5
The next morning, before they came out into the corridor, Tatiana hugged Alexander and said, “Be nice,” as she opened their bedroom door.
“I’m always nice,” said Alexander.
Stan and Inga were sitting in the hallway. Stan stood up, extended his hand to Alexander, introduced himself, apologized for yesterday, and asked Alexander to sit and have a smoke. Alexander did not sit, but he took a cigarette from Stan.
“This kind of living is hard on everyone, I know. But it’s not forever. You know what the Party says, Captain—” said Stan, smiling ingratiatingly.
“No, what does the Party say, comrade?” Alexander asked, glancing down at Tatiana, who stood beside him holding his hand.
“Being determines consciousness, doesn’t it? We live like this long enough, and we’ll all get used to it. Soon we’ll all become changed human beings.”
“But, Stan,” Inga said plaintively, “I don’t want to live like this! We had a nice apartment. I want that back.”
“We’ll get it back, Inga. The council promised us a two-bedroom.”
Alexander said, “How long do you think, Stan, we’ll have to live like this before we’re changed? And changed into what?” He stared bleakly at Tatiana, who said, peering up into his face, “Shura, I have some kasha. Darling, I’ll make you some?” Smoking as if it were his breakfast, Alexander nodded. She didn’t like the look in his eyes.
When she came back inside with two bowls of kasha and a cup of coffee for him, Tatiana overheard Stan telling Alexander that he and Inga, married for twenty years, were both engineers and long-standing members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Alexander barely excused himself before he went to eat his kasha inside the room, not even asking Tatiana to follow him.
Tatiana ate her kasha with Inga and Stan, refusing to answer Inga’s curious questions about Alexander. Then she washed the dishes from the night before, cleaned the kitchen, and finally and reluctantly joined him inside the room. Tatiana knew she was procrastinating. She did not want to face Alexander alone.
He was collecting her things into her black backpack. Glaring at her, he said, “You wanted to come back for this? You missed this? Strangers, Communist Party strangers, listening to your every word, your every moan? You missed all this, Tania?”
“No,” Tatiana said. “I missed you.”
“There is no place for me here,” he said. “There is hardly a place for you.”
After watching him for a moment she asked, “What are you doing?”
“Packing.”
“Packing?” she repeated quietly, closing the door behind her. Here it starts, Tatiana thought. I didn’t want it. I wished we didn’t have to have it. But here it is. “Where are we going?”
“Across the lake. I can get you across easily to Syastroy, and then I’ll take you in an army truck to Vologda. From there you’ll catch a train. We have to go now. It’ll take me a while to get back, and I must return to Morozovo tomorrow evening.”
Vigorously Tatiana shook her head.
“What?” Alexander snapped. “What are you shaking your head for?”
She shook her head.
“Tatiana, I’m warning you. Don’t provoke me.”
“All right. But I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yes you are.”
In a small voice she said, “No. I’m not.”
Alexander raised his voice. “You are!”
In the same small voice Tatiana said, “Don’t raise your voice to me.”
Dropping her backpack with a thud to the wooden floor, Alexander came up to her and, leaning down, said into her face, “Tatiana, in a second I’m going to raise more than my voice to you.”
Tatiana felt so sad inside. But she squared her shoulders and did not look away. Quietly she said, “Go ahead, Alexander. I’m not afraid of you.”
“No?” he said, gritting his teeth. “Well, I’m terrified of you.” He stepped away and picked up the backpack. Tatiana remembered the first day of the war, she remembered Pasha telling her father, no, I don’t want to go, and being sent away anyway, and dying.
“Alexander, stop it, I said. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Oh, you are, Tania,” he said, whirling to her, his face distorted by anger. “You are. I will take you to Vologda, if have to carry you there myself, kicking and screaming.”
Tatiana backed away from him, just a little bit, half a step, and said, “Fine. But I will not be kicking, I will not be screaming. As soon as you leave, I will come back.”
Alexander threw the backpack against the wall, close to Tatiana’s head. He came at her with clenched fists and smashed the wall near her so hard that the plaster crumbled and his hand went through the hole.
Her legs trembling, her eyes closed, Tatiana backed away another half a step and stopped moving.
“For f*ck’s sake!” Alexander screamed in a rage, punching the wall next to her face. “What will it take for you to listen to me, just once, just f*cking once, what will it take for you to do as I say?” He grabbed her by the arms and pinned her roughly against the wall.
“Shura, this is not the army,” Tatiana whispered tremulously, afraid to look at him.
“You are not staying here!”
“I am,” she said faintly.
There was a knock. Alexander went to the door, ripped it open, and shouted, “What?”
