The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman #1)

The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman #1) Page 1

Synopsis:

From the author of the international bestseller Tully comes an epic tale of passion, betrayal, and survival in World War II Russia. Leningrad, 1941: The European war seems far away in this city of fallen grandeur, where splendid palaces and stately boulevards speak of a different age, when the city was known as St. Petersburg. Now two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha Metanov, live in a cramped apartment, sharing one room with their brother and parents. Such are the harsh realities of Stalin’s Russia, but when Hitler invades the country, the siege of its cities makes the previous severe conditions seem luxurious. Against this backdrop of danger and uncertainty, Tatiana meets Alexander, an officer in the Red Army whose self-confidence sets him apart from most Russian men and helps to conceal a mysterious and troubled past. Once the relentless winter and the German army’s blockade take hold of the city, the Metanovs are forced into ever more desperate measures to survive. With bombs falling and food becoming scarce, Tatiana and Alexander are drawn to each other in an impossible love that threatens to tear her family apart and reveal his dangerous secret — a secret as destructive as the war itself. Caught between two deadly forces, the lovers find themselves swept up in a tide of history at a turning point in the century that made the modern world. Mesmerizing from the very first page to the final, breathtaking end, The Bronze Horseman brings alive the story of two indomitable, heroic spirits and their great love that triumphs over the devastation of a country at war.

THE BRONZE HORSEMAN By Paullina Simons

Copyright ? 2000 by Paullina Simons.

For my beloved grandparents, Maria and Lev Handler, who have lived through World War I, the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War, who have lived through World War II, the siege of Leningrad and evacuation, through famine and purges, through Lenin and Stalin, and in the golden twilight of their lives, through twenty non-air-conditioned summers in New York. God bless you.

Hence in a season of calm weather

Though inland far we be,

Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

— William Wordsworth

Book One

LENINGRAD

Part One

THE LUCENT DUSK

THE FIELD OF MARS

LIGHT came through the window, trickling morning all over the room. Tatiana Metanova slept the sleep of the innocent, the sleep of restless joy, of warm, white Leningrad nights, of jasmine June. But most of all, intoxicated with life, she slept the exuberant sleep of undaunted youth.

She did not sleep for much longer.

When the sun’s rays moved across the room to rest at the foot of Tatiana’s bed, she pulled the sheet over her head, trying to keep the daylight out. The bedroom door opened, and she heard the floor creak once. It was her sister, Dasha.

Daria, Dasha, Dashenka, Dashka.

She represented everything that was dear to Tatiana.

Right now, however, Tatiana wanted to smother her. Dasha was trying to wake her up and, unfortunately, succeeding. Dasha’s strong hands were vigorously shaking Tatiana, while her usually harmonious voice was dissonantly hissing, “Psst! Tania! Wake up. Wake up!”

Tatiana groaned. Dasha pulled back the sheet.

Never was their seven-year age difference more apparent than now, when Tatiana wanted to sleep and Dasha was . . .

“Stop it,” Tatiana muttered, fishing helplessly behind her for the sheet and pulling it back over her. “Can’t you see I’m sleeping? What are you? My mother?”

The door to the room opened. Two creaks on the floor. It was her mother. “Tania? You awake? Get up right now.”

Tatiana could never say that her mother’s voice was harmonious. There was nothing soft about Irina Metanova. She was small, boisterous, and full of indignant, overflowing energy. She wore a kerchief to keep her hair back from her face, for she had probably already been down on her knees washing the communal bathroom in her blue summer frock. She looked bedraggled and done with her Sunday.

“What, Mama?” Tatiana said, not lifting her head from the pillow. Dasha’s hair touched Tatiana’s back. Her hand was on Tatiana’s leg, and Dasha bent over as if to kiss her. Tatiana felt a momentary tenderness, but before Dasha could say anything, Mama’s grating voice intruded. “Get up quick. There’s going to be an important announcement on the radio in a few minutes.”

Tatiana whispered to Dasha, “Where were you last night? You didn’t come in till well past dawn.”

“Can I help it,” Dasha whispered with pleasure, “that last night dawn was at midnight? I came in at the perfectly respectable hour of midnight.” She was grinning. “You were all asleep.”

“Dawn was at three, and you weren’t home.”

Dasha paused. “I’ll tell Papa I got caught on the other side of the river when the bridges went up at three.”

