31_days | [Sept 14] [Original Short Story] [By Her Words You Will Know Her]

Title: By Her Words You Will Know Her

Day/Theme: September 14 / On Friendship

Series: Original

Character/Pairing: Katrina ('Katya' or 'Kitty') Vassilievna Khudoleiva, Kamilla ('Kamilka') Vladimirovna Verkhanovskaya, Katrina's eventual husband Misha Vasilev, Kamilla's eventual husband Samuel Campman, Kamilla and Sam's children, Vera and Alik. Katrina's twin brother, Sasha (Aleksander) and older sister, Nika (Natalya.) Nika's one time boyfriend Kolya Volkov,... and a good deal of other people.

Rating: PG-? Or PG-13?

Author's Note: Because 'Kitty' needed a partner story...

Some linguistic notes: Dorogaya is 'dear' and Tvoya is 'yours' in Russian.

EDIT: Title changed.

By Her Words You Will Know Her

Summer 1937:

Dorogaya Kamilka,

I hope you are enjoying yourself on your vacation. I would love to visit the Black Sea as well. Perhaps someday we could go together? But selfishly I eagerly anticipate the end of the summer when the Academy's term begins and you must come home.

I am amusing myself as well as can be expected without the companionship of my best friend. Mama and Papa have had many parties with all of their friends and with all kinds of people I've not before met. Anyway, you know what these parties mean for me! I have been practicing very hard on piano and singing so as not to disappoint them. I hope I am not too desiring of attention, but I must say it never offends me when people clamor for me to play for them!

My sister invited the boy she is seeing over. His name is Kolya Volkov. Nikolai Something Volkov. He had us all calling him Kolya very quickly, and he was calling us Katya and Sasha and all of that. He is so very nice. He brought us presents! He bought me a book of folk songs! I have already started playing them. They are a bit easy for me, but perhaps I can sing them while I play them? And they are so lovely!

He is lovely. He is tall, with golden hair and blue eyes... I won't say more lest you accuse me of fancying him! But I hope that he and Nika do marry. I understand any such marriage might be a long way off, but I really hope that it comes to pass. He would be a wonderful brother. I know that he doesn't have the same background as us in any way, but I don't think my parents will care. Anyway, I hope he spends much time here with us. When you return I'll be sure to introduce you.

Please write back, and soon! I miss you!

Tvoya, Katrina Vassilievna (Katya) Khudoleiva

---

Dorogaya Katya,

It is very nice here. It is really the first vacation that my father and I have taken since my mother's death, so it has been nice to spend time with him when he is not occupied by the concerns of business or my schooling. I think that you and I ought to be dreaming more grandly, though. I will go with you to Paris, maybe? Or Barcelona? Perhaps London? I have always wanted to go to London, you know. It would be so bad for me there, though, can you imagine? We would have to be speaking English and everyone would laugh at our accents!

I do not think that you are vain about attention at all. You are one of the finest amateur pianists I have ever heard and I think it is a credit to you that you have the talent to please so many and the sweetness of never tiring to play for your admirers!

Kolya sounds wonderful! It was so nice of him to bring you a gift! And he sounds very considerate and handsome, if nothing else, a worthy boy for Nika to be seeing. (Not that Nika would ever spend her time with anyone unworthy, nor I should hope would you!) I would love to meet him. What do you mean, his background is different? I can't think your parents would disapprove of anyone. They are so nice!

I miss you too! Perhaps next summer we can vacation together?

Tvoya, Kamilla Vladimirovna Verkhanovskaya

---

February 1938:

Dear Diary,

Nika has left Kolya. It's sad, but perhaps I should have seen it coming? She ran home, through the snow, to our house, in tears. She refused to speak to any of us and retired immediately to the bedroom that she keeps when here and is still there. I can hear her sobbing through the walls, though I dare not enter or try to speak with her. She is usually so reserved, so polite, that this must be causing her such pain if she exhibits it this way!

