Winter Garden

“Winter is coming,” Mama says in the silence. “We need food and a burzhuika. I will take the children and go to the marketplace tomorrow. ”

“What will you trade?”

“My wedding ring,” Mama says.

“So it has begun,” Baba says, stubbing out the cigarette.

Vera sees the way they look at each other, the knowing sadness that passes between mother and daughter, and although it scares her, it comforts her, too. They have been through this before, her mama and her babushka. War is nothing new to Peter’s city. They will survive as they have survived before, by being careful and smart.

The city becomes one long line. Everything is disappearing, especially politeness. Rations are consistently being cut, and often there is no food to be had, even with a ration card. Vera, like everyone else, is tired and hungry and afraid. She wakes at four in the morning to stand in line for bread, and after work, she walks miles to the outskirts of town, bartering with peasants for food—a liter of vodka for a bag of withered potatoes; an outgrown pair of valenki for a pound of lard—and digging up whatever forgotten vegetables she can find.

It is not safe and she knows it, but there is nothing to be done. This search for food is all there is. No one goes to the library anymore, but Vera must keep working there to keep her worker’s rations. Now she is on her way home from the country. She moves quickly, keeping to the shadows, with her precious bag of potatoes hidden inside her dress like an unborn baby.

She is less than a mile from the apartment when the air raid alarm goes off, blaring through the nearly empty city streets. When it stops, she can hear the planes buzzing, growing closer.

She hears a loud whistling and starts to run for one of the trenches in the park to her left. Before she is even across the street, something explodes. Dirt and debris rain down from the sky. One building after another is destroyed.

And then . . . silence.

Vera gets up slowly, her legs unsteady.

The potatoes are okay.

She crawls out of the trench. Dusting herself off, she runs for home. The city is burning and smoking around her. People are screaming and crying.

She turns the corner and sees her apartment building. It is intact.

But the building next door is demolished. Only half of it remains; the other side is a pile of smoking, pulverized rubble. As she draws near, she sees a living room in perfect shape—green flowered wallpaper still in place, a table still set for dinner, a painting on the wall. But no people. As she stands there, the chandelier above the table shudders and falls, crashing across the dishes on the table.

She finds her family in the basement, huddled alongside their neighbors. When the All-Clear sounds, they go back upstairs and put the children in bed.

It is only the beginning. The next day Vera goes with her mother and the children to the market, where they search for a burzhuika. Without such a stove, her mother says, they will have problems come winter.

They find one deep in the back of the market, in a stall run by the kind of people Vera normally would never see. Swarthy, drunken men and women wearing jewels they surely hadn’t owned a week ago.

Vera holds her children close, trying not to make a face as the man’s vodka breath washes over her.

“This is the last one,” he says, leering at her, swaying.

Mama takes off her wedding ring. The gold shines dully in the morning light. “I have this gold ring,” she says.

“What good is gold?” He sneers.

“The war won’t last forever,” Mama says. “And there’s more. ” She opens her coat and pulls out a large jar full of white sugar.

The man stares at it; sugar is like gold dust now. Baba or Mama must have stolen it from the warehouse where they work.

The man’s ham-sized fist snakes out; his fingers coil around the jar and pull it back.

Mama hardly seems to care that her ring is gone, that a man like that has possession of it.

Together, the four of them drag the stove and pipe back to their apartment, pull it up the stairs in clanging bursts. When it is up and in place, its vent going out the window, Mama clasps her hands. “That’s that,” she says, coughing.

The stove is a small, ugly thing, cast iron with a pair of drawers that jut out brokenly. A long metal pipe goes from the stove, up the side of the wall, and out through a newly cut hole. She finds it hard to believe that it is worth a woman’s wedding ring.

“That was a lot of sugar,” Vera says quietly as Mama walks past her.

“Yes,” Mama says, pausing. “Baba brought it to us. ”