“Yes, you do that. Explain to him what you were doing on the other side of the river at three in the morning.” Tatiana turned over. Dasha looked particularly striking this morning. She had unruly dark brown hair and an animated, round, dark-eyed face that had a reaction for everything. Right now that reaction was cheerful exasperation. Tatiana was exasperated herself — less cheerfully. She wanted to continue sleeping.

She caught a glimpse of her mother’s tense expression. “What announcement?”

Her mother was taking the bedclothes off the sofa.

“Mama! What announcement?” Tatiana repeated.

“There is going to be a government announcement in a few minutes. That’s all I know,” Mama said doggedly, shaking her head, as if to say, what’s not to understand?

Tatiana was reluctantly awake. Announcement. It was a rare event when music would be interrupted for a word from the government. “Maybe we invaded Finland again.” She rubbed her eyes.

“Quiet,” Mama said.

“Or maybe they invaded us. They’ve been wanting their borders back ever since losing them last year.”

“We didn’t invade them,” said Dasha. “Last year we went to get our borders back. The ones we lost in the Great War. And you should stop listening to adult conversations.”

“We didn’t lose our borders,” Tatiana said. “Comrade Lenin gave them away freely and willingly. That doesn’t count.”

“Tania, we are not at war with Finland. Get out of bed.”

Tatiana did not get out of bed. “Latvia, then? Lithuania? Byelorussia? Didn’t we just help ourselves to them, too, after the Hitler-Stalin pact?”

“Tatiana Georgievna! Stop it!” Her mother always called her by her first and patronymic names whenever she wanted to show Tatiana she was not in the mood to be fooled with.

Tatiana pretended to be serious. “What else is left? We already have half of Poland.”

“I said stop!” Mama exclaimed. “Enough of your games. Get out of bed. Daria Georgievna, get that sister of yours out of bed.”

Dasha did not move.

Growling, Mama left the room.

Turning quickly to Tatiana, Dasha whispered conspiratorially, “I’ve got something to tell you!”

“Something good?” Tatiana was instantly curious. Dasha usually revealed little about her grown-up life. Tatiana sat up.

“Something great!” said Dasha. “I’m in love!”

Tatiana rolled her eyes and fell back on the bed.

“Stop it!” Dasha said, jumping on top of her. “This is serious, Tania.”

“Yes, all right. Did you just meet him yesterday when the bridges were up?” She smiled.

“Yesterday was the third time.”

Tatiana shook her head, gazing at Dasha, whose joy was infectious. “Can you get off me?”

“No, I can’t get off you,” Dasha said, tickling her. “Not until you say, ‘I’m happy, Dasha.’ ”

“Why would I say that?” exclaimed Tatiana, laughing. “I’m not happy. Stop it! Why should I be happy? I’m not in love. Cut it out!”

Mama came back into the room, carrying six cups on a round tray and a silver samovar — an urn with a spigot used for boiling water for tea. “You two will stop at once! Did you hear me?”

“Yes, Mama,” said Dasha, giving Tatiana one last hard tickle.

“Ouch!” said Tatiana as loudly as possible. “Mama, I think she cracked my ribs.”

“I’m going to crack something else in a minute. You’re both too old for these games.”

Dasha stuck out her tongue at Tatiana. “Very grown-up,” Tatiana said. “Our Mamochka doesn’t know you’re only two.”

Dasha’s tongue remained out. Tatiana reached up and grabbed the slippery thing between her fingers. Dasha squealed. Tatiana let go.

“What did I say!” Mama bellowed.

Dasha leaned over and whispered to Tatiana, “Wait until you meet him. You’ve never met anybody so handsome.”

“You mean better-looking than that Sergei you tortured me with? Didn’t you tell me he was so handsome?”

“Stop it,” hissed Dasha, smacking Tatiana’s leg.

“Of course.” Tatiana grinned. “And wasn’t that just last week?”

“You’ll never understand because you are still an incorrigible child.” There was another smack. Mama yelled. The girls stopped.

Tatiana’s father, Georgi Vasilievich Metanov, came in. A short man in his forties, he sported a full head of untidy black hair that was just beginning to turn to salt and pepper. Dasha got her curly hair from Papa. He walked past the bed, glanced vacantly at Tatiana, her legs still under the sheets, and said, “Tania, it’s noon. Get up. Or there’s going to be trouble. I need you dressed in two minutes.”

