Debra Dean: The Madonnas Of Leningrad

Eventually, the light drains from the sky outside. At first, it seemed inconceivable that Marina could simply vanish, and though Helen was worried, at some deeper level she believed her worries were unfounded. Any moment, her mother would turn up, confused but unharmed. But with each hour that has elapsed, that outcome has seemed increasingly remote, and now, with the coming of dark, Helen realizes that, on an unconscious level, she is bracing herself against an unspecified horror. Dmitri, too, has retreated back into himself; he no longer asks any questions, and even when Mike comes in he registers no interest. Mike suggests again that they go back to the hotel, but he gets nowhere; Dmitri has set like concrete and will not be moved any farther to the periphery. Instead, a cot and blankets are brought in, though these too seem outside the private conditions of his vigil. If he cannot go and search for his wife, perhaps he can bring her back by force of will.

Helen flips through a magazine, waiting for something to grab her attention. She can’t sleep, either, but neither can she focus enough to read anymore. She gets up and crosses over to a rack of pamphlets on the wall: how to prevent sexually transmitted disease, how to recognize depression, how to choose the right college or career, advice against methamphetamine use and smoking and alcohol. She is glad her children are grown. Given the limitless risks, it seems a miracle that any children survive into adulthood-and deeply unjust that one may survive and then find at the other end of life not rest but a new set of dangers.

“Are you sure you don’t want the cot, Papa?” she asks. He shakes his head like a slow metronome.

“I think I’m going to try this again.” He doesn’t respond. She feels guilty, as though she is giving up on her mother or abandoning him.

She walks over to the couch and, sitting down beside him, takes his hand. His mouth shifts a little, but he doesn’t raise his eyes or otherwise acknowledge her. His hand is limp in hers.

“We have never spent a night apart,” he says eventually.

“What about the war?” she asks.

He brushes the comment off, and she’s not about to force the issue. But she doesn’t know what else to say, either.

“Well, okay,” she says, squeezing his hand, and rising to her feet. “I love you.”

He nods. “I love you also, Lenochka.”

“Do you mind if I turn off the overhead light? I can leave this lamp on.”

Lying on the cot, she stares at the ceiling. A random design of holes is punched into the acoustic tiles. She searches idly for patterns, as one might scan the night sky for crabs and hunters and lions. Here is what might be a face with one eye, there a dog with an enormous tail. Only a desperate need for sense, she thinks, could connect these dots into pictures, or the constellations into a meaningful universe.

In March, the public baths are opened. Marina and Olga Markhaeva wait in line outside the banya for three hours, as clusters of women emerge and two dozen more are admitted. In the park across the street, the bulbs that were not dug up and eaten during the winter are pushing spears through the snow. It is still cold, but the bitter grip of winter is loosening. Icicles are melting and crashing to the ground, and each day, the sun stays up in the sky five minutes longer than the day before.

Katya Kostrovitskaia, a worker on the museum’s crash rescue team, approaches them as she is leaving. Her cheeks are flushed. “It is marvelous,” she tells them. “The steam is not so hot as the old days, and there are no birch branches to make vaniks , but feel,” she says, and wraps Olga’s hands in her own. “They are still warm.”

Finally, they reach the front of the line and hand over their tickets. They enter an anteroom with rows of benches where, with a few dozen others, they disrobe. “Deposit your clothing with the laundry workers,” an attendant requests. “It will be disinfected and held for you. Your time will be limited to two hours. Please return to the anteroom and collect your clothing before the two hours has elapsed. May your steam be easy.”

Marina sits down beside Olga and gingerly begins to remove her boots and roll down the top layer of stockings. She has lived in these same clothes from week to week, sleeping and working swaddled in so many layers that her body has been disguised even to herself. While climbing the Jordan Staircase, she studiously avoids her reflection in the mirrored walls, but when she washes herself in a darkened corner of the shelter, sponging her neck and arms and up under her skirts, she has felt the bones of her body surfacing, one by one. Whether she is sitting or lying, they stab against her skin.

The ring that Dmitri gave her in the fall and which she has never gotten sized now knocks loosely against the knuckle of her ring finger as she rolls down another stocking. She stares with horror at the leg that emerges, its skin like burlap and splotched with blue spots from scurvy. At the end, the foot is as rough and blackened as the pads of a dog’s paw. Her stomach lurches, and she shuts her eyes. She rolls down the stockings on the other leg without looking, and then methodically unbuttons and removes first her sweater and then her wool skirt and then the dress beneath it. When finally she peels away the last of her undergarments, she stands naked, feeling the forgotten whisper of air against skin.

She cannot look at herself, but her hands reach for her naked belly of their own accord. While the rest of her has withered, her belly has continued to swell, and her hands have explored the growing expanse with wonder. Now, she waits, her attention focused inward, until she feels a reassuring stirring.

“Mine is distended, too.” When Marina turns, Olga is gesturing at her own abdomen. It is as rounded as a piece of fruit. Marina is about to protest, but Olga lowers her voice to a whisper. “Who would think human beings could look like this and still be alive? Look, you can’t even tell the men from the women, except for their penises.”

Marina follows Olga’s glance down the row of naked bodies opposite them. None of them look either male or female, just an undifferentiated procession of ancient, emaciated carcasses, but sure enough, about halfway down the row she sees a penis resting between two withered legs. The man sits, hands limp at his sides and eyes staring stonily ahead, unashamed. There are too few men left in the city to warrant separate baths, but everyone is past caring, their modesty as shriveled as their bodies. Neither is it modesty that makes Marina avert her eyes to the floor. It is revulsion. These are not bodies but wasted skeletons, rib cages and knobby spines and jutting femurs supported on impossibly spindly legs.

Attendants move down the line of benches, collecting clothing and checking each person for lice, systematically moving their hands over scalps before directing them to a tiled shower room where another attendant explains that the water will run for only three minutes, and they must wash their hair and every part of their bodies in that time. Marina steps under the shower and water streams over her head and batters her skin like a hard rain. She grabs the bar of rough lye soap and scours her feet, then works quickly up her body. She has just enough time to rinse the soap out of her hair before the water trickles to a stop.

Before entering the steam bath, they are handed metal basins filled with water and are cautioned to watch for signs of faintness.

It is like passing into the interior of a cloud and entering heaven. Billowing steam obscures all but the few women sitting closest to the door, but the tiled room echoes with the voices of a hundred. Olga grasps Marina ’s hand and sighs happily.