What little traffic traveled the streets and sidewalks consisted of civilians hurrying to accomplish specific daily tasks. There was no one just lounging around, and few people smiling. Yet the streets and buildings remained in good repair. Rubble had been cleared, and she saw no piles of garbage or corpses or junk.

As their train crawled through the city’s back alleys, Karen could see into apartment-building windows. She observed well-fed civilians inside who, despite the threat from the German lines only miles away, seemed proud and confident. One young boy even looked up from a book he was reading and smiled and waved. Amazed, Karen waved back. There had been no friendly gestures in Leningrad. Even the smallest gesture required strength, and the starving population had to preserve that strength.

Petr was concerned about what might happen when they finally reached the end of the line. Undoubtedly there would be military officers at the train station who would recruit all three of them back into the Red Army.

Petr planned to rejoin the army. He wasn’t a deserter, really, but he did want to save Duck first. Karen had agreed to help him find Duck’s family, so they decided to jump off the train while it waited at a crossing.

They didn’t know where they were. Petr had been born in Moscow and had grown up near Lomonosov University, where his father worked. But Petr was only thirteen when he and his father were forcibly exiled, more than seven years ago. And with his father focused entirely on mathematics, young Petr had never traveled far from the university. He didn’t recognize where they were now and didn’t know whether it was because he didn’t remember or because he’d never been there. Nonetheless, he did remember that the campus was on Manege Square, and he assured Karen that if they could just find their way there, he’d be able to finally get his bearings.

It was surprisingly easy to find their way. Manege Square was famous, very near to Communist headquarters at Red Square, so asking directions was easy. It was a long walk, and they didn’t have money for a tram, but by now they were used to long walks.

The campus itself was locked up tight. Petr recalled a secret way inside through a window with a broken latch; when he was a kid, he’d used that entrance to sneak in and out. He suspected that the window hadn’t been repaired, and once again Communist inefficiency didn’t let him down. When he pushed on the window, sure enough, it swung open.

Karen, Petr, and Duck spent an hour wandering the long halls of the university buildings. They quietly searched every floor, finding the campus deserted. The entire school—the staff, the professors, and the students—had been evacuated the previous winter and transferred to a temporary campus in Ashgabat, near Iran.

Karen found the huge, empty buildings eerie. The only sounds were the echoes of their footsteps and Duck’s claws against the marble tiles. The electricity had been turned off, and the corridors were dim. Where it wasn’t dark, along windowed chambers, dust swirled like ghosts in the shafts of sunlight.

As she got used to the emptiness of the buildings, Karen began to enjoy the solitude. She began to play with Duck, running in and out of offices and classrooms, having him chase her. She would hide and wait for him to sniff her out. Petr joined the game, and the three of them had more fun than they’d had in a long time.

Then they found the commissary. Someone had forgotten to clear out the cupboard, and there were leftover bags of flour and cans of soups and vegetables. Out of curiosity, Petr tried the stove and was thrilled to discover that the gas still worked. Karen immediately started grabbing random cans, declaring that they should celebrate their arrival in Moscow with a feast.

They didn’t have a can opener, so they used Petr’s military spade as an ax to chop them open. The first time Petr tried it, he was sprayed with stewed tomatoes. Most of it got on his face and in his hair. Karen laughed so hard that Petr made her open the next can. She, too, was sprayed, this time by creamed corn. Soon they didn’t care. They just slammed open the cans, not worrying about the mess, pouring their growing concoction into a huge vat simmering over low heat.

The preparation of their feast had turned into a food fight. Duck was having a grand old time, licking up the mess they left behind. Neither one of them knew how to cook, and the strange vegetable stew they were creating looked thin, so Karen tried to make dumplings. Instead, she made unappetizing clumps of grainy raw flour. So Petr tried to make rice, which bubbled right out of the pot all over the floor. Duck happily jumped all over it and started lapping it up.