“That’s easy,” Tatiana replied, jumping up on the bed and showing her family that she was still wearing her shirt and skirt from yesterday. Dasha and Mama shook their heads; Mama nearly smiled.

Papa looked away toward the window. “What are we going to do with her, Irina?”

Nothing, Tatiana thought, nothing as long as Papa looks the other way.

“I need to get married,” Dasha said, still sitting on the bed. “So I can finally have a room of my own to get dressed in.”

“You’re joking,” said Tatiana, jumping up and down on the bed. “You’ll just be in here with your husband. Me, you, him, all sleeping in one bed, with Pasha at our feet. Romantic, isn’t it?”

“Don’t get married, Dashenka,” her mother said absentmindedly. “Tania is right for once. We have no room for him.”

Her father said nothing, turning on the radio.

Their long, narrow room had one full bed on which Tatiana and Dasha slept, one sofa on which Mama and Papa slept, and one low metal cot on which Tatiana’s twin brother, Pasha, slept. His cot was at the foot of the girls’ bed, so Pasha called himself their little footdog.

Tatiana’s grandparents, Babushka and Deda, lived in the adjacent room, joined to theirs by a short hallway. Occasionally Dasha would sleep on the small sofa in the hallway if she came in late and didn’t want to disturb her parents and thereby get into trouble the next day. The hall sofa was only about one and a half meters long, more suitable for Tatiana to sleep on, since she was just over one and a half meters long herself. But Tatiana didn’t need to sleep in the hall because she rarely came in late, whereas Dasha was a different story.

“Where’s Pasha?” Tatiana asked.

“Finishing breakfast,” Mama replied. She couldn’t stop moving. While Papa sat on the old sofa, still as a building, Mama bustled all around him, picking up empty packs of cigarettes, straightening books on the shelf, wiping down the little table with her hand. Tatiana continued to stand on the bed. Dasha continued to sit.

The Metanovs were lucky — they had two rooms and a sectioned-off part of the communal hallway. Six years earlier they had built a door to partition the very end of the corridor. It was almost like having an apartment of their own. The Iglenkos down the hall had to sleep six to a large room — off the corridor. Now that was unlucky.

The sunshine filtered in through the billowing white curtains.

Tatiana knew there would be only an instant, a brief flicker of time that bathed her with the possibilities of the day. In a moment it would all be gone. And in a moment it all was. Still . . . that sun streaking through the room, the distant rumble of buses through the open window, the slight wind.

This was the part of Sunday that Tatiana loved most: the beginning.

Pasha walked in with Deda and Babushka. Despite being Tatiana’s twin, he looked nothing like her. A compact, dark-haired boy, a smaller version of their father, he acknowledged Tatiana by casually nodding in her direction and mouthing, “Nice hair.”

Tatiana stuck out her tongue. She just hadn’t brushed and tied it up yet.

Pasha sat on his low cot, and Babushka snuggled up next to him. Because she was the tallest of the Metanovs, the whole family deferred to her in all matters except matters of morality, in which everyone deferred to Deda. Babushka was imposing, no-nonsense, and silver-haired. Deda was humble and dark and kind. He sat next to Papa on the sofa and murmured, “It’s something big, son.”

Papa nodded anxiously.

Mama continued to clean anxiously.

Tatiana watched Babushka stroke Pasha’s back. “Pasha,” Tatiana whispered, crawling to the edge of the bed and pulling on her brother. “Want to go to Tauride Park later? I’ll beat you in war.”

“Dream on,” said Pasha. “You will never beat me.”

The radio began to make a series of clicking sounds. It was 12:30 p.m. on June 22, 1941.

“Tania, be quiet and sit down,” Papa ordered his daughter. “It’s about to begin. Irina, you, too. Sit.”

Comrade Vyacheslav Molotov, Joseph Stalin’s Foreign Minister, began:

Men and women, citizens of the Soviet Union — the Soviet government and its head, Comrade Stalin, have instructed me to make the following announcement. At 4 A.M., without declaration of war and without any claims being made on the Soviet Union, German troops attacked our country, attacked our frontier in many places, and bombed from the air Shitomir, Kiev, Sevastopol, Kaunas, and other cities. This attack has been made despite the fact that there was a nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany, a pact the terms of which were scrupulously observed by the Soviet Union. We have been attacked, although during the period of the pact the German Government had not made the slightest complaint about the USSR’s not carrying out its obligations . . .

