Dutifully she went and stood behind the last person in line.

Shifting from foot to foot, Tatiana stood and stood, asked for the time, stood and stood. The line moved a meter. Sighing, she asked the lady in front of her what they were standing in line for. The lady shrugged aggressively, turning away from Tatiana. “What, what?” the lady grumbled, holding her bag closer to her chest, as if Tatiana were about to rob her. “Stand in line like everybody else, and don’t ask stupid questions.”

Tatiana waited. The line moved another meter. She asked for the time again.

“Ten minutes after the last time you asked me!” barked the woman.

When she heard the young woman in front of the grumpy lady say the word “banks” Tatiana perked up.

“No more money,” the young woman was saying to an older woman standing next to her. “Did you know that? The savings banks have run out. I don’t know what they’re going to do now. Hope you have some in your mattress.”

The older woman shook her head worriedly. “I had 200 rubles, my life savings. That’s what I have with me now.”

“Well, buy, buy. Buy everything. Canned goods are especially—”

The older woman shook her head. “Don’t like canned goods.”

“Well, then buy caviar. I heard one woman bought ten kilos of caviar at Elisey on Nevsky. What’s she going to do with this caviar? But it’s none of my business. I’m buying oil. And matches.”

“Buy some salt,” the older woman said wisely. “You can drink tea without sugar, but you can’t eat porridge without salt.”

“Don’t like porridge,” the younger woman said. “Never liked it. Won’t eat it. It’s gruel, that’s what it is.”

“Well, buy caviar then. You like caviar, don’t you?”

“No. Maybe some sausage,” the younger woman said thoughtfully. “Some nice smoked kolbasa. Listen, it’s been over twenty years that the proletariat has been the tsar. I know by now what to expect.”

The woman in front of Tatiana snorted loudly. The two women ahead of her turned around.

“You don’t know what to expect!” the woman said in a loud tone. “It’s war.” She gave a mirthless grunt that sounded like a train engine sputtering.

“Who asked you?”

“War, comrades! Welcome to reality, brought to you by Hitler. Buy your caviar and butter, and eat them tonight. Because mark my words, your two hundred rubles will not buy you a loaf of bread next January.”

“Shut up!”

Tatiana lowered her head. She did not like fighting. Not at home, not on the street with strangers.

Two people were leaving the store with big paper bags under their arms. “What’s in them?” she inquired politely.

“Smoked kolbasa,” a man told her gruffly, hurrying on. He looked as if he were afraid Tatiana would run after him and beat him to the ground to get his cursed smoked kolbasa. Tatiana continued to stand in line. She didn’t even like sausage.

After thirty more minutes she left.

Not wanting to disappoint her father, she hurried to the bus stop. She was going to catch bus Number 22 to Elisey on Nevsky Prospekt, since she knew for sure they sold at least caviar there.

But then she thought, caviar? We will have to eat it next week. Surely caviar won’t last until winter? But is that the goal? Food for the winter? That just couldn’t be, she decided; winter was too far away. The Red Army was invincible; Comrade Stalin said so himself. The German pigs would be out by September.

As she rounded the corner of Ulitsa Saltykov-Schedrin, the rubber band holding her hair snapped and broke.

The bus stop was across the street on the Tauride Park side. Usually she got bus 136 from here to go across town to visit cousin Marina. Today bus 22 would take her to Elisey, but she knew she needed to hurry. From the way those women were talking, soon even the caviar would be gone.

Just ahead of her, Tatiana spotted a kiosk that sold ice cream.

Ice cream!

Suddenly the day was filled with possibilities. A man sat on a little stool under a small umbrella to shield himself from the sun as he read the paper.

Tatiana quickened her pace.

From behind her she heard the sound of the bus. She turned around and saw her bus in the middle distance. She knew if she ran, she could catch it easily. She stepped off the curb to cross the street, then looked at the ice cream stand, looked at the bus again, looked at the ice cream stand, and stopped.

Tatiana really wanted an ice cream.

Biting her lip, she let the bus pass. It’s all right, she thought. The next one will come soon, and in the meantime I’ll sit at the bus stop and have an ice cream.

Walking up to the kiosk man, she said eagerly, “Ice cream, yes?”

“It says ice cream, doesn’t it? I’m sitting here, aren’t I? What do you want?” He lifted his eyes from the newspaper to her, and his hard expression softened. “What can I get you, dearie?”

“Have you got…” She trembled a little. “Have you got crème brûlée?”

“Yes.” He opened the freezer door. “A cone or a cup?”

“A cone, please,” Tatiana replied, jumping up and down once.

She paid him gladly; she would have paid him double. In anticipation of the pleasure she was about to receive, Tatiana ran across the road in her heels, hurrying to the bench under the trees so she could eat her ice cream in peace, while she waited for the bus to take her to buy caviar because war had started.

There was no one else waiting for the bus, and she was glad for the fine moment to feast on her delight in seclusion. She took off the white paper wrapping, threw it in the trash can next to the bench, smelled the ice cream, and took a lick of the sweet, creamy, cold caramel. Closing her eyes in happiness, Tatiana smiled and rolled the ice cream in her mouth, waiting for it to melt on her tongue.

Too good, Tatiana thought. Just too good.

The wind blew her hair, and she held it back with one hand as she licked the ice cream in circles around the smooth ball. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, swung her head back, lolled the ice cream in her throat, and hummed the song everyone was singing these days: “Someday we’ll meet in Lvov, my love and I.”

It was a perfect day. For five minutes there was no war, and it was just a glorious Sunday in a Leningrad June.

When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.

It was unremarkable in a garrison city like Leningrad to see a soldier. Leningrad was full of soldiers. Seeing soldiers on the street was like seeing old ladies with shopping bags, or lines, or beer bars. Tatiana normally would have glanced past him down the street and moved on, except that this soldier was standing across the street and staring at her with an expression Tatiana had never seen before. She stopped eating her ice cream.

Her side of the street was already in the shade, but the side where he stood swam in the northern afternoon light. Tatiana stared back at him for just a moment, and in the moment of looking into his face, something moved inside her; moved she would have liked to say imperceptibly, but that wasn’t quite the case. It was as if her heart started pumping blood through all four chambers at once, pouring it into her lungs and flooding it through her body. She blinked and felt her breath become shorter. The soldier was melting into the pavement under the pale yellow sun.

The bus came, obstructing Tatiana’s view of him. She almost cried out and got up, not to get on the bus, no, but to run forward, across the street, so she would not lose sight of him. The bus doors opened, and the driver looked at her expectantly. Tatiana, mild-mannered and quiet, nearly shouted at him to get out of her way.

“Are you getting on, young lady? I can’t be waiting forever.”

Getting on? “No, no, I’m not going.”

“Then what the hell are you doing waiting for the bus!” the driver hollered and slammed the doors shut.