“How are you?” she said faintly.
“I’m fine,” he said. ‘How are my girls?’
“Not so good, Alexander,” said Dasha. “Not so good. Come, look at our mother. She’s been dead for five days. The council doesn’t come anymore. We can’t move her.”
Behind Dasha, Alexander walked past Tatiana and glided his gloved hand across her face.
He placed their mother in the white camouflage uniform cape and carried her—taking care not to slip on the ice—down the stairs, put her on Tatiana’s red and blue shiny sled, and pulled her to the cemetery on Starorusskaya as the girls walked beside him. He moved the frozen bodies at the entrance gate to make way for the sled and pulled Mama all the way inside, where he gent-ly laid her in the snow. He broke off two small branches and held them in front of Tatiana, who with a piece of twine tied them together in a cross, which they laid on top of Mama.
“Do you know a prayer, Alexander?” asked Tatiana. “For our mother?”
Alexander stared at Tatiana, then shook his head. She watched him cross himself and mutter a few words under his cold breath.
As they were walking out, Tatiana asked, “You don’t know a prayer?”
“Not in Russian,” he whispered back.
Back in the apartment he was almost cheerful. “Girls,” he said, “you won’t believe what goodies I have for you.” He paused. “Just for you.”
He had brought them a sack of potatoes, seven oranges he had found God knows where, half a kilo of sugar, a quarter kilo of barley, linseed oil, and, smiling with all his teeth at Tatiana, three liters of motor oil.
If she could have, Tatiana would have smiled back.
Alexander showed her how to make light with the motor oil. After pouring a few teaspoons of the oil between two saucers, he placed a moistened wick inside, leaving the end out, and lit the wick. The oil illuminated an area big enough to sew or read by. Then he went out and returned half an hour later with some wood. He said he had found the broken beams in the basement. He fetched them water.
Tatiana wanted to touch him. But Dasha was taking care of that. Dasha was not leaving his side. Tatiana couldn’t even meet his eyes. She got a pot and made some tea and put sugar in it; what a revelation. She cooked three potatoes and some barley. She broke their bread. They ate. Afterward she warmed up the water on the bourzhuika, asked Alexander for some soap, and washed her face and neck and hands.
“Thank you, Alexander,” said Tatiana. “Have you heard from Dimitri?”
“You’re welcome,” he replied. “And no, I haven’t. You?”
Tatiana shook her head.
“Alexander, my hair has started to fall out,” said Dasha. “Look.” She pulled out a black clump.
“Dash, don’t do that,” he said, turning back to Tatiana. “Has your hair begun to fall out, too?” His eyes on her were so warm, almost like a bourzhuika.
“No,” she muttered softly. “My hair can’t afford to fall out. I’ll be bald tomorrow. I’m bleeding, though.” She glanced at him and wiped her mouth. “Maybe an orange will help.”
“Eat all seven of them, but slowly. And, girls, don’t go out in the street at night. It’s too dangerous.”
“We won’t.”
“And always lock your doors.”
“We always do.”
“Then how come I waltzed right in?”
“Tania did it. She left it open.”
“Stop blaming your sister. Just lock the damn doors.”
After dinner Alexander retrieved a saw from the kitchen and sawed the dining-room table and the chairs into small pieces to fit into the bourzhuika. As he was working, Tatiana stood by his side. Dasha sat on the couch, bundled in blankets. The room was cold. They never went into this room anymore. They slept and ate and sat in the next room, where the windows weren’t broken.
“Alexander, how many tons of flour are they feeding us on now?” asked Tatiana, taking the sawed pieces from him and stacking them in the corner.
“I don’t know.”
“Alexander.”
Great sigh. “Five hundred.”
“Five hundred tons?”
“Yes.”
Dasha said, “Five hundred sounds like a lot.”
“Alexander?”
“Oh, no.”
“How many tons of flour did they give us during the July rations?” Tatiana wanted to know.
“What am I, Leningrad food chief Pavlov?”
“Answer me. How many?”
Great sigh. “Seventy-two hundred.”
