Raisa tremulously said, “I think the problem isn’t that he’s a soldier. The problem is she loves him too much.”

Axinya whispered, patting Tatiana’s back, “Lucky girl.”

“What’s lucky?” Naira said indignantly. “If only she had listened to us and stayed at our house, none of this would have happened.”

“If only she came to church with me more often,” said Dusia. “The Lord’s rod and His staff, they would comfort her.”

“What do you think, Tanechka?” Axinya said, standing close to Tatiana. “You think the Lord’s rod and staff would comfort you right now?”

Naira said, “This is no good. We are not helping her.”

Dusia: “I never liked him.”

Naira: “Me neither. Never understood what Tania saw in him.”

Raisa: “She is too good for him.”

Naira: “She is too good for anybody.”

Dusia: “She can be even better, closer to the Lord.”

Naira: “My Vova is such a kind, gentle boy. He cared for her.”

Raisa: “I bet you Alexander’s not going to come back for her. He’s left her here for good.”

Naira: “I’m sure you’re right. He married her—”

Dusia: “Soiled her—”

Raisa: “And discarded her.”

Dusia: “I always suspected he was godless.”

Axinya whispered to Tatiana, “The only thing that will keep him away is death.”

Thank you, Axinya, thought Tatiana, opening her heavy eyes and lifting her body out of bed. But that’s exactly what I’m afraid of.

The old girls convinced Tatiana without much effort to come back and live with them. Vova helped her to carry the trunk and sewing machine back to Naira’s house.

At first Tatiana could not get through her day without physically holding herself together. There was no comfort inside her, and she knew it. There was nowhere she could turn to inside herself to leave the darkness. No memory she could fondly think of, no gentle joke, no musical refrain. There was no part of her body she could touch without shuddering. Nowhere she could look without seeing Alexander.

This time she didn’t have the hunger to dull her sorrow. She didn’t have infected lungs. There was nothing for her healthy body to do but grit its teeth and lift the buckets that went on her shoulders every morning, and milk the goat and pour the warm milk for Raisa, who could not pour it herself, and hang the clothes on the line and have the women say at night how wonderful the clothes smelled, having been hung by Tania in the sunshine.

Tatiana sewed for them and for herself, she read to them and to herself, she bathed them and herself, she tended their garden and looked after their chickens and took the apples off the trees, and little by little, bucket by bucket, book by book, shirt by shirt, their need enveloped her again, and Tatiana was comforted.

Just like before.

2

After two weeks came the first letter from Alexander.

Tatiasha,

Can there be anything harder than this? Missing you is a physical aching that grips me early in the morning and does not leave me, not even as I draw my last waking breath.

My solace in these waning empty summer days is the knowledge that you’re safe, and alive, and healthy, and that the worst that you have to go through is serfdom for four well-meaning old women.

The wood piles I’ve left are the lightest in the front. The heaviest ones are for the winter. Use them last, and if you need help carrying them, God help me, ask Vova. Don’t hurt yourself. And don’t fill the water pails all the way to the top. They’re too heavy.

Getting back was rough, and as soon as I came back, I was sent right out to the Neva, where for six days we planned our attack and then made a move in boats across the river and were completely crushed in two hours. We didn’t stand a chance. The Germans bombed the boats with the Vanyushas, their version of my rocket launcher, the boats all sank. We were left with a thousand fewer men and were no closer to crossing the river. We’re now looking at other places we can cross. I’m fine, except for the fact that it’s rained here for ten days straight and I’ve been hip deep in mud for all that time. There is nowhere to sleep, except in the mud. We put our trench coats down and hope it stops raining soon. All black and wet, I almost felt sorry for myself until I thought of you during the blockade.

I’ve decided to do that from now on. Every time I think I have it so tough, I’m going to think of you burying your sister in Lake Ladoga.

I wish you had been given a lighter cross than Leningrad to carry through your life.

Things are going to be relatively quiet here for the next few weeks, until we regroup. Yesterday a bomb fell in the commandant’s bunker. The commandant wasn’t there at the time. Yet the anxiety doesn’t go away. When is it going to come again?

I play cards and soccer. And I smoke. And I think of you.

I sent you money. Go to Molotov at the end of August.

Don’t forget to eat well, my warm bun, my midnight sun, and kiss your hand for me, right in the palm and then press it against your heart.

Alexander

Tatiana read Alexander’s letter a hundred times, memorizing every word. She slept with her face on the letter, which renewed her strength.

My love, my dear, dear Shura,

Don’t talk about my cross—first heave your own off your shoulders.

How did I live last winter? I don’t know, but I think almost longingly of it now. Because I moved. There was movement inside me. I had energy to lie, to pretend to Dasha, to keep her alive. I walked, I was with Mama, I was too busy to die myself. Too busy hiding my love for you.

But now I wake up and think, how am I going to go through the rest of my day until sleep?

To ease myself back into life, I’ve surrounded myself with the villagers. You think it was bad before. I’m from morning till night helping Irina Persikova, who had to have her leg cut off in Molotov, infection or something. I think I like her because she carries my mother’s name.

I think of Dasha. I grieve for my sister.

But her face is not the last face I see before I sleep. Yours is.

You are my hand grenade, my artillery fire. You have replaced my heart with yourself.

Are you thinking of me with your rifle in your hands?

What do we do? How do we keep you from dying? These thoughts consume my waking minutes. What can I do from here to keep you alive?

Dead or wounded, those Soviets will leave you in the field.

Who is going to heal you if you fall?

Who is going to bury you if you die? Bury you like you deserve—with kings and heroes.

Yours,

Tatiana

Tatia,

You ask how I keep myself from dying. Poorly, I say. Though still better than Ivan Petrenko.

My commander tells me—choose the best men you have, and I salute him, and do. And then they die. What does that make me?

We came under the worst unprotected fire today. I can’t believe I’m alive to write you these words. We were supplying the men across the river at the Nevsky Patch. We row the boats with food and arms and munitions and new men to the other side. But the Germans are relentless from Sinyavino Heights, we can’t get past them or to them; they sit on their hills like vultures and hurl their metal at us. Usually I don’t go—there’s not enough of me to go on these suicide missions, and the commander knows it, but today we just didn’t have enough soldiers to man the boats.

Petrenko died. We were in the boat coming back to our side, and a piece of artillery shell hit him. Took his arm off. I threw him on my back, and, you know, in my insanity I bent down to pick up his arm. I picked it up and he fell off my back, and as I looked at him lying in the boat I thought, what am I doing? Who is going to sew that arm back on?