Page 2

Chapter Two

Dimitri

T he cold came in before Leningrad’s skyline did, creeping through the train’s worn seals and settling into the bones of the cabin like a second skin.

It was the first thing I noticed, how different the air felt this far north.

Sharp, metallic, tinged with damp and smoke, like the breath of something ancient.

Leningrad was still just a blur through the frost-laced window, gray buildings sliding closer as the train groaned its way into the station. I watched them come, but felt nothing.

This was the moment I’d imagined a hundred times while lying awake in that stinking barracks in Termez, too hot to sleep, my skin crusted with dust and old blood.

I used to picture this return like a film reel—me stepping off the train, my mother rushing to meet me, my father standing behind her with some rare softness in his face.

There would be warmth. Relief. A sense of something beginning again.

Instead, I sat in a half-broken seat with a squeaky cushion and a stubborn spring biting into my back, staring out at the city of my childhood like it was someone else’s home.

I wasn’t glad to be back, because I felt nothing.

The train jerked slightly as it slowed, the usual dance of wheels on rails, the hiss of brakes, the occasional barked Russian from the next car over.

Across from me, an older woman in a scarf printed with fading sunflowers crossed herself and murmured a prayer.

Her breath fogged in the cold. Someone in the back lit a cigarette, and the smell of cheap tobacco joined with the aroma of pickled cabbage, sweat, and engine grease.

The perfume of Soviet travel.

Outside, the Leningrad skyline emerged: rows of gray, blocky buildings under an iron sky, their edges softened by a dusting of early snow.

Smoke piped steadily from chimneys, blending with the mist. Cranes dotted the distance like frozen metal insects, hunched and unmoving.

The sun hadn’t truly risen, and probably wouldn’t.

It just hovered somewhere behind the clouds, diffusing light across the horizon without ever showing its face.

It looked exactly the same. That was the strange part.

The conductor, a red-nosed man in a lopsided cap, pushed through the aisle. “Leningrad station! Ten minutes only! Passengers disembarking must do so now! If you are continuing to Siverskaya or Pushkin, move to the forward car!”

I stood automatically, grabbing my battered duffle from the overhead rack. The strap was frayed; the canvas stiff from weather and sweat. Everything I owned fit inside it—uniforms I’d burn the second I could, a pair of cracked boots, and a few photos that somehow survived two years of war and sand.

At least I’d done my duty in Afghanistan. Served the Motherland. Survived. That was supposed to mean something.

Now what?

I had no skills except the kind no one wants in peacetime.

I could disassemble a Kalashnikov in fifteen seconds, and I could kill a man quietly.

Also, I could march, salute, and follow orders, and that was about it.

My grades in school had been average at best—I wasn’t clever, not like the boys who escaped the draft with university placements or Party connections.

School had always felt like a waiting room anyway, some gray purgatory before my actual life began, though none of it ever felt real.

But the war had been real. Terrible, but real.

I slung the duffle bag over my shoulder and looked out the window one last time as the train creaked to a stop. A line of waiting relatives clustered at the edge of the platform, bundled in coats like old beetles, clutching flowers or newspapers or children’s hands.

And there he was.

Ivan. My father.

I hadn’t expected him. He was always working—repairing train engines, moving freight, climbing under machines that growled and hissed like monsters.

He hadn’t sent a single letter the entire time I was gone.

My mother had written, of course, her cramped handwriting filling up blue postcards with small, ordinary updates: what she made for dinner, who died, which neighbor got a new water heater.

But my father? Silence. Just like always.

He looked the same as I remembered him—tall, stern, dressed in his old leather coat, his hair graying at the temples and his eyes hidden behind a scowl that might have been permanent.

I stepped off the train, the cold immediately slicing through the thin fabric of my coat like it had been waiting for me. My boots hit the concrete platform with a dull thud. I paused, unsure of what to say, or what to do.

He said nothing.

I nodded, once. He turned without speaking and began to walk.

So I followed.

Around us, the station buzzed with movement—soldiers home on leave, women clutching suitcases, the occasional cry of a child, the echo of announcements over crackling speakers.

The tiled walls were cracked, stained by decades of exhaust and footsteps.

A giant mosaic of Lenin looked down from above, faded but still watching.

