“Tania, did you know that everyone collects the same dependent ration?” Alexander said pointedly, edging forward and scaring Tatiana into the coat-rack.
“I heard that.”
“You don’t have any more than Nina does.”
“I know. Excuse me. I have to go and make you breakfast.” Tatiana couldn’t spend another second standing with him in the narrow hallway while he was wearing his long johns. She walked out and caught up with Nina in the corridor, handing her a hunk of the butter.
“God bless you, Tanechka,” said Nina. “God bless you as long as you live. You’ll see. He will protect you all your life for your kind heart.”
Tatiana returned to the kitchen and was making eggs and oatmeal, when Alexander came in and leaned against the stove, facing her.
“Careful, your back will get burned,” said Tatiana, not looking at him.
He didn’t say anything at first, but then a fierce whisper came out of him. “Tania, better than anyone else, I know what you are. I know what you’re doing—”
“What?” she said. “I’m making oatmeal. And eggs.”
Alexander put his finger under her chin and turned her face up to him. “You cannot give your food away, do you understand? There isn’t enough for you and your family.”
Opening her mouth and pretending to bite his finger, Tatiana nodded. Alexander left his fingers on her for a moment.
Tatiana made the oatmeal with a couple of tablespoons of milk, some butter, and a few teaspoons of sugar. And water. She made enough for four small bowls and divided it into four uneven parts, the largest one for Alexander, the next for Dasha, then Marina, and the smallest for her. He had brought them twenty eggs. She scrambled five of them with butter and salt. It felt as if they were having a feast.
Alexander took one look at his bowl and said he would not eat it. Dasha had already finished her oatmeal by the time he had stopped speaking. Marina, too. And her eggs.
Only Tatiana gazed down into her bowl as Alexander gazed down at his. “What is the matter with you two?” Dasha said. “Alex, you need much more food than she does. You’re a man. She is the smallest. She needs the least out of all of us. Now, eat. Please.”
“Yes,” said Tatiana, still not looking up. “You’re a man. I am the smallest. I do need the least. Now, eat. Please.”
Alexander switched his bowl with Tatiana’s. “Now, you eat,” he said. “I can get food at the barracks. Eat.”
Gratefully Tatiana ate every last bite in seconds. Then she finished her eggs.
Dasha said, “Oh, Alexander, how different things are since the last time you were here. It’s a lot harder now. People are harder. Everyone is now only for themselves, it seems.” She sighed, glancing away.
Alexander and Tatiana silently stared at Dasha.
“We’re getting only three hundred grams of bread a day,” she continued. “How much worse can it get?”
“Much worse,” said Tatiana, sparing Alexander an answer. “Because our provisions will soon be gone.”
“How many cans of ham do you have left?” he asked.
“Twelve.”
“Yes,” said Tatiana, “but four days ago we had eighteen. We ate six cans in four days. We’ve been hungry at night.” She wanted to add that they were hungry every waking and sleeping minute of every day but didn’t.
The girls had to go to work. Tatiana watched Dasha come close to Alexander, who put his hands on her waist. “Oh, Alexander, I’ve gotten so thin,” Dasha said. “You’re not going to like me anymore, thin like this. Soon I’ll start looking like Tania.” She kissed him. “Are you going to be all right while we’re gone? What are you going to do?”
Alexander smiled. “I’m going to fall down in your bed and not wake up until you come home.”
Tatiana ran home at five o’clock, bombing or no bombing.
At home it was toasty warm. Alexander came out of the room grinning happily at her, and Tatiana, grinning happily back, said, “Hello, Alexander, I’m home!”
He laughed.
She wanted to kiss him.
He had gone and retrieved a dozen bundles of wood from the basement and brought them upstairs. Dasha came in from the kitchen. “Isn’t it cozy in here, Tania?” she said, hugging Alexander.
“Girls,” he said, “you will have to keep heating these rooms. It’s getting too cold.”
“We’re getting heat from the central heating system, Alex,” argued Dasha.
“Dash,” he said, “the Leningrad Council is heating residential buildings to a maximum of ten degrees Centigrade. You think that’s warm enough?”
“It hasn’t been so bad,” said Tatiana, taking off her coat.
Alexander patted Dasha’s arm. “I’m going to bring you more wood from the basement and leave it for you. Heat your rooms with the big stove, not the little bourzhuika that can’t warm up a penguin. All right, Tania?”
Suddenly shivering, Tatiana said nothing at first. “Alexander, these wood-burning stoves take a lot of wood,” she said, and hurried out to make him dinner.
