Tatiana knelt next to it and put her hand on the white sheet.
Dasha, do you remember when I was five and you were twelve, teaching me how to dive into Lake Ilmen? You showed me how to swim underwater, saying you loved the feeling of water all around you because it was so peaceful. And then you taught me to stay under longer than Pasha, because you said that girls always had to beat boys. Well, you go and swim underwater now, Dasha Metanova.
Tatiana’s wet face was turning to ice in the Arctic wind. She whispered, “I wish I knew a prayer. I need a prayer right now, but I don’t know one. Dear God, please let my only sister Dasha swim in peace and not ever be cold again, and please . . . can you let her have all the daily bread she can eat, up in Heaven . . . ?”
On her knees Tatiana pushed Dasha’s body into the ice hole. In the waning light the white sack looked blue. Dasha went in reluctantly, as if unwilling to part with life, and then disappeared. Tatiana continued to kneel on the ice. Eventually she got up and, coughing into her mittens, slowly pulled the empty sled back to shore.
Book Two
THE GOLDEN DOOR
Part Three
LAZAREVO
SCENTING SPRING
ALEXANDER went to Lazarevo on faith.
He had nothing else. Literally nothing else, not a letter, not a single piece of correspondence from either Dasha or Tatiana to let him know they had arrived in Molotov. He had grave doubts about Dasha, but he had seen Slavin survive the winter, so anything was possible. It was the absence of letters from Dasha that worried Alexander. While she was in Leningrad, she wrote to him constantly. Here the rest of January and February sped on, and not a word.
A week after the girls had left, Alexander had driven a truck across the ice to Kobona and searched for them among the sick and dispossessed on the Kobona shores. He found nothing.
In March, anxious and depressed, Alexander wrote a letter to Dasha in Molotov. He also had telegraphed the Soviet office in Molotov asking them for information on a Daria or a Tatiana Metanova but did not hear back until May and by regular post. A one-sentence letter from the Molotov Soviet informed Alexander that there was no information on a Daria or a Tatiana Metanova. He telegraphed again, asking if the Lazarevo village Soviet could receive telegraphs. Here the two-word telegram came the next day: no. stop.
Every off-duty hour he got, Alexander went back to Fifth Soviet, letting himself in with the key Dasha had left him. He cleaned the rooms, swept and washed the floors, and washed the linen when the city council repaired the pipes in March. He installed new glass panes in the second bedroom. He found an old photo album of the Metanovs and started looking through it, then suddenly closed it and put it away. What was he thinking? It was like seeing ghosts.
That’s how Alexander felt. He saw their ghosts everywhere.
Each time he was back in Leningrad, Alexander went to the post office on Old Nevsky to see if there were any letters to the Metanovs. The old postmaster was sick of the sight of him.
At the garrison, Alexander constantly asked the sergeant in charge of the army mail if there was anything for him from the Metanovs. The sergeant in charge of the army mail was sick of the sight of him.
But there was nothing for Alexander, no letters, no telegrams, and no news. In April the Old Nevsky postmaster died. No one had been notified of his death, and, in fact, he remained in his chair behind the desk, with mail on the floor, and on the counter, and in boxes, and in unopened mail sacks.
Alexander smoked thirty cigarettes as he searched through all the mail. He found nothing.
He went back to Lake Ladoga, continued protecting the Road of Life—now a water road—and waited for furlough, seeing Tatiana’s ghost everywhere.
Leningrad slowly came out of the grip of death, and the city council became afraid—with good reason—that the proliferation of dead bodies, of clogged sewers, of raw sewage on the streets would result in a mass epidemic once the weather warmed up. The council initiated a full frontal assault on the city. Every living and able person cleared the debris from the bombing and the bodies from the streets. The burst pipes were fixed, the electricity restored. Trams and then trolleybuses began running. With new tulips and cabbage seedlings growing in front of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, Leningrad seemed to be temporarily reborn. Tania would have liked to see the tulips in front of St. Isaac’s, Alexander thought. The civilian ration was increased to three hundred grams of bread for dependents. Not because there was more flour. Because there were fewer people.