I suppose they had a fight, or one too many, and discovered themselves incompatible. That she is so rich and her family so renowned must make it so hard for him, when he cannot deny that he is poor and that his father works in a factory. It isn't right! Why should something like that seperate people? But he is proud and doesn't want charity, and perhaps he sees Mama's offers of financial support and a better place to live as such? Or maybe we are just bourgeois and he is proletariet and the Marxists know something we don't?

Or maybe it's the political situation with Germany and all. Everyone is so scared that they will invade Mlodovska, and maybe this fear is making them snappish?

I can't pretend to know what my sister is thinking. Perhaps she left him, expecting him to beg her not to, and since he did not, feels that he has rejected her instead? But I should not be making these speculations. I wish, how I wish, that this hadn't happened! I loved Kolya so much, not the way she did, of course, but like a brother! But I suppose he will want nothing to do with any of us now.

How can two people who are both so good and kind hurt each other so badly?

Maybe they will get over this. Maybe it is only a spat, a lovers' quarrel that will soon be forgotten? I can only hope.

Is love always so strange? I always longed to be in love, but does it always have to be this painful?

I hope that Nika is soon happy again.

Tvoya,

Katrina

---

October 1938:

Dear Diary,

Saw Katya today. It was mostly nice--we went out to see the pictures and saw one where they were singing and dancing. It was in English, but it had subtitles. (In Russian of course,--who would subtitle anything in Mlodovskan?) She was distressed because her sister is having love troubles again. Yes, still with Kolya Volkov, whom I must say is a nice man but if he doesn't love her she should move on. In any event, Kolya is now seeing a girl called Erinah Satz, whom Nika considers a tramp of the worst sort. I don't know what makes the girl a tramp other than the fact that she lives with Kolya, but if they are in love and... what do you call... freethinkers? They are young and trying things out and maybe they'll marry one of these days?

I feel bad for Nika, because it is clear that she loves Kolya. She is such a wonderful girl, clearly a kind sister to Katya, but it seems that she has some sadness in her heart that she keeps hidden away. It would be so nice if she could find some other boy, and realize that Erinah didn't steal Kolya, (it's been MONTHS! since their relationship ended!)

Part of me wonders why she is telling Katya about this. She is usually so reserved and so rarely tells her sister these kinds of things. All I can think of is that she is worried about the possibility of war? But even if this is so, why would that connect with whatever hatred she bears for E. S.?

Later:

Katya telephoned. Nika apologized to her for what she'd said and told K. not to worry. Katya is, of course, still worried. I remember back when we were younger and Nika never told Katya what she was thinking or anything. They were close, but Nika wasn't the type to say whatever she thought to whomever happened to be there! I feel so bad to be gossiping about Katya's sister, but something about this makes me so worried. It can't just be a spat and jealousy. Something is going on, something that we don't know.

I hope it resolves itself soon.

-Kamilla

----

December 1939:

Dorogaya Kamilla,

I am not sure how to tell this to you. I don't think I could say it without crying. So I shall write. Read it well, and then destroy it. I shouldn't be telling you these things at all. But you must know. You who have always been a sister to me, you must know!

Nothing is the same as it was. Kolya Volkov is dead. He was shot by the Germans for... for spying. He and my sister and countless others have been working... first to avoid the Nazi occupation and now to end it. But the struggle seems so futile! I can't believe I said that. I did not say that. But how could we win? You know how easily they conquered us! Oh, but the news is so bad. They caught him and killed him. He left behind Erinah, who was also one of the comrades in this, who is pregnant with his child. She is all alone!

Sasha, too, is involved in this group. He joined a few months ago.

I want to join too.

Pray for us all,

Tvoya, Katrina

---

1942:

Dear Diary,

This little box of mine is becoming quite a liability, but I shall keep it nonetheless. I already keep a letter of Katya's that she gave me with orders to destroy it, but I cannot bear to. And now this diary, too, will hold things that could incriminate me. For, as of today, I am a member of OBzh.

