n August, Vera is released from work on the line. She is one of thousands of dazed, solitary women walking in silent groups for home. The trains are still running, although most of them are full all the time, and only the luckiest find space enough to sit or stand. They are evacuating the children of Leningrad again—this time with their mothers—but Vera does not trust her government anymore and will not follow the evacuation order again. Only last week she heard of a train of children that was bombed near Mga. Maybe it is true, maybe it is not. She does not care. It could be true, and that is enough for her.

She is tougher now, after two months spent digging in the black earth and running for shelter. Tough enough to make her way home through countryside she’s never seen. When she is lucky, a transport or a lorry picks her up and takes her as far as they are going, but luck is a thing she has never counted on, and most of the miles to Leningrad, she walks. When she meets soldiers on the road, she asks about Sasha, but she does not get answers. It is no surprise to her.

When she finally makes it to Leningrad, she finds a city as changed as she. Windows are blacked out and crisscrossed in tape. Trenches cut through parks, tearing through grass and flowers. Everywhere she looks are mounds of broken cement—dragon’s teeth, they are called—meant to bar the tanks. Huge iron beams crisscross the city boundaries like the ugly, misplaced bars of a prison. And soldiers move in marching columns through the streets. Already many of them look as broken as she feels; they’ve lost on one front and are moving to another, closer to the city. In their tired eyes, she sees the same fear that is now lodged inside of her: Leningrad is not the impervious city they’d imagined her to be. The Germans are getting closer....

Finally, Vera stands on her own street and looks up at her apartment. Except for the blacked-out windows, it looks as it always did. The trees out front are in full summer bloom and the sky is as blue as a robin’s egg.

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.”

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.

“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.”

“She could get in trouble,” Vera whispers, moving closer. “The Badayev warehouses are watched. Almost all of the city’s food stores are there. And both of you are employees. If one of you gets in trouble—”

“Yes,” Mama says, looking at her hard. “She is still there now, working late. She will be the last one to leave.”

“But—”

“You do not yet know,” Mama says, coughing again. It is a hacking, bubbly sound that unaccountably makes Vera think of muddy rivers and hot weather.

“Are you okay, Mama?”

“I am fine. It is just the dust in the air from the bombings.”

Before Vera can answer or even think of what to say, the air-raid alarm sounds.

“Children!” she screams. “Come quickly.” Vera grabs the coats from the wall and bundles her children up.

“I don’t want to go to the basement,” Leo whines. “It stinks down there.”

“Mrs. Newsky is the one who stinks,” Anya says, and her frown turns to a smile.

Leo giggles. “She smells like cabbage.”

“Hush,” Vera says, wondering how long this childhood will last for her babies. She buttons Leo’s coat and takes his hand.

Out in the hallway, the neighbors are already lining up for the stairs. On all of their faces is the same look: a combination of fear and resignation. No one really believes that being in the basement will save them from a bomb falling on their building, but at a time like this, there is no other salvation, so they go.

Vera kisses each of her children, hugs them fiercely in turn, and then hands them over to Mama.

While her family and neighbors go down to save themselves, Vera goes up. Breathing hard, she runs up the dirty, dark staircase and emerges onto the flat, litter-strewn roof. A long pair of iron tongs and several buckets full of sand are in place along the short wall. From here, she can see across Leningrad to the south. In the distance are the planes. Not one or two as before, but dozens. At first they are tiny black dots, dodging between giant barrage balloons that hang above the city, but soon she can see their shiny propellers and the details on their tails.

Bombs fall like raindrops; in their wake, puffs of smoke and flashes of fire.

A plane is overhead....

Vera looks up, sees its glistening silver belly open up. Incendiary bombs drop out. She watches in horror as one lands not more than fifteen feet from where she is standing. She runs for it, hearing its hiss. Her foot catches on a piece of wood and she falls to the ground so hard she tastes blood. Scrambling back up, she reaches for the gloves in her pocket and puts them on, shaking, trying to hurry; then she grabs up the iron tongs and tries to use them to pick up the bomb. It is an intricate task. She takes too long and fire catches on the wooden beam beneath the bomb. Smoke rises up. She positions the tongs on the bomb—the heat on her face is terrifying; she’s sweating so she can hardly see. Still, she clamps the handles and lifts the long bomb, and throws it off the side of the building. It lands with a thud on the grass below, where it can do no real damage. Dropping the tongs, she runs back to the small fire started by the bomb and stomps the flames out with the soles of her shoes, then pours sand on it.

