DESOLATE WAVES
TATIANA went back to their house, lay down on their bed, and did not get up.
During her semiconscious sleep Tatiana kept hearing the four old women in the room. They were talking quietly while fixing her blankets, adjusting the pillows under her head, stroking her hair.
Dusia said, “She needs to trust in the Lord. He will get her out of this.”
Naira said, “I told her it wasn’t a good idea to fall in love with a soldier. All they do is break your heart.”
Raisa tremulously said, “I think the problem isn’t that he’s a soldier. The problem is she loves him too much.”
Axinya whispered, patting Tatiana’s back, “Lucky girl.”
“What’s lucky?” Naira said indignantly. “If only she had listened to us and stayed at our house, none of this would have happened.”
“If only she came to church with me more often,” said Dusia. “The Lord’s rod and His staff, they would comfort her.”
“What do you think, Tanechka?” Axinya said, standing close to Tatiana. “You think the Lord’s rod and staff would comfort you right now?”
Naira said, “This is no good. We are not helping her.”
Dusia: “I never liked him.”
Naira: “Me neither. Never understood what Tania saw in him.”
Raisa: “She is too good for him.”
Naira: “She is too good for anybody.”
Dusia: “She can be even better, closer to the Lord.”
Naira: “My Vova is such a kind, gentle boy. He cared for her.”
Raisa: “I bet you Alexander’s not going to come back for her. He’s left her here for good.”
Naira: “I’m sure you’re right. He married her—”
Dusia: “Soiled her—”
Raisa: “And discarded her.”
Dusia: “I always suspected he was godless.”
Axinya whispered to Tatiana, “The only thing that will keep him away is death.”
Thank you, Axinya, thought Tatiana, opening her heavy eyes and lifting her body out of bed. But that’s exactly what I’m afraid of.
The old girls convinced Tatiana without much effort to come back and live with them. Vova helped her to carry the trunk and sewing machine back to Naira’s house.
At first Tatiana could not get through her day without physically holding herself together. There was no comfort inside her, and she knew it. There was nowhere she could turn to inside herself to leave the darkness. No memory she could fondly think of, no gentle joke, no musical refrain. There was no part of her body she could touch without shuddering. Nowhere she could look without seeing Alexander.
This time she didn’t have the hunger to dull her sorrow. She didn’t have infected lungs. There was nothing for her healthy body to do but grit its teeth and lift the buckets that went on her shoulders every morning, and milk the goat and pour the warm milk for Raisa, who could not pour it herself, and hang the clothes on the line and have the women say at night how wonderful the clothes smelled, having been hung by Tania in the sunshine.
Tatiana sewed for them and for herself, she read to them and to herself, she bathed them and herself, she tended their garden and looked after their chickens and took the apples off the trees, and little by little, bucket by bucket, book by book, shirt by shirt, their need enveloped her again, and Tatiana was comforted.
Just like before.