I had to. After my father's arrest, how could I not?

Katya talked to me about that, too. She is as sweet as ever, not hardened by all of this pain. But I see what happened with Nika so long ago happening with her, as the hardship has eaten away at her polite reticence. She had no idea what to say about my father, said how unlike it was when my mother died, how young we were, and how polite and careful our letters were--she told me of her sincere condolences, and though I had no doubt that they were sincere, they were just words on a page, words that her mother had probably told her to write, when she would have much rather held me while I cried.

But it's so different, this... this death, for I am sure I shall never see him again! With my mother, everyone knew the proper things to say, ('oh, the cancer? Awful, awful, how terrible, and think of the poor motherless child!') Sympathy could be manufactured to approval--raw pain had an outlet in the polite words that everyone knew. But something like this? Should I be ashamed that my father was a Mlodovskan and not a collaborator? The hell I would! The hell I would feel shame that he believed in his nation, even in the darkest of times! And so I must stand beside Nika, beside Sasha, beside Misha, beside the memory of Kolya Volkov.

'You don't know how much I want to join!' Katya cried. 'Everyone I care for, my sister, my brother, my fiance, you... you are all in this! Nika won't let me join because she wants to protect me. If they all get caught, wants me to not know anything, so I can't be interrogated. How could I live like that? If you were caught I'd... I'd kill myself! I'd shoot myself hang myself turn myself in and let them send me to a camp! She doesn't think I have what it takes, because I'm her little, mild-mannered sister who plays the piano and all the fancy people clap. She doesn't trust me, but...'

I don't know what Nika thought, although I am sure that Nika trusts Katya because to know Katya is to trust her. And perhaps N. sees Katya as innocent, and undoubtably she wants to protect her baby sister, having already, in her mind, dragged her brother into this mess. But I told Katya what I know is true. I told her that, far from considering her unworthy, Nika gave her the hardest task. Nika made her stay uninvolved so that if she and Sasha would fall, her family would not lose three children. She made her stay uninvolved so she could help rebuild, should we all fall. She has given her the task of suvivival, even without us. And this, this is the hardest task of all.

I do not know if Katya will believe it. I hope she does.

We will be less close, by this. Already I've been told secrets that I cannot share with her. There is no need for me to write them here and I shall tell her when this is all over. Sasha said that's the hardest thing, keeping such dark secrets from those you love the most.

Who could have imagined that I, who was once the little Academy student, (though twenty-one now!) would have chosen this?

Tvoya,

Kamilla

---

January 1944:

Dorogaya Katrina,

It's so strange how life is, how in one way it can utterly fail you, dash your hopes against the rocks and leave you scrambling, wondering if it is even worth it at all, and then, just like that, give you something else, something that can in no way replace what it has taken from you, but something that can restore your reason to live. And this, I must say, is what happened with Sam and me.

Samuel Campman! Such a strange name! There are so many of those awful A sounds that I can't say the way he does, no matter how hard I try! He is so funny and sweet, like a breath of fresh air in the wreckage that is our lives. It's not to say that he doesn't understand the seriousness of our situation, but oh, how he knows, when we are too sad or angry or what have you, he'll bring out one of those record players or... one time he found a film projector! Once he started a dance party! A dance party here, can you imagine?

You've met him, of course, and I must say he's fond of you. He loves to hear you play piano, (but who doesn't!) And he told me that he calls you Kitty. I think that's adorable!

I suppose it's foolish, now, to be falling in love, what when we are surrounded by danger all the time, when all of our newfound hopes could well be for naught, but that's how life is! And I... well, you have Misha, you must know how it is to want to keep someone by your side, for the rest of your life!

We talk much of the future. We haven't yet said we will marry, but I think that maybe that will come soon. Be happy for me. I am so glad that your sister is carrying these letters between us! And I will write to you again soon.