When the fire is out, she drops to her knees. Her heart is going a mile a minute and her cheeks feel singed by the heat. If she hadn’t been here, that bomb would have burned its way down through the building, falling from floor to floor and leaving fire in its wake.

The basement is where it would have ended up. In that tiny room jam-packed with people. With her family...

She stays there, kneeling on the hard surface of the roof as night falls. The whole city seems to be on fire. Smoke rolls upward and out. Even after the airplanes are gone, the smoke remains, growing thicker and redder. Bright yellow and orange flames flicker up between the buildings, lick at the smoke’s swollen underbelly.

When the All Clear finally sounds, Vera is too shaken to move. It is only the thought of her children, who are probably crying now and afraid, that makes her move. One shaking step at a time, she walks across the roof and down the stairs to her apartment, where her family is already waiting for her.

“Did you see the fires?” Anya asks, biting her lip.

“They are far away from here,” Vera says, smiling as brightly as she can. “We are safe.”

“Will you tell us a story, Mama?” Leo says, popping his thumb in his mouth. His eyes lower sleepily and reopen.

Vera scoops both her children into her arms, settles one on each hip. She doesn’t bother to brush their teeth, just puts them to bed and climbs in with them.

At the table in the living room, Mama sits down and lights up her one cigarette for the day. The smell of it is lost in the overwhelming scent of the city burning. There is something almost sweet in the air, a smell like caramel left too long on a hot stove.

Vera tightens her hold on her children. “There is a peasant girl,” she says, trying to sound calm. It is hard; her thoughts are tangled up in what could have happened, what she could have lost. And she would swear that she can still hear that bomb whistling toward her, rustling impossibly in flight, and banging down beside her.

“Her name is Vera,” Anya says sleepily, snuggling close. “Right?”

“Her name is Vera,” she says, thankful for the prompting. “And she is a poor peasant girl. A nobody. But she doesn’t know that yet....”

“It is good you tell them your story,” Mama says to Vera when she comes back into the kitchen.

“I couldn’t think of anything else.” She sits down across from her mother at the rickety table, putting one foot on the empty chair beside her. Though the windows are closed and blacked out, she can still taste ash on her tongue, still smell that strange burned sweetness in the smoke. The world outside can only be seen in patches, in places where the newspaper droops limply away from the glass; the view is no longer red, but rather a dull orangey gold mixed with gray. “Papa used to tell me wonderful stories, remember?”

“I prefer not to remember.”

“But—”

“Your baba should have been home by now,” Mama says, not looking at her.

Vera feels a sharp clutch in her stomach at that. With all that has gone on tonight, she’d forgotten about her grandmother.

“I am sure she’s fine,” Vera says.

“Yes,” Mama says dully.

But in the morning, Baba is still not back; she is one of the thousands who are never seen again. And news moves through the city as ruinously as last night’s flames.

The Badayev warehouses are burned; all of the city’s food stores are gone.

Leningrad is isolated now, cut off from all help. September drips into October and disappears. The belye nochi is gone, replaced by a cold, dark winter. Vera still works in the library, but it is for show—and ration cards. Few people visit the library or the museums or theaters anymore, and those who do come are looking for heat. In these darkening weeks, when winter’s icy breath is always blowing on the back of your neck, there is nothing except the search for food.

Every day Vera is up at four o’clock in the morning, bundling up in her valenki and woolen coat, wrapping a scarf around her neck so high only her eyes show. She gets in whatever queue for food she can find; it isn’t easy just getting in line, let alone actually finding food. The strong push the weak out of the way. You have to be careful always, on guard. That nice young girl on the corner could steal from you in an instant; so might the old man standing on the stoop.

After work, she comes home to her cold apartment and sits down to a meal at six o’clock. Only it is not much of a meal anymore. A potato if they are lucky, with some kasha that is more water than buckwheat. The children complain constantly, while Mama coughs quietly in the corner....

In October, the first snow falls. Usually this is a time of laughter, when children run out to the parks with their parents and build snow angels and forts. Not in wartime, though. Now it is like tiny specks of white death falling over their ruined city. Its pretty white layer covers all their defenses—the dragon’s teeth, the iron bars, the trenches. Suddenly the city is beautiful again, a wonderland of arching bridges and icy waterways and white parks. If you don’t look at the crumbling buildings or burned-out heaps of brick where once a store had stood, you could almost forget... until seven o’clock. That is when the Germans drop the bombs. Every night, like clockwork.