At the start of war, on June 22, 1941, the day Alexander met Tatiana, there were three million civilians in Leningrad. When the Germans blockaded the city on September 8, 1941, there were two and a half million civilians in Leningrad.
In the spring of 1942 a million people remained.
The ice road over Ladoga had so far evacuated half a million people from the city, leaving them in Kobona to their dubious fate.
And the siege was not over.
After the snow melted, Alexander was put in charge of dynamiting a dozen mass graves in Piskarev Cemetery, to which nearly half a million corpses were transported on Funeral Trust trucks and eventually buried. Piskarev was just one of seven cemeteries in Leningrad to which the bodies were carried like cordwood.
And the siege was not over.
American foodstuffs—courtesy of Lend-Lease—were slowly making their twisted way into Leningrad. A few times during spring, Leningraders received dehydrated milk, dehydrated soup, dehydrated eggs. Alexander picked up some items himself, including an English-Russian phrase book he bought from a Lend-Lease truck driver in Kobona. Tania might like a new phrase book, he thought. She had been doing so well with her English.
The city rebuilt Nevsky Prospekt with false fronts to cover up the gaping holes left by German shells, and Leningrad went on slowly, neatly, and mostly quietly, into the summer of 1942.
German shelling and bombing continued daily and unabated.
January, February, March, April, May.
How many months could Alexander not hear? How many months of no news, of not a word, of not a breath? How many months of carrying hope in his heart and of admitting to himself that the inevitable and the unimaginable could have happened, might have happened, and—finally—must have happened? He saw death everywhere. At the front most of all, but hopeless death on the streets of Leningrad, too. He saw mutilated bodies and mangled bodies, frozen bodies and famished bodies. He saw it all. But through it all Alexander still believed.
2
In June, Dimitri came to see him at the garrison. Alexander was shocked and hoped his face didn’t show it. Dimitri looked older by years, not just by months. He walked with a distinct limp, hunched over a little on his right side. His body looked wearied and thin, and there was a tremor in his fingers Alexander had not seen before.
And when Alexander stared at Dimitri, he thought, Dimitri survived, why not Dasha and Tania, too? If he could, why not them? If I could, why not them?
“My only good foot is now the left foot,” Dimitri told him. “What stupidity on my part, don’t you think?” He smiled warmly at Alexander, who reluctantly invited him to sit on one of the bunks. He had been hoping he was done with Dimitri. No such luck, he could see. They were alone, and Dimitri had a thoughtful flare in his eye that Alexander did not care for.
“At least,” Dimitri said cheerfully, “I’ll never have to see real combat again. I much prefer it this way.”
“Good,” said Alexander. “It’s what you wanted. To work in the rear.”
“Some rear,” Dimitri snorted. “Do you know that first they put me on evacuation detail in Kobona—”
“Kobona!”
“Yes,” Dimitri drew out slowly. “Why? Does Kobona have some special significance other than the American Lend-Lease trucks that come through there?”
Alexander studied Dimitri. “Yes. I didn’t know you worked in Kobona.”
“We had fallen a little out of touch.”
“Were
you there back in January?”
“I can’t even remember anymore,” said Dimitri. “That was such a long time ago.”
Alexander got up and came toward him. “Dima! I got Dasha and Tatiana out through the ice—”
“They must be so grateful.”
“I don’t know if they’re grateful. Did you see them, perhaps?”
“You’re asking me if I saw two girls in Kobona, through which thousands of evacuees came?” Dimitri laughed.
“Not two girls,” Alexander said coldly. “Tania and Dasha. You’d recognize them, wouldn’t you?”
“Alexander, I would—”
“Did you see them?” He raised his voice.
“No, I didn’t,” said Dimitri. “Stop shouting. But I must say . . .” He shook his head. “To put two helpless girls in a truck to try to make it to—Where were they headed again?”
“East, somewhere.” He wasn’t about to tell Dimitri where they had been headed.