Inga, her face red, muttered, “I just wanted to see if Tania was all right. Tania? I heard yelling — banging—”
“I’m fine, Inga,” Tatiana said, stepping away from the wall on unsteady legs.
“You’ll hear a lot more before we’re done,” Alexander said to Inga. “Just put the f*cking glass to the wall,” and slammed the door shut. Whirling around, he came for Tatiana, who backed away from him, her hands up, whispering, “Shura, please . . .” but, unstoppable and crazed, he came at her just the same and shoved her down onto the couch. She fell back and covered her face. Bending over her, Alexander knocked her hands away. “Don’t cover your face!” he shouted, grabbing her cheeks between his fingers and shaking her. “Don’t make me more crazy!”
Tatiana cried out and tried to push him away, but it was useless. “Stop!” she panted. “Stop . . .”
“Safe or dead, Tania?” he yelled. “Safe or dead? What will it be?”
Clutching helplessly at his arms, she wanted to answer him but couldn’t speak. Dead, she wanted to say. Dead, Shura.
“You can see what it’s doing to me, your being here!” Alexander squeezed her face harder and harder as she struggled to break free. “You can see. But you just don’t give a shit.”
She ceased fighting him, placing her hands over his. “Please,” Tatiana whispered, trying to catch his eye. “Please . . . stop. You’re hurting me.”
Alexander eased his hold on her but did not let go of her face, nor did Tatiana pull away, even though she could hardly breathe. Underneath him, she lay on the couch, panting. Covering her with his body, he lay on top of her, panting. Through the crashing noise in her head Tatiana remotely heard the air-raid siren and explosive sounds outside her windows. She moved her mouth away from his hands a little. She was suffocating. Her own hands went around his back to clasp him. “Oh, Shura,” she whispered.
Alexander got off Tatiana, stood miserably before her, and then dropped to his knees. “Tatiana,” he said in a broken voice, “this frantic wretch begs you, please leave. If you feel any love for me at all, please go back to Lazarevo. Be safe. You just don’t know what kind of danger you’re in.”
Still short of breath, her body trembling, her face aching, Tatiana sat up at the edge of the couch and pulled Alexander to her. She couldn’t bear to see him so upset. “I’m so sorry you’re angry,” she said, holding his face. “Please don’t be angry with me.”
Alexander moved her hands off him. “Do you hear the bombs? Do you hear, or are you deaf? Do you see there is no food?”
“There’s food,” she said quietly, putting her hands back on him. “I get 700 grams a day. Plus my lunch and dinner at the hospital. I’m doing well.” She smiled. “It’s much better than last year. And I don’t care about the bombs.”
“Tatiana . . .”
“Shura, stop lying to me. It’s not the Germans or the bombs that frighten you. What are you afraid of?”
Outside, the whistling shells whizzed nearby. One sounded close. Tatiana pulled Alexander to her. “Listen to me,” she whispered, clutching his head to her breasts. “Do you hear my heart?”
He surrounded her. She sat for a moment holding on to him, closing her eyes. Dear God, she prayed. Please let me be strong for him. He needs my strength so much, don’t let me weaken right now. Gently pushing him away, she went to her dresser. “You left something behind in Lazarevo, Shura. Besides me.”
Alexander got up and sat heavily on the couch.
Ripping open the inseam on her trousers, Tatiana took out Alexander’s five thousand dollars. “Look. I returned to give you this.” She stared at him. “I see you took only half. Why?” Stop. Breathe.
Alexander’s bronze eyes were toffee pools of pain. “I’m not talking about this with Inga at our door,” he said, barely moving his lips.
“Why not? We do everything else with Inga at our door.”
They looked away from each other. Tatiana could tell they were both splintering. Who was going to pick up their fragmented pieces? She. She was going to pick them up. Leaving the money on the dresser, Tatiana went to him, straddling him, holding his head to her. “This isn’t Lazarevo, is it, Shura?” she whispered into his hair.
His voice breaking, his arms encircling her, Alexander whispered back, “What is, Tatia?”
She made love to him, kneeling on top of him, pressing her fragile self into him, bearing down on him, praying to him, wanting him to swallow her, to impale her, to save her and to kill her, wanting from him everything and yet for herself nothing, only to give back to him, only to give his life back to him. At the end she was crying again, all her strength gone, panting and melting and burning and crying.
“Tatiasha,” Alexander whispered, still unceasing, “stop crying. What’s a man to think when every time he makes love to his wife, she cries?”
“That he is his wife’s only family,” Tatiana replied, cradling his head. “That he is her whole life.”
“As she is his,” said Alexander. “But you don’t see him crying.” He was turned away from her. Tatiana couldn’t see his face.