And once the snow starts to fall, it never stops. Pipes freeze. Trolleys come to a stop and remain stuck in the accumulating snow. There are no tanks or trucks in the road anymore, no marching troops. There are just poor, bundled-up women like Vera, moving through the white landscape like refugees in search of anything resembling food. There is not a pet to be seen in Leningrad these days. Rations are cut almost every week.

Vera trudges forward. She is so hungry that it is difficult to keep moving, difficult sometimes even to want to keep moving. She tries not to think about the seven hours she spent in line today and focuses instead on the sunflower oil and oil cakes she was able to get. Behind her, the red sled she drags glides through the deep drifts, catching every now and then on things hidden in the snow—a twig, a rock, a frozen body.

The corpses began showing up last week: people still dressed for the weather, frozen in place on park benches or on the stoops of buildings.

You learn not to see them. Vera cannot believe that this is true, but it is. The hungrier and colder you get, the more your vision funnels to where you can’t see anyone beyond your own family.

She’s four blocks from her apartment and her chest aches so much that she longs to stop. She even dreams of it—she’ll sit on that bench and lean back and close her eyes. Maybe someone will come by with some hot, sweet tea and offer her a cup....

She draws in a ragged breath, ignoring the gnawing emptiness in her belly. Those are the kinds of dreams that get you killed. You sit down to rest and just die. That’s how it happens in Leningrad now. You have a little cough... or an infected cut... or you feel sluggish and want to stay in bed for just an hour or so. And then suddenly you’re dead. Every day at the library, it seems, someone fails to show up. In that absence they all know: they’ll never see that person again.

She puts one foot in front of the other and slowly makes her way in the snow, dragging her sled behind her. She has come almost a mile from the Neva River, where she collected a gallon of water from a hole in the ice. At the apartment, she pauses just long enough to catch her breath and then begins the long climb to the second floor. The gallon of water she’d had on the sled feels icy cold against her chest and the cold makes her lungs hurt even more.

The apartment is warm. She notices instantly that another chair is broken. It lies on its side, two legs missing and the back hacked up. They cannot all sit at the table now, but what does it matter? There’s precious little to eat.

Leo is wearing his coat and his boots. He is sprawled on the kitchen floor, playing war with a pair of metal trucks. At her entrance, he cocks his head and looks at her. For a second it is as if she’s been gone a month instead of a day. She sees the way his cheeks have caved in on themselves, the way his eyes seem too big for his bony face. He doesn’t look like a baby boy at all anymore.

“Did you get food?” he says.

“Did you?” Anya says, rising from her place on the bed, carrying her blanket with her.

“Oil cakes,” Vera says.

Anya frowns. “Oh, no, Mama.”

Vera’s heart actually hurts when she hears this. What she wouldn’t give to bring home potatoes or butter or even buckwheat. But oil cake is what they have now. No matter that it used to be fed to cattle, or that it tastes like sawdust or that it’s so hard that only an ax will cut it. They use shavings to make pancakes that are barely edible. But none of that matters. What matters is that you have something to eat.

Vera knows that comfort will not help her children. This is a lesson she has learned since the snow began to fall on Leningrad. Her children need strength and courage now, as they all do. It does no good to cry or whine for that which cannot be had. She goes over to the fallen chair and breaks off another leg. Cracking it in two pieces, she feeds it into the burzhuika and puts the water she brought home in a pot to boil. She will put yeast in it to fill their bellies. It won’t help, of course, but they’ll feel better for a while.

She bends down, feeling the hot popping in her joints at the movement, and puts a hand on Leo’s curls. His hair, like all of theirs, is stiff from dirt. Baths are luxuries these days. “I have some more of the story for tonight,” she says, waiting for his enthusiasm, but he just nods a little and shrugs.

“Okay.”

It is wearing all of them away, the cold and the hunger. With a sigh, she gets back to her feet, rising like an old woman. She glances across the room at her mother, who is still in bed. To Anya she says, “How is she today?”

Anya stands there, her pale, thin face so drawn that her eyes seem to protrude. “Quiet,” is all she says. “I made her drink water.”

Vera goes to her small, serious daughter and picks her up, hugging her tightly. Even through the bulk of her coat, she can feel Anya’s boniness, and it breaks her heart. “You are my best girl,” she whispers. “You are taking such good care of everyone.”

