Babushka Maya stopped going across the Neva.

4

Tatiana was in the hallway when she heard Dasha, Alexander, Marina, Mama, and Babushka all arguing heatedly inside the room. She was about to open the door and walk in with the tea when she heard Alexander say, “No, no, you cannot tell her. This is not the time.”

And Dasha’s voice spilled through the crack in the door. “But, Alexander, she is going to have to know eventually—”

“Not now!”

“What’s the point?” said Mama. “What does it matter? Tell her.”

Babushka said, “I agree with Alexander. Why weaken her now when she needs her strength?”

Tatiana opened the door. “Tell me what?”

Everyone fell mute.

“Nothing, Tanechka,” Dasha said quickly, glaring at Alexander, who lowered his gaze and sat down.

Tatiana was holding the tray of teacups, saucers, spoons, and a small teapot. “Tell me what?”

Dasha’s face was streaked with tears. “Oh, Tania,” she said.

“Oh, Tania, what?” said Tatiana.

No one said anything. No one even looked at her.

Tatiana looked from her grandmother to her mother to her cousin to her sister and stopped on Alexander, who was smoking and looking at his cigarette. Someone lift your eyes to me, Tatiana thought.

“Alexander, what don’t you want them to tell me?”

He raised his eyes. “Your grandfather died, Tania,” he said. “In September. Pneumonia.”

The tray with the teacups fell from Tatiana’s hands, and the cups broke on the wood floor, and the hot tea spilled on her stockings. Tatiana knelt on the floor and picked up all the shards without saying a word to anyone, which was just as well, because no one could say a word to her. And then she put all the broken pieces on the tray, picked the tray up and went back out to the kitchen. As she was closing the door, she heard Alexander say, “Happy now?”

Dasha and Alexander came out to the kitchen, where Tatiana was standing next to the window, numbly grasping the sill. Dasha went to Tatiana and said, “Honey, I’m sorry. Come here.” She hugged Tatiana and whispered, “We all adored him. We are all devastated.”

Tatiana hugged her sister back and said, “Dasha, it’s a bad sign.”

“No, Tanechka, it isn’t.”

“It’s a bad sign,” Tatiana repeated. “It’s as if Deda died because he couldn’t bear to see what was about to happen to his family.”

Both girls looked at Alexander, who stood nearby watching them and said nothing.

The next morning Alexander and Tatiana walked in silence to the ration store and waited in silence for their bread. When they were outside by the Fontanka Canal, Alexander stuck his hand into his coat pocket and said, “I have to go back up tomorrow, Tania. But look. Look what I brought you.” He held a small bar of chocolate. She took it from him and managed a weak smile. Her eyes filled up.

Alexander took hold of Tatiana’s hand and said soothingly, patting his chest, “Come here.”

She stood for a long time—her face pressed into Alexander’s chest, his arms around her—and cried.

Anton’s leg was not getting better. Anton was not getting better.

Tatiana brought him a piece of Alexander’s chocolate. Anton ate it, but listlessly.

She sat by his bed. They didn’t speak for a while.

“Tania,” he said, “remember summer before last?” His voice was weak.

“No,” said Tatiana. She only remembered last summer.

“In August when you came back from Luga, me, you, Volodya, Petka, and Pasha played soccer in Tauride Park? You wanted the ball so much, you kicked my shin to get it? I think it was the same leg.” A faint smile passed over Anton’s face.

“I think you’re right,” Tatiana said quietly. “Shh, Anton.” She took his hand. “Your leg will heal, and maybe next summer we’ll go to Tauride Park and play soccer again.”

“Yes,” he said, squeezing her hand and closing his eyes. “But not with your brother. Or my brothers.”

“Just you and I, Anton,” whispered Tatiana.

“Not even me, Tania,” he whispered back.

They’re waiting for you, Tatiana wanted to say to him. They’re waiting to play soccer with you again.

And with me.

5

Tatiana used to leave at six-thirty to get the rations—herself as punctual as a German—so that even with waiting in line and the ration store being all the way on Fontanka, she could be back by eight when the bombing formations flew overhead and the air-raid sirens sounded. But she had noticed that either the raids were starting earlier or she was getting out later, because three mornings in a row she got caught in the shell fire while still on Nekrasova returning home.

Only because she had promised, sworn to Alexander that she would, Tatiana waited out the bombing in a shelter in someone else’s building, holding her precious bread to her chest and wearing the helmet he had left her and made her promise and swear to wear when she went out.

The bread Tatiana was holding wasn’t delicious bread; it wasn’t white, and it wasn’t soft, and it didn’t have a golden crust, but still a smell emanated from it. For thirty minutes she sat while thirty pairs of eyes glared at her from all directions, and finally an old woman’s voice said, “Come on, girlie, share with us. Don’t just sit there holding the loot. Give us a bite.”

“It’s for my family,” Tatiana said. “There are five of us, all women. They’re waiting for me to bring it to them. If I give it to you, they will have no food today.”

“Not much, girlie,” the old woman persisted. “Just a bite.”

The shelling stopped, and Tatiana was the first one out. After that she made sure she didn’t lag behind anymore.

But despite her best efforts she could not seem to get to the ration store and back before the bombs came.

To go at ten was impossible. Tatiana had to be at work; people depended on her there, too. She wondered if Marina would do better, or maybe Dasha. Maybe they could move faster than Tatiana. Mama was sewing uniforms by hand in the morning and at night. Tatiana couldn’t possibly send her mother, who practically never looked up from her sewing nowadays, trying to finish a few uniforms so she could get some extra oatmeal.

Dasha said she couldn’t go because she had to do laundry in the morning. Marina also refused, which was just as well. She had nearly stopped going to university. Taking her ration card, she picked up her own bread and ate it immediately. At night when she came back to Fifth Soviet, she demanded more food from Tatiana. “Marinka, it’s just not fair,” Tatiana would say to her cousin. “We’re all hungry. I know this is hard, but you have to keep yourself in check—”

“Oh, like you keep yourself in check?”

“Yes,” Tatiana said, sensing that Marina was not talking about the bread.

“You’re doing well,” Marina said. “Very well, Tania. Keep it up.”

But Tatiana didn’t feel she was doing well.

She felt that she was doing worse than ever before, and yet her family was lauding her efforts. Something was not right with the world in which her family thought Tatiana was making a success out of a big botch. It wasn’t that she felt herself to be slow that bothered her, but that she felt herself slowing down. All her efforts at haste, at deliberate speed, were met with an unknown resistance—resistance from her own body.

It wasn’t moving as fast as it used to, and the inarguable proof of that lay with the German bombers, who at precisely eight o’clock flew their planes over the center of the city and for two hours sounded the mortar clarion call, the high-explosive bugle, to disrupt the rush hour of the morning.

Sunrise came at eight also. Tatiana walked to the store and back in near-dark.

One morning Tatiana was walking on Nekrasova and without much thought passed a man walking in the same direction. He was tall, older, thin, wearing a hat.