Call Sign. White Lily (Chapter One)
Krasny Luch, Ukraine Dear Reader, You have in your hands a noble collaboration between two cultures that we have been proud to be associated with. I am an English teacher from a small Ukrainian town of Krasny Luch, Lugansk region. Lilia Litvyak, the prototype of this book, fought for our town during the World War II and perished not far from it. She was a 22-year-old Muscovite, her name is included in the Guinness Record Book as the most successful female pilot of World War Two. I had been working for 27 years in the School bearing her name. In this school there is a museum of War Glory where one can see photos, documents and artifacts belonging to the heroes of the war, many of them are connected with Lilia Litvyak. Many generations of children have been brought up on the heroic past of our country. I am proud to belong to this school. I think the fact that three persons � an American writer, a Ukrainian teacher, and a museum curator, many thousands of kilometers apart, have got connected with one idea � to bring the world this wonderful story � is some new interesting experience that has never occurred before. We wanted the world to know about the great sacrifices people have paid to save peace on our planet. To know that in America or in Europe � people of good will are alike � they want to live in peace, they want to find the common language, in the wide sense of the word, they want to share their cultural wealth and experience. We believe this is a story about a beautiful, brave woman the world would want to know about. This was not meant to be a narrow trade book about a misunderstood culture. The book is first a celebration of the indomitable spirit of women...all women, everywhere. The book's honesty also provides insights into how and why our patriotic beliefs, our pride of citizenship, are no different than your average American citizen�s. Our wish is that readers the world over would find our literary collaboration informative, entertaining and insightful. To that end, we have also included some photographs, illustrations, posters and memorabilia from Lilia�s time that we have reason to believe have never been seen outside Russia. Our hope is that they will enhance your reading experience. With great respect, Valentina Vaschenko, Curator, The Lilia Litvyak Museum and Yelena Sivolap, English Teacher, School No 1 Moscow, 1921� Gray the sky was a dark,gloomy gray. The clouds hung low, thick, laden with chilly moisture. The temperature, hovering around 15 degrees centigrade, was unseasonably low for a late summer day in Moscow. Women wrapped in wool cardigans shuffled briskly as they ventured shop to shop on busy Arbat Street. It was as if October had arrived early. The architecturally mundane obstetric clinic at the nearby Moscow Centre Maternity Home showed decades of neglect and long, harsh winters. Hairline cracks traveled from the top floor to the worn, rounded street-level entrance steps. Here on August 18, in a non-descript ward, a squirming, screaming Lilia Vladimirovna Litvyak announced to her proud parents, Vladimir and Anna, two former peasants from tiny Istra Village � a six hour horse and carriage ride from Moscow � that she had entered the world. The midwife handed the baby with penetrating blue-gray eyes and curly flaxen blonde hair to her mother and smiled broadly, �Congratulations, Comrade Litvyak, your daughter is an extraordinary beauty.� Anna exuded pride as she held her child for the first time. The baby appeared surprisingly at peace, seemingly content to stare into her mother�s eyes. All was right with the world. Soon it was time for mother and child to leave the clinic. Vladimir had dreamed of this day for months. He greeted his new daughter with a broad smile. �She gets her beauty from her mother.� After wrapping both in a warm blanket to protect them from the cool morning breeze, Vladimir gently placed mother and child on a mattress of soft hay and straw in the rear of his horse-drawn carriage, and snapped his whip to begin the ride home. Anna began to sing Sleep, My Charming Baby, written by the famous Russian poet M. Lermontov, while Vladimir pensively reminisced about how his family had come to be in this joyful place at this time. Just four years prior, on the farm of the wealthy, arrogant nobleman Evgeniy Vasiliev, two young peasants, Anna Tarasova,16, and Vladimir Litvyak, 19, had been randomly assigned to long days locating, cleaning and packing a potion of the season�s potato harvest. The handsome, wired-haired Vladimir was a diligent and muscular worker who moved from main tuber to main tuber seeking mature potatoes. He assumed feeder tubers were devoid of mature crops. Anna knew otherwise, and she was not afraid to say something. �Vladimir, you work too hard for each potato, why not search the attached tubers?� Vladimir�s response was predictably curt. �How would you know such things?� �Believe it or not, Vladimir, women sometimes see other things than men do,� smiled Anna, twirling her long blonde hair with her fingers. �Really,� said Vladimir, oblivious to the natural beauty standing in front of him. He handed her a spade to dig and a knife to cut. �Show me.� Minutes later she had traversed the same line of tubers that Vladimir had previously harvested and found another twelve perfectly mature potatoes. She stood and smiled proudly. �I believe you will now have a much larger harvest!� And so Vladimir came to realize the subtle determination of the beauty that stood before him. Other Russian men of that time might have kicked and screamed. Made excuses. Vladimir, in a society dominated by men, was ahead of his time. His broad imposing physique masked a deeply sensitive nature. But cupid�s arrow had pierced him deeply, and for all time. �Maybe you can teach me how you did that?