The government calls upon you, men and women citizens of the Soviet Union, to rally even more closely around the glorious Bolshevik Party, around the Soviet government and our great leader, Comrade Stalin. Our cause is just. The enemy will be crushed. Victory will be ours.

The radio went dead, and the family sat in stunned and heavy silence.

Finally Papa said, “Oh, my God.” And from the sofa he stared at Pasha.

Mama said, “We have to immediately go and get our money out of the bank.”

Babushka Anna said, “Not evacuation again. Can we survive another one? Almost better to stay in the city.”

Deda said, “Can I even get another evacuation teaching post? I’m nearly sixty-four. It’s time to die, not move.”

Dasha said, “The Leningrad garrison doesn’t go to war, right? The war comes to the Leningrad garrison?”

Pasha said, “War! Tania, did you hear? I’m going to enlist. I’m going to go and fight for Mother Russia.”

Before Tatiana could say what she was thinking — which was an immeasurably excited “Wow!” — her father jumped up off the sofa and, responding only to Pasha, exclaimed, “What are you thinking? Who do you think will take you?”

“Come on, Papochka,” said Pasha with a smile. “The war always needs good men.”

“Good men, yes. Not children,” barked Papa as he kneeled on the floor, looking under Tatiana and Dasha’s bed.

“War, why, that’s not possible,” Tatiana said slowly. “Didn’t Comrade Stalin sign a peace treaty?”

Mama poured tea and said, “Tania, it’s for real. It’s for real.”

Tatiana tried to keep the thrill out of her voice when she said, “Will we have to . . . evacuate?”

Papa pulled an old, ratty suitcase from under the bed.

“So soon?” said Tatiana.

She knew of evacuation from the stories Deda and Babushka had told her of the unrest around the time of the Revolution of 1917, when they went just west of the Ural Mountains to live in a village whose name Tatiana could never remember. Waiting for the train with all their belongings, crowding in, crossing the Volga on barges . . .

It was the change that excited Tatiana. It was the unknown. She herself had been to Moscow once for a minute when she was eight — did that even count? Moscow wasn’t exotic. It wasn’t Africa or America. It wasn’t even the Urals. It was just Moscow. Beyond the Red Square there was nothing, not even a little beauty.

As a family the Metanovs had taken a couple of day trips to Tsarskoye Selo and Peterhof. The summer palaces of the tsars had been turned by the Bolsheviks into lavish museums with landscaped grounds. When Tatiana wandered the halls of Peterhof, treading carefully on the cold, veined marble, she could not believe there had been a time when people had all this to live in.

But then the family would return to Leningrad, to their two rooms on Fifth Soviet, and before Tatiana got to her room, she would have to walk past the six Iglenkos who lived off the corridor with their door open.

When Tatiana was three, the family vacationed in the very Crimea that this morning had been attacked by the Germans. What Tatiana remembered from that trip was that it was the first time she ate a raw potato. Also the last. She saw tadpoles in a little pond and slept covered with a blanket in a tent. She vaguely remembered the smell of salt water. It was in the frigid April Black Sea that Tatiana felt her first and last jellyfish, floating past her tiny naked body and making her shriek with delighted terror.

The thought of evacuation filled Tatiana with stomach-churning excitement. Born in 1924, the year of Lenin’s death, after the revolution, after the hunger, after the civil war, Tatiana had been born after the worst but before anything good either. She had been born during.

Lifting his black eyes to her, as if measuring her emotions, Deda spoke. “Tanechka, what are you even thinking?”

She tried to make her face calm. “Nothing.”

“What’s going on in that head of yours? It’s war. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Somehow I don’t think you do.” Deda paused. “Tania, the life you know is over. Mark my words. From this day forward, nothing will be as you have imagined.”

Pasha exclaimed, “Yes! We’re going to boot the Germans back to hell, where they belong.” He smiled at Tatiana, who smiled back.

Mama and Papa were quiet.

Papa said, “Yes. And then what?”

Babushka went to sit on the sofa next to Deda. Placing her large hand on his, she pursed her lips and nodded, in a way that showed Tatiana that Babushka knew things and was keeping them to herself. Deda knew, too, but whatever it was they knew did not measure up to Tatiana’s tumult. That’s all right, she thought. They don’t understand. They are not young.