Tatiana said nothing, glancing at Dasha sitting on the couch. Dasha is withdrawing, Tatiana thought, her unblinking eyes focusing on Alexander. Putting on her most chipper voice, Tatiana said tremulously, “Look on the bright side—five hundred tons goes a lot further than it used to.”
The three of them sat huddled on the couch in semidarkness in front of the bourzhuika that had just a bit of light coming out from its little metal door. Alexander was between Tatiana and Dasha. Tatiana wore her quilted coat that Mama had sewn for her and quilted trousers. She pulled her hat over her ears and her eyes. Only her nose and mouth were exposed to the air in the room. A blanket lay across their legs. At one point Tatiana thought she was going to sleep and leaned her head to the right—on Alexander. His hand came to rest on her lap.
Alexander spoke. “The saying goes, ‘I’d like to be a German soldier with a Russian general, British armaments, and American rations.’ ”
“I would just like to have American rations,” said Tatiana. “Alexander, now that the Americans are in the war, will it be easier for us?”
“Yes.”
“You know this for a fact?”
“Absolutely. Now that the Americans are in the war, there is hope.”
Tatiana heard Dasha’s voice. “If we come out of this, Alexander, I swear we are leaving Leningrad and moving to the Ukraine, to the Black Sea, somewhere where it isn’t ever cold.”
“No place like that in Russia,” he replied. He wore his quilted khaki coat on top of his uniform, and his shapka covered his ears. Dasha insisted. Alexander said, “No. We’re too far north. Winters are cold in Russia.”
“Is there a place on earth where it doesn’t get below freezing in the winter?”
“Arizona.”
“Arizona. Is that somewhere in Africa?”
“No.” Mildly he sighed. “Tania, do you know where Arizona is?”
“America,” Tatiana replied. The only warmth was coming from the little window in the stove. And from Alexander. She pressed her head into his arm.
“Yes. It’s a state in America,” he said. “Near California. It’s desert land. Forty degrees in the summer. Twenty degrees in the winter. Every year. Never freezes. Never has snow.”
“Stop it,” said Dasha. “You’re telling us fairy tales. Tell it to Tatiana. I’m too old for fairy tales.”
“It’s the truth. Never.”
Her eyes closed, Tatiana listened to the resonant lilting of Alexander’s voice. She never wanted him to stop talking. You have a good voice, Alexander, she thought. I can imagine myself drifting off, hearing only your voice, calm, measured, courageous, deep, spurring me on to eternal rest. Go, Tatia, go.
“That’s impossible,” said Dasha. “What do they do in the winter?”
“They wear a long-sleeved shirt.”
“Oh, stop it,” said Dasha. “Now I know you’re making it up.”
Tatiana pulled up her hat and stared into the flickering copper light of the stove.
“Tatia?” Alexander said quietly. “You know I’m telling the truth. Would you like to live in Arizona, ‘the land of the small spring’?”
“Yes,” she replied.
Her voice flat and apathetic, Dasha asked, “What did you call her?”
“Tatiana,” Alexander said.
Dasha shook her head. “No. The accent was in the wrong place for Tatiana. Tátia. I’ve never heard you call her that before.”
“Really, Alexander,” said Tatiana, pulling the hat over her face. “What’s gotten into you?”
Dasha struggled up. “I don’t care. Call her anything you want.”
She stepped out to go to the bathroom.
Tatiana continued to sit next to Alexander, but her head was not resting on him anymore.
“Tatia, Tatiasha, Tania,” he whispered, “can you hear me?”
“I can hear you, Shura.”
“Press your head into me again. Go on.”
She did.
“How are you holding up?”
“You see.”
“I see.” He took her mittened hand and kissed it. “Courage, Tatiana. Courage.”
I love you, Alexander, thought Tatiana.
The following day Alexander came back in the evening and said happily, “Girls! You know what day today is, don’t you?”
They looked at him blankly. Tatiana had gone to the hospital for a few hours. What she did there, she could not remember. Dasha seemed even more unfocused. They attempted to smile, and failed. “What day is it?” asked Dasha.
