This will undoubtedly make considerably more sense if you've read "Thicker Than Water". This is sort of a "missing scene" running parallel to chapter eighteen - from Irina's perspective.
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Spi, mladenets moi prekrasnij, baushki-bau
Tiho smotrit mesyats yasnij, baushki-bau
Spi, malutka, bud' spokoen, baushki-bau
Sam uznaesh', budet vremya, baushki-bau
* * * *
Mat' i Syn
She finds the alley and the gate easily enough. Jack's directions up to this point have been concise and explicit. When he tells her there will be a password, however, he is oblique and she hears a hint of subtle amusement in his voice. You will know it when you're asked, he says.
Mathair, she replies to the woman behind the wall and smiles softly to herself as the gate swings open. It is telling, she thinks, that he has insisted on this. As if he's afraid that they need reminding. She wonders if the transparency of his need to be claimed is deliberate… or if he even recognizes it for what it is.
She is left at the door of the room at the end of the hall. His pallor surprises her. If this is what Jack calls improved, she wonders how he looked earlier. She crosses to the chair beside his bed and knows this is where his father has been sitting so recently, watching over him as she now does. Looking down at his restless sleep she is reminded of the nights spent long ago at her daughter's bedside watching over her through one childhood illness or another.
She is also reminded of the first time she ever saw him.
It is not an easy birth. Not that his sister's had been any easier physically. But it did not have these shadows hanging over it. She has been preparing herself for the separation months before he is to be born, fully expecting that she will never be allowed to even hold him. When he is placed in her arms, she is astonished and awed - a quiet bundle with fine fair hair and solemn blue eyes. Stepanushka, she murmurs. Malchik moy.
She has not expected the time with him that she is permitted. Every day that passes is more painful than the one before. She knows that it cannot last, that sooner or later he will be taken from her and never seen again. She tries to steel herself against that moment but grows more attached to him by the hour nonetheless.
They are given only three weeks. On that last morning she gazes down into his clear blue eyes and knows that they will never again look at anyone with such innocent trust. That is not to be his lot in life. His tiny hand wraps around her finger, clinging fiercely as if he knows. She does not watch them take him from the room. His cries seem to echo in the house long after he is gone.
She is right about his eyes. Five years later, in the first photograph that she is allowed to see, she can pick him out immediately. He stands out from the handful of other little boys, his dour expression an uncanny imitation of the father he has never known. He is already beginning to realize that he is different, but cannot imagine how carefully orchestrated this distinction has been.
By the time she receives the next photographs he is seven. He is going to be handsome, she can tell. Even beneath the bruises from schoolyard rows there is something that catches the attention. His eyes are bright with intelligence and there is a determined set to his jaw. In none of the pictures she is given can she find him smiling.
He is nine when she first sees him again in person, his eyes cold and wary. No one has ever wanted him before and her interest makes him suspicious. She displays an outward indifference to the proceedings that formally deliver him into her custody, resists the urge to run her fingers through his unruly blond hair or pull him into her arms. She forces herself to treat him exactly the same as the rest of the children that they are beginning to train.
From the first, he is tougher than the rest. He is the only one who has not been culled from even the semblance of a normal home. He expects none of the indulgences that the others are accustomed to, adapts quickly to the regimen. He is the earliest of the group to grasp and accept what traits their new mentors value most. She understands why he struggles so hard to impress them. Earning approval is the only thing he comprehends, having never experienced it given unconditionally.
He is barely sixteen the first time he is shot, and she is grateful for the decades spent honing her mask of impassivity. All of the maternal instincts that she has sought to suppress over the years cry out to comfort him, but she maintains her professionalism. He is more ashamed of the bloody line that creases his ribs than appalled by the closeness of his brush with death. It does not occur to him to look for sympathy. Once again his stoical demeanor reminds her of a man she doubts he will ever meet.
By the time he turns twenty he is more independent and more isolated than ever. His meteoric rise in The Man's organization has not made him any friends nor has he sought them. Hers is the only favor he has tried to curry and he has done so with ruthless efficiency. He has proven himself to be the best of the lot and she has been able to reward him without arousing protests of favoritism. The minuscule traces of affection she permits herself to show towards him on rare occasions are still begrudged him by colleagues, but none deny that he has earned them. In return for such small signs of her esteem, he has granted her a degree of devotion that he will give to no one else. She wonders sometimes if he suspects the truth.
When he is twenty-three he knows. She has lied to him, betrayed him, abandoned him. She hopes that he will understand but fears his response more than she ever anticipated. It is his long-estranged father who arranges their first tentative meeting. She is unexpectedly pleased to see the beginnings of their bond even if neither of them is willing to recognize it yet. She is even more relieved to see that beneath the anger, the core of her own relationship with him is still intact. They have only a moment and she uses it to tell him the most important things that he has never heard. She cannot determine exactly how much he believes, but at least he has heard her.
It has been six months since that meeting, since she last saw him. As she sits beside his bed watching his troubled slumber she wonders what his response will be this time. The bandage covering the hole in his shoulder is peeling up at the corner and she smoothes it down again. Her hand is drawn then to his fever-damp hair and she smoothes it too. As her fingers brush across his cheek they are prickled by the fine golden stubble. Her baby boy is older than he looks, she reminds herself ruefully. She picks up one of his hands then, caressing the countless scars that she knows she is ultimately responsible for placing there. His fingers close unconsciously around hers and she marvels at how small her own hand looks now in comparison. When she tries to withdraw her hand his grip tightens, clinging as fiercely as he did so long ago. She does not try to remove it again.
Eventually his eyes flutter open, blue and blurry. It takes him a moment to focus and she watches the emotions flicker through his eyes - disorientation, recognition, surprise, acceptance. Though she has been hoping for it, his faint smile still startles her. His words shock her even more.
Mat', he says, his voice dry and rough. He knows what it means for her to hear that in her native tongue. Mathair, he says then, naming her in his own.
Moj syn, she says, brushing her hand through his hair once more. Stepanushka.
The sound he makes is scratchy and she does not recognize it at first.
Please don't call me that, he laughs tiredly. Makes me sound like I'm four.
She smiles wryly in return and does not tell him that she will always see the child he once was when she looks at him.
Jack? he asks and is too weak, too exhausted to disguise his disappointment when she shakes her head.
Been and gone, she explains. Back to Los Angeles where Sydney is now. She sees the frown settle over his features and knows what he is thinking. I'm not going anywhere, she assures him but he still seems discontent. He tries to sit up and she moves reflexively to steady him as he sways dizzily. You are not well, she reminds him as he stubbornly resists her efforts to help.
A sudden cough racks him, collapsing the arm he is using for support. He stops refusing her assistance then and leans against her until the shuddering subsides. He begins to lift his head but wearily drops it again, nestles against her shoulder instead. It is too plaintive a gesture to reject and she knows that this opportunity will not come again. Once his recovery is more advanced, she knows that he will not allow himself the childish comfort of his mother's arms.
Though the muscles in her back scream and the circulation becomes painfully slow in her legs, she does not move for hours. It is enough to be able to hold her blue-eyed baby boy once again as he sleeps.
Stepanushka, she murmurs. Malchik moy.
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translation:
Sleep my baby, my beautiful baby.
The beautiful moon is looking down on you.
Sleep little one, don't worry about anything.
When the time comes you will know.
from: Sleepy Time Lullabies: traditional lullabies from around the world