After the air raid was over and they were finished, they bundled up and went out. “Too cold to be out,” Tatiana said, clinging to him.
“Why didn’t you wear a hat?”
“So you can see my hair. I know you like it.” She smiled.
Taking off his glove, he ran his hand across her head. “Put on your scarf,” he said, tying it around her. “You’ll be cold.”
“I’m fine.” She took his arm. “I like your new coat. It’s big, like a tent.” In sadness, she lowered her eyes. She shouldn’t have said the word tent. Too many Lazarevo memories. Some words were like that. Whole lives attached to them. Ghosts and lives and ecstasy and sorrow. The simplest words, and suddenly she couldn’t continue to speak. “It looks warm,” she added quietly.
Alexander smiled. “Next week I will have better than a tent. I’ll have a room in the main headquarters, just five doors away from Stepanov. There is heat in the building. I’ll actually be warm.”
“I’m glad,” said Tatiana. “Do you have a blanket?”
“My coat is my blanket, and I have another one, yes. I’m all right, Tania. It’s war. Now, where do you want to go?”
“To Lazarevo — with you,” she said, unable to look at him. “Barring that, let’s walk to the Summer Garden.”
He sighed heavily. “To the Summer Garden it is, then.”
They walked silently for many minutes. With her arm through his, Tatiana kept pressing her head into Alexander’s sleeve. Finally she took a deep breath. “Talk to me, Alexander,” Tatiana began. “Tell me what’s going on. We’re alone now. We have a little privacy. Tell me. Why did you take half the money?”
Alexander said nothing. Tatiana listened. Still nothing. She put her face on his woolen coat. Still nothing. She looked at the slushy snow at her feet, at the trolleybus that went by, at the policeman on a horse that trotted by, at the broken glass they stepped over, at the red traffic light up ahead. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
She sighed. Why was this so difficult for him? More difficult than usual. “Shura, why didn’t you take all of the money?”
“Because,” he let out slowly, “I left you what was mine.”
“It’s all yours. All the money is yours. What are you talking about?”
Nothing.
“Alexander! What did you take five thousand dollars for? If you’re running, you need all of it. If you’re not running, you don’t need any of it. Why did you take half?”
No reply. It was like Lazarevo. Tatiana would ask, he would answer, tight-lipped and thoughtful, and she would spend an hour trying to decipher what was between the single words. Lisiy Nos, Vyborg, Helsinki, Stockholm, Yuri Stepanov, all multisyllables with Alexander hidden in the middle of them, saying nothing.
“You know what?” Tatiana said, exasperated, detaching herself from him. “I’m tired of this game. In fact, I’m done with it. You either tell me everything without holding back, without stupid guessing games where I’m trying to figure things out and getting them wrong, you tell me everything right now, or just turn around, go and get your things, and get away from me. Go on. The choice is yours.” Tatiana stopped walking near the Fontanka Canal, folded her arms, and waited.
Alexander stopped walking, too, but didn’t reply.
“Are you thinking it over?” she exclaimed, pulling on his arm, trying to look deeper — behind his constricted face. Letting go of him, her voice unable to hide her anguish, she said, “I know, Alexander, that when you’re wearing these clothes, your army clothes, you wear them as armor against me, so you don’t have to tell me anything. Because I also know that when you’re naked and making love to me, you’re completely defenseless, and if only I were stronger, I could ask anything then, and you would tell me. Trouble is . . .” Her voice broke. “I’m not stronger. I’m just as defenseless against you. So you, afraid I’m going to see the truth and your agony, afraid I’ll see that you’re saying good-bye to me, you turn me over because you think if I don’t see it, I can’t feel it.” She started to cry. I’m not doing so well, she thought. Where is my strength?
“Please, stop,” Alexander whispered, not looking at her.
“Well, I can feel it, Shura,” Tatiana said, wiping her face and grabbing his hand. He pulled it from her. “You came here, angry, yes, upset, yes, because you thought you had said good-bye to me for good in Lazarevo—”
“That’s not why I was angry and upset.”
“As it turns out,” Tatiana continued, “you’re going to have to say good-bye to me in Leningrad. But you’ll have to do it to my face, all right?”
Tatiana saw Alexander’s tormented eyes.
She stepped up. He backed away. What a waltz they danced in the stark morning. But Tatiana’s heart was strong; she could take it. “Alexander. I know — you think I don’t know? I’ve got nothing to do but think about the things you tell me. You have wanted to escape to America all your Soviet life. It was the only thing that had kept you going the years before me, those years in the army. That someday you might return home.” She stretched out her hand to him. He took it. “Am I right?”
“You’re right,” Alexander said. “But then I met you.”