Tvoya,

Kamilla

---

Dorogaya Kamilla,

I cannot tell you how happy I am for you! Sam is very kind and giving and I think he will be perfect for you. I know that this may be no time to be falling in love, as you said, but life goes on and one cannot expect you to cut yourself off from life during these hard times. If he does not ask your hand in marriage soon, I suggest that you be modern and ask him instead! He may be reluctant because he fears you do not feel the same way? Americans wear their emotions on their sleeves, it seems, and he might not understand how you feel? Or perhaps he thinks you won't approve of an international marriage? In any event, be proactive! I wish you the best of luck!

Your dance party sounds fun. After this is all over, tell him to have one and to invite me. Do you remember when we were just little girls and we danced together? I used to dance with Sasha. He is such a good dancer! But now I will be dancing with Misha and you with Sam and so Sasha must find some other girl to dance with. In fact, I think he has. Do you know Ziven Sokolov? He has a younger sister, Kara Elisa, who is only seventeen, but it seems that she and Sasha are... good friends, probably more. We should have a triple wedding! In Paris, like we used to dream of!

But I am being silly. I am so glad for you and Sam. Please write soon.

Tvoya,

Katrina

---

Dorogaya Katrina,

Life hates me, I think. Why else would it give me these tantalizing glimpses of happiness, then dash my hopes once again? Perhaps I should learn not to hope. But...

Sam must go, must return to America. His superiors don't approve. They think that he is no longer loyal to them, because he loves me, and they are going to transfer him. This would be bad enough if he accepted without complaint, for at least I could mourn what could not be while understanding that it was forces much stronger than the two of us, forces of nations and peoples and ways of thought, that seperated us. But Sam is not accepting this. He is talking... why, crazy talk! He says he'll stay, he'll marry me, he'll... he says that he doesn't care if he dies, for life is worthless if he does not share it with me!

I want to stay with him! I want to marry him! But how can it be? I try to explain that it is out of our hands and that he must save himself, that I love him and do not want him to die for me. I could die happily knowing he was safe! But he, how could he accept any of this? So I now realize that I must trick him. I must bury my feelings and pretend to love another, pretend to have forgotten him. I must break his heart so that he will see that there is nothing for him here and he will go home and meet a girl who can be for him whom I could never be.

He must go home. He would not be safe here. Oh, how I wish it could be different! Katya, what else can I do?

Tvoya,

Kamilla

---

Dorogaya Kamilla,

Sam came to see me and told me everything. I tried to convince him to return home; I told him Kolya's story, trying to impress upon him the risks, but he would not be discouraged. He insists on staying and swore to me that he would keep the both of you safe. I want to believe it! I don't know if I do.

You must not lie to him, though. It would not make him leave. It would make him kill himself.

People are all the same, really! People might look different, speak a different language, live on a different continent, have a different religion or none at all, have more money, have less money, have conservative politics or leftist politics, but they are really all the same! Your love for Sam proves this! Comparatively minor differences, those of social standing, tore Nika and Kolya's love apart. I am glad to see that yours is withstanding this test, but I fear for the consequences!

I am sorry to be burdening you with my fears, you who have too many troubles to be concerning yourself with my feelings. I wish the best for you and Sam. He says that I shall be there when you name your children. I hope we... I know that day will come soon.

Tvoya,

Katrina

---

September 1945:

Dear Diary,

Today was Sam and Kamilka's wedding. I was one of the maids of honor, along with Erinah and Nika and Kara. There have been so many weddings these days! It's hardly surprising, as so many people fell in love during the war and as Resistants could hardly link their names together publicly. Mine with Misha is planned for next spring. The city suffered so much damage in the Liberation, possibly by then it won't look so shabby? At least the weather will be nice.

But the wedding was beautiful and I was so very proud. How I was worried, during the war, of what might come to pass! But in the end, we have triumped and people are getting their just rewards. Truly, we have no longer any need to fear. And these marriages symbolize the bright future that we are all walking towards together.

