Debra Dean: The Madonnas Of Leningrad

Fragonard called this The Stolen Kiss , but the boy is not stealing something from her. It is the moment that is stolen before she is called away.

It is like disappearing for a few moments at a time, like a switch being turned off. A short while later, the switch mysteriously flips again. When her eyes blink open, her friend Dmitri’s face is before her. She has the sense that he has been watching her.

They have hardly seen each other since the start of the war. Even though his battalion has been drilling in Palace Square for the past week, though she has heard the shouted orders and the drumbeat of marching feet through the open windows of the Hermitage and known that he was at most a few hundred meters away, there simply hasn’t been time.

“I came to take you out. I don’t have to report to the barracks until morning, and I want to take you out for dinner.”

“Dinner? What time is it?”

“Almost nine.”

“In the evening?” She is always disoriented now. The Hermitage staff has been packing almost round the clock for weeks and weeks now, eating sandwiches brought into the galleries, slipping away only to use the toilet. In the first week, they crated more than half a million pieces of art and artifacts. And then on the last night of June, an endless parade of trucks carried away the crates. A train, twenty-two cars long and armed with machine guns, waited at the goods depot to spirit the priceless art away, its destination a state secret. Walking back through the rooms, through wastelands of shredded paper, Marina had averted her eyes. Many of the older people wept.

But that was only the visible tip of the collection, the masterpieces on permanent display. Since then, they have been packing up hundreds of thousands of additional items, lesser paintings and drawings, pieces of sculpture, jewelry and coins, collections of silver and shards of pottery. A second train will depart in two days, and there is still no end in sight.

Nevertheless, for no reason that Marina can imagine, she has been relieved until tomorrow morning, when she must report back for her ARP duty as a fire warden. Dmitri has made some kind of arrangement with the woman from the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory who is directing the packing of breakables; he will tell her no more than this, and Comrade Markovish will say only that Dmitri has promised to name their first daughter after her. She winks at Dmitri and adds, “But he has not asked me my given name.”

“I’m so sorry, Comrade Markovish. What is your name?”

“Ah, too late, Comrade Buriakov,” she teases. “The deal is already made.” She turns to Marina. “Go on. Just don’t say anything to the other girls. I can’t spare another hand.”

She and Dmitri pass through room after room, weaving through a maze of sealed and labeled crates and past dozens of women lined up along tables filled with porcelain or kneeling on the floor in a forest of silver candelabra. She is ashamed to be leaving for no better reason than a meal, but when they step out into the air and she feels the breeze washing off the Neva River, her shame is forgotten. She sucks the bracing air deep into her lungs and feels herself revive. Except to run up to the roof every time the air raid sirens shriek, she has hardly set foot outside, has been home only a few times, and only then for just long enough to bathe and to change into fresh clothes that her aunt has washed out for her.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“You shall see,” he says mysteriously. He takes her arm and guides her through knots of evening strollers, across Palace Square, under the triumphal arch, and over onto Nevsky Prospekt, the main thoroughfare. In the space of a few weeks, the city has been transformed. The spire of Peter and Paul Cathedral is draped in camouflage rigging, the Admiralty tower spattered with gray paint. They pass shop windows that are crosshatched with strips of paper to prevent their shattering in the event of shelling. The window of a pharmacy is papered with a lacy design of flowers and crosses as elaborate as a Fabergé egg. After a few more blocks, Dmitri turns the corner onto Mikhailovskaya Street and stops outside the front entrance to the Hotel Grand Europa. Its plate-glass windows are hidden behind a wall of sandbags, but the front doors are open and she hears music coming from inside.

“Oh, no, Dima. I can’t go in there. Look at me.” The Hotel Grand Europa is legendary for its elegance, and she is still wearing her blue work smock.

“You look fine,” he says. “What do you care what they think? Do you know anyone in there?”

“But it’s horribly expensive.”

“It is. But what am I saving my money for?” The question is not rhetorical; he is waiting for her to answer.

As though he could read her thoughts, he says, “I’m not being foolhardy, Marina. I might as well spend it now. I suspect the ruble won’t be worth an empty eggshell by the time I get back.” He takes her hand. “Please humor me. This is a special night.”

She can’t imagine what is special about tonight, except that every night is special now. Every day, every night since the war began has become infused with a new intensity, the awareness that the world is about to change. It is strangely exhilarating. There is the possibility that when this is all over, the Soviet Union will be a better place. She is ready for change, any change.

The grand Art Deco dining room is buzzing, its tables full. Astonishing the way the world can tilt on its axis and yet people continue to walk upright, to go about their days, eating their dinners in restaurants, making their plans. Except for the incongruity of gas masks hanging from the necks of the finely dressed patrons, one might think the war looming outside were a fiction. A harpist plucks delicate music from the air, and palm trees waft in the colored light of a stained-glass skylight.

The maître d’ guides them through the room to a table in a corner. He pulls out Marina ’s chair, and with a flourish snaps open a linen napkin and drapes it across her lap. Like magic, a waiter appears at Dmitri’s elbow.

Dmitri orders champagne and osetra caviar, but the waiter takes stock of the young couple and confides that really, the caviar is not worth the thieves’ rates being charged these days. He glances around discreetly. “Secretary Kuznetsov himself was here for dinner earlier, and I told him precisely the same thing. He had instead a very nice fish solyanka, followed by sturgeon in cream sauce with potatoes and a salad of cucumbers and tomatoes.” Dmitri thanks the waiter and agrees that they cannot do better than to follow the Party secretary’s wise choice.

It is indeed a delicious dinner, and in spite of her exhaustion, Marina finds herself enjoying it immensely. Dmitri is quiet, but Marina fills the silences by telling him about the progress of the work at the museum.

“I’m packing things I’ve never seen before. I just had no idea. You go on your usual routes through the museum, seeing the same things every day, and you forget how much more is not on display. I don’t think anyone, except Orbeli, of course, had any idea just how much there was to evacuate. It’s overwhelming sometimes.

“This morning, I had an eerie moment,” she confides. She would never admit this to anyone but Dmitri. “I was packing a set of eighteenth-century Belgian Delft. Each plate has a different scene from this particular town. They are so detailed, almost like paintings, except all blue and white. For hours it was just blue and white, blue and white, plate after plate, all these detailed little scenes of houses and canals and milkmaids. And I suppose I was daydreaming because I was wrapping this one plate-it pictured the front of a house, and there was a splotch of bright red on the door. And I thought that was odd, but maybe it was a religious reference. But then the next plate, as I was looking at it, suddenly there was a splash of red in the water of the canal. And then more red. And then every plate I picked up, when I looked at it, blood appeared in the scene. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I got a little panicky until I realized it was coming from me. My nose was bleeding. Nothing alarming, it’s just from leaning over from the waist for too long. It’s happening to everybody, but I suppose I was so tired, it just didn’t occur to me. I know it sounds silly, something for the hens to laugh at, but I had a moment when I thought I was having a vision.” She smiles at her own ridiculousness.