“I’m trying,” Anya says, and the earnestness in her voice almost makes Vera feel ill.

Vera hugs her again and then lets go.

As she crosses the room, Vera can feel her mother’s eyes on her, following her movements like a hawk. Everything about Mama is pale and shrunken and colorless except for those dark eyes that hold on to Vera like a fist.

She sits down at her bedside. “I got some oil cakes today. And a little sunflower oil.”

“I am not hungry. Give mine to our babies.”

It is what Mama says every night. At first Vera argued, but then she started to see Anya’s cheekbones, and heard the way her son cried in his sleep for food.

“I’ll make you some tea.”

“That would be nice,” Mama says, letting her eyes drift shut.

Vera knows how hard her mother has worked to stay awake in the hours that Vera is gone. It takes every scrap of Mama’s will and courage simply to lie here and watch her grandchildren during the day, though she hasn’t gotten out of bed for more than a few minutes at a time in weeks.

“There will be more food next week,” Vera says. “I heard they’re sending a transport across Lake Ladoga as soon as the water freezes. Then we’ll all be fine.”

Her mother says nothing to that, but her breathing doesn’t even out, either. “Do you remember how your papa used to pace when he was working, how he muttered words to himself and laughed when he found what he wanted?”

Vera reaches out to touch her mother’s dry forehead, strokes it gently. “He used to read his poetry to me sometimes, when he was working. He’d say, ‘Verushka, when you are old enough to write your own stories, you’ll be ready. Now listen to this....’ ”

“Sometimes I feel him in here. And Olga. I can hear them talking, moving. I think they’re dancing. There’s a fire in the stove when they’re here, and it’s warm.”

Vera nods but says nothing. More and more often lately Mama sees ghosts; sometimes she talks to them. It is only when Leo starts to cry that she stops.

“I’ll add a drop of honey into your tea. And you need to eat today, okay? Just today.”

Mama pats Vera’s hand and sighs quietly.

Every day that winter Vera wakes thinking one of two things: it will get better today or it will be over soon. She doesn’t know how it is possible to believe simultaneously that her situation will improve and that she will die, but there it is. Each cold morning, she wakens with a start and reaches for her children, who are in bed with her. When she feels the slow, steady beating of their hearts, she breathes easily again.

It takes courage to get out of bed. Even wearing every piece of clothing she owns and layered beneath all their blankets she isn’t warm, and once she climbs from bed, she will be freezing. While they sleep, water freezes in pots in the kitchen and their eyelashes stick to skin, sometimes so hard that blood is drawn when they open their eyes.

Still, she eases the blankets back and climbs out over her children, who moan in their sleep. Mama, on her other side, doesn’t make a sound, but she shifts almost imperceptibly to the left. They all sleep together for warmth now, in the bed that had once been her grandmother’s.

In stockinged feet, Vera goes to the stove. It is not far; they have moved their bed as close to the burzhuika as possible. The remaining furniture is cluttered together, unimportant except for the wood from which it is made. She grabs an ax from the closet and hacks through the last of the bed that was once her own. Then she starts a fire in the little burzhuika and puts water on to boil.

While she’s waiting, she kneels in the corner of the kitchen and pries up a floorboard. There, hidden in the dark, she counts up their stores. It is something she does every day, sometimes four times a day. A nervous habit now.

A bag of onions, a half a bottle of sunflower oil, some oil cakes, a nearly empty jar of honey, two jars of pickles, three potatoes, and the last of the sugar. She carefully takes out one large yellow onion and the honey, then replaces the floorboard. She will boil half an onion for breakfast, and add a drop of honey to their tea. She has just measured out a small amount of tea when there is a knock at the door.

At first she hardly recognizes the sound, it is so foreign. There is no talking in Leningrad anymore, no neighbors stopping by. Not here, at least, where their whole family is together.

But there is danger. People who will kill for a gram of butter or a spoonful of sugar.

She reaches for the ax again, holds it to her chest as she goes to the door. Her heart is beating so fast and hard she feels dizzy. For the first time in months, she forgets that she is hungry. With a trembling hand, she reaches for the doorknob and turns it.

He stands there like a stranger.

Vera stares up at him and shakes her head. She has become like her mama, hungry enough and sick enough to see ghosts. The ax falls from her grasp, thunks on the floor at her feet.

“Verushka?” he says, frowning.