Then I met you. Stop, stop. Oh, the summer last year, the white nights by the Neva, the Summer Garden, the northern sun, his smiling face. Tatiana looked at his heartbreaking face. She wanted to speak. Where were all those words she once knew? Where were they now when she needed them most?
Alexander shook his head. “Tania, it’s too late for me. From the moment my father decided to abandon the life we had in America, he doomed us all. I knew it first — even then. My mother second. My father third, last, but most heartfelt. My mother could ease her pain by blaming him. I thought I could ease mine by joining the army and by being young, but who did my father have to point a finger to?”
Tatiana came up to him and held on to his coat. Alexander put his arms around her. “Tania, when I found you, I felt for that hour or two we were together — before Dimitri, before Dasha — that somehow I was going to right my life.” Alexander smiled bitterly. “I had a sense of hope and destiny that I can neither explain nor understand.” He wasn’t smiling anymore. “Then our Soviet life interfered. You saw, I tried to stay away. I thought, I must stay away. I must keep away. Before Luga. After Luga. Look how I tried after I came to see you at the hospital. I tried to put distance between us after St. Isaac’s, after the Germans closed the ring around Leningrad.” He paused. He shook his head. “I should have, somehow . . .”
“I didn’t want you to,” Tatiana said faintly.
“Oh, Tania,” Alexander said. “If only I hadn’t come to Lazarevo!”
“What are you talking about?” she gasped. “What are you saying? How can you regret—” She didn’t finish. How could he be regretting them? She stared at him, perplexed and ashen.
Alexander didn’t respond. “Some destiny. I’ve done nothing since the day I met you but hurt your heart and — worse — drag you into my own destruction.” He shook his head so hard his cap fell off.
Tatiana picked up his cap, brushed off the slush, and gave it back to him.
“What are you talking about? Hurt my heart? Forget all that, it’s done with. Alexander . . . and I came willingly.” She paused, frowning. “What destruction? I’m not doomed,” said Tatiana slowly, not understanding. “I’m lucky.”
“You’re blind.”
“Then open my eyes.” Like you did once before. She pulled the scarf tighter around her neck, wanting to bundle up, wanting to be near a fire, wanting to be in Lazarevo.
Tatiana watched Alexander gulp down his fear. He turned his face away and started to walk along the canal pavement. Not looking at her, Alexander said, “I took the five thousand dollars because I was going to give it to Dimitri. I’ve been trying to convince him to run by himself—”
Tatiana laughed without feeling. “Stop it.” She shook her head. “I suspected that was why you took half the money. The man who wouldn’t go half a kilometer out onto the ice with me? Is that the man you think is going to America by himself? Honestly.” They stopped for a red light just past Engineers Castle, last winter used as a hospital and now nearly unrecognizable after repeated bombings. “Dimitri would never go by himself,” Tatiana went on. “I already told you. He is a coward and a parasite. You are his courage and his host. What are you even thinking? As soon as Dimitri realizes you’re not going, he won’t go either, and if he remains in the Soviet Union and sees suddenly that he’s got no hope of escape, then he’s going straight to his new friend Mekhlis of the NKVD, and you will be instantly—”
Tatiana broke off, staring at Alexander. Something dawned on her. His face was too miserable. “You know all this. You know he’ll never go without you. You know this already.”
Alexander didn’t reply.
They began walking again, over the crippled-by-shelling Fontanka Bridge, stepping over the granite pieces. “So what are you even talking about, then?” Tatiana said, nudging him slightly and looking up into his face, full of incomprehensible fear. She could not imagine that Alexander was afraid for himself. Whom was he afraid for?
“You’re not thinking of me—” Tatiana wanted to continue, but the words got stuck in her throat.
Her eyes opened; her heart opened.
Truth flowed in, but not the truth she had known with Alexander. No. Truth illuminating terror. Truth lighting up those hideous corners of an ugly room, with the rotting wood and the broken plaster and the ratty furniture. Once Tatiana saw it, once she saw what was left—
She came around and stood in front of Alexander, stopping him from walking. Too many things were making themselves clear on this desolate Leningrad Saturday. Alexander was thinking of her. He was thinking only of her.
“Tell me . . .” Tatiana said faintly, “what do they do to wives of Red Army officers arrested on suspicion of high treason? Arrested for being foreign infiltrators? What do they do to wives of American men who jumped out of trains on the way to prison?’
Alexander said nothing, closing his eyes.
And suddenly — the flip side. His eyes were closed. Hers were open.
“Oh, no, Shura . . .” she said. “What do they do to wives of deserters?”
