Текст книги "The Bronze Horseman"

Автор книги: Paullina Simons

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

Dasha said she couldn’t go because she had to do laundry in the morning. Marina also refused, which was just as well. She had nearly stopped going to university. Taking her ration card, she picked up her own bread and ate it immediately. At night when she came back to Fifth Soviet, she demanded more food from Tatiana. “Marinka, it’s just not fair,” Tatiana would say to her cousin. “We’re all hungry. I know this is hard, but you have to keep yourself in check—”

“Oh, like you keep yourself in check?”

“Yes,” Tatiana said, sensing that Marina was not talking about the bread.

“You’re doing well,” Marina said. “Very well, Tania. Keep it up.”

But Tatiana didn’t feel she was doing well.

She felt that she was doing worse than ever before, and yet her family was lauding her efforts. Something was not right with the world in which her family thought Tatiana was making a success out of a big botch. It wasn’t that she felt herself to be slow that bothered her, but that she felt herself slowing down. All her efforts at haste, at deliberate speed, were met with an unknown resistance—resistance from her own body.

It wasn’t moving as fast as it used to, and the inarguable proof of that lay with the German bombers, who at precisely eight o’clock flew their planes over the center of the city and for two hours sounded the mortar clarion call, the high-explosive bugle, to disrupt the rush hour of the morning.

Sunrise came at eight also. Tatiana walked to the store and back in near-dark.

One morning Tatiana was walking on Nekrasova and without much thought passed a man walking in the same direction. He was tall, older, thin, wearing a hat.

Only when she passed him did it occur to Tatiana that she hadn’t passed anyone in a long time. People walked at their own pace, but it was never an overtaking pace. Either I’m walking faster, she thought, or he is even slower than me.

She slowed down, then stopped. As she turned around, she saw him drift down like a parachute by the side of the building and keel over to his side. Tatiana walked back to him, to help him sit up. He was still.

Nonetheless, she tried to straighten him up. She lifted his hat. His unblinking eyes stared at Tatiana. They remained open, as they were just minutes ago when he had been walking on the street. Now he was dead.

Horrified, Tatiana let go of the man and his hat and hurried on without turning around. On the way back with her rations, she decided to take Ulitsa Zhukovskogo instead so as not to walk by the corpse. The air raid had started, but she ignored it and walked on. If they wanted to take my bread in the shelter, there would be nothing I could do to stop them, Tatiana thought, pulling Alexander’s helmet down over her head.

That morning she told her family she had seen a dead man on the street. They barely acknowledged it. “Oh?” said Marina. “Well, I saw a dead horse in the middle of the street, cut open, and a crowd of people helping themselves to the horse’s flesh. And that’s not the worst part. I walked up behind someone and asked if there was anything left for me.”

The man’s face, his walk, his silly hat stayed in Tatiana’s mind as she closed her eyes at night. It wasn’t his death that tormented her, because, unfortunately, Tatiana had seen death before—in Luga, in the abject absence of Pasha, as she watched her father burn. But it was this man’s walking gait that Tatiana saw when she closed her eyes, because when he died, he had been walking, and though he was walking slower than Tatiana, he was not walking slower by much.

6

“How many cans of ham do we have left?” Mama asked.

“One,” Tatiana replied.

“That can’t be.”

“Mama, we’ve been eating it every night.”

“But it can’t be,” said Mama. “We had ten just a few days ago.”

“About nine days ago.”

The next day Mama asked, “Have we got any flour left?”

“Yes, we have about another kilo. I’ve been making pancakes with it every evening.”

“Is that what those are? Pancakes?” Dasha said. “Tastes like flour and water to me.”

“It is flour and water.” Tatiana paused. “Alexander calls them sea biscuits.”

“Can you make bread out of it?” demanded Mama. “Instead of silly pancakes?”

“Mama, bread? Out of what? We have no milk. We have no yeast. We have no butter. And we certainly have no more eggs.”