Tvoya,

Katrina

---

1951:

Dorogaya Kamilla,

France is lovely. We're currently staying at Damien's house in Provence. I have already been to Paris and Nice and all of the places we dreamed of going together, and I feel your absence very deeply. I miss Mlodovska so very much and feel bad that, after the war and all, it is not a place we can feel we can stay. The oppression of the Soviets is communism in name only. I don't know what my brother is doing in Moscow working for them. How could such beautiful ideas go so badly astray?

I wish that you and Sam and the children would come and join Misha and me here. Nika and Damien were married just a short while ago; I wish you could have seen it. It was a wedding like none I'd ever seen, a Catholic wedding. I never knew that Damien was Catholic. It turns out that he was baptized as such but he doesn't consider himself religious. I suppose it's not all that different from me and Nika, then, because we never went to church even though we considered ourselves Orthodox

You would always be welcome here if you should choose to come. There are lovely schools here that would be wonderful for Vera and Alik. Why stay?

Tvoya,

Katrina

---

Dorogaya Katrina,

I would love to join you in France, as you very well know. Unfortunately, Sam's work is requiring us to stay here. To be honest, I am afraid. I hope I can see you again soon but I honestly do not know when that will be.

As always, tvoya,

Kamilla

---

Dorogaya Kamilka,

Please, tell me what is going on? What is he doing? What are you doing? Your letters are so short now; are you in danger? Please write me. Please tell me what is going on. Please, send the children to me if nothing else.

Tvoya,

Katrina

---

1954:

Dorogaya Katrina,

This is probably the last letter you will ever recieve from me. I wish to tell you all, so that you can understand why things ended the way they did, but I have so little time and so much to say. You know that Sam was spying for the Americans during the war, do you not? He spied for the Soviets after. In the last year, though, he tried to reestablish links with the Americans. He was trying to save us all, trying to get us all to the west.

He was caught and is sentenced to die tomorrow. There is only one thing I can do. I cannot allow him to die alone. I simply ask of you to beseech your brother to use some of his clout with the authorities in Moscow and save Vera and Alik. They are half American and are citizens. They would never let them out of here were I still living. I have already been the most wicked Jezebel who has condemned the man she loved, I will not doom my children to a life without a future. So I go to join Sam and to die with him.

I wish it could have been different. I wish I could have come and joined you in France. But life twists and turns in ways that we could never possibly imagine, and I know that I will see you again in the world beyond this one. Please do not be too sad for me, for I know how this will hurt you. And thank you for helping my children, which I know you will. With this, I can say only...

Farewell,

Kamilla Vladimirovna Campman

---

Kamilka,

You cannot do this! There must be a way! You must be able to escape, you and the children! I've telephoned Sasha and I know he will arrange it! I've tried to telephone you as well, but I cannot get through. So I'm sending this to you by mail and I pray it is not too late.

-Katya

---

LETTER RETURNED TO SENDER. ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN.

Epilogue: 1962

As soon as she had unpacked her suitcase, Vera brought Katrina a small package. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with a faded ribbon. "These were my mother's," the girl said softly. "I think she would want you to have them."

Katrina barely could hold back the tears as she unwrapped it, as she lifted first an old, worn diary and then a neat pile of yellowed letters out of a wooden box. But she shook her head and handed them back to Vera. "No," she murmured, "She would want them to be yours. You must read them and know your parents."

The sixteen-year-old nodded solemnly and turned to go, but soon enough stepped back towards her mother's best friend. "Madame Vasileva... I mean, K... Katya, what were my parents like? I was only eight when they died. I guess I know how they were as parents, but..."

"Oh, Vera," Katrina sighed. "Your parents were... oh, your parents were star-crossed lovers. Your parents were Romeo et Juliette."

And the two women sat side by side for quite a while, looking through old letters as Katrina told the long story of her friendship so dear.

-END-