The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman #1)

The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman #1) Page 2

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“Tatiana, no long good-byes. You’ll see your brother in a month. Come downstairs and hold the front door open for us. Your mother’s back is bothering her,” Papa told her as they got ready to carry Pasha’s things along with bags of extra food for camp.

“All right, Papa.”

The apartment was laid out like a train — a long corridor with nine rooms attached. There were two kitchens, one at the front of the apartment, one at the back. The bathrooms and the toilets were attached to the kitchens. In the nine rooms lived twenty-five people. Five years ago there were thirty-three people in the apartment, but eight people had moved or died or—

Tatiana’s family lived in the back. It was better to live in the back. The rear kitchen was the bigger of the two, and it had stairs leading up to the roof and down to the courtyard; Tatiana liked taking the rear stairs because she could sneak out without passing crazy Slavin’s room.

The rear kitchen had a bigger stove than the front kitchen and a bigger bath. And only three other families shared the rear kitchen and bathroom with the Metanovs — the Petrovs, the Sarkovs, and crazy Slavin, who never cooked and never bathed.

Slavin was not in the hall at the moment. Good.

As Tatiana walked down the corridor to the front door, she passed the shared telephone. Petr Petrov was using it, and Tatiana had time to think how lucky they were that their telephone worked. Tatiana’s cousin Marina lived in an apartment where the telephone was broken all the time — faulty wiring. It was difficult to get in touch with her, unless Tatiana wrote or went to see her personally, which she did not do often, since Marina lived on the other side of town, across the river Neva.

As Tatiana neared Petr, she saw that he was very agitated. He was obviously waiting for a connection, and though the cord was too short to allow him to pace, he was pacing with his whole body while standing in one place. Petr got his connection just as Tatiana was passing him in the narrow corridor; Tatiana knew this because he screamed into the phone. “Luba! Is that you? Is that you, Luba?”

So unexpected and sharp was his cry that Tatiana jumped away from him, knocking into the wall. Getting her bearings, she passed him quickly and then slowed down to listen.

“Luba, can you hear me? We have a bad connection. Everyone is trying to get through. Luba, come back to Leningrad! Did you hear? War has started. Take whatever you can, leave the rest, and get the next train. Luba! No, not in an hour, not tomorrow — now, do you understand? Come back immediately!” Short pause. “Forget our things, I tell you! Are you listening to me, woman?”

Turning around, Tatiana caught a glimpse of Petr’s stiff back.

“Tatiana!” Papa was glaring at her with an expression that said, if you don’t come here right now . . .

But Tatiana dawdled to hear more. Her father yelled across the corridor, “Tatiana Georgievna! Come here and help.” Like her mother, her father said her full name only when he wanted Tatiana to know how serious he was. Tatiana hurried, wondering about Petr Petrov and about why her brother couldn’t open the front door himself.

Volodya Iglenko, who was Pasha’s age and was going to the Tolmachevo camp with him, walked downstairs with the Metanovs, holding his own suitcase and opening his own door. He was one of four brothers. He had to do things for himself. “Pasha, let me show you,” Tatiana said quietly. “It’s like this. You put your hand on the handle, and you pull. The door opens. You walk outside. It shuts behind you. Let’s see if you can do it.”

“Just open the door, Tania,” said Pasha. “Can’t you see I’m carrying my suitcase?”

Out on the street they stood still for a moment.

“Tania,” said Papa. “Take the hundred and fifty rubles I gave you and go and buy us some food. But don’t dawdle, like always. Go immediately. Do you hear?”

“I hear, Papa. I’ll go immediately.”

Pasha snorted. “You’re going back to bed,” he whispered to her.

Mama said, “Come on, we better go.”

“Yes,” Papa said. “Come on, Pasha.”

“So long,” Tatiana said, knocking Pasha on the arm.

He grunted unhappily in reply and pulled her hair. “Tie your hair up before you go out, will you?” he said. “You’ll scare off the passersby.”

“Shut up,” Tatiana said lightly. “Or I’ll cut it off completely.”

“All right, let’s go now,” said Papa, tugging at Pasha.

Tatiana said good-bye to Volodya, waved to her mother, took one last look at Pasha’s reluctant back, and returned upstairs.

Deda and Babushka were on their way out with Dasha. They were going to the bank to get their savings out.

Tatiana was left alone.

She breathed a sigh of relief and fell onto her bed.