“Just mix it with a little water. We must have some soy milk?”

“We have three tablespoons.”

“Use it. Put some sugar in it.”

“All right, Mama.” For dinner Tatiana made unleavened bread with sugar and the remaining milk. They had the last can of ham. It was October 31.

“What’s in this bread?” Tatiana asked, breaking off a piece of the black crust and looking inside. “What is this?” It was the start of November. Babushka was on the couch. Mama and Marina had already gone out for the day. Tatiana was procrastinating, trying to make her portion last. She didn’t want to go to the hospital.

Dasha leaned over from her chair and shrugged. “Who knows? Who cares? How does it taste?”

“Actually, revolting.”

“Eat it. What, maybe you’d like some white bread instead?”

Tatiana picked at a little piece of something in the bread, poked it with her fingers, then put it on her tongue. “Dash, oh my God, you know what it is?”

“I don’t care.”

“It’s sawdust.”

Dasha paused in her own chewing, but only for a second. “Sawdust?”

“Yes, and this here?” Tatiana pointed to a brown fleck between her fingers. “That’s cardboard. We’re eating paper. Three hundred grams a day, and they’re giving us paper.”

Finishing every last crumb of her piece and looking hungrily at the one Tatiana was kneading between her fingers, Dasha said, “We’re lucky to have that. Can I open the can of tomatoes?”

“No. We have only two left. Besides, Mama and Marina are not here. You know if we open it, we’ll eat it all.”

“That’s the idea.”

“We can’t. We’ll open it tonight for dinner.”

“What kind of dinner is that going to be? Tomatoes?”

“If you didn’t eat all your cardboard in the morning, you’d have some left for dinner.”

“I can’t help it.”

“I know,” said Tatiana, putting the rest of the bread in her mouth and chewing it with her eyes closed. “Listen,” she said when she had swallowed hard, “I’ve got some crackers left. Want to have some? Just three each?”

“Yes.” The girls glanced at Babushka, who was sleeping.

They ate seven each. Only small remainders were left of what used to be whole pieces of toasted bread. Broken remainders with crumbs on the bottom.

“Tania, are you still getting your monthlies?”

“What?”

“Are you?” There was anxiety in Dasha’s voice and anxiety in Tatiana’s as she answered. “No. Why do you ask?”

“I’m not either.”

“Oh.”

Dasha was quiet. The sisters breathed shallowly.

“Are you worried, Dasha?” Tatiana said at last, with great reluctance.

Dasha shook her head. “I’m not worried about that. Alexander and I—” She glanced at Tatiana. “Never mind. I’m worried I’m not getting it. That it just ceased to be.”

“Don’t worry,” said Tatiana, relieved and sad for her sister at the same time. “It’ll come back when we start to eat again.”

Dasha raised her eyes at Tatiana.

Tatiana looked away.

“Tania,” Dasha whispered, “aren’t you feeling it? Like your whole body is just shutting down?” She started to cry. “Shutting down, Tania!”

Tatiana hugged her sister. “Dearest,” she said. “my heart’s still beating. I’m not shutting down, Dasha. And you’re not either.”

The girls were silent in the cold room. Hugging Tatiana back, Dasha said, “I want that senseless hunger back. Remember last month when we were always starving?”

“I remember.”

“You don’t feel that anymore, do you?”

“No,” admitted Tatiana faintly.

“I want it back.”

“You’ll get it back. When we start eating, it will all come back.”

That night Tatiana came home with a pot of clear liquid they served in the hospital cafeteria. There was one potato floating in it.

“It’s chicken soup,” Tatiana said to her family. “With some ham hock.”

“Where is the chicken? Where is the ham hock?” Mama asked as she looked into the small pot.

“I was lucky to get this.”

“Yes, Tanechka, you were. Come, pour for us,” Mama said.

It tasted like hot water with a potato. It had no salt, and it had no oil. Tatiana divided it into five portions because Alexander was still away.

