Could we have kept you with us longer? Could we have all hung on to you, held you closer, played in the park once more with you to stave off the unforgiving fate for a few more days, a few more Sundays, a few more afternoons? Would that have been worth it, to have you for one more month before you were claimed, before you were lost to us? Knowing your inevitable future, would it have been worth it to see your face for another day, another hour, another minute before you were blink and gone?

Yes.

Yes, it would have been worth it. For you. And for us.

Papa was drunk, spread out on the couch, and Mama was wiping the couch, crying into the bucket of water. Tatiana offered to clean up. Mama pushed her away. Dasha was in the kitchen, crying while she was cooking dinner. Tatiana was filled with an acute sense of finality, a sharp anxiety for the days ahead. Anything could happen in a future forged by the incomprehensible present in which her twin brother was no longer alive.

As they prepared dinner, Tatiana said to Dasha, “Dash, a month ago you asked me if I thought Pasha was still alive, and I said—”

“Like I pay any attention to you, Tania,” snapped Dasha.

“Why did you ask me?” questioned a surprised Tatiana.

“I thought you were going to give me some comforting pat answer. Listen, I don’t want to talk about it. You might not be shocked, but we all are.”

When he came for dinner, Alexander raised his questioning eyebrows to Tatiana, who told him about the telegram.

No one ate the cabbage with a little canned ham that Dasha had made, except Alexander and Tatiana, who, despite a small hope, had been living with a lost Pasha since Luga.

Papa remained on the couch, and Mama sat by his side listening to the tick-tock, tick-tock of the radio’s metronome.

Dasha went to put the samovar on, and Alexander and Tatiana were left alone. He didn’t say anything, just bent his head slightly and peered into her face. For a moment they held each other’s eyes.

“Courage, Alexander,” she whispered.

“Courage, Tatiana.”

She left and went out onto the roof, looking for bombs in the chilly Leningrad night. Summer was over. Winter wasn’t far off.

Part Two

Winter’s Fierce Embrace

Beset and Besieged

WHAT did it cost the soul to lie? At every step, with every breath, with every Soviet Information Bureau report, with every casualty list and every monthly ration card?

From the moment Tatiana woke up until she fell into a bleary sleep, she lied.

She wished Alexander would stop coming around. Lies.

She wished he would end it with Dasha. Alas. More lies.

No more trips to St. Isaac’s. That was good news. Lies.

No more tram rides, no more canals, no more Summer Garden, no more Luga, no more lips or eyes or palpitating breath. Good. Good. Good. More lies.

He was cold. He had an uncanny ability to act as if there were nothing behind his smiling face, or his steady hands, or his burned-down cigarette. Not a twitch showed on his face for Tatiana. That was good. Lies.

Curfew was imposed on Leningrad at the beginning of September. Rations were reduced again. Alexander stopped coming every day. That was good. More lies.

When Alexander came, he was extremely affectionate with Dasha, in front of Tatiana and in front of Dimitri. That was good. Lies.

Tatiana put on her own brave face and turned it away and smiled at Di-mitri and clenched her heart in a tight fist. She could do it, too. More lies.

Pouring tea. Such a simple matter, yet fraught with deceit. Pouring tea, for someone else before him. Her hands trembled with the effort.

Tatiana wished she could get out from the spell that was Leningrad at the beginning of September, get out from the circle of misery and love that besieged her.

She loved Alexander. Ah, finally. Something true to hold on to.

After news of Pasha, Papa worked sporadically, being frequently too intoxicated. His being home made it difficult for Tatiana to cook, to clean, to be in the rooms, to read. More lies. That’s not what made it difficult. It’s what made it unpleasant. Sitting on the roof was the only peace left to Tatiana, and even then peace was relative. There was no peace inside her.

While she was on the roof, she closed her eyes and imagined walking, without a cast, without a limp, with Alexander. They walked down Nevsky, to Palace Square, down the embankment, all around the Field of Mars. They meandered across the Fontanka Bridge, through the Summer Garden, and back out onto the embankment, and then to Smolny and then past Tauride Park, to Ulitsa Saltykov-Schedrin, past their bench, and on to Suvorovsky, and home. And as she walked with him, it felt as if she were walking into the rest of her life.

In her mind they had walked along the streets of their summer while she sat on the roof and heard the echo of gunfire and explosions. It was a small solace to think the gunfire wasn’t as close as it had been at Luga. Alexander wasn’t as close as he had been at Luga either.

Alexander’s own visits became as truncated as Tatiana’s rations. He was rationing himself the way the Leningrad Council was rationing food. Tatiana missed him, wishing for a second, a moment alone with him again, just to remind herself that the summer of 1941 had not been an illusion, that there had indeed been a time when she had walked along a canal wall, holding his rifle, while he was looking at her and laughing.

There was little laughing nowadays.

“The Germans aren’t here yet, right, Alexander?” asked Dasha over tea—the damned tea. “When they come, will we repel von Leeb?”

“Yes,” Alexander replied. Tatiana knew. More lies.

Tatiana would grimly watch Dasha nuzzling Alexander. She would avert her eyes and say to Dimitri, “Hey, want to hear a joke?”

“What, Tania? No, not really. Sorry, I’m a little preoccupied.”

“That’s fine,” she would say, watching Alexander smile at Dasha. Lies, lies, and lies.

All that Alexander was doing wasn’t enough. Dimitri wasn’t leaving Tatiana alone.

Meanwhile, Tatiana hadn’t heard from Marina about coming to live with them, and in the hospital Vera, along with the other nurses, was anxious about the war. Tatiana felt it herself—war was no longer something on the Luga River, something that had swallowed Pasha, something that was fought by the Ukrainians far away in their smoldering villages or by the British in their distant and proper London. It was coming here.

Well, something better come here, Tatiana thought, because I can’t imagine continuing this way.

The city seemed to hold its collective breath. Tatiana certainly held hers.

For four nights in a row Tatiana cooked fried cabbage for dinner, with less and less oil each day.

“What the hell are you cooking for us, Tania?” asked Mama.

“You call this cooking?” Papa remarked.

“I can’t even dip my bread in the oil. Where is the oil?”

“Couldn’t find any,” said Tatiana.

The radio offered only the most depressing news. Tatiana thought the announcers must deliberately wait until Soviet performance at the front was particularly awful and then begin broadcasting. After Mga fell at the end of August, Tatiana had heard that Dubrovka was under attack—her mother’s mother, Babushka Maya, lived in Dubrovka, a rural town just across the river, right outside city limits.

And then Dubrovka fell on September 6.