Winter Garden (32 page)

A nurse sees us.

Even though we are two among hundreds, she comes over, looks down at Leo. When she looks up at me, I see the pity in her eyes.

“Here,” she says, giving me a piece of paper. “This will get him some millet soup and butter. There’s aspirin at the dispensary.”

“Thank you,” I say.

We look at each other again, both knowing it is not enough. “He is Leo.”

“My son was Yuri.”

I nod in understanding. Sometimes a name is all you have left.

When I get home from the hospital, I cook everything I can find. I strip the wallpaper from the walls and boil it. The paste is made of flour and water, and it thickens into a kind of soup. Carpenter’s glue will do the same thing. These are the recipes I teach my daughter. God help us.

I boil a leather belt of Sasha’s and make a jelly from it. The taste is sickening, but I get Leo to eat a little of it. . . .

In the middle of January, a friend of Sasha’s arrives at our apartment. I can see that he is shocked by what he sees. He gives me a box from Sasha.

As soon as he is gone, we crowd around to look at it. Even Leo is smiling.

Inside are evacuation papers. We are to leave on the twentieth.

Beneath the papers is a coil of fresh sausage and a bag of nuts.

In utter darkness, I pack up the whole of my life, not that there is much left. Honestly, I do not know what I have taken and what I left behind. Most of our possessions have either frozen or been burned, but I remember to take my writings and my father’s, and my last book of poetry by Anna Akhmatova. I take all the food we have—the sausage, half a bag of onions, four pieces of bread, some oil cakes, a quarter of a jar of sunflower oil, and the last of the sauerkraut.

I have to carry Leo. With his swollen feet and boil-covered arms, he can barely move, and I don’t have it in me to waken him when he sleeps.

The three of us leave in the darkness of midmorning. Little Anya carries our only suitcase, filled with food. All our clothes we are wearing.

It is bitter cold outside and snowing hard. I hold her hand on the long walk to the train station, and once there, we are both exhausted.

In the train, we cram together. We are three of many, but no one talks. The air smells musty, of body odor and bad breath and death. It is a smell we all recognize.

I pull my babies close around me. I give Leo and Anya some wine to drink, but Leo is not happy with that. I cannot take out my food, not in this crowded train car. I could be killed for the oil cakes, let alone the sausage.

I dig deep in my coat pocket, which I have filled with dirt from the ground outside the burned Badayev food warehouses.

Leo eats the dirty, sugary particles greedily and cries for more. I do the only thing I can think of: I cut my finger and put it in his mouth. Like a newborn baby, he sucks on my finger, drinking my warm blood. It hurts, but not as much as hearing the congestion in his lungs or feeling the heat in his forehead.

In a quiet voice, I tell them stories of their father and me, of a fairy-tale love that seems so far away. Somewhere along that clackety trip, when I am so afraid and Leo is coughing terribly and Anya keeps asking when we will see Papa, I begin to call my husband a prince and Comrade Stalin the Black Knight and the Neva River takes on magical powers.

The train trip seems to last for a long time. My insides ache from being rattled around for so many hours. My fairy tale is the only thing that keeps us all sane. Without it, I think I might begin crying or screaming and never stop.

Finally, we reach the edge of Lake Ladoga. There is ice as far as I can see; there is almost no difference between my view through a clean window and one through the fog of my own breath.

We are at the start of the ice road.

The army has been working for months to make a road across frozen Lake Ladoga. The road is here now, and everyone is calling it the road of life. Soon, they say, transports of food will rumble across the ice toward Leningrad. Up until now, those same trucks kept falling through into the freezing black water below. And, of course, the Germans bomb it constantly.

I check my children’s clothes. Everything is in place, just as it was when we left Leningrad. Leo and Anya are wrapped in newsprint and then in all the clothes they own. We wrap scarves around our heads and necks; I try to cover everything, even Leo’s small red nose.

Outside, it hurts when I take a breath. My lungs ache. Beside me, Leo starts to cough.