� he flirted. �Maybe,� smiled Anna devilishly. She too was smitten. Some eleven months later, in that same potato field, Vladimir would ask Anna for her hand in marriage. Not long after, they exchanged vows in a peasant ceremony typical of the times. During their first year of marriage, the socially aware Vladimir felt the couple should move to Moscow. Anna was at first reluctant, the farms were all she knew. �Dear wife, wasn�t that what the Revolution was all about?� argued a confident Vladimir. �To create a better life for us. And that of our children.� �Let me think,� responded Anna, delaying the inevitable. After weeks of discussion, Vladimir ran out of rational arguments, and attempted a different, more subtle tactic: �My wife,� he said lovingly over dinner one evening, �you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I hope our life on the farm never wears that beauty.� Two weeks later, the couple packed their meager belongs, and Anna�s vanity, and headed to Moscow. Not long after arriving in Moscow, Vladimir knocked on the door of the manager at a bustling furniture factory on the outskirts of the city adjacent to the waterway where ships collected the factory�s completed product for other ports of call. The manager wanted experienced help. Vladimir did not fit the bill. �I can make anything with my hands. Just need to show me how,� passionately pleaded Vladimir. �I work hard and long. You will be satisfied. I give my word.� The gray haired manager rubbed his hands across his beard, and then smiled. �I take a chance.� �No chance,� said Vladimir. �Sure thing.� In time, Vladimir became an accomplished carpenter. For Anna�s 20th birthday, Vladimir created a surprise. �My wife, we must go to your birthday present.� �Why can you not give it to me here?� said Anna, reaching for the bag at Vladimir�s side. �There is a good reason,� he responded. �Then, what is that?� �If I were to tell you, there would be no surprise. Just follow. For one time please, stop all your chatter.� Twenty minutes later they were standing by a pond not far from the factory. Vladimir took a handsome red-and-yellow wooden sailboat from the bag, as he proudly announced �I made with my own hands. My tribute to you.� Anna smiled at the handsome boat with her name inscribed on both sides of the bow in bright blue letters. Her heart pounded with pride. It was probably the closest she would ever come to owning a real sailboat. �This is the most beautiful gift I have ever received.� �We can now imagine sailing to far off places together.� �And, will we always return home?� teased Anna. �Most certainly,� smiled Vladimir as he pulled a string from his pocket and attached it to a small hook on the front of the boat. Weekend after weekend, weather permitting, the handsome couple placed their boat on the pond, and watch it being carried by the wind. �Today I say we sail the Volga to the Caspian Sea and taste the breezes of the salt air�. The couple laughed as Vladimir pulled their vessel to shore. He then looked inside the boat. �I am disappointed to say, it was a poor day at sea.� �It is never a poor day when I sail with my husband,� smiled Anna. It was a bitter cold January. The couple had long since placed their boat in storage. Vladimir, who accepted but did not enjoy winter, looked out the window. His imagined he and Anna having a picnic after one of their imaginary sailing trips. He smiled. �Why such a broad smile,� asked Anna.�Do you suddenly love winter?� He rubbed his hand across his stubby beard. �We were having a picnic by the shore. Under the tree, not far from where we went ashore. The picnic basket was so full. The apricots and pears were delicious, the lemonade so refreshing. We ate until it was empty.� Anna rubbed her stomach. �No matter, the basket still full.� �Now you are going to tell me about my dreams,� laughed Vladimir. �It is not a dream.� Vladimir looked totally confused. Anna realized she needed to be more explicit. �Dear husband, I am talking about this basket,� said a smiling Anna pointing to her stomach. And so it was that Vladimir learned he would be a father in the near future. As Vladimir recalled those early days of their relationship, he wondered if his wife�s staunch determination and sense of vanity would find its way into baby Lilia. Lilia's first "home" was a small but tidy two-room apartment on Smolenskaya Street. Vladimir, Anna and Lilia slept in one room, while the other was a combination kitchen, dining room, and place to read and invite friends to discuss matters of the day. �We will save our rubles, and one day give our daughter a better life,� declared the optimistic Vladimir who now worked two jobs � Monday to Saturday during the day at the furniture factory, and Tuesday to Friday evenings as a railway clerk. While neither job was the stuff that dreams were made of, Vladimir received regular wages and still worked less total hours and had better working conditions than the virtual servitude of Vasiliev�s farm. Anna and Vladimir were proudly and solidly lower-lower middle class! "I need to shop for dinner,� said Anna one day when Vladimir arrived home from work. �Can I trust you with little Lilia?� �Trust me?� responded a clueless Vladimir. �You know, make sure nothing happens to our daughter.� �What can happen, my wife? She is but three months old. She simply lies and sleeps.� �She struggles to turn more each day,� said Anna. �With all respect, wife, your imagination runs wild.