“I hope Alexander comes back soon so we can have some of his food. He’s so lucky to have such a good ration,” said Dasha.

I hope Alexander comes back soon, too, thought Tatiana. I need to lay my eyes on him.

“Look at us,” said Mama. “We’ve waited for this dinner since our one o’clock lunch. But someone has to help with the bombs, the fires, the glass, the wounded. We’re not helping. All we want to do is eat.”

“That’s exactly what the Germans want,” said Tatiana. “They want us to abandon our city, and we are ready to do it to have a potato.”

“I can’t go out there,” said Mama. “I’ve got five uniforms to sew by hand.” She glared at Babushka, who sat quietly, chewed her bread, and said nothing.

“We won’t go out there,” said Tatiana. “We will sit and work and sew. But we are not abandoning our Leningrad. No one is leaving here.”

No one else spoke.

When the air raid began, they all descended to the shelter, even Tatiana, who tripped over a woman who had died sitting up against the wall and whom no one had bothered to move. Tatiana sank down and waited out the darkness.

7

Dasha wrote to Alexander each day; every single day she wrote him a short letter. How lucky she is, Tatiana thought. To be able to write to him, to have him receive her thoughts, how lucky.

They also wrote to their widowed Babushka in Molotov.

Letters back from her were rare.

The mail was terrible.

Then it stopped coming at all.

When the mail stopped coming to the building, Tatiana started going to the post office on Old Nevsky, where an old gray man with no teeth sat and gave her the mail only after asking her if she had any food for him. She would bring him a remainder of a small cracker. Finally she got a letter from Alexander to Dasha.

My dear Dasha, and everyone else,

The saving grace of war is that most women don’t have to see it, only the nurses who tend to us, and they are immune to our pain.

Across from Shlisselburg we’re trying to supply the island fortress Oreshek with munitions. A small group of soldiers has been holding that island since September, despite intense German shelling from the banks of Lake Ladoga just 200 meters away. You remember Oreshek? Lenin’s brother Alexander was hanged there in 1887 for his part in the plot to assassinate Alexander III.

Now that war has started, the sailors and soldiers guarding the entrance to the Neva are lauded as heroes of the New Russia—the Russia after Hitler. We are all told that after we win, everything will be completely different in the Soviet Union. It will be a much better life, we are promised, but for that life we have to be prepared to die. Lay down your life, we are told, so your children can live.

All right, we say. The fighting doesn’t end, even at night. Neither does the rain. We have been wet all day and all night for seven days. We can’t dry out. Three of my men have died of pneumonia. It almost seems cosmically unfair to die from pneumonia, when Hitler is so intent on killing us himself. I’m glad I’m not in Moscow right now. Have you heard much about what’s going on there? I think that’s what’s saving us. Saving you. Hitler diverted a large part of his Army Group Nord, including most of his planes and tanks, away from Leningrad for his attack on Moscow. If Moscow falls, we’re done for, but right now it’s our only reprieve.

I’m fine myself. I don’t like being wet much. They still feed us officers. Each day I have meat I think of you.

Be well. Tell Tatiana to walk close to the sides of the buildings. Except when the bombs are falling; then tell her to stop walking and wait in a doorway. Tell her to wear the helmet I left.

Girls, under no circumstances give away your bread. Stay clear of the roof.

And use the soap I left you. Remember that you always feel slightly better about things when you’re clean. My father told me that. I will add it’s impossible to keep yourself clean on the winter front. But on the plus side, it’s so cold here that the lice that spread typhus can’t live.

Believe me when I tell you I think of you every minute of every day.

Until I see you again, I remain distantly

Yours,

Alexander

Tatiana wore the helmet. She used the soap. She waited in the doorways. But for some reason all she could think about with a peculiar and prolonged aching, as she didn’t take off her felt boots, her felt hat, and her quilted coat, which Mama had made in the days when there was a sewing machine, was Alexander being wet all day and night in his uniform on the icy Ladoga.

