what I’m looking at? ”

He stood up and then bent over her shoulder, supporting himself on the seat in front. “It will be hard to make out the landmarks with so much snow, but in just a minute, you should be able to see the Mother Russia statue. That will show you the Mamayev Hill where the Stalingrad memorial complex is located. ”

“Oh yes, that’s something I want to visit while I’m here. You see, my father fought at Stalingrad, ” she said with pride, surprising herself.

“I see. And, judging by your age, it appears he survived. A lucky man. I myself was one of the children hiding in the tunnels and basements. ” He sat down again.

Katherina twisted toward him in her seat. “So the story is real. I read some place that thousands of civilians were trapped in the city throughout the battle. ”

“What you read is true. Stalin didn’t allow the people to evacuate until much too late. And my family could not evacuate at all because my mother was a worker at the Red October metal factory. After our house was burned by exploding fuel tanks, we slept in the factory, until bombs gutted it. After that, we went into hiding. We had no food or even water most of the time, although I was five years old so I don’t remember very much. I do remember the soldiers rescuing us and giving us food. We were so hungry, and of course, it’s a little boy’s dream to be sitting down with real soldier heroes. Ah, there it is! ” He stood up again. “There’s the ‘Mother Russia Calls’ statue. ”

Katherina pressed her forehead against the glass and saw an enormously tall structure, dark against the surrounding snow, drift into view on the right. Although the distance and line of sight did not allow a good view, she knew from pictures that it was a statue of a woman striding forward with upraised arm and swinging an enormous sword.

“She’s very tall, ” the gentleman added. “Some eighty-five meters, with her sword. You can see her from much of the city. ”

“Very impressive, ” Katherina replied politely. “And those buildings around her are part of the memorial? ”

“Yes. One of them is a burnt-out building they’ve left to show what the whole city looked like. That cylindrical building there is the Hall of the Warrior Glory. Very beautiful inside, with mosaics of golden glass all around. The names of about seventy thousand of the soldiers are inscribed on the walls. That, of course, does not count the civilians. ”

“Is there a special cemetery? ”

“No, not yet. But one is planned. However, there is a tomb where General Chuikov is buried. Perhaps you don’t know the name. You are so young. Vasily Chuikov is one of the generals who were victorious at Stalingrad. He went on to capture Berlin too. He died just last year and is buried on the Mamayev Kurgan. ”

Katherina thought of swollen infected hands that saved her father’s life and could almost imagine the general’s cheerful peasant face with its row of gold teeth. “Yes, I have heard of him, ” she said softly, and at that moment decided to lay flowers at his tomb.

Katherina stood facing the spotlights of the Tsaritsinskaya Opera Theater. She held the skirt of her white gauze concert dress with one hand and raised the other toward the balcony. The common soldiers sat there, she knew, or rather the white-haired men and women who had survived the “cauldron” of Stalingrad. She wanted them to know she was bringing something back to them.

She sang her father’s song, which he had carried with him across the Eastern front. It tied him to his young lover and haunted him for forty years. Upon his death, it had passed through the voice of Anastasia Ivanova to her, Sergei Marovsky’s child, and now she gave it back to the air of Stalingrad.

With the full orchestra swelling beneath her, she sang the climax of the aria that belonged to all four of them. In a language that did not distinguish between “him” and “her, ” she celebrated the mouth, eyes, caress, and kiss of the beloved, of all beloveds.

O caresses de flamme! Que je voudrais un jour

Voir s’exhaler mon â me Dans ses baisers d’amour!

When it was over, she curtsied deeply. The other performers joined her onstage then, and the audience of politicians, diplomats, survivors, and their families gave them an ovation. The survivors, especially, clapped long and passionately, acknowledging not only the concert but, of course, themselves. For everyone among them, the Battle of Stalingrad had been the nadir of their existence; for everyone, the memory was a deep and twisted scar. And yet they had emerged from the chasm and could celebrate in music what hardly could be said in words. Katherina felt it in the air around her: gratitude, reconciliation, and fathomless melancholy.

When the cheering stopped, all the artists gathered at the reception in the entry hall of the theater.

She shook hands with a dozen Russian politicians, whose names she knew she would never remember. Then the crowd parted and Yuri Andropov himself stepped forward.

The premier, who had gained a reputation for ice-cold and sometimes ruthless calculation in his long career as head of the KGB, looked surprisingly weak. His bland face, rendered even blander by his growing baldness, was pale and slightly jaundiced. Katherina recalled that men like Yuri Andropov were part of the reason that Anastasia had defected to the West. But for all that, he seemed sickly, and the head of the vast and all-powerful Soviet Union looked like a banker in need of a vacation. After working his way down the line of musicians, he shook Katherina’s hand and, in awkward German, thanked her for her performance. A secretary handed him a series of small bouquets, which he presented with presidential formality to each of the performers. After a few additional words, presumably about international cooperation, he left the hall with his entourage.

