Alexander looked into the face of every one of the women, his heart stopping each time.

Then he walked among the dozens of wounded, but again he did not find Tatiana. He even looked for Pasha, just in case, having seen a picture of him when he was a thirteen-year-old boy, standing in swimming trunks by Tatiana, pulling at her blonde braids.

He looked for Pasha reflexively. He knew that Pasha was not in Luga.

Alexander could not find Zina again.

He finally went to talk to Colonel Pyadyshev. After standing at attention for a few moments, Alexander said, “Hard to work in these conditions, isn’t it, sir?”

“No, Lieutenant,” said Pyadyshev, a brooding, balding man. “What conditions would these be? The conditions of war?”

“No, sir. The conditions of being ill prepared to face a relentless enemy. I am merely expressing a measure of sympathy for the struggle ahead. Tomorrow we will resume fortifying the line.”

“Lieutenant, you will resume tonight, until there is no more light. What do you think, is tomorrow a holiday for the Nazis? You think they won’t bomb us again?”

Alexander was sure they would bomb again.

“Lieutenant Belov,” continued Colonel Pyadyshev, “you just got here, and today you worked very hard…”

“Got here three days ago, sir,” said Alexander.

“Three days ago, good. Well, the Germans have been bombing the line for the last ten days. There was bombing yesterday—I don’t know where you were—and the day before. Every morning like clockwork, from nine to eleven. First they throw the leaflets telling us all to join their side, then they bomb us. We spend the rest of the day burying the bodies and digging trenches. Their main units are advancing on us at a rate of fifteen kilometers a day. They’ve mowed us down in Minsk, they’ve mowed us down in Brest Litovsk, and they’re finishing mowing us down in Novgorod. We’re next. You’re right, we have no chance. But when you tell me that we’re ill prepared, I tell you no, we do everything we can, and then we die. That’s the whole point.” Pyadyshev lit a cigarette with trembling hands and leaned on his small table.

Alexander saluted him. “We will continue to do all we can.”

While there was still light, Alexander walked with three of his men around the front-line camp. As he passed the hundreds of soldiers on the Luga shores, waiting for the Germans, playing cards, smoking cigarettes, he was surprised by how many wore ranking colors on their shoulders. It seemed to Alexander that one out of every ten men was an officer. Many were lieutenants, some first, some second, but there were captains, and quite a number of majors, all on the front line, ready to face the enemy. Front line. Who was left to command the troops if the majors were down on the ground? Alexander didn’t want to think about it.

He combed the fields diligently, using the grid method and going up and down, looking into the face of every person either shoveling out potatoes or shoveling out trenches. He did not find her.

Alexander went back to talk to Pyadyshev. “One more question, sir. Some volunteers came from Kirov Works about five days ago. Is there any place besides here they might have been diverted to, to help in the war effort? Could any of them have been sent farther east?”

“I command these twelve kilometers, and the rest I don’t know about. These twelve are the last line of defense between here and Leningrad. After this there is nothing left. There is only retreat. Or surrender.”

“There is no surrender, Colonel,” Alexander said firmly. “Death before surrender.”

Now it was the colonel’s turn to blink. “Go back to Leningrad, Lieutenant Belov. Go back to Leningrad while you still can. And take the volunteers you brought with you. Save them.”

The next morning when Alexander went to speak to Pyadyshev, he saw that the colonel’s tent had been dismantled overnight, the stakes had been removed, and the holes where the stakes had been filled in. More and more soldiers arrived at the river, and the front was split into three sectors, each with its own commander, since it became increasingly clear that it was difficult to organize such a large regiment of troops with just one command post. The new commander’s tent was pitched fifty meters from Pyadyshev’s old tent. The new commander not only did not know where Pyadyshev was, he did not even know who Pyadyshev was. The date was July 23.

Alexander did not have time to marvel at the speedy work of the NKVD, because at nine the shelling started again and lasted this time until noon. The Germans were trying to kill the front-line soldiers before they attacked with ground troops. They were biding their time, but not for long. Alexander suspected that it was only a matter of days before part two of the blitzkrieg. Either he was going to find Tatiana or he was going to remain at Luga and stand in front of the German tanks.

With a heavy heart Alexander walked up and down the river, looking for her. The rest of Alexander’s men were taken into the entrenching service. Those who had been trained by him had been given rifles. They were told it was a crime punishable by death to get separated from their weapons. “To lose your gun is a crime against the Motherland!” But during the next air raid he watched three of his men drop their rifles as they ran for cover. When the air raid was over, they smiled sheepishly at Alexander, who smiled wearily back, shaking his head.

Another day went by. As soldiers took their positions along the banks, as they set up artillery cannons and mined the potato fields, as they loaded what vegetables they could onto trucks that carried them back to Leningrad, the tight feeling inside Alexander’s chest did not let up from morning until night.

Pasha was lost, that much was obvious. But where was Tatiana? Why couldn’t he find her?

5

Tatiana jumped off the train and rolled down the hill without much ado. It was a breeze compared to what they used to do in Luga, taking a running jump and heaving themselves down a hard, pebbled, steep embankment to the river. The grassy hill was positively soft by comparison. The shoulder on which she fell hurt a little.

Finding the boys’ camp in Dohotino abandoned traumatized Tatiana, and for one day she stayed in one of the tents at the camp, not knowing what to do. She swam in the pond and ate blueberries. She had brought a few dried and toasted bread pieces in her knapsack, but she was saving them.

When she and her brother were younger, they used to race across the Luga River to see who could swim the fastest. Pasha was slightly bigger and stronger than Tatiana, but what she had that he did not was endurance. The first time they raced, he won. The second time they raced, he won. The third time he did not win. Tatiana smiled as she thought back to that, smiled at the memory of Pasha screaming in his frustration, at the memory of herself squealing in her delight.

She wasn’t going to give up on her brother yet. Tatiana figured that Pasha and his campmates had been taken into volunteer work somewhere near Luga. She decided to go ahead to Luga to look for Pasha and maybe find Zina, too, and convince her to return to Leningrad. She didn’t want Zina on her conscience, the way Pasha lay on her conscience.

But the following morning as she set out, the German planes shelled the village of Dohotino, where Tatiana was walking completely alone. She ran and hid in one of the huts, but suddenly a small incendiary bomb fell through the roof and set ablaze the wooden wall in front of her. She saw the old kerosene lamp just in time. Forgetting everything, she ran like mad, and the house exploded seconds later, incinerating the hut she had been in, three surrounding huts, and a stable nearby. She was left without her tent, or her sleeping bag, or her knapsack, or her toast.