Alexander did not reply. He tried to go around her, but Tatiana stopped him, putting both her hands on his chest. “Don’t turn your face from me,” she said. “Tell me, what does the Commissariat of Internal Affairs do with wives of soldiers who desert, soldiers who run into the woods in marshy Finland, what do they do with the Soviet wives who remain behind?”
Alexander didn’t answer her.
“Shura!” she cried. “What is the NKVD going to do with me? The same thing they do to wives of MIAs? Or POWs? What did Stalin call it, protective custody? What is that a euphemism for?”
Alexander was silent.
“Shura!” Tatiana wasn’t letting him off the bombed-out bridge. “Is that a euphemism for being shot? Is it?” She was panting.
Tatiana stared at Alexander in disbelief, inhaling the cold wet air, her nose hurting from the frost, and she thought back to the river Kama — the icy water every morning on her naked body as it touched him, thought back to all Alexander had tried to hide from her in the corners of his soul where he hoped she would not peek. But in Lazarevo, Tatiana’s eyes saw only the Kama sunrise. It was only here in dreary Leningrad that all was exposed, the darkness and the light, the day and the night. “Are you telling me,” she breathed out, “that whether you go or stay, I am done for?”
Turning his agonized face away from her, Alexander said nothing.
Tatiana’s scarf fell off her head. Numbly she picked it up and held it in her hands. “No wonder you couldn’t tell me. But how could I not have seen?” she whispered.
“How? Because you never think of yourself,” Alexander said, grabbing his rifle, moving from foot to foot, not looking at her. “And that’s why,” he said, “I wanted you to stay in Lazarevo. I wanted you to stay as far away from here, as far away from me, as possible.”
Tatiana shivered, putting her hands inside the pockets of her coat. “What did you think?” she said. “If you kept me in Lazarevo, you’d keep me safe?” She shook her head. “How long do you think it would take the village Soviet right next to the bathhouse to receive the order by that long Lend-Lease telegraph line to have me come in for a few questions?”
“That’s why I liked Lazarevo so much,” he said, not looking at her. “The village Soviet didn’t have a telegraph line.”
“Is that why you liked Lazarevo so much?”
Alexander lowered his head to his chest, his warm eyes cooling off, his breath a vapor. His back to the stone wall, he said, “Now do you see? Now do you understand? Are your eyes opened?”
“Now I see.” Everything. “Now I understand.” Everything. My eyes are opened.
“Do you see there is only one way out before us?”
Narrowing her eyes at him, Tatiana stopped talking, backing away from Alexander, tripping over her scarf, and falling on the bombed, deserted bridge under the liquid sky. Alexander went to help her up and then let go. He could not continue to touch her, Tatiana saw that. And for a moment she could not touch him. But it was just a moment. At first it was black, but the clearing inside her own head made her breathless. Suddenly, through the darkness, there was light, light! She saw it up ahead and she flew to it, knowing what it was, and before she opened her mouth to speak, she felt such relief as if her weight — and his — had been lifted.
Tatiana looked at Alexander with her clearest eyes.
Perplexed, he stared at her. She stretched out her arms to him and said quietly, “Shura, look, look here.”
He looked at her.
“All around you is darkness,” she said. “But in front of you I stand.”
He looked at her.
“Do you see me?” she said faintly.
“Yes.” Just as faintly.
She came closer to him, stepping over the broken granite. Alexander sank to the ground.
Tatiana studied him for a few moments and then descended to her knees. Alexander put his face into his shaking hands.
Tatiana said, “Darling, soldier, husband. Oh, God, Shura, don’t be afraid. Will you listen to me, please? Look at me.”
Alexander would not.
“Shura,” Tatiana said, clenching her fists to keep her composure. Stop. Breathe. Beg for strength. “You think your death is our only choice? Remember what I told you in Lazarevo? Do you not remember me in Lazarevo? I cannot bear the thought of you dying. And I will do everything in my pathetic, powerless life to keep that from happening. You have no chance here in the Soviet Union. No chance. The Germans or the Communists will kill you. That’s their sole objective. And if you die at war, your death will mean that for the rest of my life I will be eating poisoned mushrooms in the Soviet Union, alone and without you! And you know it. Your greatest sacrifice will be for my life in darkness.” Come on, Tania, be strong. “You wanted me to let you go? You wanted my faithful face to free you?” Her voice could not keep from breaking. “Well, here I am! Here is my face.” She wished he would look at her. “Go, Alexander. Go!” she said. “Run to America, and never look back.” Stop. Breathe. Breathe again. She couldn’t even wipe her eyes. All right, I cried, but I think I did well, Tatiana thought. And besides, he wasn’t looking at me.
Taking his hands away from his face, Alexander glared at her for several moments before he spoke. “Tatiana, are you out of your mind? I need you right now,” he said slowly, “to stop being ridiculous. Can you do that for me?”