Mama broke the silence of seven people. “What are you doing, Georgi Vasilievich?”

“Too many children, Irina Fedorovna. Too many children to worry about,” he said dolefully to her, struggling with Pasha’s suitcase.

“Really, Papa?” said Tatiana. “Which of your children would you like not to worry about?”

Without replying, Papa went to Pasha’s drawers in the armoire they all shared and started haphazardly throwing the boy’s clothes into the suitcase.

“I’m sending him away, Irina. I’m sending him away to camp in Tolmachevo. He was going to go anyway next week with Volodya Iglenko. He’ll just go a little sooner. Volodya will go with him. Nina will be glad to have them go a week early. You’ll see. Everything will be all right.”

Mama opened her mouth and shook her head. “Tolmachevo? He will be safe there? Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” said Papa.

“Absolutely not,” said Pasha. “Papa, war has started! I’m not going to camp. I’m going to enlist.”

Good for you, Pasha, thought Tatiana, but Papa whipped around to glare at her brother, and, sucking in her breath, Tatiana suddenly understood everything.

Grabbing Pasha by the shoulders, Papa started to shake him. “What are you saying? Are you crazy? Enlist?”

Pasha fought to break free. Papa would not let go.

“Papa, let go of me.”

“Pavel, you’re my son, and you will listen to me. The first thing you’re going to do is get out of Leningrad. Then we’ll discuss enlisting. Right now we have a train to catch.”

There was something embarrassing and awkward about a physical scene in a small room with so many people watching. Tatiana wanted to turn away, but there was nowhere to turn. Across from her were her grandmother and grandfather, behind her was Dasha, to the left of her were her mother and father and brother. She looked down at her hands and closed her eyes. She imagined lying on her back in the middle of a summer field eating sweet clover. No one was around her.

How did things change in a matter of seconds?

She opened her eyes and blinked. One second. She blinked again. Another second.

Seconds ago she was sleeping.

Seconds ago Molotov spoke.

Seconds ago she was exhilarated.

Seconds ago Papa spoke.

And now Pasha was leaving. Blink, blink, blink.

Deda and Babushka were diplomatically silent, as always. Deda, God love him, never missed an opportunity to keep quiet. Babushka was quite the opposite of him in that respect, but in this particular instance she had obviously decided to follow his lead. Perhaps it was his hand tightly squeezing her leg each time she opened her mouth, but for whatever reason, she did not speak.

Dasha, unafraid of their father and not discouraged by the distant prospect of war, got up and said, “Papa, this is crazy. Why are you sending him away? The Germans are nowhere near Leningrad. You heard Comrade Molotov. They’re at the Crimea. That’s thousands of kilometers from here.”

“Be quiet, Dashenka,” said Papa. “You have no idea about the Germans.”

“They’re not here, Papa,” Dasha repeated in her strong voice that allowed for no argument. Tatiana wished she could speak as persuasively as Dasha. Her own voice was echo soft, as if some female hormone hadn’t come her way yet. In many ways it barely had. She’d got her monthlies only last year, and even then . . . she barely got her monthlies. They were more like quarterlies. They came in the winter, decided they didn’t like it, and left till fall. In the fall they came and stayed as if they were never leaving. Since then Tatiana had seen them twice. Maybe if they came more often, Tatiana would have a meaningful voice like Dasha’s. You could set the clock by Dasha’s monthlies.

“Daria! I’m not going to argue with you on this point!” exclaimed Papa. “Your brother is not staying in Leningrad. Pasha, get dressed. Put on some trousers and a nice shirt.”

“Papa, please.”

“Pasha! I said get dressed. We cannot waste time. I guarantee those children’s camps are going to completely fill up in one hour, and then I won’t be able to get you in.”

Perhaps it was a mistake to tell that to Pasha, because Tatiana had never seen her brother move more slowly. He must have spent a good ten minutes looking for the one dress shirt he owned. They all averted their eyes while Pasha changed. Tatiana closed her eyes again, searching for her meadow, for the pleasant summer smell of white cherry and nettles. She wanted some blueberries. She realized she was a little hungry. Opening her eyes, she glanced around the room. “I don’t want to go,” complained Pasha.