� Within minutes the men were waving their arms and shouting at each other, trying to convince the other of his point of view. �I still do not trust Kamenev (a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician in the 1920�s). Remember he and Zinovyev were the only two Central Committee members to vote against the October Revolution (the Soviet seizure of power in October 1917),� offered Vladimir. �Did not Lenin write a pro-clamation calling them deserters?� �That is old news. Times change. People change. Must you always live in the past? Even Lenin had a change of heart!� responded Boris emphatically. While the men drank and swore, little Lilia, in an adjacent room, was awakened by the commotion, and attracted to a dark brown kerchief on a nearby chair. Rather than cry, she determinedly squirmed to the edge of the bed and slid onto the carpet. The startled baby began to cry from the tumble. The increasing boisterous Vladimir and Boris heard nothing�until Anna came home. �How has our daughter been?� she asked. �Quiet as a church-mouse,� replied Vladimir. Boris nodded. Anna saw the half empty vodka bottle. She went into their bedroom. Lilia�s cheeks were pink from the tears she had shed. She looked at her mother and cooed lovingly, as if to say, thank goodness you have returned. Anna was furious. �My husband, how could you be so unaware! Thank goodness our daughter fell to the soft carpet.� At six months, a surprisingly well-coordinated Lilia began to grasp the legs of the kitchen table in a determined effort to stand erect. By nine months she had taken her first steps. A month later she first uttered mama and papa. By the twelfth month, Anna was teaching Lilia the names of animals, and letting her smell the flowers she had picked. Also during this first year, the couple accidentally learned about another of their child�s unique gifts. Anna always placed a wide neck jar of fresh wildflowers on the table between Lilia�s crib and their bed. Preferably, red and white to commemorate the day she told Vladimir of Lilia�s impending arrival. One evening after Anna sang her daughter to sleep, she and Vladimir returned to the kitchen table to read a few more hours before retiring. Unbeknownst to both, Lilia had awoken, saw the flowers, dangled over the side of the crib, grabbed two white wildflowers (her favorite color) from the jar, and then went back to sleep. Anna turned the light on in the bedroom. �Husband, look at your daughter.� Lilia laid sound asleep with two wildflowers by her face. �How could that happen?� wondered Vladimir. Concerned that the wildflowers might poke their daughter in the eye, Anna quietly removed the flowers and returned them to the jar. �Perhaps we should move the jar, so our daughter cannot get in any additional trouble,� she said. �That is a good solution,� said Vladimir. Later that evening, Lilia awoke to find the wildflowers had been removed from her direct view. The determined child cried and pointed for a solid hour. �That little girl has an iron will. Let her have the flowers,� whined Vladimir. �She must learn,� responded a determined Anna. �Learn what?� �Learn things cannot always be her way.� At 4 AM an exhausted Anna acquiesced. She tore the rough stems off the wildflowers and returned them to the crib. Within moments, Lilia stopped crying and went right back to sleep. �We lose. I guess the solution was not so good,� said Vladimir, covering his head with the blanket. �Congratulations, Comrades,� smiled the doctor at the child�s first annual medical examination. �Lilia is a perfectly healthy and very well coordinated little girl.� �But what about her continued temper?� said Vladimir, referring to their sleepless nights. �I don�t understand,� responded the doctor. Vladimir then described his tale of woe. �She will not go to sleep without wildflowers by her side. � �And so?� �Once asleep, we turn out the lights. We remove the wildflowers from her crib so there is no accident during the night.� �That is good, no?� �Every night is the same. She awakes, realizes the flowers have been removed, and �the temper� cries until they are returned to her side.� �I do not believe that means the child has a particularly difficult temper,� responded the doctor. �Then what does it mean?� �Comrades, it means Lilia appears to possess good night vision in addition to her advanced coordination and determined personality.� �Will that remain as she grows,� wondered Anna. �Comrade,� smiled the doctor. �Are we referring to her vision, her coordination or her determination?� Vladimir laughed at the interplay. �Perhaps she will use her gifts to become a night watchman.� �Perhaps, she will decide to become a pilot and fly night missions!� imagined the doctor. Vladimir, Anna and the doctor laughed. Baby Lilia did not. The couple needed a larger apartment, so all could have their own space. Anna, over Vladimir�s protestations, got a part-time job as a store clerk. �We will work as partners to raise our child,� declared Anna. �The situation will only be temporary.� Anna was right. Ten months later the couple had saved enough to move in larger, more functionally proportioned apartment on Novoslobodskaya Street, a 400 year-old street that had burned to the ground during the Patriotic War of 1812, and since rebuilt. In fact, Lilia even had her own room, a rare amenity in Moscow for one so young. �How did you find such a grand place?� said Vladimir, thinking he died and went to heaven. �While I was stocking the shelves, I heard my manager tell his assistant about the apartment. I told my manager I was feeling sick, and needed to go home. Then I went right over, and here we are.�
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