Debra Dean: The Madonnas Of Leningrad

The porridge is delicious, green and tangy with beet tops.

While they eat, the women chat about the progress of work in the Hanging Garden. They talk about what is being planted, how many rows of carrots and cabbage, how many rows of leeks and onions, what will be ready for harvest first.

“It’s just a big kitchen garden, though,” Olga says. “It won’t be enough to get us through.”

Even on a bright spring day, it is hard to avoid thinking forward to next winter. No one talks anymore of an imminent resolution to the war. The Red Army’s victories in December buoyed the population for months, but despite a full-scale offensive, the winter campaign has ended in a stalemate, and the army is near collapse from exhaustion.

Meanwhile, spring is melting the ice road over Lake Ladoga and the only means of escape out of the city. Though the trucks continue to roll along the road, already their wheels are splashing through water.

“If the warm weather holds, they say the road may close within a few weeks,” Marina tells Anya. “Dr. Sokolov said I would be able to travel about a week after the birth, but the baby is already two weeks late.” Her plan is to travel south to a little resort town in the Caucasus, where many of the Hermitage staff have already headed.

“God will provide, dear,” Anya says.

“I don’t want to be disrespectful, but after all you have seen, how can you say that?”

The old woman’s expression is so full of anguish that Marina is instantly sorry to have challenged her.

“I don’t know what He will provide for you, dear. The future is always written with a pitchfork on the water. But I will pray for you. It will do you no harm anyway.”

Olga bids them a good afternoon and heads back upstairs to the garden. Marina walks with Anya out to the courtyard. It is strewn with furniture: rows of gilt chairs, Russian Empire settees and divans. The upholstered furniture in the museum has begun to bloom with mildew, and because the staff is too weak to heft the heavy pieces, cadets from the naval academy have been brought in to help move them all into the sun to air. A few old women are working on the upholstery with brushes, dusting a green fur off the brocades and velvets.

Anya claims a comfortable armchair and asks Marina to help her remove her boots. Marina squats at her feet and pulls a shabby felt boot into her lap. The laces are frayed to threads and so knobbed with knots that it is slow work unlacing them. She is careful not to tug hard, lest the boot fall apart in her hands.

“The stockings, too, dear, please,” Anya says, leaning her face back into the sunshine and closing her eyes. Marina rolls down the old woman’s heavy stocking, exposing a blackened foot. Anya wriggles her toes and sighs luxuriantly.

“It is good to be alive on a day like this.” She sinks back into the armchair, propping her bare foot on another chair and lifting her other foot like an expectant child waiting to be undressed by her nurse.

By the time Marina has stripped the second foot and set it gently next to its neighbor, Anya’s chin is drooping on her chest and her eyes are closed. Her face is soft, and saliva burbles on her open lips. It is the privilege of the old, Marina thinks. She tells herself that if she lives so long, perhaps she will be able to sleep like that again.

In the space of an hour, the dozens of buckets and urns in the Spanish Hall have overflowed, creating a sea of mud where they’ve mixed with the sand.

On her second pass upstairs, she hears the nearly forgotten sound of laughter. She follows the sound through the Skylight halls and into the Knights’ Hall, where a pair of boys wearing the blue uniforms of the cadets are peering into a huge showcase, their noses pressed against the glass. Inside are three stuffed horses and the padded forms of knights stripped of their medieval tournament armor and looking like dress dummies.

“You should see them with their armor,” Marina says. The boys startle at Marina ’s voice and back away from the case guiltily.

Smiling, she tries to put them at ease, but their faces remain solemn and unreadable.

“They don’t look like much now, but they are quite fierce when they’re dressed. Even the horses wore armor.” Marina describes the jointed full-body armor, the heavy visored helmets, and the breastplates that protected the horses.

The younger of the two boys, only a few years older than her cousins, asks shyly, “Are they real?”

“The horses? Oh, yes, they’re stuffed.”

The older boy stands rooted to the spot, his glance darting nervously between Marina and the door behind her.

“It’s okay,” she reassures him. “You’re supposed to stop and look. We all do. I’ll tell you what: when you’re done, would you like me to show you what else we have here?”

The boys hesitate.

“I don’t know if our captain will allow it,” the older boy volunteers.

“I’ll speak to your captain and to mine. It seems like the least we can do to thank you for all your help.”

“Yes, auntie,” the older one says to her. It is the commonplace term used to address any older woman, but Marina has to resist the urge to hug him.

“Good, then. It’s settled.”

Green . The word doesn’t begin to describe this.

For the moment, she forgets that she is lost, that she is weak and chilled and the soles of her feet are tender with sores. She pinches a leaf between her thumb and forefinger and holds it up. It is breathtakingly beautiful, the first new green of the world, the light of creation still shining inside it. She studies it. Time recedes, and she floats beyond it, absorbed totally and completely in this vision. Who knows how much time has passed? She is beyond the tyranny of time. Dmitri once left her sitting in a chair by the window and returned later to find her still entranced by the dance of dust motes caught in a shaft of late-afternoon sun. He claimed to have done three loads of wash in what felt to her like an instant.

This slow erosion of self has its compensations. Having forgotten whatever associations might dull her vision, she can look at a leaf and see it as if for the first time. Though reason suggests otherwise, she has never seen this green before. It is wondrous. Each day, the world is made fresh again, holy, and she takes it in, in all its raw intensity, like a young child. She feels something bloom in her chest-joy or grief, eventually they are inseparable. The world is so acutely beautiful, for all its horrors, that she will be sorry to leave it.

Helen drifts in and out of sleep, losing consciousness and then starting awake moments later as though she were in danger of drowning. When the sky lightens again, she checks the clock. It is almost five. Twenty-six hours now since this thing started, another hour or two on top of that since her mother disappeared into the night. She sits up slowly, testing her stiff limbs and neck. Dmitri is prone on the couch, his face slack with sleep and his chest lifting and falling rhythmically. Like a mother with a fussy newborn, she slides quietly off of her cot and sneaks out of the room.

The cafeteria is nearly empty: only a silver-haired man with the ropy build of a hiker whom she recognizes as the search coordinator, and Mike, who is stretched out on a narrow bench, his eyes closed, remain. It occurs to her that he, too, has been here nearly a full day, and she wonders if anyone is waiting for him at home. Rather than wake him, she asks the coordinator if there is any news. He shakes his head, his face etched with compassion. “I wish I could tell you different. But that’s a crackerjack team out there. And the temperature’s stayed warm enough at night. I think we’ve got lots of reason to feel hopeful.” He holds her gaze and adds, “I’ve been told she’s a tough lady. I’m looking forward to meeting her.”