Tatiana knew she had been born too late into the family. She and Pasha. She should have been born in 1917, like Dasha. After her there were other children, but not for long: two brothers, one born in 1919 and one in 1921, died of typhus. A girl, born in 1922, died of scarlet fever in 1923. Then in 1924, as Lenin was dying and the New Economic Plan — that short-lived return to free enterprise — was coming to an end, while Stalin was scheming to enlarge his power base in the presidium through the firing squad, Pasha and Tatiana were born seven minutes apart to a very tired twenty-five-year-old Irina Fedorovna. The family wanted Pasha, their boy, but Tatiana was a stunning surprise. No one had twins. Who had twins? Twins were almost unheard of. And there was no room for her. She and Pasha had to share a crib for the first three years of their life. Since then Tatiana slept with Dasha.

But the fact remained — she was taking up valuable bed space. Dasha couldn’t get married because Tania took up the space where Dasha’s prospective husband would lie. Dasha often expressed this to Tatiana. She would say, “Because of you I’m going to die an old maid.” To which Tatiana would immediately reply, “Soon, I hope. So I can marry and have my husband sleep next to me.”

After graduating from school last month, Tatiana had gotten a job so she wouldn’t have to spend another idle summer in Luga reading and rowing boats and playing silly games with the kids down the dusty road. Tatiana had spent all of her childhood summers at their dacha in Luga and on nearby Lake Ilmen in Novgorod, where her cousin Marina had a dacha with her parents.

In the past Tatiana had looked forward to cucumbers in June, tomatoes in July, and maybe some raspberries in August, looked forward to mushroom picking and blueberry picking, to fishing on the river — all such small pleasures. But this summer was going to be different.

Tatiana realized she was tired of being a child. At the same time she didn’t know how to be anything else, so she got a job at the Kirov factory, in the south of Leningrad. That was nearly adult. She now worked and constantly read the newspaper, shaking her head at France, at Marshal Pétain, at Dunkirk, at Neville Chamberlain. She tried to be very serious, nodding purposefully at the crises in the Low Countries and the Far East. Those were Tatiana’s concessions to adulthood — Kirov and Pravda.

She liked her job at Kirov, the biggest industrial plant in Leningrad and probably in all of the Soviet Union. Tatiana had heard that somewhere in that factory workers built tanks. But she was skeptical. She had not seen one.

She made silverware. Her job was to put the knives, forks, and spoons into boxes. She was the second-to-last person in the assembly line. The girl after her taped the boxes shut. Tatiana felt bad for that girl; taping was just so boring. At least Tatiana got to handle three different types of utensils.

Working at Kirov was going to be fun this summer, Tatiana thought, lying on her bed, but not as much fun as evacuation would have been.

Tatiana would have liked to get in a few hours of reading. She had just started Mikhail Zoshchenko’s sadistically funny short stories on the ironic realities of Soviet life, but her instructions from her father had been very clear. She looked at her book longingly. What was the hurry anyway? The adults were behaving as if there were a fire. The Germans were two thousand kilometers away. Comrade Stalin would not let that traitor Hitler get deep into the country. And Tatiana never got to be home alone.

As soon as Tatiana had realized there was going to be no immediate evacuation, she became less excited about the war. Was it interesting? Yes. But Zoshchenko’s story “Banya” — “The Bathhouse” — about a man going to the Soviet bathhouse and washing his clothes there, too, and losing his coat checks, was hilarious. Where is a naked man to put those coat checks? The checks were washed away during the bath. Only the string remained. I offer the string to the coat attendant. He won’t take it. Any citizen can cut up string, he says. There won’t be enough coats to go around. Wait until the other customers have gone. I’ll give you whatever coat is left.

Since no one was evacuating, Tatiana read the story twice, lying on the bed, her legs up on the wall, weak from laughter by the second time.

Still, orders were orders. She had to go out and get food.

But today was Sunday, and Tatiana did not like to go out on Sundays unless she got dressed up. Without asking, she borrowed Dasha’s high-heeled red sandals, in which Tatiana walked like a newborn calf with two broken legs. Dasha walked better in them; she was much more used to them.

Tatiana brushed out her very blonde long hair, wistfully wishing for thick dark curls like the rest of the family’s. Hers was so straight and blah blonde. She always wore it tied back in a ponytail or in braids. Today she tied it up in a ponytail. The straightness and the blondeness of her hair were inexplicable. In her daughter’s defense, Mama would say that she herself had had straight blonde hair as a child. Yes, and Babushka said that when she got married she had weighed only forty-seven kilos.