“It’s just for a little while, son,” said Papa. “It’s a precaution. You’ll be safe in camp, out of harm’s way. You’ll stay maybe a month, until we see how the war is going. Then you’ll come back, and if there’s evacuation, we’ll get you and your sisters out.”

Yes! Tatiana wanted to hear that.

“Georg.” Deda spoke softly. “Georg.”

“Yes, Papochka?” Tatiana’s father said respectfully. No one loved Deda more than Papa, not even Tatiana.

“Georg. You cannot keep the boy out of conscription. You can’t.”

“Of course I can. He is only seventeen.”

Deda shook his neat gray head. “Exactly — seventeen. They’ll take him.”

The look of trapped fear slid across Papa’s face and was gone. “They won’t take him, Papochka,” said Papa hoarsely. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” He was clearly unable to say what he felt: everyone stop talking and let me save my son the only way I know how. Deda sat back against the sofa cushions.

Feeling bad for her father and wanting to be helpful, Tatiana began to say, “We’re not yet—” but Mama cut in with, “Pashechka, take a sweater, darling.”

“I’m not taking a sweater, Mama,” he exclaimed. “It’s the middle of summer!”

“We had frost two weeks ago.”

“And now it’s hot. I’m not taking it.”

“Listen to your mother, Pavel,” said Papa. “The nights will be cold in Tolmachevo. Take the sweater.” Pasha sighed deeply, rebelliously, but took the sweater and threw it inside the suitcase. Papa closed it and locked it. “Everyone, listen. Here’s my plan . . .”

“What plan?” Tatiana said with mild frustration. “I hope this plan includes some food. Because—”

“I know why,” Papa snapped. “Now, be quiet and listen. This concerns you, too.” He started telling them what he needed them to do.

Tatiana fell back on the bed. If they weren’t evacuating this instant, she didn’t want to hear any more.

Pasha went to boys’ camp every summer, in Tolmachevo, Luga, or Gatchina. Pasha preferred Luga because it had the best river for swimming. Tatiana preferred Pasha in Luga because he was close to their dacha, their summer house, and she could go and visit him. The Luga camp was only five kilometers from their dacha straight through the woods. Tolmachevo, on the other hand, was twenty kilometers from Luga, and there the counselors were strict and expected you up by sunrise. Pasha said it was a bit like being in the army. Well, now it would be almost like enlisting, she thought, not listening to her father speak.

She felt Dasha pinch her hard on the leg. “Ouch!” she said, deliberately loudly, hoping her sister would get into trouble for hurting her. No one cared. No one said anything. They didn’t even look her way. All eyes were on Pasha as he stood — reedy and awkward in his brown trousers and frayed beige shirt — in the middle of the room, in the half bloom of late adolescence, so beloved. And he knew it.

He was everyone’s favorite child, favorite grandchild, favorite brother.

Because he was the only son.

Tatiana lifted herself off the bed and came to stand by Pasha. Putting her arm around him, she said, “Cheer up. You’re so lucky. You’re going to camp. I’m not going anywhere.”

He stepped slightly away from her, but only slightly; stepped away not because he was uncomfortable with her, Tatiana knew, but because he did not feel himself to be lucky. She knew that her brother wanted to become a soldier more than anything. He didn’t want to be in some silly camp. “Pasha,” she said cheerfully, “first you have to beat me in war. Then you can enlist and fight the Germans.”

“Shut up, Tania,” said Pasha.

“Shut up, Tania,” said Papa.

“Papa,” said Tatiana, “can I pack my suitcase? I want to go to camp, too.”

“Pasha, are you ready? Let’s go,” said Papa, not even replying to Tatiana. There were no girls’ camps.

“I have a joke for you, dear Pasha,” said Tatiana, not wanting to give up and not put off by her brother’s reluctance.

“Don’t want to hear your stupid jokes, dear Tania.”

“You’ll like this one.”

“Why do I doubt it?”

Papa said, “Tatiana! This is no time for jokes.”

Deda intervened on Tatiana’s behalf. “Georg, let the girl speak.”

Nodding at Deda, Tatiana said, “A soldier is being led to his execution. ‘Some bad weather we’re having,’ he says to his convoy. ‘Look who’s complaining,’ they say. ‘We have to go back.’ ”

Nobody moved. No one even smiled.

Pasha raised his eyebrows, pinched her, and whispered, “Nice going, Tania.”

She sighed. Someday her spirit would soar, she thought, but not this day.