A full moon rises in the black sky, turning the snow blue. We stand around, all of us, matted together like cattle. Many people are coughing; somewhere a child is crying. It occurs to me to wish that it were Leo. His quiet scares me.

“What do we do, Mama?” Anya says.

“We find a truck. Here, take my hand.”

My eyes water and sting as I start forward. Leo is in my arms, and as thin as he is, he weighs me down so that I can hardly move. Every step takes concentration, willpower. I have to lean into the howling wind. The only real thing in this icy blue-and-black world is my daughter’s hand in mine. Somewhere far away, I hear an engine idling and then roaring. It is a convoy, I hope.

“Come,” I shout into the wind, or mean to. I am so cold my knees hurt. It hurts even to bend my fingers enough to hold Anya’s hand.

I walk

and walk

and walk

and there is nothing. Just ice and black sky and the distant popping of antiaircraft guns.

I think, I must hurry, and, My babies, and then Sasha is beside me. I can feel the warmth of his breath. He is whispering about love and the place we will build for ourselves in Alaska and he tells me it’s okay for me to rest.

“Just for a moment,” I say, falling to my knees before the words are even out of my mouth.

The world is totally quiet then. Somewhere, someone laughs and it sounds just like Olga. I will go find her as soon as I have a nap. This is the thought I have.

And I close my eyes.

“Mama.”

“Mama.”

“Mama.”

She is screaming in my face.

I open my eyes slowly and see Anya. My daughter has pulled off her scarf and wrapped it around my neck.

“You have to get up, Mama,” she says, tugging at me.

I look down. Leo is limp in my arms, his head lolled back. But I can feel his breathing.

I uncoil the scarf from around my neck and rewrap Anya’s face. “Never take your scarf off again. Do not give it to anyone. Not even me.”

“But I love you, Mama.”

And there is my strength. Gritting my teeth against the pain that will come, I stagger to my feet and start moving again.

One step at a time, until a lorry materializes in front of me.

A man dressed in baggy white camouflage is standing beside the door, smoking a cigarette. The smell of it makes me think of my mother.

“A ride across the ice?” I say, hearing how cracked and weak my voice is.

The man’s face is not drawn or gaunt. This means he is Somebody, or in the Party at least, and I feel my hope plummet.

He leans forward, looks at Leo. “Dead?”

I shake my head. “No. Just sleeping.

“Please,” I say, desperate now. All around me trucks are leaving and I know we will die tonight, here, if we do not find a ride soon. I pull out the cloisonné butterfly made by my grandfather. “Here.”

“No, Mama,” Anya says, reaching for it.

The man just frowns. “What good is a trinket?”

I pull off my glove and give him my wedding ring instead. “It is gold. Please. . . .”

He looks me over as he takes one last drag of the cigarette and then drops it to the snow. “All right, Baba,” he says, pocketing my ring. “Get in. I will take you and your grandchildren.”

I am so grateful, I don’t even realize what he has said to me until later, when we are all packed into the cab of his truck.

Baba.

He thinks I am an old woman. I pull the scarf off and glance in the mirror above the windshield.

My hair is as white as my skin.

It is daylight when we get across the ice. Not much light, of course, but enough. I can really see where we are now.

Endless snow. Trucks lined up, filled with food for my poor Leningrad. Soldiers dressed in white. Not far from here—three hundred yards, maybe—is the train station that is our next destination.

The bombing starts almost immediately. Our driver stops and gets out.

Honestly, I do not want to get out of the truck, even though I know how dangerous it is to sit here. There is gasoline in the tank, and no camouflage on the truck. It is a clear target from the air. But we are warm and it has been so long. . . . Then I look down at my Leo and I forget all about the danger.

He is not breathing.

I shake him hard, ripping open his coat and pulling up the newspaper. His chest is really just a brace of bones and blue skin and boils. “Wake up, Leo. Breathe. Come on, my lion.” I put my mouth on his, breathing for him.

Finally, he shudders in my arms and I feel a sour little breath slip into my mouth.

