Tatiana knew that the trucks were headed for Stockholm because one of the men said the word “Stokgolm,” which sounded like “Stockholm” in Russian.

She stood at the edge of the harbor watching the lumber being loaded onto the back of an open truck. Was she scared? No. Not anymore. She approached the truck driver, showing him her Red Cross badge, and said in English that she was a nurse trying to get to Stockholm and could he please take her across the Gulf of Bothnia with him for a hundred American dollars. He didn’t understand a word of what she had said. She showed him a hundred-dollar bill and said, “Stokgolm?” Gladly taking the money from her hands, he let her ride with him.

He didn’t speak any English or Russian, so they barely talked, which was fine with Tatiana. On the way through the white-out darkness, illuminated by the convoy’s headlights and by the gleaming northern lights above her head, she remembered that the first time she kissed Alexander when they were in the woods in Luga, she was really afraid that he was going to know immediately that she had never been kissed before, and she thought, if he asks me, I’m going to lie, because I don’t want him to think less of me. She thought that for the first second or two, and then she couldn’t think about anything, because his lips were so abundantly passionate for her, because in her hunger to kiss him back she had forgotten her inexperience.

Thinking about the first time they kissed took up much of the trip. Then Tatiana slept.

She didn’t know how long the journey took. The last few hours, they meandered on the ice through the small islands preceding Stockholm.

“Tack,” she said to the driver when they stopped at the harbor. “Tack sa mycket.” Alexander taught her that, how to say thank you in Swedish. Tatiana walked across the ice, careful not to slip, walked up granite steps and was out on the cobbled seaside promenade. I’m in Stockholm, she thought. I’m nearly free. Slowly she meandered through the half-empty streets. It was morning—too early for the stores to be open. What day was it? She did not know. Near the industrial docks Tatiana found a small open bakery, and on its shelves there was white bread. She showed the woman her American money. The shop owner shook her head and said something in Swedish. “Bank,” she said. “Pengar, dollars.”

Tatiana turned to go. The woman called after her, but in a strident voice, and Tatiana, afraid the woman suspected she didn’t belong in Sweden, did not turn around. She was already on the street when the woman ran around to stop her, giving her a loaf of warm crusty white bread, the likes of which Tatiana had never smelled, and a paper cup of black coffee. “Tack,” Tatiana said. “Tack sa mycket.”

“Varsagod,” said the woman, shaking her head at the money Tatiana was offering her.

Tatiana sat on the bench at the docks overlooking the crescent of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia and ate the whole loaf of bread and had her coffee. She stared unblinkingly into the blue dawn in front of her. Somewhere east of the ice lay besieged Leningrad. And somewhere east of that was Lazarevo. And in between was the Second World War and Comrade Stalin.

After eating, she walked around the streets long enough to find an open bank, where she exchanged some of her American money. Armed with a few kronor, Tatiana bought some more white bread and then found a place that sold cheese—in fact, all different kinds of cheeses—but even better, she found a café near the harbor that served her breakfast, and not just oatmeal, and not just eggs, and not just bread, but bacon! She bought three helpings of bacon and decided that from now on that was all she was going to have for breakfast.

The day was still long. Tatiana didn’t know where to go to sleep. Alexander told her that in Stockholm there would be hotels that would rent them a room without asking for their passports. Just like in Poland. She found that beyond belief then. But Alexander, of course, was right.

Not only did Tatiana rent a hotel room, not only did she get a key to a room that was warm, that had a bed and a view of the harbor, but it had its own bathroom and in the bathroom was the thing that Alexander had told her about, the shower thing that poured water on her from above. She must have stayed under the hot stream for an hour.

And then she slept for twenty-four.

It took Tatiana over two months to leave Stockholm.

Seventy-six days of sitting on the pier bench looking east past the gulf, past Finland, to the Soviet Union, while the seagulls cried overhead.

Seventy-six days of—

She and Alexander had planned to stay in Stockholm in the spring while waiting for his documents to come through from the U.S. State Department. They would have celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday in Stockholm on May 29.

Austere Stockholm was softened by spring. Tatiana bought yellow tulips and ate fresh fruit right from the market vendors, and she had meat—smoked hams and pork and sausages. She had ice cream. Her face healed. Her stomach grew. She thought of remaining in Stockholm, of finding a hospital to work in, of having her baby in Sweden. She liked the tulips and the hot shower.

But the seagulls wept overhead.

Tatiana never did go to Riddarholm Church, Sweden’s Temple of Fame.

Finally she took a train across the country to Göteborg, where she easily slipped into one of the holds on a Swedish trade cargo vessel bound for Harwich, England, carrying paper products. As during her passage from Finland to Sweden, she and her vessel were surrounded by a heavily armed convoy. Since Norway was German-occupied, there were quite a few incidents of bombings and sinkings in the North Sea. Noncombatant Sweden wasn’t having any of it, and neither was Tatiana.

All was quiet as she crossed the North Sea and docked in Harwich. To get to Liverpool, Tatiana took a train, which had the most comfortable seats. Out of curiosity she bought herself a first-class ticket. The pillows were white. This would have been a good train to take to Lazarevo after burying Dasha, thought Tatiana.

She spent two weeks in dank and industrial Liverpool, until she found out that a shipping company called the White Star sailed once a month to New York, but she needed a visa to get on board. She bought a second-class ticket and appeared on the gangplank. When a young midshipman asked for her papers, Tatiana showed him her Red Cross travel document from the Soviet Union. He said it was no good; she needed a visa. Tatiana said she didn’t have one. He said she needed a passport. She said she didn’t have one. He laughed and said, “Well then, dearie, you’re not getting on this boat.”

Tatiana said, “I do not have visa, I do not have passport, but what I do have is five hundred dollars I would like you to have if you let me pass.” She coughed. She knew that five hundred dollars was a year’s salary for the sailor.

The midshipman instantly took the money and led her into a small room below sea level, where Tatiana climbed onto the top bunk. Alexander told her he slept on the top bunk at the Leningrad garrison. She wasn’t feeling well. She was wearing the larger of her two white uniforms, the one she had been given in Helsinki. Her original one had long stopped fitting her, and even this one did not button well around her stomach.

In Stockholm, Tatiana had found a place to wash her uniforms called the tvatteri, where there were things called tvatt maskins and tork tumlares that she put money into, and thirty minutes later the clothes came out clean, and thirty minutes later the clothes came out dry, and there was no standing in cold water, no washboards, no soaping. She didn’t have to do anything but sit and watch the machine.