Page 23 of Winter Garden
In 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 .