He starts to cry.

I hold him to me, crying, too, and say, “Don’t you leave me, Leo. I couldn’t bear it.”

“His hands are so hot, Mama,” Anya says, and I see how scared she is by the suddenness of my yelling.

I touch Leo’s forehead.

He is burning up. My hands are shaking as I reposition the newspaper and button up his sweater and coat.

We are going out into the cold again.

Anya leads the way out of the truck. I am so focused on Leo that I hardly notice the bombing and gunfire going on around me. Somewhere nearby a truck explodes.

It is like being in the eye of a hurricane. All around us trucks are rolling past, horses are clopping forward pulling wagons, soldiers are running, and we poor, starved Leningraders are looking for rides.

At last I find the infirmary. It consists of flapping, dirty white tents spread out across a snowy field.

Inside, it is no hospital. It is a place for the dying and the dead. That is all. The smell is horrible. People are lying in their own freezing filth, moaning.

I dare not put Leo down for fear he’ll get worse. It seems like hours we wander around, looking for someone to help us.

Finally, I find an old man, hunched over a cane, staring at nothing. Only because he is wearing white do I approach him.

“Please,” I say, reaching for him. “My son is burning up.”

The man turns to me. He looks as tired as I feel. His hands are trembling slightly as he reaches for Leo. I can see the boils on his fingers.

He touches Leo’s forehead and then looks at me.

It is a look I will never forget. Thank God there are no words with the look. “Get him to the hospital at Cherepovets.” He shrugs. “Maybe.”

I do not ask him to say more. In fact, I don’t want him to.

He hands me four white pills. “Two a day,” he says. “With clean water. When did he eat last?”

I shake my head. How can I say the words, tell the truth? It is impossible to get him to eat.

“Cherepovets,” is all he says, and then he turns and goes away. At every step, people are reaching for him, begging for help.

“Let’s go.”

I take Anya’s hand and we make our slow, painful way through the infirmary and across the snowy field to the train station. Our papers are in order and we climb into a car, where we are again packed in too tightly. There is no seat for me or my children, so we sit on the cold floor. I hold my Leo on my lap and Anya at my side. When it gets dark, I take out my small bag of nuts. I give Anya as many as I dare and eat a few myself. I manage to get Leo to take one of the pills with a swallow of water I’ve brought.

It is a long and terrible night.

I keep leaning down to see if Leo is still breathing.

I remember stopping once. The train doors opened and someone yelled out, “Any dead? Dead? Give them to us.”

Hands reach for Leo, try to pull him out of my arms.

I hang on to him, screaming, “He’s breathing, he’s breathing.”

When the door closes and it is dark again, Anya moves closer to me. I can hear her crying.

It is no better in Cherepovets. We have one day to spend here. At first I think this is a blessing, that we will have time to save Leo before we board the next train, but he is getting weaker. I try not to see this truth, but it is lying in my arms. He coughs all the time. Now there is blood in it. He is burning hot and shivering. He will neither eat nor drink.

The hospital here is an abomination. Everyone has dysentery and scurvy. You cannot stand for more than a moment or two without seeing a new Leningrader hobble in, looking for help. Every hour, trucks loaded with corpses leave the hospital, only to return empty. People are dying where they stand.

It is good that I am weak and hungry; I don’t have the strength to run from place to place for help. Instead, I stand in the cold, bleak hallway, holding my son. When people pass, I whisper, “Help him. Please.”

Anya is asleep on the cold floor, sucking her thumb, when a nurse stops.

“Help him,” I say, handing Leo to her.

She takes him gently. I try not to notice how his head lolls back.

“He’s dystrophic. Third stage. There is no fourth.” At my blank look, she says, “Dying. But if we could get fluids into him . . . maybe. I could take him to the doctor. It would be a difficult few days, maybe, though.”

She is so young, this nurse. As young as I was before the war began. I don’t know how to believe her, or how not to. “I have evacuation papers. We are supposed to be on the train to Vologda tomorrow.”