Peter’s Darkened City

THERE was no longer any denying that what was happening to Leningrad was nothing like what they could have ever imagined.

Marina’s mother died.

Mariska died.

Anton died.

The shelling continued. The bombing continued. There were fewer incendiaries falling, and Tatiana knew this because there were fewer fires, and she knew this because as she walked to Fontanka, there were fewer places for her to stand and warm her hands.

As she was making her way to the store one November morning, Tatiana noticed two dead people lying in the street. On the way back two hours later there were seven. They weren’t injured, and they weren’t wounded. They were just dead. She made the sign of the cross as she walked past them, stopped and thought, what did I just do? Did I make the sign of the cross on dead people? But I live in Communist Russia. Why would I do that? She made the sign of the hammer and sickle as she slowly walked on.

There was no place for God in the Soviet Union. In fact, God clearly went against the principles by which they all lived their lives: faith in work, in living together, in protecting the state against nonconformist individuals, in Comrade Stalin. In school, in newspapers, on the radio, Tatiana heard that God was the great oppressor, the loathsome tyrant who had kept the Russian worker from realizing his full potential for centuries. Now, in post-Bolshevik Russia, God was just another roadblock in the way of the new Soviet man. The Communist man could not have an allegiance to God because that would mean his first allegiance was to something other than the state. And nothing could come before the state. Not only would the state provide for the Soviet people, but it also would feed them and it would give them jobs and protect them from the enemy. Tatiana had heard that in kindergarten, and through nine years of school and in the Young Pioneer classes she attended when she was nine. She became a Pioneer because she had no choice, but when it was time for her to join the Young Komsomols in her last year of school, she refused. Not because of God necessarily, but just because. Somewhere deep inside, Tatiana had always thought she would not make a very good Communist. She liked Mikhail Zoshchenko’s stories too much.

As a child in Luga, Tatiana had known some religious women who were always trying to get their hands on her, to baptize her, to teach her, to make her believe. She would run from them, hiding behind the lilac tree in the neighbors’ garden, and watch them shuffle down the village road, but not before they made airy crosses on her with benevolent smiles on their faces, every once in a while lovingly calling out to her, Tatia, Tatia.

Tatiana made another sign of the cross, this time on herself. Why was that so conspicuously comforting?

It’s as if I’m not alone.

She went to sit inside the church across the street from her building. Do churches ever get bombed? she wondered. Did St. Paul’s in London get bombed? If the Germans couldn’t be smart enough to destroy the magnificently conspicuous St. Paul’s, how were they ever going to find the little church she was in? She felt safer.

At the post office Tatiana had to step over a dead man to get inside. He had died on the doorstep. “How long has he been here?” she asked the postmaster.

Toothlessly he grinned. “I’ll tell you for another cracker.”

“I don’t want to know that badly,” she replied, “but I’ll give you a cracker anyway.”

In the dark no one could see what was happening to their bodies. No one could face what was happening to their bodies either. Dasha removed all the mirrors from their rooms and from the kitchen. No one wanted to catch even an accidental glimpse of themselves. They stopped looking at one another. No one wanted to catch even an accidental glimpse of someone they loved.

To hide her own body from herself and everyone else, Tatiana wore a flannel undershirt, a flannel shirt, her own wool sweater, Pasha’s wool sweater, a pair of heavy stockings, long trousers, a skirt over them, and her quilted winter coat. She took off her coat to sleep.

Dasha mentioned that she had lost her breasts, and Marina said, breasts? I don’t have a mother anymore, and you’re talking about breasts? Wouldn’t you trade breasts for your mother? I would. And Dasha apologized, but in the kitchen she broke down crying and said, “I want my breasts back, Tanechka.”

Tatiana gently rubbed Dasha’s back. “Come on, now,” she said. “Courage, Dasha. We’re not doing too badly. Look, we have some oatmeal left. Go inside. I’ll make you some.”

