It feels like a lie. Tastes like one. But she trusts me.
I don’t let her hug me. I can see her reaching, reaching, and I push her back, into the crowd that is lining up around us.
A woman is standing close. Anya hits her and the woman stumbles sideways, cursing softly.
“Mama—”
I push my daughter at the stranger, who looks at me with glassy eyes.
“Take my daughter,” I say. “She has papers. Her father will be in Vologda. Aleksandr Ivanovich Marchenko. ”
“No, Mama. ” Anya is wailing, reaching for me.
I mean to push her away so hard she stumbles, but I can’t do it. At the last moment, I yank her into my arms and hold her tightly.
The train whistle blows. Someone yells, “Is she going?”
I unwrap Anya’s arm from around my neck. “You be strong, Anya. I love you, moya dusha. ”
How can I call her my soul and then push her away? But I do. I do.
At the last minute, I hand her the butterfly. “Here. You hold this for me. I will come back for it. For you. ”
“No, Mama—”
“I promise,” I say, lifting her up, putting her in a stranger’s arms.
She is still crying, screaming my name and struggling to get free, when the train doors slam shut.
I stand there for a long time, watching the train grow smaller and smaller, until it disappears altogether. The Germans are bombing again. I can hear the explosions all around, and people shouting, and debris thumping on metal roofs.
I hardly care.
As I turn toward the hospital, it feels as if something falls out of me, but I don’t look down, don’t want to see whatever I’ve lost. Instead, I walk through the raining dirt and snow toward my son.
Loss is a dull ache in my chest, a catch in my breathing, but I tell myself I have done the right thing.
I will keep Leo alive by the sheer force of my will, and Sasha will find Anya in Vologda and the four of us will meet up on Wednesday.
It is such a beautiful dream. I keep it alive one breath at a time, like a timid candle flame in the cup of my hands.
Back at the hospital, it is dark again. The smell of the place is unbearable. And it is cold. I can feel the wind prowling outside, testing every crack and crevice, looking for a way in.
In his narrow, sagging cot, Leo is sucking in his sleep, chewing food that isn’t there. He coughs almost constantly now, spasms that spew lacy blood designs across the woolen blankets.
When I can stand it no more, I crawl into the cot and pull him into my arms. He burrows against me like the baby he once was, murmuring my name in his sleep. His breathing is a terrible thing to listen to.
I stroke his hot, damp forehead. My hand is freezing, but it is worth it to touch him, to let him know I am here, beside him, all around him. I sing his favorite songs and tell him his favorite stories. Now and then he rouses, smiles sloppily at me, and asks for candy.
“No candy,” I say, kissing his sunken blue cheek. I cut my finger again, let him suck on it until the pain makes me draw back.
I am singing to him, barely able to remember the words, when I realize that he is not breathing anymore.
I kiss his cheek, so cold, and his lips, and I think I hear him say, “I love you, Mama,” but of course it is only my imagination. How will I ever forget how this was—how he died a little every day? How I let him. Maybe we should never have left Leningrad.
I think I will not be able to bear this pain, but I do. For all of that day and part of the next, I lie with him, holding him as he grows cold. In ordinary times perhaps this wouldn’t have been allowed, but these are far from ordinary times. Finally, I ease away from his little body and get up.
As much as I want to lie with him forever, to just slowly starve to death with him, I cannot do it. I made a promise to Sasha.