“Somewhere deep in the country? I don’t know, Alexander, what were you thinking?” Dimitri chuckled. “I can’t imagine you wanted them to die.”
“Dimitri, what are you talking about?” Alexander snapped. “What choice did I have? Have you not heard what happened to Leningrad last winter? What’s still happening now?”
Dimitri smiled. “I heard. Wasn’t there something else you could have done? Couldn’t Colonel Stepanov do anything for you?”
“No, he couldn’t.” Alexander was fed up. “Listen, I’ve got—”
“I’m just saying, Alexander, the evacuees that came our way were all at death’s door. I know Dasha is made of strong stuff, but Tania? I’m surprised she made it long enough for you to get her across the ice.” Dimitri shrugged. “I thought she’d be the first to— I mean, even I got dystrophy. And most of the people coming through Kobona were sick and starved. Then they were forced to get on more trucks to be transported sixty kilometers to the nearest trains, which were all cattle trains.” Lowering his voice, Dimitri said, “I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard through the grapevine that seventy percent of all the people we put on the trains died of either cold or disease.” He shook his head. “And you wanted Dasha and Tania to go through that? Some future husband you are!” Dimitri laughed.
Alexander clenched his teeth.
“Listen, I’m glad I’m out of there,” Dimitri said. “Didn’t like Kobona much.”
“What?” said Alexander. “Was Kobona too dangerous?”
“No, that wasn’t it. The trucks were usually backed up onto the Ladoga ice, because the evacuees were so damn slow. We were expected to go out and help unload them. But they couldn’t walk. They were all near death.” Staring at Alexander, Dimitri said, “Just last month the Germans blew up three of the six trucks on the ice.” He sighed. “Some rear. Finally I asked to be transferred into supplies.”
Turning his back to Dimitri, Alexander began folding his clothes. “Supplies is not the safest thing either. On the other hand,” he said, thinking to himself, what am I saying? Let him go into fucking supplies, “supplies might be good for you. You’ll be the guy selling the cigarettes. Everybody will love you.” The yawning chasm between what had been between them and what was now was too great. There were no boats and no bridges. Alexander waited for Dimitri either to leave or to ask after Tatiana’s family. He did neither.
Finally Alexander couldn’t take it anymore. “Dima, are you even remotely interested in what happened to the Metanovs?”
Shrugging, Dimitri said, “I figured the same thing that happened to most of Leningrad. Everybody died, no?” He could have been saying, everyone went shopping, no? Alexander lowered his head.
“This is war, Alexander,” Dimitri said. “Only the strongest survive. That’s why I finally had to give up on Tania. I didn’t want to, I quite liked her, and I still do; I have fond memories of her, but I had barely enough strength to keep myself going. I couldn’t be worrying about her, too, without food or warm clothes.”
How clearly Tatiana saw right through Dimitri. He never did care for her at all, Alexander thought, putting his clothes into his locker and avoiding Dimitri’s gaze.
“Alexander, speaking of surviving, there is something I wanted to talk to you about,” Dimitri began.
Here it comes. Alexander did not look up while he waited for it.
“Since the Americans have joined the war—it’s better for us, yes?”
Nodding, Alexander replied, “Certainly. Lend-Lease is a great help.”
“No, no.” Getting up off the bed, Dimitri said in an excited and anxious voice, “I don’t mean for us, I mean for you and me. For our plans.”
Getting up off the floor, Alexander faced Dimitri. “I haven’t seen too many Americans on this side,” he said slowly, pretending not to understand.
“Yes,” exclaimed Dimitri, “but they’re all over Kobona! They’re trucking and shipping supplies, tanks, jeeps, boots, through Murmansk and down the whole east coast of Lake Ladoga, to Petrozavodsk, to Lodeinoye Pole. There are dozens of them in Kobona.”
“Is that true? Dozens?”
“Maybe not dozens. But Americans!” He paused. “Maybe they can help us?”
Alexander came up closer to Dimitri. “In what way?” he said sharply.
