Winter Garden

Out in the freezing darkness of early morning, I drag my sled through the streets. In the library, I go down to the one reading room that is open. Oil lamps create pockets of light. Many of the librarians are too sick to move, so those of us who are able move books and answer research questions for the government and the army. We go in search of books, too, saving what we can from bombed buildings. When there is nothing left to do, I queue up for whatever rations I can get. Today I am lucky: there is a jar of sauerkraut and a ration of bread.

The walk home is terrible. My legs are so weak and I can’t breathe and I am dizzy. There are corpses everywhere. I no longer even go around them. I don’t have the energy.

Halfway home, I reach into my pocket and pull out my tiny piece of bread from the morning meal. I put it in my mouth, let it melt on my tongue.

I can feel myself swaying. That white roar of noise is back in my ears; in the past few weeks I have grown accustomed to the sound.

I see a bench up ahead.

Sit. Close your eyes for just a moment . . .

I am so tired. The gnawing in my belly is gone, replaced by exhaustion. It is a struggle just to breathe.

And then, amazingly, I see Sasha standing in the street in front of me. He looks exactly as he did on the day I met him, years ago, a lifetime; he isn’t even wearing a coat and his hair is long and golden.

“Sasha,” I say, hearing the crack in my voice. I want to run to him, but my legs won’t work. Instead I crumple to my knees in the thick snow.

I can feel him beside me, putting his arm around me. His breath is so warm and it smells of cherries.

Cherries. Like the ones Papa used to bring us . . .

And honey.

I close my eyes, hungry for the taste of him and his sweet breath.

I can smell my mama’s borscht.

“Get up, Vera. ”

At first it is Sasha’s voice, deep and familiar, and then it is my own. Screaming.

“Get up, Vera. ”

I am alone. There is no one here beside me, no lover’s breath that smells of honeyed cherries. There is just me, kneeling in the deep snow, slowly freezing to death.

I think of Leo’s giggle and Anya’s stern look and Sasha’s kiss.

And I climb slowly, agonizingly, to my feet.

It takes hours to get home, although it is not far. When I finally arrive and stumble into the relative warmth of the apartment, I fall again to my knees.

Anya is there. She wraps her arms around me and holds me.

I have no idea how long we sit there, holding each other. Probably until the cold in the apartment drives us back into bed.

That night, after a dinner of hot sauerkraut and a boiled potato—heaven—we sit around the little burzhuika.

“Tell us a story, Mama,” Anya says. “Don’t you want a story, Leo?”

I scoop Leo into my arms and stare down at his pale face, made beautiful by firelight. I want to tell him a story, a fairy tale that will give him good dreams, but my throat is tight and my lips are so cracked it hurts to speak, so I just hold my babies instead and the frosty silence lulls us to sleep.

You think that things cannot get worse, but they can. They do.

It is the coldest winter on record in Leningrad. Rations are cut and cut again. Page by page I burn my father’s beloved books for warmth. I sit in the freezing dark, holding my bony children as I tell them the stories. Anna Karenina. War and Peace. Onegin. I tell them how Sasha and I met so often that soon I know the words by heart.

It feels further and further away, though. Some days I cannot remember my own face, let alone my husband’s. I can’t recall the past, but I can see the future: it is in the stretched, tiny faces of my children, in the blue boils that have begun to blister Leo’s pale skin.

Scurvy.