We moved through it all in silence, like ghosts.

I wanted to ask why he’d come. I wanted to ask what came next. But the words didn’t rise. I just walked beside him, our footsteps echoing in unison as the frost bit deeper into my hands and face, and the city I no longer belonged to swallowed us whole.

Outside the station, the city pressed in—flat and gray, sky and pavement indistinguishable under the low, bloated clouds.

The air smelled like coal smoke and wet stone.

Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked, then another.

Street vendors sold newspapers and boiled sausages from rusted carts, their voices hoarse from cold and exhaustion.

And then I saw it.

A car. Not just any car. A Lada Samara. Sky-blue, though the color looked dull beneath the layer of grime and road salt. Its compact frame and dented bumper made it look almost shy among the drab bulk of Soviet architecture, like a child trying to dress up for a funeral.

“You got a car?” I said, not bothering to hide the disbelief in my voice.

My father grunted, the universal sign of affirmation in his personal dialect. He pulled a key from his coat pocket, inserted it into the driver’s side, and with a firm twist of his wrist and shoulder, popped the doors open.

“Get in,” he said.

I climbed in beside him. Places on the dashboard were cracked, a rubber band held the glove box shut, and a strip of electrical tape covered a long, branching fracture on the passenger window.

“Seriously,” I said, fastening the seatbelt, “how’d you get this?”

He started the engine, which wheezed like an old man clearing his throat. “I’m Chief Logistics Coordinator for the regional transportation division now.” He said it flat, like he wasn’t sure the title meant anything. “Party decided I could have a car.”

A pause settled in, heavy and strange.

It wasn’t the car, really. Or the job title. It was that I couldn’t remember the last time we had talked. Not like this. Not like two people trying.

I looked at him sideways, at the deep lines etched into his face, at the scar above his right eyebrow he’d never told me the story of.

For just a moment, a flash of something passed through me. A wish, maybe. That things between us had been different. That he’d ever told me anything about himself, or asked about me, or been more than a silent, looming presence who smelled of machine oil and sweat.

But this was how it had always been. Distant. Functional. Like we were two men running the same machine, but never at the same time.

“Where’s Mama?” I asked, adjusting the heater vent, so it stopped blowing warm dust into my eyes. “I thought she’d be picking me up.”

“She wanted to cook you a special dinner.”

We pulled away from the train station and into traffic, which was already snarling with the end-of-shift crush.

Buses and trucks belched smoke into the air, and every crosswalk was clogged with bundled figures moving like sluggish insects.

A dull clanging echoed down the avenue—a trolley bell, I thought—and somewhere nearby, someone was playing a tinny cassette of Alla Pugacheva.

We passed a sprawling brick building surrounded by chain-link fencing, where a sea of workers in thick coats spilled from the doors like water breaching a dam.

“There,” my father said, jerking his chin at it. “You start Monday. It’s a blanket factory.”

“A blanket factory?” I echoed, eyebrows raised.

He didn’t look at me. “Could be worse. Could’ve been sewage maintenance. Or collecting animal carcasses from the train tracks. Or washing out chemical drums in Vyborg. You want one of those jobs?”

I sat back and let out a small breath. “No. No, this is fine. Blankets sound… soft.”

Traffic had come to a crawl, vehicles bumper to bumper like dominoes waiting to fall.

The windshield wipers squeaked against the glass, spreading streaks of brown slush in uneven arcs.

My father tapped the wheel with his fingers.

Not impatiently, just… absentmindedly. And then he turned his head toward me, and for the first time in what felt like years, I swore he looked happy.

Well. Happy for Papa, that is.

He caught me looking and raised one eyebrow. “What?”

I hesitated. “Something’s changed. You’re… different.”

“I’m fifty-seven,” he said after a moment. “Been with the Party since I was seventeen. Never asked for much. Never made trouble. Now it’s paying off. They gave us a new apartment.”

I blinked. “New apartment?”

“Two bedrooms,” he said. “So you won’t be sleeping on the couch anymore.”

That hit me harder than I expected. We’d lived in that same two-room flat my entire life. The idea of having my own room—walls, a door, a space that belonged only to me—felt like winning a small, quiet lottery.

“It’s not much,” he added, as if apologizing for the thought. “But it’s more than we had.”