Babushka brought seven potatoes from Malaya Ochta. They ate one more can of ham and all of the potatoes. After dinner Alexander suggested that from now on they eat only half a can of ham a day. Dasha got upset. She said they could barely make it on the whole can. He said nothing.
When the air-raid siren sounded, he motioned for the family to go down into the shelter—everyone, including Tatiana. When Dasha asked him to come with them, Alexander looked at her thoughtfully and said, “Dasha, go on now, and don’t worry about me.” When she insisted, he said, more firmly, “What kind of a soldier would I be if I ran for shelter every time there was a little bombing? Now, go. And, Tania, you, too. You haven’t been on the roof, have you?”
No one answered him as they filed out, certainly not Tatiana.
Later that night Dasha said, “Marinka, can you sleep with Babushka tonight? Please? It’s warm in her room, not like ours. I want Alexander to sleep next to me. Mama, you don’t mind, do you? We are getting married.”
“Next to you and Tania?” Marina gave Tatiana a look that Tatiana did not return.
“Yes.” Dasha smiled, getting clean bedding out of the dresser. “Alexander, you don’t mind sleeping in the same bed as Tania?”
He grunted.
“Tanechka, tell me,” Dasha said teasingly, as she started to make the bed, “should I put him in the middle, between us?” She laughed lightly. “It will be good for Tania. It’ll be the first time she has slept with a man.” Amused at herself, Dasha pinched Alexander’s arm and said, “Though, darling, maybe she shouldn’t start with you.”
Not looking at Tatiana, Alexander muttered that he really wouldn’t be comfortable in the middle, and Tatiana, not looking at him, muttered that he was right, and Dasha said to him, “Relax, you don’t think I was really going to put you next to my sister?”
At bedtime Tatiana climbed in next to her wall, Dasha climbed in next to her, and Alexander fitted in on the end in his thermals. There was no room to move, but it was warmer, and his presence so close, yet so far away, a whole heart away, softened Tatiana’s eyes. Quietly they lay in bed listening to Mama as she cried on her sofa.
Then Tatiana heard Dasha whispering to Alexander, “You said before that we would get married—when, my love, when?”
He whispered back, “Let’s wait, Dasha.”
“No,” she said. “Wait for what? You said we would do it when you got leave. Let’s get married tomorrow. We’ll go to the registry office and get married in ten minutes. Tania and Marina can be our witnesses. Come on, Alexander, we have nothing to wait for.”
Tatiana turned to the wall.
“Dasha, listen to me. The fighting is too intense. And haven’t you heard? Comrade Stalin has made it a crime to be taken prisoner. It’s now against the law to fall into German hands. To prevent me further from willingly giving myself up to the Germans, our great leader has decided to take away family rations from th
e Soviet POW. If I get taken by the Germans and we’re married, you will lose your rations. You. Tania. Your mother, grandmother. All of you. I will have to get killed to keep you getting your bread.”
“Oh, Alexander. Oh, no.”
“We’ll wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“For a better time.”
“Will there be a better time?”
“Yes.”
Then they fell quiet.
Tatiana turned away from the wall, to Dasha, and stared at the back of Alexander’s head. She was remembering lying in his arms, naked and broken in Luga, with his breath in her hair.
In the middle of the night Dasha got up to go to the bathroom. Tatiana thought Alexander was asleep, but he turned around and faced her. In the dark she made out his liquid eyes. Under the blanket his leg moved sideways and touched hers; she was wearing socks and two layers of flannel pajamas. When she heard Dasha in the outside hallway, she closed her eyes. Alexander moved his leg away.
The following evening Tatiana cooked only half a can of ham for all of them. It was about a tablespoonful each, but at least it was ham. Dasha grumbled that it wasn’t enough.
“Anton is dying,” said Tatiana. “Eat the ham. Nina Iglenko has not had ham since August.”
After dinner Mama went to her sewing machine. Since the start of September she had been bringing work home. The army needed winter uniforms, and the factory offered Mama a bonus if she made twenty uniforms a day instead of ten. A bonus of a few rubles and one extra ration. Mama worked until one in the morning for 300 grams of bread and some rubles. This evening she went to her sewing seat, sat down, took her materials, and said, “Where is my sewing machine?”
No one spoke.
“Where is my sewing machine? Tania, where is my sewing machine?”
“I don’t know, Mama,” said Tatiana.
Babushka limped forward and said, “Irina, I sold it.”
“You what?”
“I traded it in for those soybeans and oil you had tonight. They were so good, Ira.”