“They won’t let your son on that train,” the young nurse says. “Not one so sick.”

“If we stay it will be impossible to get more tickets,” I say. “We’ll die here.”

The nurse says nothing to this. Lies are a waste of time.

“We could start helping Leo now, couldn’t we?” I say. “Maybe he’ll be better by tomorrow.”

The nurse cannot hide her pity for me. “Of course. Maybe he’ll be better.”

And he is.

Better.

After a night when Anya and I lay curled on the floor by Leo’s dirty cot, I wake feeling bruised and cold. But when I get to my knees and look down at Leo, he is awake. For the first time in a long time, his blue eyes are clear. “Hi, Mama,” he says in a scratchy, froglike voice that cuts right through my heart. “Where are we? Where’s Papa?”

I waken Anya, pull her up beside me. “We are right here, baby. We are on our way to your papa. He will be waiting for us in Vologda.”

I am smiling and crying as I look down at my son, my baby. Maybe it is the tears that blur my vision, or more likely it is hope. I am old enough to know better, but common sense is gone with the sound of his voice. I don’t see how blue his skin is, how the boils have burst on his chest and are seeping yellow; I don’t hear the thickness of his cough. I just see Leo. My lion. My baby with the bluest eyes and the purest laugh.

So when the nurse comes by to tell me that I should get on the train, I am confused.

“He’s getting better,” I say, looking down at him.

The silence stretches out between us, broken only by Leo’s coughing and the distant rat-a-ta-tat of gunfire. She looks pointedly at Anya.

For the first time I see how pale Anya is, how gray her chapped lips are, the angry boils on her throat. Her hair is falling out in clumps.

How did I miss all that?

“But . . .” I look around. “You said they won’t let my son on the train.”

“There are too many evacuees. They won’t transport the dying. You have papers for you and your daughter, yes?”

How is it that I don’t understand what she is saying to me until then? And how can I explain how it feels to finally understand? A knife in the heart would hurt less.

“You’re saying I should leave him here to die? Alone?”

“I’m saying he will die.” The nurse looks at Anya. “You can save her.” She touches my arm. “I’m sorry.”

I stand there, frozen, watching her walk away. I don’t know how long I stand there, but when I hear the train’s whistle, I look down at the daughter I love more than my own life, and the son of mine who is dying.

“Mama?” Anya says, frowning up at me.

I take Anya’s hand and walk her out of the hospital. At the train, I kneel in front of her.

She is so small, wrapped as she is in her bright red coat and wearing the valenki that are too big for her feet.

“Mama?”

“I can’t leave Leo here,” I say, hearing the break in my voice. He can’t die alone is what I want to say, but how can I say such a thing to my five-year-old? Does she know I am making a choice no mother should ever have to make? Will she someday hate me for this?

Her face scrunches in a frown so familiar it breaks my heart. For a second, I see her as she used to be. “But—”

“You are my strong one. You will be okay alone.”

She shakes her head, starts to cry. “No, Mama. I want to stay with you.”

I reach into my pocket and take out a piece of paper. It still smells of sausage and my stomach churns at the scent of it. I write her name on the paper and pin it to her lapel. “P-Papa will be waiting for you in Vologda. You find him. Tell him we’ll be there by Wednesday. You two can meet Leo and me.”

It feels like a lie. Tastes like one. But she trusts me.

I don’t let her hug me. I can see her reaching, reaching, and I push her back, into the crowd that is lining up around us.

A woman is standing close. Anya hits her and the woman stumbles sideways, cursing softly.

“Mama—”

I push my daughter at the stranger, who looks at me with glassy eyes.

“Take my daughter,” I say. “She has papers. Her father will be in Vologda. Aleksandr Ivanovich Marchenko.”

“No, Mama.” Anya is wailing, reaching for me.

I mean to push her away so hard she stumbles, but I can’t do it. At the last moment, I yank her into my arms and hold her tightly.

The train whistle blows. Someone yells, “Is she going?”