After Aunt Rita died, Marina still went out every morning to university, even though, as she told Tatiana, the professors taught nothing, there were no books and no lectures. But there was some heat, and Marina could sit in the library for a few hours until she could go to the canteen and get her clear soup.

“I hate soup,” Marina said. “Hate it now. It’s so meaningless.”

“It’s not meaningless. It’s hot water,” said Tatiana, as she crouched beside her dwindling bag of sugar. They still had some barley left. “Don’t touch the barley,” she said. “It will be our dinner for the next month.”

“There is hardly a cupful in the bag!” Marina exclaimed in disbelief.

“It’s a good thing you can’t eat it raw,” Tatiana said. But she was wrong. The next day there was less barley in the bag.

2

The leaflets rained down as they had in Luga. First the leaflets, then the bombs. The difference was, there had been food then, and it was warm. The difference was, back then Tatiana had believed in many things. She had believed she would find Pasha. She had believed the war would soon be over. She had believed Comrade Stalin.

Nowadays she believed in only one faint but immutable thing.

In one immutable man.

Now the leaflets that rained down from the Luftwaffe planes proclaimed to her in Russian: Women! Wear your white dresses. Wear your white dresses so when you walk along Suvorovsky to get your 250 grams of bread, we can see you from 200 meters in the sky, and not shoot you and not throw bombs your way.

Wear your white dress and live, Tatiana! was what the leaflets shouted to her.

Tatiana saved one, a few days before the twenty-fourth celebration of the Russian Revolution on November 7. She brought it home and carelessly dropped it on the table. There it stayed until the next day, when Alexander returned, thinner than he had been two weeks earlier, his face more gaunt. Gone was the twinkling glance, gone was the perpetual smile, gone the charm and the liveliness. Gone.

What was left was a man who hugged Dasha and even Mama, who hugged him back and said, “Good to see you, dearest. Good to see you. We can’t bear to think about you in that wet and cold.”

“It’s drier, but not much warmer here,” said the man, who hugged Babushka standing against the wall in the hallway, because she could not stand unsupported anymore, and who pecked Marina on the cheek, and who, when he turned to Tatiana standing awkwardly by the door, holding on to the brass handle, could not bring himself to come over and touch her. Couldn’t, despite the fact that his dark eyes lingered on her. He waved to her. That was something. Waved, turned and walked inside the room, put down his rifle, took off his heavy coat, sat, and asked for his soap. The girls twittered around him. Dasha brought him a piece of bread, which he swallowed whole. Marina stared at the bread before he ate it.

“It’s Revolution Day tomorrow, Alexander. Will there be a little extra to celebrate with?” Dasha asked.

“I’ll get you some food when I go back to the barracks. I’ll bring some tomorrow, all right?”

“What about now? Do you have anything now?”

“I came straight from the front, Dasha. I have nothing today.”

Tatiana stepped forward. “Alexander, do you want a cup of tea? I’ll make you some.”

“Yes, please.”

“I’ll make it!” barked Dasha, and disappeared.

Taking out a cigarette, Alexander lit it and offered it to Tatiana. “Have a smoke,” he said quietly. “Go ahead.”

Shaking her head, Tatiana looked at him, puzzled. “You know I don’t smoke.”

“I know,” Alexander said. “But it’ll lessen your appetite.” He paused. “What? What are you looking at me like that for?” He smiled faintly. “Keep looking,” he whispered.

Staring at him with her clear, affectionate eyes, Tatiana couldn’t help herself. She placed her glove-clad hand on the back of his uniform and patted him softly. “Shura,” she whispered, “you’re still months behind us, aren’t you? I have no appetite.” She took her hand away. He put the cigarette into his own mouth.

Standing behind Alexander, Babushka and Marina watched them. Tatiana didn’t care. His face was to her. Marina said, coming up to them, “Alexander, offer me a cigarette, why don’t you? To lessen my appetite.”

Taking the cigarette out of his mouth, Alexander handed it to Marina, who took it and said to Tatiana, “Are you sure you don’t want a smoke? It’s just been in his mouth, Tania.”