In the end, the soup was thin, the rice was hard, the dumplings were inedible, and the commissary was a complete mess. So were Petr and Karen. Their clothes were soaked and stained with all manner of food and sauce. Petr knew that what they ought to do is strip down to their underwear and boil their uniforms clean. It’s what he would have done in the army. Living with soldiers had mostly cured him of modesty, though taking off his clothes in front of a fellow soldier, he now realized, was very different from stripping in front of Karen—a girl whom he undeniably found attractive. So the recommendation caught in his throat.

Karen also knew their clothes desperately needed washing. They’d worn them for weeks, and so the garments were filthy and stinking. But cleaning them required removing them, and she, too, was embarrassed to make the suggestion. They both mumbled and agreed that their clothes needed cleaning, but neither was willing to voice the obvious consequence: stripping. So instead they looked through closets and pantries for some miracle that would rescue them from their embarrassment.

Karen found that miracle in the form of janitors’ aprons. They could wear them over their underwear, she reasoned, and after all, it really wouldn’t be all that different from wearing a bathing suit, would it? That’s how she justified it to herself, and how she justified it to Petr when she proposed that course of action.

They boiled a huge pot of soapy water and then slipped into separate rooms, where they stripped off their wet and sticky clothes and wrapped the aprons around their bodies. It wasn’t quite like being in a bathing suit, after all, Karen realized with shame, since the apron didn’t cover her backside. So when she returned to the kitchen to throw her clothes in the pot, she self-consciously made sure she was always facing Petr. Petr, she noticed, was doing the same. That realization made her giggle, and her giggle helped break the tension.

“When I was little and had stage fright,” she said to Petr, “my father told me to imagine the audience in their underwear.”

Petr laughed. “I guess if I’m in the audience now, you don’t have to imagine.”

“Exactly!” Karen said with delight.

When they finished boiling their clothes, they laid them out on commissary tables to dry. Then they slept on one of the few tables that had remained clean.

It was a hard and cold bed. They didn’t sleep in each other’s arms as they had on the trains. They were too self-conscious in their state of half dress. Their discomfort prompted them to wake up before dawn, at which time they were dismayed to discover their clothes hadn’t yet dried. Teeth chattering, they opened the windows of a nearby classroom and hung their clothes out to dry.

As the sun rose, Petr tried his hand at making coffee, boiling water and dumping in grounds until it looked the right shade of black. Despite having a film with the same grainy consistency as Karen’s dumplings, the coffee both warmed them up and energized them. But when they returned to fetch their clothes, they discovered that the wind had blown them into the bushes below. Someone had to go outside and rummage around to find them.

Petr reluctantly volunteered. He had to be cautious. They weren’t supposed to be inside the university buildings and could technically be arrested. His state of undress only made him more timid. As bad as it would be to get arrested, it would be even worse to be arrested without any clothes on.

Karen served as the lookout in the window above. She was supposed to whistle if she saw anyone, warning Petr to duck down into the bushes. But she was having too much fun watching Petr’s undignified tromp through the hedges, and couldn’t help but giggle, which Petr heard. He hissed at her to be quiet, but then his apron got caught on a branch, and he found himself stripped to his underwear. Karen’s giggle turned into a loud guffaw as Petr stood up and grabbed his apron, cursing. It was fortunate that no one was nearby, because the two of them couldn’t have been making a louder racket.

An hour later they were finally dressed, wondering what to do next. Neither of them had any idea how to find Duck’s family. Petr knew nothing about them; he only knew they lived in Moscow and had told the army that Duck enjoyed chasing birds in the park. Remembering this finally gave Karen an idea. They should find parks with lots of birds. If the family had spent time in such a park before the war, it would stand to reason that they’d still spend time there. And they might recognize their dog. Petr shrugged. It was worth a try, and he certainly didn’t have any better ideas.

Petr and Karen spent three days visiting each of Moscow’s parks. Duck lived up to his name, chasing everything with either wings or a tail, from ducks to geese to squirrels. In the rare instances he had no wildlife to chase, Petr and Karen threw a stick for him. It was fun at first, but the fun didn’t last, especially since they didn’t seem to be making much progress. Every park seemed much like any other. They would have to be extraordinarily lucky to be in the right park the very moment that Duck’s family visited.