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help defend the Motherland. Vlad felt awkward. He knew his father felt useless, but it wasn’t something they could ever talk about. His mother handed him a paper bag containing two hardboiled eggs and four slices of her homemade bread.
    Both his mother and father knew their son had to go to war, since theirs was the only family in their street who had yet to contribute somebody to the war. Even Mrs Bychok, the widow, who had no sons to give to the army, saw her two daughters off to work as nurses in distant hospitals – a factthat she spoke about loudly and frequently.
    Fortunately Vlad did not see himself as some sort of family sacrifice. There was no choice, in any case. If the authorities had ever found it necessary to raise their eyebrows and question the Chevola family’s loyalty to their country, it would mean certain trouble, and not just for Vlad and his parents, but also for his grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. Every single Chevola would be infected with the hint of suspected treason, and that was all that was needed – just the smallest, tiniest hint. These days, to be suspected of not loving the state more than yourself and family was as good as being guilty of something quite dreadful, and
completely
unforgiveable . Punishment meant exile to the gulag labour camps, where prisoners – traitors – worked hard with little food until the day they died. Meanwhile, their families would forever be known for having spawned an ‘Enemy of the State’ and would live under constant scrutiny with the ever present threat of being arrested themselves.
    Anton Vasiliev towered over his tearful mother, making sure to keep some distance from her, in case she tried to hug him in front of everyone. He had no problem seeing himself as a man and, accordingly, imitated his father’s roughness , ‘Will you stop crying, woman! You’re embarrassing me. People will think you’ve no faith in me as a soldier.’
    He caught Vlad looking at him and, over the rather impressive sound of his mother blowing her nose, rolled his eyes asif to say, man to man, ‘Do you see what I have to deal with!’
    Vlad smiled, in spite of himself, and even wished he could be like Anton. He was eager for his parents to go, but, at the same time, dreaded saying goodbye to them, because he might give himself away and show how scared he was. Peering at the younger children, the boys and girls who were too young for any army, he wished madly to be nine again. When he and his classmates walked away from here, those lucky kids could return to their game of football, or chasing, or whatever they normally did at four o’clock on a sunny Wednesday afternoon.
    He glanced over again at Anton and his mother; both were now engaged in a furious discussion over Anton’s refusal to take the small statue of her favourite saint, to keep him safe from all harm.
    â€˜I can’t take that with me. Do you want to get me in trouble ?’
    Mrs Vasiliev held the statue to her chest, too miserable to lower her voice. ‘But, my dear, it’s allowed now. Stalin has said we can pray again and go back to church.’
    Nevertheless Anton was adamant; he was simply not prepared to risk anything that might affect his otherwise blatant patriotism. In fact, his mother was right; Russia’s tempestuous leader had recently relaxed his rules forbidding his people from practising religion, recognising that happier citizens might, in the short term at least, make better soldiers.Then again, maybe Anton was, accidentally, the wiser one since Stalin was known to change his mind over things like this, tripping up people who couldn’t be expected to keep up with the hundreds of rules. What might be allowed one day would invariably be a crime the following day and there was no room for such reasonable explanations as:
I didn’t realise, I’m so sorry,
or
it was a mistake.
    The roaring silence and awkwardness