IF IT HADN’T BEEN FOR THE DOGS, I THINK I MIGHT HAVE GONE A LITTLE CRAZY. ONLY FIVE DAYS AGO I’D LEFT LENINGRAD; SO MUCH HAD HAPPENED SINCE THEN, IT FELT like a month. I’m sure my mother didn’t have Axel Recht in mind when she sent me across the ice road to “safety.” And yet here I was, a sort of prisoner with special privileges in the very heart of darkness.
On the second morning I awakened at headquarters, Axel was gone. No one could really understand me except Fritzi. But after seeing him last night as I crept back into my room, I wanted to keep my distance. I asked one of the men in Axel’s office through pantomime when Axel would be back by pointing at the wall clock and the major’s desk. All I got was a look of annoyance. It was the best thing that could have happened. Now I could give all my attention to training the dogs.
With Axel’s letter securely in my shirt pocket, I left to go outside with them through the side door of the basement. Dieter was gone, another soldier in his place. I walked right up to him, showed him Axel’s letter, and let him pet the dogs. I wanted him to notice us. Until we escaped from this place, my goal was for the sight of me walking the dogs to become commonplace.
Petr’s instructions for the night of the escape were for me to go down Kirov Avenue just outside headquarters for one block, turn right, and then turn right again when I reached the alley. Polina would be waiting. Today would be my first dry run.
Thor and Zasha couldn’t have been happier. Thor sort of leapt every few feet as if in joy, anxious to be running and having fun. A light snow began to fall. I walked toward the street I thought was Kirov — Petr had described its position to me — but, as in Leningrad, all the street signs were gone.
“Let’s see if we can figure this out,” I murmured to the dogs, walking faster, anxious to get to the corner to see if there was an alley where Petr had said there would be. The dogs fell into a walking rhythm together like they were little huskies pulling a sled. How beautiful it was to look down and see them ahead of me, the snowflakes landing on their thick fur, their bodies moving with such coordination and grace.
“Let’s turn here,” I said as we reached the corner. “That’s it.” We passed a well-tended house and its snowy garden before we came to an alley. My heart beat fast as I thought about how we would be here again in two and a half days under the cover of darkness.
The alley was like a narrow road; no German vehicles were going to come plowing down this little lane. We walked past the back of the first house and I saw immediately why Petr had picked his spot. A garden shed belonging to the second house abutted the alley, perfect for hiding behind. If unlocked, a shelter for a quick, private change of clothes.
“I think it’s going to work,” I whispered to the dogs, so excited to have a clear picture of it all in my mind. “Now we can go walk!” They pulled me back to the street and right, taking up just where we’d left off.
I was thinking so intently about what I would teach Zasha and Thor as we walked briskly through the light snow that when someone came up behind me and spoke, I jumped.
“Ivan, it’s only me,” Polina said, looking concerned and casting a watchful eye around her.
“But why are you here?” I said, my heart pounding. “I was doing a practice run with the dogs. Is everything okay?”
“Keep walking normally,” she instructed me. “If we’re stopped we say I’m on my way to Galina’s house to see if the chickens have laid any eggs.” She patted the handle of the wicker basket resting in the crook of her arm, a kerchief neatly folded on the bottom.
“Why are you here?”
“I’m practicing,” she said brightly. Her face was less swollen, but the cut above her eye still looked new.
“Me, too. Do you have information for me?”
“Not much. I’ve been walking the west side of the village from below Petr’s up to the German perimeter in the north.”
“And?”
“There doesn’t seem to be anyone guarding the southwest area. Yes, it’s remote and hilly, but … I keep asking myself why the security is wide open there. It makes no sense.”
“Unless …”
Polina stopped walking. “Unless what?”
“Unless that’s the direction they’ll go when they leave.”
Her bright eyes reflected the excitement within her. “That’s what I’ve been thinking! They don’t want to waste manpower in the west. They probably think the people of Vilnov won’t go that way under any circumstances. There’s nothing in the west to go to! A twenty-mile strip of land, then Lake Ladoga, then Leningrad. And who in their right mind wants to go to Leningr — Oh, I’m so sorry, Ivan. I didn’t mean it in that way.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re right. The city is half dead. I don’t even know if my mother …” I couldn’t make the words come out of my mouth. Polina slipped her arm through mine, and we walked in silence until I regained control of myself.
