Winter Garden

There is grumbling around her. She is hardly surprised. Her country is a place of great fear these days, and no one knows which is more likely to kill you—the Germans or the secret police.

She tightens her hold on her children’s hands and begins to move slowly through the crowd. Even the children ease sideways to let her pass. The eyes that meet hers are distrustful and afraid.

“I will come with you,” one woman says. She is old and wrinkled, her gray hair hidden beneath a dirty kerchief. Four children stand clustered around her, dressed for winter, their pale faces streaked with ash.

They are the only ones.

Vera and the woman and their six children make their way out of the barn, past all the silent children. Outside, the countryside is gray with smoke.

“We might as well start walking,” the woman says.

“How far are we from Leningrad?” Vera asks, wondering if she has done the right thing. She feels exposed now, vulnerable to the airplanes flying overhead. To her left, a bomb falls and a building explodes.

“About ninety kilometers,” the woman says. “It will do us no good to talk. ”

Vera hefts Leo into her arms and holds on to Anya. She knows that she will not be able to carry her son for long, but she wants to start out that way. Just in case. She can feel his strong, steady heartbeat against her own.

In the years to come, she will forget the hardships of that journey, how her children’s feet blistered until they bled, how their food ran out, how they slept in hay barns like criminals, listening all night for air raids and falling bombs, how they woke in a panic, thinking they’d been shot, feeling blindly for wounds that were not there. Instead, she will remember the lorry drivers who picked them up, and the people who stopped to give them bread and ask them what they’d seen down south. She will remember how she told them what she hadn’t known before: that war is about fire and fear and bodies lying in ditches by the side of the road.

By the time she gets home and stumbles into her mother’s welcoming arms, she is battered and tired and bloody; her shoes have worn through in places and the pain in her feet will not ease, even in a pail of hot water. But none of this matters. Not now.

What matters is Leningrad, her wonderful white city. The Germans are moving toward her home. Hitler has vowed to wipe this city off the map.

Vera knows what she must do.

Tomorrow, very early in the morning, she will get out of her narrow bed and dress in layers. She will pack all the sausage and dried fruit she can carry, and like thousands of other women her age, she will go south again to protect all that she loves. It is every citizen’s job.

“We have to stop them at Luga,” she says to her mother, whose face crumples in understanding. “They need workers there. ”

Mama does not ask why or how or why you? All of those answers are clear. It is only the first full week of war, and already Leningrad is becoming a city of women. Every man between fourteen and sixty has gone to fight. Now the girls are going off to war, too. “I will take care of the children,” is all her mother says, but Vera can hear You come back to us as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud.

“I won’t be gone long,” Vera promises. “The library will call me patriotic. All will be fine. ”

Mama only nods. They both know it is a fiction, this promise of Vera’s, but they say nothing. Both of them want to believe.

Twenty

I think that is enough for tonight,” Mom said.

Meredith was the first to stand. Moving almost cautiously, she crossed the small, carpeted space and stood beside Mom. “You don’t look as tired tonight. ”

“Acceptance,” Mom said, staring down at her own hands.

The unexpected answer brought Nina to her feet. She moved in beside her sister. “What do you mean by that?”

“You were right, Nina. Your father made me promise to tell you this story. I did not want to. And fighting a thing tires you out. ”

“Is that why you went so . . . crazy after Dad died?” Meredith asked. “Because you were ignoring his wishes?”

“That is perhaps one of the reasons,” her mother said, giving a little shrug, as if to say that reasons didn’t matter much.

Nina and Meredith stood there a moment longer, but whatever slim strand of intimacy had been created tonight was gone now. Again, Mom would barely make eye contact with them.

“Okay,” Meredith finally said. “We’ll come get you in the morning for breakfast. ”

“I do not want—”

“We do,” Nina said in a voice that silenced her mother’s protest. “Tomorrow the three of us are going to be together. You can discuss it or argue or yell at me, but you know that I won’t change my mind and in the end I’ll get my way. ”