The woman in front of Tatiana snorted loudly. The two women ahead of her turned around.

“You don’t know what to expect!” the woman said in a loud tone. “It’s war.” She gave a mirthless grunt that sounded like a train engine sputtering.

“Who asked you?”

“War, comrades! Welcome to reality, brought to you by Hitler. Buy your caviar and butter, and eat them tonight. Because mark my words, your two hundred rubles will not buy you a loaf of bread next January.”

“Shut up!”

Tatiana lowered her head. She did not like fighting. Not at home, not on the street with strangers.

Two people were leaving the store with big paper bags under their arms. “What’s in them?” she inquired politely.

“Smoked kolbasa,” a man told her gruffly, hurrying on. He looked as if he were afraid Tatiana would run after him and beat him to the ground to get his cursed smoked kolbasa. Tatiana continued to stand in line. She didn’t even like sausage.

After thirty more minutes she left.

Not wanting to disappoint her father, she hurried to the bus stop. She was going to catch bus Number 22 to Elisey on Nevsky Prospekt, since she knew for sure they sold at least caviar there.

But then she thought, caviar? We will have to eat it next week. Surely caviar won’t last until winter? But is that the goal? Food for the winter? That just couldn’t be, she decided; winter was too far away. The Red Army was invincible; Comrade Stalin said so himself. The German pigs would be out by September.

As she rounded the corner of Ulitsa Saltykov-Schedrin, the rubber band holding her hair snapped and broke.

The bus stop was across the street on the Tauride Park side. Usually she got bus 136 from here to go across town to visit cousin Marina. Today bus 22 would take her to Elisey, but she knew she needed to hurry. From the way those women were talking, soon even the caviar would be gone.

Just ahead of her, Tatiana spotted a kiosk that sold ice cream.

Ice cream!

Suddenly the day was filled with possibilities. A man sat on a little stool under a small umbrella to shield himself from the sun as he read the paper.

Tatiana quickened her pace.

From behind her she heard the sound of the bus. She turned around and saw her bus in the middle distance. She knew if she ran, she could catch it easily. She stepped off the curb to cross the street, then looked at the ice cream stand, looked at the bus again, looked at the ice cream stand, and stopped.

Tatiana really wanted an ice cream.

Biting her lip, she let the bus pass. It’s all right, she thought. The next one will come soon, and in the meantime I’ll sit at the bus stop and have an ice cream.

Walking up to the kiosk man, she said eagerly, “Ice cream, yes?”

“It says ice cream, doesn’t it? I’m sitting here, aren’t I? What do you want?” He lifted his eyes from the newspaper to her, and his hard expression softened. “What can I get you, dearie?”

“Have you got . . .” She trembled a little. “Have you got crème brûlée?”

“Yes.” He opened the freezer door. “A cone or a cup?”

“A cone, please,” Tatiana replied, jumping up and down once.

She paid him gladly; she would have paid him double. In anticipation of the pleasure she was about to receive, Tatiana ran across the road in her heels, hurrying to the bench under the trees so she could eat her ice cream in peace, while she waited for the bus to take her to buy caviar because war had started.

There was no one else waiting for the bus, and she was glad for the fine moment to feast on her delight in seclusion. She took off the white paper wrapping, threw it in the trash can next to the bench, smelled the ice cream, and took a lick of the sweet, creamy, cold caramel. Closing her eyes in happiness, Tatiana smiled and rolled the ice cream in her mouth, waiting for it to melt on her tongue.

Too good, Tatiana thought. Just too good.

The wind blew her hair, and she held it back with one hand as she licked the ice cream in circles around the smooth ball. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, swung her head back, lolled the ice cream in her throat, and hummed the song everyone was singing these days: “Someday we’ll meet in Lvov, my love and I.”

It was a perfect day. For five minutes there was no war, and it was just a glorious Sunday in a Leningrad June.

When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.

It was unremarkable in a garrison city like Leningrad to see a soldier. Leningrad was full of soldiers. Seeing soldiers on the street was like seeing old ladies with shopping bags, or lines, or beer bars. Tatiana normally would have glanced past him down the street and moved on, except that this soldier was standing across the street and staring at her with an expression Tatiana had never seen before. She stopped eating her ice cream.

Her side of the street was already in the shade, but the side where he stood swam in the northern afternoon light. Tatiana stared back at him for just a moment, and in the moment of looking into his face, something moved inside her; moved she would have liked to say imperceptibly, but that wasn’t quite the case. It was as if her heart started pumping blood through all four chambers at once, pouring it into her lungs and flooding it through her body. She blinked and felt her breath become shorter. The soldier was melting into the pavement under the pale yellow sun.

The bus came, obstructing Tatiana’s view of him. She almost cried out and got up, not to get on the bus, no, but to run forward, across the street, so she would not lose sight of him. The bus doors opened, and the driver looked at her expectantly. Tatiana, mild-mannered and quiet, nearly shouted at him to get out of her way.

“Are you getting on, young lady? I can’t be waiting forever.”

Getting on? “No, no, I’m not going.”

“Then what the hell are you doing waiting for the bus!” the driver hollered and slammed the doors shut.

Tatiana backed away toward the bench and saw the soldier running around the bus.

He stopped.

She stopped.

The bus doors opened again. “Need the bus?” asked the driver.

The soldier looked at Tatiana, then at the bus driver.

“Oh, for the sake of Lenin and Stalin!” the driver bellowed, slamming the doors shut for the second time.