“Shura,” Tatiana whispered, “I never imagined that I could love anyone like I love you. Do this for me. Go! Return home, and don’t think about me again.”
“Tania, stop it, you don’t mean a word of that.”
“What?” she exclaimed, still on her knees. “Which part don’t you think I mean? Have you be alive in America or dead in the Soviet Union? You think I don’t mean that? Shura, it’s the only way, and you know it.” She paused when he did not speak. “I know what I would do if I were you.”
Alexander shook his head. “What would you do? You would leave me to die? Leave me in the Fifth Soviet apartment, living with Inga and Stan, orphaned and alone?”
Frantically Tatiana chewed her lip. It was love or truth.
Love won.
Steeling herself, she said, “Yes,” in a fragment of a voice. “I would choose America over you.”
Alexander broke down. “Come here, you lying wife,” he said, bringing her close, encompassing her.
The ice on the Fontanka Canal was just forming where they were crumbled against the granite parapets.
“Shura, listen to me,” Tatiana said into Alexander’s chest, “if no matter which way we twist in this world, we are faced with this impossible choice, if no matter what we do, I cannot be saved, then I beg of you, I beg of you—”
“Tania! God, I will not listen to this anymore!” he shouted, pushing her away and jumping to his feet, holding the rifle in his hands.
She stared at him pleadingly, still on the ice. “You can be saved, Alexander Barrington. You. My husband. Your father’s only son. Your mother’s only son.” Tatiana extended her hands to him in supplication. “I am Parasha,” she whispered. “And I am the cost of the rest of your life. Please! There was once a time I saved myself for you. Look at me, I’m on my knees.” She was weeping. “Please, Shura, please. Save your one life for me.”
“Tatiana!” Alexander pulled her up to him so hard, he lifted her off her feet. She clung to him, not letting go. “You are not going to be the cost of the rest of my life!” he said, setting her down. “Now, I need you to stop this.”
She shook her head into his chest. “I won’t stop.”
“Oh, yes, you will,” he said, squeezing her to him.
“You’d rather we both perish?” she cried. “Is that what you would prefer? You’d prefer all the suffering, all the sacrifice, and no Leningrad at the end of it?” She shook him. “Are you out of your mind? You must go! You will go, and you will build yourself a new life.”
Alexander pushed her away and walked a few strides from her. “If you don’t keep quiet,” he said, “I swear to God, I am going to leave you here and go” — he pointed down the street — “and I will never come back!”
Tatiana nodded, pointing in the same direction. “That’s exactly what I want. Go. But far, Shura,” she whispered. “Far.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Alexander yelled, slamming his rifle on the ice. “What kind of crazy world do you live in? What, you think you can come here, fly in on your little wings, and say, all right, Shura, you can go, and I just go? How do you think I can leave you? How do you think it’ll be possible for me to do that? I couldn’t leave a dying stranger in the woods. How do you think I can leave you?”
“I don’t know,” Tatiana said, crossing her arms. “But you better find a way, big man.”
They fell quiet. What to do? She watched him from a distance.
“Do you see how impossible it is what you’re saying?” Alexander said. “Do you even see, or have you completely lost your senses?”
She saw how impossible it was what she was saying. “I’ve completely lost my senses. But you must go.”
“Tania, I’m not going anywhere without you,” he said, “except to the wall.”
“Stop it. You must go.”
He yelled, “If you don’t stop—”
“Alexander!” Tatiana screamed. “If you don’t stop, I am going back to Fifth Soviet and I’m going to hang myself over the bathtub, so you can run to America free of me! I’m going to do it on Sunday, five seconds after you leave, do you understand?”
They stared at each other for a mute, unspeakable moment.
Tatiana stared at Alexander.
Alexander stared at Tatiana.
Then he opened his arms, and she ran into them; he lifted her off her feet, they hugged and did not let go. For many silent minutes they stood on the Fontanka Bridge, wrapped around each other.
At last Alexander spoke into her neck. “Let’s make a deal, Tatiasha, all right? I will promise you that I’ll do my best to keep myself alive, if you promise me that you’ll stay away from bathtubs.”
“You got yourself a deal.” Tatiana looked into his face. “Soldier,” she said clutching him, “I hate to point out the obvious at a time like this, but still . . . I need to point out that I was completely right. That’s all.”
“No, you were completely wrong. That’s all,” Alexander said. “I said to you that some things were worth a great sacrifice. This is just not one of those things.”
“No, Alexander. What you said to me — your exact words to me — was that all great things worth having required great sacrifices worth giving.”