After the premier’s departure, the corridor returned to its previous liveliness, and people once again crowded around the singers. The high emotion of the concert still lingered, in spite of the extreme age of many of the audience members. Some wore their old military uniforms, ill fitting on aging bodies, and all of them, even the ones who attended in civilian jackets, wore their ribbons and Stalingrad medals. That was what they still carried after forty years: memories, medals, and long covered-over wounds. A few were scarred in a more obvious way, with missing arms or a limp that betrayed a prosthetic leg.

Katherina looked around for the German survivors, knowing there would not be many. Practically the whole of the Sixth Army marched into POW camps where some 90 percent of them perished. Only a lucky few were seriously wounded early in the battle and carried by their comrades to the airfields, from where the Luftwaffe flew them out. In the final weeks, when the casualties were massive, such evacuations ceased. To be a German survivor of Stalingrad was to be extraordinarily tenacious or extraordinarily lucky.

They were also difficult to identify since, unlike some of the Russians, they had no old uniforms hanging in their closets. Few German soldiers cherished their identification with the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany, and any who had been captured had worn their uniforms to shreds. It was not until a cluster of some dozen old men in business suits shuffled toward her that Katherina recognized the German veterans.

Surely these were the early escapees, the wounded ones saved by the Luftwaffe before the Soviets captured the last airstrip. The number of leg-amputees and variety of prosthesis hands seemed to verify that assumption. She could not imagine that a POW would want to return to the country that had kept him in purgatory for years, even if the government paid for his visit.

One after another, the mostly handicapped German veterans greeted her. “Sehr schö n, ” they said. Lovely that the daughter of a Stalingrad man could sing for them. None of them remembered Sergei Marovsky but, given the size of the city and the number of medical personnel, it was not surprising. The concert program, she recalled, had listed Sergei Marovsky among the Germans and made no mention of his service with the Red Army. Did the German government not know? Or care? Katherina supposed that highly political events such as the Reconciliation Concert would wish to gloss over such facts as the heroism of a turncoat. In any case, she was relieved that these old men in their sorrowful nostalgia would have nothing with which to reproach her.

After nearly an hour of handshaking and a few tears, the crowd thinned out and the general manager of the Tsaritsinskaya Opera Company arrived to offer his congratulations. She accepted his handshake and then excused herself for a moment, asking him to wait. A few minutes later she returned to the entrance hall with a package wrapped in brown paper and addressed the manager in German.

“Herr Direktor. My father found this in the basement of the Stalingrad Opera House, during the battle which destroyed it. He took it due to a misunderstanding, and it has stayed far too long with my family. I believe you are its rightful heir, ” she said, presenting the package to him.

Clearly surprised, the general manager opened one end of the package, revealing the desiccated and dusty leather of a black gauntlet. He smiled, slightly nonplussed, and drew it out.

“I thought it might have some historical value, ” Katherina explained. “I suspect there is little else left of that opera house. ”

The general manager studied the glove, holding it gingerly, then nodded. “Yes, you’re right. I believe it does have great value for the Museum of Stalingrad. Thank you for returning it. ” He held up the glove for a press photo, standing next to her, and flashbulbs flickered.

At that moment, the conductor appeared in the corridor, adding a third face and another photo opportunity. For the next several minutes, the press constructed a photo-documented story out of the presentation.

When the press interest waned, both general manager and conductor turned away and meandered across the hall toward a waiter carrying a tray of champagne glasses.

Katherina was still surrounded by elderly German veterans who seemed to have run out of small talk. One of them, however, stepped shyly out of the circle. Well dressed, in his early sixties, he was accompanied by a slightly younger man who had stepped out also, but kept a slight distance behind him. Both were attractive, though the closer one, with thinning white hair, had a curiously delicate quality to his face, and under long eyelashes, his eyes were an extraordinary bright blue. He spoke in a soft voice, his manner slightly effeminate.

“The program says you are the daughter of Sergei Marovsky. ” He held it up as evidence.

“Yes, ” Katherina confirmed. “He changed his name to Marow after the war. ”

The old man smiled wanly. “All these years I thought he had fallen at Stalingrad. But he made it back after all. You look a lot like him. ”

Katherina’s heart leapt. Finally, someone who remembered her father. Someone who could describe him, tell of the wounds he had bandaged, men he’d saved. She was hungry to hear it all. “Did you know him as a medic, or were you a fellow soldier? ”

“Both, actually. Your father treated me for shrapnel but we were also very good friends. His excellent surgery saved my life. I was sure he had been arrested for something, and I myself was in a bad state, both physically and mentally. But a Russian guard, a man named Kolya, befriended me and helped me survive the first hard weeks after surrender. ”

“I am so happy to meet you. ” Katherina studied the veteran’s face, an idea forming. But no, it was not possible.

He had been standing somewhat stiffly and bent toward her, with one hand behind his back, like an officer poised midway in a military bow.

She offered him her hand, and he presented his own. It was missing the last two fingers.

“Mü ller is my name. Florian Mü ller. I don’t suppose he ever mentioned me. ”

Holding the mangled hand in her own, Katherina felt tears well up. “Yes, Mr. Mü ller. He did. With great affection. I believe we have a lot to talk about. ”

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