Tatiana was left standing in front of the bench. She backed away, tripped, and sat quickly down.

In a casual tone, with a shrug and a roll of his eyes, the soldier said, “I thought it was my bus.”

“Yes, me, too,” she uttered, her voice croaky.

“Your ice cream is melting,” he said helpfully.

And it was, melting right through the bottom point of the waffle cone, onto her dress. “Oh, no,” she said. Tatiana brushed the ice cream, only to spread it in a smear. “Great,” she muttered, and noticed that her hand wiping the dress was trembling.

“Have you been waiting long?” the soldier asked. His voice was strong and deep and had a trace of . . . she didn’t know. Not from around here, she thought, keeping her gaze lowered.

“Not too long,” she replied quietly, and, holding her breath, raised her eyes to get a better look at him. And raised them and raised them. He was tall.

He was wearing a dress uniform. The beige fatigues looked like his Sunday best, and his cap was ornate, with an enameled red star on the front. He wore wide parade shoulder boards in gray metallic lace. They looked impressive, but Tatiana had no idea what they meant. Was he a private? He was carrying his rifle. Did privates carry rifles? On the left side of his chest he wore a single silver medal trimmed in gold.

Underneath his umber cap he was dark-haired. The youth and dark hair were to his advantage, Tatiana thought, as her shy eyes met his eyes, which were the color of caramel — one shade darker than her crème brûlée ice cream. Were they a soldier’s eyes? Were they a man’s eyes? They were peaceful and smiling.

Tatiana and the soldier stared at each other for a moment or two, but it was a moment or two too long. Strangers looked at each other for half a nothing before averting their eyes. Tatiana felt as if she could open her mouth and say his name. She glanced away, feeling unsteady and warm.

“Your ice cream is still melting,” the soldier repeated helpfully.

Blushing, Tatiana said with haste, “Oh, this ice cream. I’m finished with it.” She got up and threw it emphatically in the trash, wishing she had a handkerchief to wipe her stained dress.

Tatiana couldn’t tell if he was young like her; no, he seemed older. Like a young man, looking at her with a man’s eyes. She blushed again, continuing to stare at the pavement between her red sandals and his black army boots.

A bus came. The soldier turned away from her and walked toward it. Tatiana watched him. Even his walk was from another world; the step was too sure, the stride too long, yet somehow it all seemed right, looked right, felt right. It was like stumbling on a book you thought you had lost. Ah, yes, there it is.

In a minute the bus doors were going to open and he was going to hop on the bus and wave a little good-bye to her and she was never going to see him again. Don’t go! Tatiana shouted to him in her mind.

As the soldier got closer to the bus, he slowed down and stopped. At the last minute he backed away, shaking his head at the bus driver, who made a frustrated motion with his hands, slammed the door shut, and peeled away from the curb.

The soldier came back and sat on the bench.

The rest of her day flew out of her head without even a farewell.

Tatiana and the soldier were having a silence. How can we be having a silence? Tatiana thought. We just met. Wait. We haven’t met at all. We don’t know each other. How could we be having anything?

Nervously she looked up and down the street. Suddenly it occurred to her that he might be hearing the thumping in her chest, for how could he not? The noise had scared away the crows from the trees behind them. The birds had flown off in a panic, their wings flapping fervently. She knew — it was her.

Now she needed her bus to come. Now.

He was a soldier, yes, but she had seen soldiers before. And he was good-looking, yes, but she had seen good-looking before. Once or twice last summer she had even met good-looking soldiers. One, she forgot his name now — as she forgot most things now — had bought her an ice cream.

It wasn’t this soldier’s uniform that affected her, and it wasn’t his looks. It was the way he had stared at her from across the street, separated from her by ten meters of concrete, a bus, and the electric wires of the tram line.

He took a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his uniform. “Would you like one?”

“Oh, no, no,” Tatiana replied. “I don’t smoke.”

The soldier put the cigarettes back in his pocket. “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t smoke,” he said lightly.

She and her grandfather were the only ones Tatiana knew who didn’t smoke. She couldn’t continue to be silent; it was too pathetic. But when Tatiana opened her mouth to speak, all the words she thought of saying sounded so stupid that she just closed her mouth and begged silently for the bus to come.

It didn’t.

Finally the soldier spoke again. “Are you waiting for bus 22?”

“Yes,” Tatiana replied in a tinny voice. “Wait, no.” She saw a bus with three digits coming up. It was Number 136.

“This is the one I’m going to take,” she said without thinking and quickly got up.

“One thirty-six?” she heard him mutter behind her.

Tatiana walked toward it, took out five kopecks, and climbed aboard. After paying, she made her way to the back of the bus and sat down just in time to see the soldier getting on and making his way to the back.

He sat one seat behind her on the opposite side.

Tatiana scooted over to the window and tried not to think of him. Where did she intend to go on bus 136? Oh, yes, that’s the bus she took to Marina’s on Polustrovsky Prospekt. She would go there. She’d get off at Polustrovsky and go ring Marina’s doorbell.

Tatiana could see the soldier out of the corner of her eye.

Where was he going on bus Number 136?

The bus passed Tauride Park and turned at Liteiny Prospekt.

Tatiana straightened out the folds of her dress and traced the embroidered shapes of the roses with her fingers. Bending over between the seats, she adjusted her sandals. But mainly what she did was hope at every stop that the soldier would not get off. Not here, she thought, not here. And not here either. Where she wanted him to get off, Tatiana didn’t know; all she knew was that she didn’t want him to get off here.