“Tania, what the hell are you going on about? I mean, just for a second, step away from the world in which you live and into mine, for a millisecond, all right, and tell me, what kind of life do you think I could build for myself in America knowing that I left you in the Soviet Union — to die — or to rot?” He shook his head. “The Bronze Horseman would indeed pursue me all through that long night into my maddening dust.”
“Yes. And that would be your price for light instead of darkness.”
“I’m not paying it.”
“Either way, Alexander, my fate is sealed,” Tatiana said without acrimony or bitterness, “but you have a chance, right now, while you are still so young to kiss my hand and to go with God because you were meant for great things.” She took a breath. “You are the best of men.” Her arms were around his neck, and her feet were off the ground.
“Oh, yes,” said Alexander, clamping her to him. “Running to America, abandoning my wife. I’m just f*cking priceless.”
“You’re just impossible.”
“I’m impossible?” Alexander whispered, setting her down. “Come on, let’s walk a bit before we freeze.” She held on to him as they stepped slowly through the trampled snow down Fontanka to the Field of Mars. Silently they crossed the Moika Canal and walked into the Summer Garden.
Tatiana opened her mouth to speak, but Alexander shook his head. “Don’t say a word. What are we even thinking, walking through here? Let’s go. Quick.”
Their heads bent and his arm around her, they walked quickly down the path among the tall, bare trees, past the empty benches, past the statue of Saturn devouring his own child. Tatiana remembered that the last time they were here in the warmth, she had yearned for him to touch her, and now in the cold she was touching him and feeling that she did not deserve what she had been given — a life in which she was loved by a man like Alexander.
“What did I tell you then?” he said. “I told you that was the best time. And I was right.”
“You were wrong,” Tatiana said, unable to look at him. “The Summer Garden was not the best time.”
She was sitting on his bare shoulders in the water, waiting for him to throw her over into the Kama. He wasn’t moving. “Shura,” she said, “what are you waiting for?” He wasn’t moving. “Shura!”
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said. “What kind of man would throw off a girl sitting naked around his neck?”
“A ticklish man!” she shouted.
Exiting through the gilded iron gates on the Neva embankment, they headed mutely upriver. Weakening by minutes, Tatiana took Alexander’s arm and slowed him down. “Can’t walk our streets with you anymore,” she said hoarsely.
From the embankment they turned to Tauride Park. They passed their bench on Ulitsa Saltykov-Schedrin, walked a little farther along the wrought-iron fence, stopped, stared at each other and turned around. They sat down in their coats. Tatiana sat for a minute next to Alexander, then got up and climbed into his lap. Pressing her head to his, she said, “That’s better.”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s better.”
Silently they sat together on their bench in the cold. Tatiana’s whole body struggled with heartbreak. “Why,” she whispered into his mouth, “why can’t we have even what Inga and Stan have? Yes, in the Soviet Union, but together twenty years, still together.”
“Because Inga and Stan are Party spies,” replied Alexander. “Because Inga and Stan sold their souls for a two-bedroom apartment, and now they don’t have either.” He paused. “You and I want too much from this Soviet life.”
“I want nothing from this life,” said Tatiana. “Just you.”
“Me, and running hot water, and electricity, and a little house in the desert, and a state that doesn’t ask for your life in return for these small things.”
“No,” Tatiana said, shaking her head. “Just you.”
Moving her hair back under her scarf, Alexander studied her face. “And a state that doesn’t ask for your life in return for me.”
“The state,” she said with a sigh, “has to ask for something. After all, it protects us from Hitler.”
“Yes,” Alexander said. “But, Tania, who is going to protect you and me from the state?”
Tatiana held him closer. One way or another she had to help Alexander. But how? How to help him? How to save him?
“Don’t you see? We live in a state of war. Communism is war on you and me,” Alexander said. “That’s why I wanted to keep you in Lazarevo. I was just trying to hide my artwork until the war was over.”
“You’re hiding it in the wrong place,” said Tatiana. “You told me yourself there was no safe place in the Soviet Union.” She paused. “Besides, this war is going to be a long one. It’s going to take some time to reconstruct our souls.”
Squeezing her, Alexander muttered, “I have to stop talking to you. Do you ever forget anything I tell you?”
“Not a word,” she said. “Every day I’m afraid that’s all I’ll have left of you.”
They sat.
Tatiana brightened. “Alexander,” she said, “want to hear a joke?”
“Dying to.”
“When we get married, I’ll be there to share all your troubles and sorrows.”
“What troubles? I don’t have any troubles,” said Alexander.
“I said when we get married,” replied Tatiana, her tearful eyes twinkling. “You have to admit that you getting killed at the front so I can live in the Soviet Union, and me hanging myself over a bathtub so you can live in America is an ironic tale quite well told, don’t you think?”