“It’s New Year’s Eve!” he exclaimed.
They stared.
“Come, look, I brought us three cans of tushonka.” He grinned. “One each. And some vodka. But only a little bit. You don’t want to be drinking too much vodka.”
Tatiana and Dasha continued to stare at him. Tatiana finally said, “Alexander, how will we even know when it’s New Year? We have only the wind-up alarm clock that hasn’t been right in months. And the radio is not working.”
Alexander pointed to his wristwatch. “I’m on military time. I always know precisely what time it is. And you two have got to be more cheerful. This is no way to act before a celebration.”
There was no table to set anymore, but they laid their food out on plates, sat on the couch in front of the bourzhuika, and ate their New Year’s Eve dinner of tushonka, some white bread and a spoonful of butter. Alexander gave Dasha cigarettes and Tatiana, with a smile, a small hard candy, which she gladly put in her mouth. They sat chatting quietly until Alexander looked at his watch and went to pour everyone a bit of vodka. In the darkened room they stood up a few minutes before twelve and raised their glasses to 1942.
They counted down the last ten seconds, and clinked and drank, and then Alexander kissed and hugged Dasha, and Dasha kissed and hugged Tatiana, and said, “Go on, Tania, don’t be afraid, kiss Alexander on New Year’s,” and went to sit on the couch, while Tatiana raised her face to Alexander, who bent to Tatiana and very carefully, very gently kissed her on the lips. It was the first time his lips had touched hers since St. Isaac’s.
“Happy New Year, Tania.”
“Happy New Year, Alexander.”
Dasha was on the couch with her eyes closed, a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other. “Here’s to 1942,” she said.
“Here’s to 1942,” echoed Alexander and Tatiana, allowing themselves a glance before he went to sit next to Dasha.
Afterward they all lay down in the bed together, Tatiana next to her wall, turned to Dasha, turned to Alexander. Are there any layers left? she thought. There is hardly life left, how can anything be covering our remains?
The day after New Year’s, Alexander and Tatiana slowly made their way to the post office. Every week Tatiana still went to check if there were any letters from Babushka and to send her a short note. Since Deda died, they had received just one letter from her, telling them she had moved from Molotov to a fishing village on the mighty Kama.
Tatiana’s letters were brief; she could not get out more than a few paragraphs. She wrote to Babushka about the hospital, about Vera, about Nina Iglenko, and a little about crazy Slavin, who before his inexplicable disappearance two weeks earlier had spent the days and nights, as always, on the floor of the corridor, halfway in, halfway out, indifferent to the bombing and the hunger, his only nod to winter being a blanket over his sunken frame. Slavin, Tatiana could write about. Herself, she could not; even less about the family. She left that to Dasha, who always seemed to manage to write a bright sentence to tack onto Tatiana’s grim paragraph. Tatiana didn’t know how to hide the Leningrad of October, November, December 1941. Dasha, however, hid it all, constantly and cheerfully writing only about Alexander and their plans for marriage. Well, she was a grown-up. Grown-ups could hide so well.
The letter Tatiana was carrying today did not have an addendum from Dasha, who had been too tired yesterday to write.
Alexander and Tatiana made their careful way in the snow, their faces down and away from the choking wind. The snow was getting inside Tatiana’s shredded boots and not melting. Holding on to Alexander’s arm, she was thinking about her next letter. Maybe in the next letter she could write about Mama. And Marina. And Aunt Rita. And Babushka Maya.
The post office was on the first floor of the old building on Nevsky. It used to be on the ground floor, but high explosives blew out the windows on the ground floor, and the glass could not be replaced. So the post office moved upstairs. The problem with upstairs was that it was hard to get to. The stairs were covered with ice and bodies.
At the foot of the stairs Alexander said, “It’s getting late, I have to go. I have to report back at noon.”
“It’s many hours till noon,” said Tatiana.
“No, actually, it’s eleven. It took us an hour and a half to get here.”
Tatiana felt even colder. “Go, Shura, get out of the cold,” she muttered.