At the sound of his voice, she feels herself start to fall. Her legs are giving out on her. If this is dying, she wants to give in, and when his arms come around her and hold her up, she is sure she is dead. She can feel the warmth of his breath on her throat; he is holding her upright. No one has held her in so long.

“Verushka,” he says again, and she hears the question in his voice, the worry. He doesn’t know why she hasn’t spoken.

She laughs. It is a cracked, papery sound, rusty from disuse. “Sasha,” she says. “Am I dreaming you?”

“I’m here,” he says.

She clings to him, but when he goes to kiss her, she draws back in shame. Her breath is terrible; hunger has made her smell foul.

But he won’t let her pull away. He kisses her as he used to, and for a sweet, perfect moment, she is Vera again, a twenty-two-year-old girl in love with her prince....

When finally she can bear to let him go, she stares up at him in awe. His hair is gone, shaved down to nothing, and his cheekbones are more pronounced, and there is something new in his eyes—a sadness, she thinks—that will now be a mark of their generation. “You didn’t write,” she says.

“I wrote. Every week. There is no one to deliver the letters.”

“Are you done? Are you back now?”

“Oh, Vera. No.” He closes the door behind him. “Christ, it’s cold in here.”

“And we’re lucky. We have a burzhuika.”

He opens his ragged coat. Hidden beneath it are half a ham, six sausage links, and a jar of honey.

Vera goes almost light-headed at the sight of meat. She cannot remember the last time she tasted it.

He sets the food down on the table. Taking her hand, he walks over to the bed, stepping around the broken furniture on the floor. At the bedside, he stares down at his sleeping children.

Vera sees the tears that come to his eyes and she understands: they do not look like his babies anymore. They look like children who are starving.

Anya rolls over in bed, bringing her baby brother with her. She smacks her lips together and chews in her sleep—dreaming—and then she slowly opens her eyes. “Papa?” she says. She looks like a little fox, with her sharp nose and pointed chin and sunken cheeks. “Papa?” she says again, elbowing Leo.

Leo rolls over and opens his eyes. He doesn’t seem to understand, or doesn’t recognize Sasha. “Quit hitting me,” he whines.

“Are these my little mushrooms?” Sasha says.

Leo sits up. “Papa?”

Sasha leans down and scoops his children into his arms as if they weigh nothing. For the first time in months, the sound of their laughter fills the apartment. They fight to get his attention, squirming like a pair of puppies in his arms. As he takes them over toward the stove, Vera can hear snippets of their conversation.

“I learned to make a fire, Papa—”

“I can cut wood—”

“Ham! You brought us ham!”

Vera sits down beside her mother, who smiles.

“He’s back,” Mama says.

“He brought food,” Vera says.

Mama struggles to sit up. Vera helps her, repositions her pillows behind her.

Once she’s upright, Mama’s foul breath taints the air between them. “Go spend the day with your family, Vera. No lines. No getting water from the Neva. No war. Just go.” She coughs into a gray handkerchief. They both pretend not to see the bloody spots.

Vera strokes her mother’s brow. “I’ll make you some sweet tea. And you will eat some ham.”

Mama nods and closes her eyes again.

Vera sits there a moment longer, listening to the strange mix of Mama’s troubled breathing and her children’s laughter and her husband’s voice. It all leaves her feeling vaguely out of place. Still she covers her mother’s frail body and stands up.

“He is so proud of you,” Mama says on a sigh.

“Sasha?”

“Your papa.”

Vera feels an unexpected tightness in her throat. Saying nothing, she walks forward, and Leo’s laughter warms her more than the burning legs of any old desk ever could. She gets out her cast-iron frying pan and fries up some of the ham in a tiny spot of sunflower oil and adds sliced onions at the last minute.

A feast.

The whole room smells of rich, sizzling ham and sweet, caramelized onions. She even adds extra honey to their tea, and when they all sit on the old mattress to eat (there are no chairs anymore), no one says anything. Even Mama is lost in the unfamiliar sensation of eating.

“Can I have more, Mama?” Leo says, wiping his finger in the empty cup, looking for any trace of honey.

“No more,” Vera says quietly, knowing that as kingly as this breakfast is, it is not enough for any of them.

“I say we go to the park,” Sasha says.

“It’s all boarded up,” Anya tells him. “Like a prison. No one plays there anymore.”

“We do,” Sasha says, smiling as if this is an ordinary day.

