Debra Dean: The Madonnas Of Leningrad

She turns into the Spanish Skylight Hall. Its dark red walls once teemed with religious fervor, Murillo’s Jacob dreaming a swirl of dark angels, Zurbaran’s martyred Saint Lawrence carrying the gridiron he will be roasted on, and wherever one turned, another saint caught up in some terrible ecstasy, their eyes cast upward to the celestial light streaming through the monumental barrel-vaulted skylight. Now, though, the room seems more like an underground cavern or an abandoned mine. After a shell explosion shattered the skylight, it was tented over with plywood lashed to the frame with wire. In the gloom, the room echoes with the dripping of water, and, looking up, she sees telltale pinpricks and slivers of light. The braver women on the repair crew have repeatedly crawled out onto the skylight and tried to seal the leaks, nailing down loose boards and shellacking canvas over the seams, but wind and water continually find fresh weaknesses.

Her boots slap across the muddy floor toward a thin waterfall that spatters noisily into an overflowing pail. She hefts the heavy pail and replaces it with the empty one in her hand. Hundreds of tons of snow are melting on the roof, and it seems to Marina that she is hauling it out one pail at a time.

Her back is aching and she is short of breath. When she first knew she was pregnant, she would forget for hours at a time and be amazed afresh every time she felt the baby move. But now it is a continual presence, pressing into her bladder and against her diaphragm, waking her in the night. The baby is beginning to settle heavy and low, and the nurse says it could come any day now. Marina is of two minds on this. So long as it is in her womb, she can protect it from the world. But already it is two weeks late, and the lake is thawing.

Descending the stairs, she feels for each step, balancing against the weight of the water in her hand and the weight of the child thrust out in front of her. In the winter, she was careful not to fall because she might not have the strength to get up. Now, though, she is not thinking of herself. Everything now is for this child. She is merely a vehicle for something bigger.

She figures she has time enough for one more trip before lunch, but when she climbs the stairs with her emptied pail, she finds herself veering off her path, drawn toward the light and the sound of voices coming from the Hanging Gardens above the Palace Mews. Just five minutes to rest myself, she promises.

The garden, once dotted with flowering trees and graceful statuary, is now stripped bare, the marble fountain standing alone amid raw squares of earth. A cluster of women are on their knees in the freshly turned soil, chattering among themselves like sparrows as they root shell splinters out of the ground and plant rows of seed. One of them notices her and waves. It is Olga Markhaeva. She pulls herself to her feet and brushes the soil off the front of her coat.

“You shouldn’t be lugging water.” Since Olga learned of Marina’s pregnancy, she has taken charge of Marina’s care, advising her to sleep with her feet elevated, somehow procuring handfuls of fresh dandelion greens, even accompanying her to a doctor to help her secure a milk ration. The doctor’s office was crowded with dystrophics, and it was only through Olga’s doggedness that Marina had gotten five minutes of the harried doctor’s time.

“I’m fine,” she reassures Olga. “Dr. Sokolov said I may continue to work just as I have been. It’s healthy for the baby, he says.”

“What does he know, the old rooster. You are not one of the serfs on his old family estate. Here, sit down and take the weight off your feet.” Olga takes Marina ’s arm and leads her to a bench against the wall. Marina sinks down gratefully. She draws the rich, loamy smells of earth into her lungs and turns her face up to the weak, watery light of the new sun. She can barely feel its warmth-she doubts she will ever feel completely warm again-but the light prickles at numb nerve endings.

“Dmitri and I used to bring our lunches out here,” she says, running her hand over the marble. It is smooth and warm under her palm. “We sat on this bench.”

Olga nods but doesn’t say anything. There are too many dead for words of comfort. This is just the way it is.

The bench has been moved. It used to be in the center of the garden, under a particularly beautiful corkscrew willow. They would chew on their sandwiches and listen to the plashing of the fountain; little rainbows hung in its mist. Dmitri talked about Hemingway and Babel. The sun danced in the green leaves. The perfume of wisteria hung in the air.

It doesn’t seem possible that this is the same place. Last summer, the statues were removed to rooms below, and then the harsh winter killed off all the trees and shrubs. Dead willows were cut down one by one for firewood, and now the honeysuckle and wisteria have been pulled out and the rose beds dug up to make room for vegetable plots. There is nothing left but this bench, the fountain, and, heaped against the wall next to her, a dozen old lilac bushes, soil still clinging to their root-balls. The gnarled limbs are covered with leaves.

“Look. They are still alive,” Marina says. The lilacs, planted ages and ages ago for the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, have survived. The heart-shaped leaves seem to glow from within, hundreds of hearts pulsing with a beautiful warm green light. She has never seen such a brilliant green.

“It’s a pity, isn’t it,” Olga says. “They leafed out but they didn’t blossom. Besides, we need the room for vegetables. One cannot eat lilacs.”

Marina leans forward and plucks a single leaf. It is as translucent as a baby’s skin, each delicate vein visible, its tender edges just starting to curl inward. She feels something inside her rip open, and the leaf is swimming in a blurry flood of tears.

“There, there.” Olga rubs Marina ’s back tentatively. “Stop, now. You mustn’t weep. It isn’t good for the baby, so much grief.”

Marina shakes her head mutely. She can’t explain it, but what she is feeling is as much gratitude as grief, some primal feeling that contains both. “It’s not that,” she sobs. “I’m here to see it. This green. This day.”

In a way, it was easier in winter. The dark, the cold, the hunger, reduced the world to a repeating sequence of dull, small movements. One moved through the day like a zombie, enduring the unendurable, feeling nothing. Now, Marina finds herself awash in sensation. It is like waking from the dead. Her muscles and bones are stiff, but her soul reels drunkenly, buffeted by unexpected memories and by a tenderness of feeling that surprises her.

“It is the pregnancy,” Olga says, visibly relieved to have this explanation. “The mother’s moods become tidal.” She hands Marina a clean rag and watches while she mops her eyes and blows her nose.

“We’ll eat. You’ll feel better. It is time for lunch, anyway.”

The canteen is filled with workers and the murmuring surge and ebb of dozens of conversations. This is new. In the winter, one heard only the shuffle of feet, the slow scrape of utensils, as each diner focused mutely on his food, but as the weather has warmed, meals have started to become social again, with people turning their attentions outward. Marina and Olga stand in line for bowls of porridge and bread and then, carrying their trays, weave through the tables until they spot Anya and another babushka seated at a large table.

Anya is one of the enigmas of the winter starvation. She was so frail in the winter that Marina did not expect her to survive, yet here she is. She is bone thin and shriveled as an apple doll, but alive.

“Just look at you,” Anya says. “This baby must be fat as a little prince,” she says. “Here, sit down next to me, dear.” She pats the bench next to her.