“Mama!” Irina screamed. She became hysterical. For minutes she sobbed into her hands. Tatiana stood and watched Alexander’s pained expression as he went out into the hallway.
“Mama, how could you do that?” Irina cried. “You know that every night they offer me work, and every night I kill myself on that thing to make something for myself, to bring something for my family, something just for us! Don’t you know they were telling me I could get some oats every day, too, if I managed to get up to twenty-five uniforms. Oh, Mama, what have you done?”
Tatiana left the room herself. Alexander was sitting on the hallway sofa, smoking. Taking a pen, she went behind the sofa, knelt on the floor, and started lifting the bag of oats so she could mark its level. The oatmeal, the flour, the sugar just kept disappearing. Behind her she heard Alexander say, “Come on, get up off the floor. It’s too hard for you. Let me help.” She moved out of his way, and he lifted the bag for her as she looked inside and drew a black line on the outside. “What do you think, Tatia?” Alexander said, calling her Tatia quietly. “Private enterprise for your mother? Who would’ve thought?”
“It’s everywhere, though,” said Tatiana. “’Socialism in one country’ seems not to work so well when the country is fighting a war.” She motioned to the bag of flour.
Picking it up, Alexander nodded. “Just like during the Russian civil war and right after. Have you noticed that during war, to preserve its own life, the beast subsides and lies low . . .”
“Just long enough to get strong again and rear its head. Wait, hold the flour a little lower.” Her hand with the pen touched his hand holding the bag. She did not look up.
“What’s your Mama going to do, Tania?”
“I don’t know. What’s Babushka going to do? She’s got nothing left to sell.” Taking her hand away, Tatiana went into the kitchen to wash the dishes from dinner.
As she headed back to the room, Alexander entered the kitchen. They were alone. She went to walk past him, and he moved in front of her; she tried to go the other way, and he moved in front of her. Tatiana looked up at him and saw that his eyes were twinkling.
Her own eyes twinkling, she stood still for a moment and then moved right, left, and was around him. Glancing back and smiling, Tatiana said quietly, “Got to be quicker than that, Shura,” and he laughed loudly.
* * *
Alexander left after four days and went back to base. Everybody missed him when he went.
The good news was he was staying in Leningrad for another week or so, doing patrol work and base maintenance, building barricades and training new recruits. He couldn’t stay over anymore, but he spent most evenings with them, and in the mornings he came at six-thirty and walked Tatiana to Fontanka to get her rations.
One morning when he came, he said, “I heard Dimitri’s been shot!”
“No!”
“True.” He paused.
“What happened? Did he go down in a blaze of glory?”
“He shot himself in the foot with his Nagant sidearm.”
“Oh, I forget,” Tatiana said. “He is not you.”
Placing a hand on her coat, Alexander told her Dimitri was in a Volkhov hospital, indefinitely out of action. “On top of the foot wound, he’s got dystrophy.”
“What’s that?”
Tatiana felt that Alexander almost did not want to tell her. “Dystrophy,” he said slowly, “is a muscle-mass disease, degenerative. Brought on by acute malnutrition.”
Patting him lightly, Tatiana said in a weak voice, “Don’t worry, Shura. I won’t get it. I have no muscles.”
They waited patiently for her rations.
Alexander kept looking down at her, trying to get her to meet his expectant gaze. Tatiana strongly sensed that he wanted something from her, but what it was she didn’t know and couldn’t guess at.
Couldn’t? Or didn’t want to?
Alexander’s rations helped them stretch their food supplies a little longer. He got a king’s ration—800 grams of bread per day!—more than half of what they were getting for the five of them. He also received 150 grams of meat and 140 of cereals and half a kilo of vegetables.
Tatiana was elated when he came for dinner, bringing with him his food for the day. Was it because she was happy to see him or was it because she was happy to eat better? Alexander would hand her the food, telling her to divide it into six portions. “And, Tania,” he would tell her every time, “six equal portions.”
The meat in his ration was not beef but some kind of pasty pork or sometimes an aged chicken leg with thick skin. It took all of Tatiana’s mental strength not to give him the largest cut. She did what she could and gave him the best.
There were no more candlesticks to trade and no more dishes, except for the six plates the Metanovs kept for themselves and Alexander. Babushka wanted to trade their old blankets and coats, but Mama put her foot down. “No. Winter is cold here in the city. We will need them.” The temperature had dropped below freezing in the third week of October. Only six sheets remained for three beds, only six towels. Babushka wanted to trade one of the towels, but Tania put her foot down, remembering that Alexander needed a towel, too.
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.
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“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.