“We’re your daughters,” Meredith said gently, trying to soften the questions her sister had asked. “We just want to know you. ”
“It was what Dad wanted, too,” Nina said.
Mom stared down at the photograph, which vibrated in her shaking hand. The room went so still they could hear the waves hitting the boat far below. “You are right. This is no fairy tale. But if you want to hear the rest of it, you will allow me to tell the story in the only way I can. ”
“But who—”
“No questions, Nina. Just listen. ” Mom might have looked pale and tired, but her voice was pure steel.
Nina sat down by Meredith, holding her hand. “Okay. ”
“Okay, then. ” Mom leaned back in the seat. Her finger moved over the photo, feeling its slick surface. For once, the lights were on as she started to speak. “Vera fell in love with Sasha on that day in the Summer Garden, and for her, this is a decision that will never change. Even though her mother disagrees, is afraid of Sasha’s love of poetry, Vera is young and passionately in love with her husband, and when their first child is born, it seems like a miracle. Anastasia, they name her, and she is the light of Vera’s life. When Leo is born the next year, Vera cannot imagine that it is possible to be happier, even though it is a bad time in the Soviet Union. The world knows this, they know of Stalin’s evil. People are disappearing and dying. No one knows this better than Vera and Olga, who still cannot safely say their father’s name. But in June of 1941, it is impossible to worry, or so it seems to Vera as she kneels in the
rich black earth and tends her garden. Here, on the outskirts of the city, she and Sasha have a small plat of land where they grow vegetables to carry them through the long white Leningrad winter. Vera still works in the library, while Sasha studies at university, learning only what Stalin allows. They become good Soviets, or at least quiet ones, for the black vans are everywhere these days. Sasha is only a year away from finishing his degree and he hopes to find a teaching position at one of the universities.
/> “Mama, look!” Leo calls out to her, holding up a tiny orange carrot, more root still than vegetable. Vera knows she should chastise him, but his smile is so infectious that she is lost. At four he has his father’s golden curls and easy laugh. “Put the carrot back, Leo, it still needs time to grow. ”
“I told him not to pull it up,” says five-year-old Anya, who is as serious as her brother is joyous.
“And you were right,” Vera says, struggling not to smile. Though she is only twenty-two years old, the children have turned her into an adult; it is only when she and Sasha are alone that they are really still young.
When Vera finishes with her garden, she gathers up her children, takes one in each hand, and begins the long walk back to their apartment.
It is late afternoon by the time they return to Leningrad, and the streets are crowded with people running and shouting. At first Vera thinks it is just the belye nochi that has energized everyone, but as she reaches the Fontanka Bridge, she begins to hear snippets of conversation, the start of a dozen arguments, a buzz of anxiety.
She hears a squawking sound coming through a speaker and the word—Attention —thrown like a knife into wood. Clutching her children’s hands, she wades into the crowd just as the announcement begins. “Citizens of the Soviet Union . . . at four A. M. without declaration of war . . . German troops have attacked our country. . . . ”
The announcement goes on and on, telling them to be good Soviets, to enlist in the Red Army, to resist the enemy, but Vera cannot listen to anymore. All she can think is that she must get home.
The children are crying long before Vera gets back to the apartment near the Moika embankment. She hardly hears them. Though she is a mother, holding her own babies’ hands, she is a daughter, too, and a wife, and it is her mother and husband whom she wants to see now. She takes her children up the dirty staircase, down hallways that are frighteningly quiet. In their own apartment, no lights are on, so it takes her eyes a moment to adjust.
Mama and Olga, still dressed in their work clothes, are at one of the windows, taping newsprint over the glass. At Vera’s return, her mother stumbles back from the window she’s been covering, saying, “Thank God,” and takes Vera in her arms.
“We have things to do quickly,” Mama says, and Olga finishes the window and comes over. Vera can see that Olga has been crying, her freckled cheeks are tracked in tears and her strawberry-blond hair is a mess. Olga has a nervous habit of pulling at her own hair when she is afraid.
“Vera,” Mama says briskly. “You take Olga and go to the store. Buy whatever you can that will last. Buckwheat, honey, sugar, lard. Anything. I will run to the bank and get out all our money. ” Then she kneels in front of Leo and Anya. “You will stay here alone and wait for us to return. ”
Anya immediately whines. “I want to go with you, Baba. ”
Mama touches Anya’s cheek. “Things are different now, even for children. ” She gets to her feet and grabs her purse from the other room, checking to make sure that her blue passbook is there.
The three of them leave the apartment, closing the door behind them, hearing the lock click into place. From the other side, there is crying almost immediately.
Vera looks at her mother. “I cannot just leave them here, locked in—”
“From now on, you will do many unimaginable things,” her mother says tiredly. “Now let us go before it is too late. ”
Outside, the sky is a beautiful cloudless blue and the lilacs that grow beneath the first-floor windows scent the air. It seems impossible that war hangs over Leningrad on a day like this . . . until they turn the corner and come to the bank, where people are jammed together in a crowd at the closed door, waving their passbooks in the air and screaming; women are crying.
“We are too late already,” Mama says.
“What is happening?” Olga asks, pulling nervously at her hair again, looking around. Beside her, an elderly woman makes a moaning sound and thumps to the ground in a heap. In seconds she is lost amid the crowd.
“The banks are closed for now. Too many people tried to take out their money. ” Mama chews on her lower lip until blood appears and then leads them down to the grocer’s. Here, people are leaving with whatever they can carry. The shelves are practically empty. Already prices are doubling and tripling.
Vera has trouble making sense of this. War has just been announced and yet the supplies are gone already and the people around her look dazed and desperate.
“We have been here before,” Mama says simply.