Marina laughed. “Not even with Dima?”

“Of course, not!” Tatiana said, and didn’t say anything else.

Marina put her arm around Tatiana. “Don’t be sad, Tania. You’ll get out of this city somehow.”

Tatiana shook her head. “No. There are no more trains, Marinka. Mga fell.”

Marina was quiet. “We haven’t heard from Papa for three days,” she said. “He’s been fighting at Izhorsk. That’s near Mga, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Tatiana said faintly. “It is.”

Marina held Tatiana closer. “I don’t think anyone is getting out of this city,” she said. “My mama is so sick. My papa is…”

“I know,” said Tatiana, patting her cousin’s leg. “We’ll make it, Marina. We just have to be strong.”

“Yes, especially you,” Marina said, with a shake of her head, shuddering away her unhappy thoughts. “Will you tell me why you brought me here?”

“No.”

“Tania…”

“No. I have nothing to tell.”

Marina tickled Tatiana’s arm. “Tania, tell me about Dimitri.”

“There is nothing to tell.”

Marina giggled. “I can’t believe you of all people are seeing a soldier!” She looked askance at Tatiana. “Oh, no—you’re not meeting him here later, are you?”

“No!” Tatiana cried. “Dima and I are just friendly.”

“Yes, sure. Soldiers have only one way of being friendly, Tania.”

Now it was Tatiana’s turn to look askance at her cousin. “What are you talking about?”

“Remember I went out with a soldier last year?” Marina made a derisive clicking sound with her tongue. “I glimpsed the life he lived and said forget it, I want no part of it. But this summer I was seeing someone nice, another student. He enlisted and went down to Fornosovo.” She stopped. “Haven’t heard from him since.”

“What do you mean?” said Tatiana. “What did you want no part of with soldiers? War, you mean?”

“Tania, not war. Women.”

“Women?” she said weakly.

“Women—good-time girls, pick-me-up girls, garrison hacks, harlots—all kinds of women come to the bars and the clubs and the barracks offering themselves to garrison soldiers, and the soldiers accept. All of them. It’s just what they do. Like having a smoke. Every time they’re off duty, every time they have time off at the weekend, every time they get furlough.” Marina shook her head. “I don’t know how you’re keeping Dimitri away. Easy women, difficult women, young girls like you, it’s all the same to soldiers—just one big conquest party to them.”

In a small, horrified voice, Tatiana said, “Marinka, what are you talking about? Not in Leningrad. That’s only in the West. In America.”

Marina burst out laughing. “Tania, I love you,” she said, putting an arm around her. “I really do. You are just—”

“That’s not Alexander,” muttered a shaken Tatiana.

“Who? Oh, Dasha’s guy. No? Ask Dasha.” Marina laughed. “How do you think he met her?”

Dasha did meet Alexander in Sadko. “You’re not saying…”

“Ask Dasha, Tania.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Tatiana was sorry she’d ever called her.

When Tatiana remained silent, Marina continued. “Look, the point I’m making is that you have to be careful with a soldier like Dimitri, especially you of all people. They expect certain things. And when they don’t get the things they expect, they take them anyway. Do you understand?”

Tatiana kept quiet. How in the world had they started talking about this?

“Are you still friendly with Anton Iglenko? He is a nice boy, and he really likes you.”

“Marina!” Tatiana shook her head. “Anton is my friend.” She sat breathing heavily, keeping her hands steady on her lap. “He doesn’t like me.”

Marina smiled, ruffling Tatiana’s hair. “You’re adorable, Tania. And blind as always. Remember Misha? Remember how stuck on you he was?”

“Who?” Tatiana strained to remember. “Misha from Luga?”

Marina nodded. “For three summers in a row. Pasha couldn’t keep him away from you.”

“You’re crazy.” Tatiana and Misha used to hang upside down from trees together. She taught him how to do cartwheels. And Pasha, too.

Marina asked, “Tania, have you ever talked to Dasha about these things?”

“God, no!” Tatiana exclaimed, trying to get up. She felt as if she were being stabbed repeatedly with a blunt kitchen utensil.

Marina helped her stand. “Well, I suggest you do. She’s your older sister. She should help you. But be careful with Dimitri, Tania. You don’t want to be just another notch in some soldier’s belt.”

Tatiana tried to think of Alexander as she knew him. She knew nothing about that part of him. A vision of his head appeared, softly kissing the top of her breast when she lay wounded in his tent. She shook her head. What Marina was describing, that was not her Alexander.

Then Tatiana remembered Dimitri’s comment about Alexander’s extracurricular activities. She felt ill. “Let’s go home,” she said dejectedly, and slowly they walked back to the tram stop on Nevsky. Tatiana told Marina that she didn’t have to go all the way back home with her. “I’m going to be fine. I can walk home from Insurrection Square. Honestly. Look, your bus home will come any minute. Don’t worry for a second about me.”

Marina said she could not leave Tatiana alone at night in the middle of the city. It hadn’t occurred to Tatiana that she should be afraid of anything. “Alexander told us that violent crime has fallen off dramatically since war began. It’s almost nonexistent.”

“Oh, well, if Alexander told you…” Marina said, peering at Tatiana’s face. “Are you all right?”

“I’m great. Go,” Tatiana said, and then she saw a sad reluctance in Marina that she had not seen at first, so wrapped up was she in her own upset haze. Focusing, she studied Marina for a moment. She couldn’t see. Reaching out, she touched Marina’s face. Marina blinked. Tatiana saw. “Who is home, Marina?” Tatiana asked quietly. “Who are you going home to?”

“No one,” Marina replied, just as quietly. “Mama’s in the hospital. Papa’s gone. Down the hall, the Lublins—”

“Marinka,” Tatiana said softly, “don’t stay by yourself. Come and live with us. We have room now. Deda and Babushka have left. You don’t want to be alone. Come on. You’ll sleep with Dasha and me.”

“Really?” Marina said.

Tatiana nodded. “Really.”

“Tania, have you asked your parents about this?”

“I don’t need to. Just pack your things and come. Your mother is my father’s sister. He will not say no. Come, all right?”

Marina gave Tatiana a hug. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I’ve been feeling so alone in those rooms without Mama and Papa.”

Tatiana patted Marina, and said, “I know— Look! Your bus!”

Waving to Tatiana, Marina ran across Nevsky to catch her bus, and Tatiana sat on the bench and waited for her tram to go back home.

She felt sick to her stomach.

Her tram came; the doors opened. The conductor looked at her. Tatiana shook her head. The tram left.

How could she not go to see him? She could not stay away from him.

Getting up, Tatiana limped past the Admiralty Gardens to St. Isaac’s.

Two soldiers were walking toward her. Stopping in front of Tatiana, they banged their rifles on the pavement and asked where she was headed. She told them.

One soldier said St. Isaac’s was closed this time of night. She said yes, but she was looking for a Lieutenant Belov. They knew him, and their serious faces relaxed. One soldier said, “I told you, Viktor, that we should have enrolled in officers’ school, and you didn’t believe me.”

“I thought it’d be more work, not more—” He glanced at Tatiana and broke off. “And who are you?”

“His cousin from Krasnodar.”

“Oh. Cousin,” said Viktor. “Well, come with us. We’ll take you to him. I don’t know how you’re going to get up to the observation arcade with that cast. It’s about two hundred steps up a spiral staircase.”

“I’ll make it,” Tatiana said.