Tatiana put on the only Sunday dress she owned, made sure her face and teeth and hands were sparkling clean, and left the apartment.

A hundred and fifty rubles was a colossal amount of money. Tatiana didn’t know where her father got that kind of money, but it appeared magically in his hands, and it was not her place to ask. She was supposed to come back with — what did her father say? Rice? Vodka? She had already forgotten.

Mama did tell him, “Georg, don’t send her out. She won’t get anything.”

Tatiana had nodded in agreement. “Mama is right. Send Dasha, Papa.”

“No!” Papa exclaimed. “I know you can do it. Just go to the store, take a bag with you, and come back with—”

What did he tell her to come back with? Potatoes? Flour?

Tatiana walked past the Sarkovs’ room and saw Zhanna and Zhenya Sarkov sitting in armchairs, sipping tea, reading, looking very relaxed, as if it were just another Sunday. How lucky they are to have such a big room all to themselves, thought Tatiana. Crazy Slavin was not in the hall. Good.

It was as if Molotov’s announcement two hours ago had been an aberration in an otherwise normal day. Tatiana almost doubted that she had heard Comrade Molotov correctly until she got outside and turned the corner on Grechesky Prospekt, where teeming clusters of people were rushing toward Nevsky Prospekt, the main shopping street in Leningrad.

Tatiana could not remember when she had last seen such crowds on Leningrad streets. Quickly she turned around and went the other way to Suvorovsky Prospekt. She wanted to beat the crowds. If they were all going to the Nevsky Prospekt stores, she was going the opposite way down to Tauride Park, where the grocery stores, though understocked, were also underpatronized.

A man and a woman walked by, stared at Tatiana in her dress, and smiled. She lowered her gaze but smiled, too.

Tatiana was wearing her splendid white dress with red roses. She had the dress since 1938, when she had turned fourteen. Her father bought it from a market vendor in a town called Swietokryst in Poland, where he had gone on a business trip for the Leningrad waterworks plant. He went to Swietokryst, Warsaw, and Lublin. Tatiana thought her father was a world traveler when he came back. Dasha and Mama received chocolates from Warsaw, but the chocolates went a long time ago — two years and three hundred and sixty three days ago. But here Tatiana was, still wearing her dress with crimson roses embroidered on the thick, smooth, snow-white cotton. The roses weren’t buds; they were blooms. It was a perfect summer dress, with thin shoulder straps and no sleeves. It was fitted through the waist and then billowed out in a flowing skirt to just above her knees, and if Tatiana spun around fast enough, the skirt whirled up in a parachute.

There was only one problem with this dress in June 1941: it was too small for Tatiana. The crisscross satin straps at the back of the dress that Tatiana could once tie completely closed had to be constantly loosened.

It vexed Tatiana that the body she was increasingly uneasy with could outgrow her favorite dress. It wasn’t as if her body were blossoming to look like Dasha’s, full of hips and breasts and thighs and arms. No, not at all. Tatiana’s hips, though round, remained small, and her legs and arms remained slender, but the breasts got larger, and there was the problem. Had the breasts remained the same size, Tatiana wouldn’t have had to leave the straps loose, exposing her bare spine under the crisscrosses from her shoulder blades to the small of her back for all the world to see.

Tatiana liked the notion of the dress, she liked the feeling of the cotton against her skin and the stitched roses under her fingers, but she did not like the feeling of her exploding body trapped inside the lung-squeezing material. What she enjoyed was the memory of her skinny-as-a-stick fourteen-year-old self putting on that dress for the first time and going out for a Sunday walk on Nevsky. It was for that feeling that she had put on the dress again this Sunday, the day Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

On another level, on a conscious, loudly-audible-to-the-soul level, what Tatiana also loved about the dress was a small tag that said FABRIQUé EN FRANCE.

Fabriqué en France! It was gratifying to own a piece of anything not made badly by the Soviets, but instead made well and romantically by the French; for who was more romantic than the French? The French were masters of love. All nations were different. The Russians were unparalleled in their suffering, the English in their reserve, the Americans in their love of life, the Italians in their love of Christ, and the French in their hope of love. So when they made the dress for Tatiana, they made it full of promise. They made it as if to tell her, put it on, chérie, and in this dress you, too, shall be loved as we have loved; put it on and love shall be yours. And so Tatiana never despaired in her white dress with red roses. Had the Americans made it, she would have been happy. Had the Italians made it, she would have started praying, had the British made it, she would have squared her shoulders, but because the French had made it, she never lost hope.

