Tatiana listened to the radio every afternoon, because the second thing her father said when he came home was, “Any news from the front?” The first thing he said was, “Any news?” leaving out the unspoken. Any news about Pasha?

So Tatiana felt obliged to listen to the radio to find out the minimum about the Red Army’s position, or about von Leeb’s army’s advance. She didn’t want to hear it. On occasion, yes—listening to bleak reports from the front lifted her spirits. Even defeat at the hands of Hitler’s men was better than what she had to endure inside herself every day. She turned on the radio in the hope that hopeless news elsewhere would cheer her up.

She knew if the announcer started listing open radio frequencies, then nothing extraordinary had happened that day. Usually there was some news. But even before the announcer came on, there was a series of dismal little rings and pauses, like a rat-ta-tat-tat of a typewriter. The radio information bulletin itself lasted a few seconds. Maybe three short sentences about the Finnish-Russian front.

“The Finnish armies are quickly regaining all the territory they lost in the war of 1940.”

“The Finns are coming closer to Leningrad.”

“The Finns are at Lisiy Nos, only twenty kilometers from the city limits.”

Then followed a few sentences about the German advance. The newsreader read slowly, stretching out the no-news bulletin to impart meaning that wasn’t there. After he listed the cities south of Leningrad that were under German control, Tatiana had to go and open a map.

When she found out that Tsarskoye Selo was in German hands, she was shocked and even forgot about Alexander for the moment it took her to get her bearings. Tsarskoye Selo, like Peterhof, was a summer palace of the old tsars, it was the summer writing place of Alexander Pushkin, but the worst thing was that Tsarskoye Selo was just ten kilometers southeast of the Kirov factory, which was located on the city limits of Leningrad.

Were the Germans ten kilometers from Leningrad?

“Yes,” Alexander said that night. “The Germans are very close.”

The city had changed in the month Tatiana spent in Luga and in the hospital. The golden spires of the Admiralty and Peter and Paul’s Cathedral had been spray-painted gray. Soldiers were on every street, and the NKVD militia in their dark blue uniforms were even more conspicuous than the soldiers. Every window in the city was taped against explosion; the people on the streets walked quickly and with a purpose. Tatiana sometimes sat on a bench near the church across the street and watched them. In the sky floated the ubiquitous airships, some round, some oval. The rations became slightly more restrictive, but Tatiana was still able to get enough flour to make potato pies, mushroom pies, and cabbage pies. Alexander often brought some of his rations with him when he came for dinner. There was chicken enough to make chicken soup with well-cooked carrots. Bay leaf was gone.

Dimitri got Tatiana out onto the roof while Dasha and Alexander were downstairs alone in Tatiana’s room. Putting his arm around her, Dimitri said, “Tania, please. I’m feeling so sad. How long am I going to wait? Just a little more tonight?”

Placing her hand on his arm, Tatiana asked, “What’s the matter?”

“I just need a little comfort from you,” he said, hugging her, kissing her cheeks, trying to bring his mouth to hers. There was something that felt almost unnatural in Dimitri’s touching her. She couldn’t put her finger on it. “Dima, please,” she whispered, moving slightly away from him and motioning for Anton, who skipped over and chatted with them until Dimitri got fed up and left.

“Thanks, Anton,” said Tatiana.

“Anytime,” he replied. “Why don’t you just tell him to leave you alone?”

“Anton, you wouldn’t believe it, but the more I do, the more he comes around,” said Tatiana.

“Older men are all like that, Tania,” said Anton with authority, as if he knew about such things. “Don’t you understand anything? You have to give in. Then he’ll leave you alone!” He laughed.

Tatiana laughed, too. “I think you may be right, Anton. I think that’s how older men work.”

She continued to busy Dimitri with cards or books, with jokes or vodka. Vodka, in particular, was good. Dimitri tended to have a little too much and then fall asleep on the small sofa in the hallway, and Tatiana would take her grandmother’s cardigan and go up onto the roof without him and sit with Anton and think of Pasha, and think of Alexander.

She passed the time with Anton, told jokes, read Zoshchenko and War and Peace, and looked at the Leningrad sky, wondering how much longer for the Germans to get to Leningrad.

Wondering how much longer for everything.

And after the other kids left to go to sleep, Tatiana continued to sit by the kerosene lamp on the roof and mouth little English words to herself from the dictionary and the phrase book. She learned to say “Pen.” “Table.” “Love.” “The United States of America.” “Potato pancakes.” She wished she had two minutes alone with Alexander to tell him some of the amusing phrases she was learning.

One night at the very end of August, with Anton asleep next to her, Tatiana tried to think of a way to make her life right again.

Once it had been right. As right as it could be. Suddenly after June 22 there was such havoc, constant, cheerless, and unending. But not all of it cheerless.

Tatiana missed the evening hour with Alexander at Kirov more than she could admit even to herself. The evening hour when they had sat apart and together and ambled through the empty streets; when they talked and were silent, and the silence flowed into their words as Lake Ladoga flowed into the Neva that flowed into the Gulf of Finland that flowed into the Baltic Sea. The evening hour when they smiled and the white of his teeth blinded her eyes, when he laughed and his laughter flew into her lungs, when she never took her eyes off him and no one saw but him, and he was all right with it.

The evening hour at Kirov when they were alone.

What to do? How to fix this? Somehow she had to make herself right again inside. For her own sake, for her sister’s, and for Alexander’s.

It was two in the morning. Tatiana was cold, wearing only an old sundress with a cardigan over it. She was thinking that she would rather spend the rest of her life on the roof than downstairs with Mama and Papa’s forlorn hope for Pasha, or with Dasha’s supplicating whisper… Tania, go away so I can be alone with him.

Tatiana thought about the war. Maybe if the German planes came whizzing by and dropped a bomb on our building, I could save everyone else but die in the process. Would they mourn me? Would they cry? Would Alexander wish things were different?

Different how?

Different when?

She knew that Alexander already wished things were different. He wished they had been different from the start.

But even at the start, on the bus still, together, untouched by anything but each other, was there a place where Tania and Shura could have gone when they wanted to be alone for two minutes to speak English phrases to one another? Other than the walk home from Kirov?

Tatiana didn’t know of such a place.

Did Alexander?

This was a pointless exercise, designed only to pummel herself further. As if she needed it.

All I want is some relief, Tatiana thought. Why is that too much to ask?

Nothing brought her relief. Not Alexander’s aloofness, not his occasional short temper with Dasha, not his moodiness, not his winning at cards all the time—nothing eased either Tatiana’s feeling for him or her need for him. He didn’t have many nights off. He usually had to be back for taps, while other nights he had sky duty at St. Isaac’s. He had only one or two evenings off each week, but it was one or two evenings too many.