Alexander looked from Marina to Tatiana with a tired, slightly bemused expression. “Marinka,” he said, “have the cigarette and leave Tania alone.”

Picking up the Nazi leaflet off the table, he said, “To celebrate the glorious revolution, Leningrad Party chief Zhdanov is trying to get a couple of tablespoons of sour cream for the children. There might be—”

He stopped talking. Reading the leaflet more carefully, he said, “What’s this?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Tatiana, stepping closer to the table. Marina had sat down. Babushka continued to stand against the wall. Tatiana opened her coat and showed Alexander the white dress with the red roses she was wearing underneath.

Alexander paled. “Is that your dress?” he asked, his voice breaking.

Only Tatiana stood in front of Alexander, and only Tatiana could see what his eyes were filled with. Stepping away from him, she shook her head at him imperceptibly, to say, no, stop, this room is too small for us, stop.

“Yes, that’s my dress,” Tatiana said, looking at the dress hanging off her. She closed her coat.

Dasha came through, shutting the door behind her with her foot. “Alex, here, have some tea. It’s weak, but tea is something we still have. Not much else, mind you, not much—” She broke off. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” Alexander looked back down at the leaflet. “What’s this?”

Dasha looked at Marina quizzically, and Marina just shrugged as if to say, I’ll be damned if I know.

Tatiana remained standing. “That’s why I’m wearing a white dress,” she said to Alexander. “To avoid being hit.”

Alexander shot up from his seat so fast that he spilled the hot tea all over himself. Holding the leaflet, he banged his fist hard on the table. “Are you crazy?” he yelled at Tatiana. “Have you lost your mind?”

Dasha grabbed him by the sleeve. “Alexander, are you crazy? What are you shouting at her for?”

“Tania!” he yelled again, taking a lunging step toward her. Tatiana did not back away; she blinked.

Dasha got between them, pushing Alexander away. “Sit down, what’s the matter with you? Why are you shouting?”

Alexander sat down, never taking his eyes off Tatiana, who reached behind the sofa, got an old rag, came to the table, and started wiping up the spilled tea.

“Tania,” Dasha said, “don’t come so close to him. Or in a minute he’ll—”

“In a minute I’ll what, Dasha?” Alexander said.

“Forget it, Dash,” Tatiana said quietly. Picking up the empty teacup, she started toward the door.

Alexander grabbed her arm. “Tania, put the cup down and go change your dress.” He didn’t let go of her arm, but added, “Please.”

Tatiana put the cup down.

“Tania,” said Alexander, his eyes boring into her. How she wished he would stop holding her arm and looking at her. “Tania, do you know what the Germans did in Luga? You were there, didn’t you see? They rained these leaflets down on the volunteer women and young girls, who were digging the trenches and potatoes. Wear your white dresses and white shawls, they said, and we’ll know you’re civilian women and we’ll avoid shooting at you. The women said, oh, all right, and happily went to change and put on their best whites, and the Germans, as they were flying overhead, saw their dresses from 300 meters in the sky and slaughtered them all right there in the trenches. It made targeting them so much easier.”

Tatiana pulled her arm from him.

“Now, go and change. Put on something brown. And warm.” Alexander got up. “I’ll make my own tea.” Looking at Dasha, he added coldly, “And, Dasha, do me a favor—don’t ever confuse me with anyone who has hurt your sister.”

“Can you stay?” Dasha asked.

He shook his head. “Have to report to the garrison by nine.”

They ate soup with a bit of cabbage leaf. Black bread as heavy as brick, a few tablespoons of buckwheat kernels, and some unsweetened tea. They gave Alexander a shot of their precious vodka. He went and found wood in the basement and made a nice fire. It got warm in the room. How remarkable, Tatiana thought.

Alexander was at the table, with Dasha on one side and Mama on the other and Marina standing behind him. Babushka remained on the couch. And Tatiana was in the farthest corner, looking into her beige tea. Everyone was around Alexander, except for her. She couldn’t even get close.