Outside, the snow is falling. A veil of white obscures the city, softens it. The dragon’s teeth and trenches are just mounds of snow and hollowed-out white valleys, respectively. Every now and then a white hillock sits on a park bench or lies by the side of the road, but it is easy to miss. Vera hopes her children do not know what is beneath the cover of snow.

In the park, everything is sparkling and white. The sandbagged Bronze Horseman is only visible in pieces. The trees are frosted white and strung with icicles. It amazes Vera that not a tree has been cut down here. There are no wooden fences or benches or railings left in the city, but no tree has been cut down for firewood.

The children immediately rush forward and drop onto their backs, making snow angels and giggling.

Vera sits by Sasha on a black iron bench. A tree shivers beside them, dropping ice and snow. She takes his hand, and although she cannot feel his flesh beneath her glove, the solid feel of him is more than enough.

“They are making an ice road across Ladoga,” he says at last, and she knows it is what he has come to tell her.

“I hear trucks keep falling through the ice.”

“For now. But it will work. They will get food into the city. And people out of it.”

“Will they?”

“It’s the only evacuation route.”

“Is it?” She glances sideways, deciding not to tell him about their other evacuation, how she almost lost their children.

“I will get all of you passes as soon as it’s safe.”

She does not want to talk about any of this. It doesn’t matter. Only food matters now, and heat. She wishes he would just hold her and kiss her.

Maybe they will make love tonight, she thinks, closing her eyes. But how could she? She is too weak to sit up sometimes....

“Vera,” he says, making her look at him.

She blinks. It is hard sometimes to stay concentrated, even now. “What?” She stares into his bright green eyes, sharp with both fear and worry, and suddenly she is remembering the first time they met. The poetry. He said something to her, a line about roses. And later, in the library, he said he’d waited for her to grow up.

“You stay alive,” he says.

She frowns, trying to listen carefully; then he starts to cry and she understands.

“I will,” she says, crying now, too.

“And keep them well. I’ll find you a way out. I promise. You just have to hang on a little while longer. Promise me.” He shakes her. “Promise me. The three of you will make it to the end.”

She licks her cracked, dry lips. “I will,” she says, believing it, believing in it.

He pulls her close and kisses her. He tastes like sweet summer peaches, and when he draws back they are both done with crying.

“It’s your birthday tomorrow,” she says.

“Twenty-six,” he says.

She leans against him; his arm comes around her. For a few hours, they are just a young family playing in the park. People hear the children laughing and come to see; they stand at the edges of the park like confused mental patients suddenly set free. It has been a long time since any of them heard a child laugh.

It is the best day of Vera’s life—as impossible as that sounds. The memory of it is golden, and as she walks home, holding his hand, she can feel herself protecting it. It is a light she will need in the months to come.

But when she gets home, she knows instantly that something is wrong.

The apartment is dark and freezing. She can see her breath. On the table, a pitcher of water is frozen solid. Frost shines on the metal stove. The fire has gone out.

She hears her mother coughing in bed and she runs to her, yelling at Sasha to build a fire.

Her mother’s breathing is noisy and strained. It sounds like old fruit being pushed through a sieve. Her skin is as pale as dirty snow. The flesh around her mouth is darkening, turning blue. “Verushka,” she whispers.

Or did she really speak? Vera doesn’t know. “Mama,” she says.

“I waited for Sasha,” Mama says.

Vera wants to beg with her, to plead, to say that he is not back, he is only visiting, and that she needs her mother, but she—

I can’t say anything.

All I can do is sit there, staring down at my mother, loving her so much I don’t even remember how hungry I am.

“I love you,” Mama says softly. “Never forget that.”

“How could I?”

“Don’t try. That’s what I mean.” Mama struggles to lean forward and it’s terrible to watch the effort it takes, so I lean forward and take her in my arms. She’s like a stick doll now. Her head lolls back.

“I love you, Mama,” I say. It is not enough, those three little words that suddenly mean good-bye, and I am not ready for good-bye. So I keep talking. I hold her close and say, “Remember when you taught me to make borscht, Mama? And we argued about how small to cut the onions and why to cook them first? You made a pot and put the vegetables in raw so I could taste the difference? And you smiled at me then, and touched my cheek, and said, ‘Do not forget how much I know, Verushka.’ I am not done learning from you....”

At that, I feel my throat tighten and I can’t say anything more.

She is gone.

I hear my son say, “Mama, what’s wrong with Baba?” and it takes all my strength not to cry. But what good will crying do?

Tears are useless now in Leningrad.