Fixing her scarf, Alexander said, “Don’t go to any stores. Go straight home. I already gave you my ration. And we spent all my money.”
“I know. I will.”
“Please.”
“All right,” she said. “Are you coming back tonight?”
Shaking his head, he said, “I’m leaving tonight. I’m going back up. My replacement gunner—”
“Don’t say it.”
“I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
“All right. You promise?”
“Tatia, I’m going to try to get you and Dasha out of Leningrad on one of the trucks. You hang on until I can do it, all right?”
They stared at each other. She wanted to tell him she was grateful to be able to look into his face but didn’t have the energy. Nodding, she turned to walk up the stairs. Alexander remained at the bottom. She slipped on the second step and stumbled backward. Putting his hands out, Alexander caught her, straightening her up. She grabbed on to the railing and then turned around to him. Something resembling a smile passed over her face. “I really am all right without you,” she said. “I can manage.”
“What about the ravenous boys who follow you home?”
Tatiana warmed her eyes, so she could look at him with the truth that was inside her. “I really am not all right without you,” she said. “I can’t manage.”
“I know,” Alexander said. “Hold on to the rail.”
Slowly Tatiana walked up the slippery stairs. At the top she turned around to see if Alexander was still there. He was, looking up at her. She pressed her gloved hand to her lips.
The morning after the post office Dasha could not get up. “Dasha, please.”
“I can’t. You go.”
“Of course I will go, but, Dasha, I don’t want to go by myself. Alexander is not here.”
“No, he’s not.”
Tatiana fixed the blankets and coats on top of her. Even as she begged Dasha to get up, Tatiana knew that her sister wasn’t going anywhere. Dasha’s eyes were closed, and she was lying in the same position in which she had fallen asleep the night before. Dasha had also been very quiet the night before. Very quiet except for a cough. “Please get up. You need to get up.”
“I’ll get up later,” said Dasha. “I just can’t right now.” Her eyes were closed.
Tatiana went to fetch water from downstairs. That took her an hour. She lit the fire in the bourzhuika, putting a chair leg in it, and when the fire was started, she made Dasha some tea.
Afte
r she had fed Dasha small spoonfuls of the barely brown, barely sweet liquid, she left by herself to go to the ration store. It was ten in the morning but still dark. At eleven it would be light, Tatiana thought. When I’m coming back with the bread it will be light. “Give us this day our daily bread,” she whispered to herself. I wish I had known that earlier. I could have said that prayer every day since September.
It’s dark all the time now. Was it late? Was it early? Was it evening or night? She looked at the alarm clock. She couldn’t make out the hands in the dark. I don’t see light. In the morning it’s dark, and when I drag the bucket of water up the stairs, it’s dark, and when I wash Dasha’s face and go to the store and the bombs fly, it’s dark. Then a building explodes and burns brightly, and I can go and stand in front of it and warm up a bit. The fire reddens my face, and I stand—for how long? Well, today, I stood until around noon. I didn’t get to the hospital until one. Tomorrow maybe I can go and find another fire somewhere. But at home it’s dark. Alexander’s oil and wick in the little plate help, I can sit and look at a book, maybe, or at Dasha’s face.
Dasha—why is she staring at me like that? She has not been herself for five days. She hasn’t gotten out of bed for the last three. Her eyes are darker—what’s in them? She is staring as if she doesn’t know who I am.
“Dasha? What’s the matter?”
Dasha staring, not replying. Not moving.
“Dasha!”
“What are you screaming at?” Dasha said quietly.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Come here.”
Tatiana came and kneeled by Dasha’s face. “What, honey?” she said. “What can I get you?”
“Where is Alexander?”
“I don’t know. Up in Ladoga?”
“When is he coming back?”
“Don’t know. Maybe tomorrow?”
Dasha staring.
“What’s the matter?” Tatiana asked.
“Do you want me to die?”
“What?” Even in her own half-extinguished life, Tatiana was aghast. “Of course not. You’re my sister. We all need a second person to remain human, Dasha, you know that.”