“What effect does this have on our escape route?” I asked finally.
“I think it means that if you go west and then north — and stay off the roads — you’ll have a good chance of making it. Just make sure you leave before they do.”
“Have you nailed the boxes to the sleds yet?”
“I have. They’re all ready for the dogs. You look so worried, Ivan.”
“I am! The idea of stuffing the puppies in potato sacks and then putting them in boxes on your sleds is pretty …”
“Imaginative?”
I laughed and looked down at the dogs, who were busy smelling the bottom of a tree. “Yes.”
“And makes the dogs suddenly disappear?” she teased.
“That, too. And you promised to cut lots and lots of airholes.”
“Already done.”
I’d noticed that Polina hadn’t acknowledged the dogs at all yet, except for watching them as we walked. “Do you want to pet them?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said softly, looking at them. “But I shouldn’t. I can’t let my heart get attached to anything right now. It’s like I’m protecting it.”
“I understand,” I said softly, and I did. At that moment I realized I would soon lose Polina, and some of my other new friends. It was almost more than I could stand; I’d been torn away from so much already. And even though Polina and I hadn’t been friends that long, it still hurt. “Polina, do you think we’ll ever see each other again?”
“Maybe someday, when the war is over.” She looked at me sadly when she said it.
“It might not be over for years.” I felt desolate.
Her eyes glistened. “I wish there were no war. Sometimes I just want to be a normal girl worrying about normal things.”
I smiled. “Fortunately, you’re one of the least normal girls I know. Wait — I’m not sure that came out right.”
She laughed. “It’s okay. I think I know what you mean.”
“I’m starting to feel better,” I said. “This plan is coming into focus. I meet you in the alley, the dogs go into the sacks in the boxes nailed to the sleds. We take the path near Galina’s down to Petr’s. From there, Vladimir drives us to his place.”
“That’s where Petr is now,” Polina said.
“So no one knows if Vladimir has agreed to help us?”
“No, we don’t.”
My emotions seemed to sway like branches in a strong wind. I was feeling doubtful and fearful again.
“Just two more days, Ivan.”
“Two more days.”
We said good-bye, but when she was just a few feet away from me I said, “Polina, what if someone chases us? What do we do?”
“You let go of the sleds and you leave the dogs. You run for your life down to Petr’s.”
Did she really expect me to abandon them? Axel was a punisher. If I wasn’t there to satisfy his vengeance, I had no doubt he’d take it out on the dogs.
“Maybe Josef and Yeshka could help us.”
Polina took a few steps toward me. “They have their orders. We have to make our part succeed by ourselves.”
That was the truth; there was no more to be said. Polina turned and left.
After I’d walked with the dogs another twenty minutes, I returned to headquarters and dug something out of my duffle bag. Fritzi had shown me a small bathroom off the kitchen. I took it there and hoped no one would come in for the next few minutes.
I laid my father’s shaving kit on the side of the sink, carefully pulling out a brush and a straight razor. I took off my shirt and ran the water until it was hot, letting it clean and soften the brush. Swishing it around on the soap, I foamed it enough that I was able to cover my face in a thin layer of soap suds. Taking the razor carefully in my right hand, I scraped my face from the top of my right cheekbone down an inch or two at a time until I reached my jawline.
I observed the results. My skin looked damp and clean. I repeated the process on the other side, cutting myself twice. Droplets of blood oozed out and dotted my skin. Above the lip and the chin were the hardest, and I cut myself some more.
Finally, when I was done, I cleaned my razor and brush, rinsed my face, dried it lightly, and stared at my reflection in the mirror. Bits of blood still oozed; others had congealed.
You’re a man now, I told myself. A man acts bravely even when he’s afraid. Do this for your mother and your father. Make the family line of Savichev proud. Do it for Leningrad and all the hungry people fighting for life. Do it for the partisans. Do it for Zasha and Thor and the good lives they’ll have away from Axel Recht. Do it for the generations of puppies they’ll give life to. Do it so you can look yourself in the mirror and be proud.
I was ready now, my energy focused, my motives clear.