Smiling, and keeping his thin voice low, Dimitri said, “In what way? In that American way. Perhaps you can go to Kobona—”
“Dima, go to Kobona and what? Who am I going to talk to? The truck drivers? You think if a Soviet soldier starts talking English to them, they’ll just say, oh, sure, come with us on our steamer. We’ll take you back home.” Alexander paused, taking a drag on his cigarette. “And even if somehow that were not impossible, how do you suggest we get you out? Even if a stranger was willing to risk his neck for me because of what you perceive as some American bond, how do you think that would help you?”
Taken aback, Dimitri said hastily, “I’m not saying it’s a good plan. But it’s a start.”
“Dima, you’re injured. Look at you.” Alexander looked him up and down. “You are in no condition to fight, nor are you in any condition to . . . run. We need to forget our plans.”
In a frantic voice, Dimitri said, “What are you talking about? I know you still want to—”
“Dimitri!”
“What? We have to do something, Alexander,” Dimitri said. “You and I had plans—”
“Dimitri!” Alexander exclaimed. “Our plans involved fighting through NKVD border troops and hiding out in the mined swamps in Finland! Now that you’ve shot yourself in the foot, how do you think that will be possible?”
Alexander was grateful that Dimitri did not have any immediate answers. He backed away.
Dimitri said, “I agree, maybe the Lisiy Nos route is harder, but I think we have a good chance of bribing the Lend-Lease delivery boys.”
“They’re not delivery boys!” Alexander said angrily. He paused. It was not worth it. “These men are trained fighters, and they subject themselves to submarine torpedoes every day as they trudge 2,000 kilometers through the Arctic and North Russia to bring you tushonka.”
“Yes, and they are the very men who can help us. And, Alexander”— Dimitri stepped closer—”I need somebody to help me.” He stepped closer still. “And very soon. I have no intention whatsoever of dying in this fucking war.” He paused, his slit eyes on Alexander. “Do you?”
“I will die if I have to,” said an unyielding Alexander.
Dimitri studied him. Alexander hated to be studied. He lit a cigarette and stared icily at Dimitri, who retreated. “Do you still have your money on you?” Dimitri asked.
“No.”
“Can you get to it?”
“I don’t know,” said Alexander. He took out another cigarette. This conversation was over.
“You have an unsmoked one in your mouth,” Dimitri remarked dryly.
* * *
Alexander received a generous furlough of thirty days. He asked Stepanov for more ti
me. He got a little more time, from June 15 until July 24.
“Is that enough time?” asked Stepanov, smiling lightly.
“It’s either too much time, sir,” replied Alexander, “or not enough.”
“Captain,” said Stepanov, lighting a cigarette and giving one to Alexander, “when you come back . . .” He sighed. “We can no longer stay at the garrison. You see what has happened to our city. We cannot spend another winter like the last one. It simply cannot happen.” He paused. “We are going to have to break the blockade. All of us. This fall.”
“I agree, sir.”
“Do you, Alexander? Have you seen what’s happened to our men at Tikhvin and Mga last winter and this spring?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you heard what’s been happening to our men in Nevsky Patch across the river from Dubrovka?”
“Yes, sir,” Alexander said. Nevsky Patch was a Red Army enclave inside enemy lines—a place the Germans used for daily target practice. Russian soldiers were dying there at a rate of 200 a day.
Shaking his head, Stepanov said, “We’re going to move across the Neva in pontoon boats. We have limited artillery—you. We have single-shot rifles—”
“Not me, sir, I have a Shpagin machine gun. And my rifle is an automatic.” Alexander smiled.
Smiling himself, Stepanov nodded. “I’m making it sound brutal.”
“It is, sir.”
“Captain, don’t get scared off by the good fight, an unequal fight though it may be.”
Alexander, raising his eyes to Stepanov and squaring his shoulders, said, “Sir. When have I ever?”
Coming up to him, Stepanov said, “If we had more men like you, we would have won this war long ago.” He shook Alexander’s hand. “Go. Have a good trip. Nothing will be the same when you come back.”