Then Tatiana heard Dasha whispering to Alexander, “You said before that we would get married—when, my love, when?”

He whispered back, “Let’s wait, Dasha.”

“No,” she said. “Wait for what? You said we would do it when you got leave. Let’s get married tomorrow. We’ll go to the registry office and get married in ten minutes. Tania and Marina can be our witnesses. Come on, Alexander, we have nothing to wait for.”

Tatiana turned to the wall.

“Dasha, listen to me. The fighting is too intense. And haven’t you heard? Comrade Stalin has made it a crime to be taken prisoner. It’s now against the law to fall into German hands. To prevent me further from willingly giving myself up to the Germans, our great leader has decided to take away family rations from the Soviet POW. If I get taken by the Germans and we’re married, you will lose your rations. You. Tania. Your mother, grandmother. All of you. I will have to get killed to keep you getting your bread.”

“Oh, Alexander. Oh, no.”

“We’ll wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For a better time.”

“Will there be a better time?”

“Yes.”

Then they fell quiet.

Tatiana turned away from the wall, to Dasha, and stared at the back of Alexander’s head. She was remembering lying in his arms, naked and broken in Luga, with his breath in her hair.

In the middle of the night Dasha got up to go to the bathroom. Tatiana thought Alexander was asleep, but he turned around and faced her. In the dark she made out his liquid eyes. Under the blanket his leg moved sideways and touched hers; she was wearing socks and two layers of flannel pajamas. When she heard Dasha in the outside hallway, she closed her eyes. Alexander moved his leg away.

The following evening Tatiana cooked only half a can of ham for all of them. It was about a tablespoonful each, but at least it was ham. Dasha grumbled that it wasn’t enough.

“Anton is dying,” said Tatiana. “Eat the ham. Nina Iglenko has not had ham since August.”

After dinner Mama went to her sewing machine. Since the start of September she had been bringing work home. The army needed winter uniforms, and the factory offered Mama a bonus if she made twenty uniforms a day instead of ten. A bonus of a few rubles and one extra ration. Mama worked until one in the morning for 300 grams of bread and some rubles. This evening she went to her sewing seat, sat down, took her materials, and said, “Where is my sewing machine?”

No one spoke.

“Where is my sewing machine? Tania, where is my sewing machine?”

“I don’t know, Mama,” said Tatiana.

Babushka limped forward and said, “Irina, I sold it.”

“You what?”

“I traded it in for those soybeans and oil you had tonight. They were so good, Ira.”

“Mama!” Irina screamed. She became hysterical. For minutes she sobbed into her hands. Tatiana stood and watched Alexander’s pained expression as he went out into the hallway.

“Mama, how could you do that?” Irina cried. “You know that every night they offer me work, and every night I kill myself on that thing to make something for myself, to bring something for my family, something just for us! Don’t you know they were telling me I could get some oats every day, too, if I managed to get up to twenty-five uniforms. Oh, Mama, what have you done?”

Tatiana left the room herself. Alexander was sitting on the hallway sofa, smoking. Taking a pen, she went behind the sofa, knelt on the floor, and started lifting the bag of oats so she could mark its level. The oatmeal, the flour, the sugar just kept disappearing. Behind her she heard Alexander say, “Come on, get up off the floor. It’s too hard for you. Let me help.” She moved out of his way, and he lifted the bag for her as she looked inside and drew a black line on the outside. “What do you think, Tatia?” Alexander said, calling her Tatia quietly. “Private enterprise for your mother? Who would’ve thought?”

“It’s everywhere, though,” said Tatiana. “’Socialism in one country’ seems not to work so well when the country is fighting a war.” She motioned to the bag of flour.

Picking it up, Alexander nodded. “Just like during the Russian civil war and right after. Have you noticed that during war, to preserve its own life, the beast subsides and lies low…”

“Just long enough to get strong again and rear its head. Wait, hold the flour a little lower.” Her hand with the pen touched his hand holding the bag. She did not look up.

“What’s your Mama going to do, Tania?”

“I don’t know. What’s Babushka going to do? She’s got nothing left to sell.” Taking her hand away, Tatiana went into the kitchen to wash the dishes from dinner.

As she headed back to the room, Alexander entered the kitchen. They were alone. She went to walk past him, and he moved in front of her; she tried to go the other way, and he moved in front of her. Tatiana looked up at him and saw that his eyes were twinkling.

Her own eyes twinkling, she stood still for a moment and then moved right, left, and was around him. Glancing back and smiling, Tatiana said quietly, “Got to be quicker than that, Shura,” and he laughed loudly.

Alexander left after four days and went back to base. Everybody missed him when he went.

The good news was he was staying in Leningrad for another week or so, doing patrol work and base maintenance, building barricades and training new recruits. He couldn’t stay over anymore, but he spent most evenings with them, and in the mornings he came at six-thirty and walked Tatiana to Fontanka to get her rations.

One morning when he came, he said, “I heard Dimitri’s been shot!”

“No!”

“True.” He paused.

“What happened? Did he go down in a blaze of glory?”

“He shot himself in the foot with his Nagant sidearm.”

“Oh, I forget,” Tatiana said. “He is not you.”

Placing a hand on her coat, Alexander told her Dimitri was in a Volkhov hospital, indefinitely out of action. “On top of the foot wound, he’s got dystrophy.”

“What’s that?”

Tatiana felt that Alexander almost did not want to tell her. “Dystrophy,” he said slowly, “is a muscle-mass disease, degenerative. Brought on by acute malnutrition.”

Patting him lightly, Tatiana said in a weak voice, “Don’t worry, Shura. I won’t get it. I have no muscles.”

They waited patiently for her rations.

Alexander kept looking down at her, trying to get her to meet his expectant gaze. Tatiana strongly sensed that he wanted something from her, but what it was she didn’t know and couldn’t guess at.

Couldn’t? Or didn’t want to?

Alexander’s rations helped them stretch their food supplies a little longer. He got a king’s ration—800 grams of bread per day!—more than half of what they were getting for the five of them. He also received 150 grams of meat and 140 of cereals and half a kilo of vegetables.

Tatiana was elated when he came for dinner, bringing with him his food for the day. Was it because she was happy to see him or was it because she was happy to eat better? Alexander would hand her the food, telling her to divide it into six portions. “And, Tania,” he would tell her every time, “six equal portions.”

The meat in his ration was not beef but some kind of pasty pork or sometimes an aged chicken leg with thick skin. It took all of Tatiana’s mental strength not to give him the largest cut. She did what she could and gave him the best.

There were no more candlesticks to trade and no more dishes, except for the six plates the Metanovs kept for themselves and Alexander. Babushka wanted to trade their old blankets and coats, but Mama put her foot down. “No. Winter is cold here in the city. We will need them.” The temperature had dropped below freezing in the third week of October. Only six sheets remained for three beds, only six towels. Babushka wanted to trade one of the towels, but Tania put her foot down, remembering that Alexander needed a towel, too.