“Hmm. But since we are not leaving a scrap of family behind,” said Alexander, “there will be no one to tell it.”
“There is that,” said Tatiana. “But still . . . how Greek of us, don’t you think?” She smiled and squished his face.
Alexander shook his head. “How do you do that?” he asked. “Find comfort? Through anything. How?”
“Because I’ve been comforted by the master,” she said, kissing his forehead.
He tutted. “Some master I am. Couldn’t even get one tiny tadpole of a wife to stay in Lazarevo.”
Tatiana watched him stare at her. “What, husband?” she said. “What are you thinking?”
“Tania . . . you and I had only one moment . . .” said Alexander. “A single moment in time, in your time and mine . . . one instant, when another life could have still been possible.” He kissed her lips. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”
When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.
“I know that moment,” whispered Tatiana.
“Regret that I crossed the street for you?”
“No, Shura,” she replied. “Before I met you, I could not imagine living a life different from my parents, my grandparents, Dasha, me, Pasha, our children. Could not have conceived of it.” She smiled. “I didn’t dream of someone like you even when I was a child in Luga. You showed me, in a glimpse, in our tremor, a beautiful life . . .” She peered into his eyes. “What did I ever show you?”
“That there is a God,” whispered Alexander.
“There is!” exclaimed Tatiana. “And I felt your need for me clear across the steppes. I’m here for you. And one way or another we will fix this.” She squeezed him. “You’ll see. You and I will fix this together.”
“How? And now what?” came Alexander’s voice at her head.
Taking a frigid breath, Tatiana spoke, trying to sound as cheerful as possible. “How, I don’t know. What now? Now we go blindly into the thick forest at the other side of which awaits the rest of our short but oh-so-blissful time on this earth. You go and fight me a nice war, Captain, and you stay alive, as promised, and keep Dimitri off your back—”
“Tania, I could kill him. Don’t think I haven’t thought about it.”
“In cold blood? I know you couldn’t. And if you could, how long do you think God would look after you then in war? And me in the Soviet Union?” She paused, trying to get hold of her departing senses. It wasn’t as if she herself hadn’t thought about it . . . but Tatiana had the feeling that it was not the Almighty who was keeping Dimitri alive.
“And what about you?” asked Alexander. “What now for you? I don’t suppose you might consider going back to Lazarevo?”
Smiling, Tatiana shook her head. “Don’t worry about me. You must know that having survived last winter’s Leningrad, I’m ready for the worst.” She traced her glove along Alexander’s cheeks, thinking, and the very best, too. “And though I do sometimes wonder,” she continued, “what’s ahead of me if I needed Leningrad to pave my way into it . . . it doesn’t matter. I’m here for the long haul, or the short haul. I’m here to stay. And I’m paved and ready for it all.” Her heart throbbing, Tatiana hugged him to her. “Regret crossing the street for me, soldier?”
Taking her hand into both of his, Alexander said, “Tania, I was spellbound by you from the first moment I saw you. There I was, living my dissolute life, and war had just started. My entire base was in disarray, people were running around, closing accounts, taking money out, grabbing food out of stores, buying up the entire Gostiny Dvor, volunteering for the army, sending their kids to camp—” He broke off. “And in the middle of my chaos, there was you!” Alexander whispered passionately. “You were sitting alone on this bench, impossibly young, breathtakingly blonde and lovely, and you were eating ice cream with such abandon, such pleasure, such mystical delight that I could not believe my eyes. As if there were nothing else in the world on that summer Sunday. I give you this so that if you ever need strength in the future and I’m not there, you don’t have to look far. You, with your high-heeled red sandals, in your sublime dress, eating ice cream before war, before going who knows where to find who knows what, and yet never having any doubt that you would find it. That’s what I crossed the street for, Tatiana. Because I believed that you would find it. I believed in you.”
Alexander wiped the tears from her eyes and, pulling off her glove, pressed his warm lips to her hand.
“But I would’ve come back empty-handed that day if it weren’t for you.”
He shook his head. “No. You didn’t start with me. I came to you because you already had yourself. You know what I bring you?”
“What?”
His voice choking with emotion, he said, “Offerings.”
Alexander and Tatiana sat a long time with their wet, cold faces pressed against each other, his arms around her, her hands cradling his head, while the wind blew the last dead leaves off the trees, while the sky was a leaky November gray.
A tram went by. Three people walked down the street at the end of which Smolny Monastery stood, concealed with scaffolding and camouflage. Down by the granite carapace the river was icy and still. And past the empty Summer Garden the Field of Mars lay flat under blackened snow.