Winter Garden

As she stands there, afraid to go forward, a feeling moves through her, as powerful as hunger or desire: she shivers with it.

It is wanting to turn and run, to hold on to this terrible truth a little longer, but she knows that running will not help, so she takes a deep breath and walks forward, one step at a time, until she is at her own front door.

It opens at her touch and suddenly she is in her home again, as small and cluttered as it is. Never has the broken-down furniture and peeling paint looked so beautiful.

And there is her mama, standing at the stove in a faded dress, with her gray hair all but hidden beneath a threadbare kerchief, stirring something. At Vera’s entrance, she turns slowly. Her bright smile is heartbreaking; worse is the way it fades away and is replaced by sorrow. Only one has come home.

“Mama!” Leo screams, coming at her like a windstorm, toys dropping from his hands. Anya is beside him in an instant and they throw themselves into Vera’s arms.

They smell so good, so pure. . . . Leo’s cheeks are as soft and sweet as ripe plums and Vera could eat him up. She holds them too long, too tightly, unaware that she has begun to shake and to cry.

“Don’t cry, Mama,” Anya says, wiping her cheek. “I still have the butterfly. I didn’t break it. ”

Vera slowly releases them and stands up. She is shaking like a leaf and trying not to cry as she stares across the kitchen at her mother. In that look, Vera feels her childhood leave her at last.

“Where’s Aunt Olga?” Leo asks, looking past her.

Vera cannot answer. She just stands there. “Olga is gone,” Mama says with only a slight tremble in her voice. “She is a hero of the state, our Olga, and that is how we must think of her. ”

“But . . . ”

Mama takes Vera in her arms, holding her so hard that neither can breathe. There is only silence between them; in that silence, memories pass back and forth like dye in water, moving and fluid, and when they pull back and look at each other, Vera understands.

They will not speak of Olga again, not for a long time, not until the sharp pain rounds into something that can be handled.

“You need a bath,” Mama says after a time. “And those bandages on your hands need changing, so come along. ”r />

Those first days back in Leningrad seem like a dream to Vera. During the day, she works alongside other library employees, packing up the most valuable books for transport. She, who is so low on the roster, finds herself actually holding a first edition of Anna Karenina. The pages have an unexpected weight, and she closes her eyes for just a moment. In the darkness she sees Anna, dressed in jewels and furs, running across the snow to Count Vronsky.

Someone says her name so sharply she almost drops the treasured volume. Starting, she flushes and lowers her gaze to the floor, mumbling, “Sorry,” and goes back to work. By the end of the week, they have packed up more than 350,000 masterpieces and sent them out of harm’s way. They’ve filled the attic with sandbags and moved other important works to the basement. Room after room is cleared out and boarded up and shut down, until only the smallest of the rooms is left open for readers.

By the end of her shift, Vera’s shoulders ache from all the lifting and dragging of boxes, but she is far from finished for the day. Instead of going home, she trudges through the busy, camouflaged streets and gets into the first queue she finds.

She doesn’t know what they are selling at this market and she doesn’t care. Since the start of bread rationing and the limitations placed on the withdrawal of banking accounts, you take what you can get. Like most of her friends and neighbors, Vera has very little money. Her rations allow her four hundred grams of bread a day and six hundred grams of butter a month. On this, they can live. But she thinks often of a decision she made years ago: if she worked now in the bread factory, her family would be better fed. She would be an essential worker, with higher rations.

She stands in line for hours. At just past ten o’clock in the evening, she comes to the front. The only thing left for sale are jars of pickles, and she buys three—the amount she can afford and carry.

In the apartment, she finds her mother and grandmother sitting at the kitchen table, passing a cigarette back and forth between them.

Saying nothing—they all say little these days—she goes past them to the children’s beds. Leaning down, she kisses both tender cheeks. Exhausted and hungry, she goes back into the kitchen. Mama has put out a plate of cold kasha for her.

“The last transport left today,” Baba says when Vera sits down.

Vera looks at her grandmother. “I thought they were still evacuating the city. ”

Mama shakes her head. “We could not decide and now it is decided for us. ”

“The Germans have taken Mga. ”

Vera knows what this means, and if she did not, the look of despair in her mother’s eyes would have been enough to inform her. “So . . . ”

“Leningrad is an island now,” Mama says, taking a drag off the cigarette and handing it back to Baba. “Cut off from the mainland on all sides. ”

Cut off from supplies.

“What do we do?” Vera asks.

“Do?” Baba says.