“Alexander?” Mama asked. “Dear, it must be so hard for you at the front thinking about food all the time, like us.”

“Irina Fedorovna,” said Alexander, “I’ll tell you a little secret.” He bent his head to her. “When I’m at the front, I don’t think about food at all.”

Rubbing his arm, Mama spoke again. “Is there any way you can get my girls out of Leningrad? We’re almost out of food.”

Shaking his head and trying to disentangle himself from the women, Alexander said, “It’s impossible. Anyway, you know that I’m not on the Ladoga command. I’m below on the Neva, bombing the German positions across the river in Shlisselburg.” He shuddered. “They’re just relentless. But besides, the lake is not frozen over yet, and the barges—There are over two million civilians in Leningrad, and only a few thousand have been evacuated by barge out of the city, all of them children with their mothers.”

“We are also children with our mothers,” said Dasha.

“Small children with their mothers,” Alexander corrected himself. “All of you work—who is going to let you go? You and Dasha are making uniforms for the army,” he said to Mama, patting her. “Tania works in the hospital. How are you doing there, Tania?” His eyes were on her. She had moved near the window, away from the dining table.

Tatiana shrugged. “Today I sewed forty-two sacks. Still wasn’t enough—seventy-eight people died. Mama, I wish I could bring a sewing machine home for you.”

Mama turned around and glared at Babushka on the couch, who said in a defeated voice, “You used to like the potatoes I brought, daughter. Now I have nothing to give you.”

“Tomorrow,” said Alexander, “I will bring potatoes from the army store. I’ll bring you a little white flour. I’ll bring you everything I can. But I can’t get you out. Did you hear about the gunboat Konstructor? It was crossing Ladoga with women and children on board, headed around the Ladoga horn to Novaya Ladoga, and it was hit. The captain avoided one bomb. The second one sank his ship, drowning all 250 people.”

Dasha declared, “I would rather take my chances here in Leningrad than die in the cold sea like that.”

“How have you all been holding up?” Alexander said. “Marina, are you hanging in there?”

“Barely,” Marina said. “Look at us all.”

“You’ve looked better,” Alexander agreed, glancing at Tatiana, who said emptily, without glancing at him, “Anton died. Last week.”

“Yes,” said Dasha. “Maybe now Nina will stop coming around asking you for food for him.”

“I’m sorry Anton died, Tania,” Alexander said. “You’re not giving away your food, are you?”

Tatiana didn’t reply. “Have you heard from Dimitri?” she asked, changing the subject. “We haven’t heard a word.”

Lighting a cigarette and shaking his head, Alexander said, “Dimitri is in the Volkhov Hospital fighting for his life. I’m sure he doesn’t have the energy to write.” He and Tatiana glanced at each other.

The air-raid siren sounded. Alexander looked around the table. No one moved. “Does anyone go down to the shelter anymore, or has Tania corrupted each and every one of you?” he asked over the shrill wailing sound.

Wrapping her cardigan tighter around herself, Dasha replied, “Marina and I still go every once—”

“Tania, when was the last time you went to the shelter?” interrupted Alexander.

Tatiana shrugged. “I went just last week,” she said. “I sat next to a woman who wasn’t speaking to me. I struck up a conversation three times until I realized she was dead. And not recently dead either.” Tatiana raised her eyebrows.

“Tania, tell the truth,” said Dasha. “You were there for five seconds, and the bombing went on that night for three hours. And when was the time before that?”

“September,” said Mama casually, getting up and going to get her sewing.

“Mama, you know what? You’re a fine one to talk,” exclaimed Dasha. “You haven’t been there since September either.”

“I have work to do. I’m trying to make extra money. You should do the same.”

“I do, Mama! I just take my sewing to the bomb shelter.”

“Yes, and I saw what you did to that uniform—attaching the arm upside down. Can’t sew in the near-dark, Dasha.”