“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.