Though at the moment, Tatiana walked down Suvorovsky with her dress uncomfortably tight against her swelling adolescent chest.

Outside was fresh and warm, and it was a jolt to the consciousness to remember that on this sunny lovely day full of promise, Hitler was in the Soviet Union. Tatiana shook her head as she walked. Deda had never trusted that Hitler and said so from the start. When Comrade Stalin signed the nonaggression pact with Hitler in 1939, Deda said that Stalin had gone to bed with the devil. And now the devil had betrayed Stalin. Why was that such a surprise? Why had we expected more from him? Had we expected the devil to behave honorably?

Tatiana thought Deda was the smartest man on earth. Ever since Poland was trampled over in 1939, Deda had been saying that Hitler was coming to the Soviet Union. A few months ago in the spring, he suddenly started bringing home canned goods. Too many canned goods for Babushka’s liking. Babushka had no interest in spending part of Deda’s monthly pay on an intangible such as just in case. She would scoff at him. What are you talking about, war? she would say, glaring at the canned ham. Who is going to eat this, ever? I will never eat this garbage, why do you spend good money on garbage? Why can’t you get marinated mushrooms, or tomatoes? And Deda, who loved Babushka more than a woman deserved to be loved by a man, would bow his head, let her vent her feelings, say nothing, but the following month be back carrying more cans of ham. He also bought sugar and he bought coffee and he bought tobacco, and he bought some vodka, too. He had less luck with keeping these items stocked because for every birthday, anniversary, May Day, the vodka was broken open and the tobacco smoked and the coffee drunk and the sugar put into bread and pie dough and tea. Deda was a man unable to deny his family anything, but he denied himself. So on his own birthday he refused to open the vodka. But Babushka still opened the bag of sugar to make him blueberry pie. The one thing that remained constant and grew by a can or two each month was the ham, which everyone hated and no one ate.

Tatiana’s task of buying up all the rice and vodka she could get her hands on was proving much harder than she had anticipated.

The stores on Suvorovsky were empty of vodka. They carried cheese. But cheese would not keep well. They had bread, but bread would not keep well. The salami was gone, the canned goods, too. And the flour.

With a quickening pace Tatiana walked down Suvorovsky, eleven blocks in all, over a kilometer, and every store was empty of canned or long-term provisions. It was only three o’clock.

Tatiana passed two savings banks. Both were closed. Signs, hastily handwritten, said CLOSED EARLY. This surprised her. Why would the banks close early? It’s not as if they could run out of money. They were banks. She chuckled to herself.

The Metanovs had waited too long, Tatiana realized, sitting around as they did, packing Pasha, bickering, looking dejectedly at one another. They should have been out the door in an instant, but instead Pasha was sent to camp. And Tatiana had read Zoshchenko. She should have been out an hour earlier. If only she had gone to Nevsky Prospekt, she could be standing in line right now with the rest of the crowds.

But even though she strolled down Suvorovsky disheartened at not being able to find even a box of matches to buy, Tatiana felt the warm summer air carrying with it an anomalous scent of provenance, a scent of an order of things to come that she neither knew nor understood. Will I always remember this day? Tatiana thought, inhaling deeply. I’ve said that in the past: oh, this day I’ll remember, but I have forgotten the days I thought I would never forget. I remember seeing my first tadpole. Who would have thought? I remember tasting the salt water of the Black Sea for the first time. I remember getting lost in the woods by myself the first time. Maybe it’s the firsts you remember. I’ve never been in a real war before, Tatiana thought. Maybe I’ll remember this.

Tatiana headed toward the stores near Tauride Park. She liked this area of the city, away from the hustle of Nevsky Prospekt. The trees were lush and tall, and there were fewer people. She liked the feeling of a bit of solitude.

After looking inside three or four grocers, Tatiana wanted to just give up. She was seriously considering going back home and telling her father she wasn’t able to find anything, but the thought of telling him she had failed in the one small task he had assigned her filled her with anxiety. She walked on. Near the corner where Suvorovsky met Ulitsa Saltykov-Schedrin, there was a store with a long line of people stretching out into an otherwise empty street.

Dutifully she went and stood behind the last person in line.

Shifting from foot to foot, Tatiana stood and stood, asked for the time, stood and stood. The line moved a meter. Sighing, she asked the lady in front of her what they were standing in line for. The lady shrugged aggressively, turning away from Tatiana. “What, what?” the lady grumbled, holding her bag closer to her chest, as if Tatiana were about to rob her. “Stand in line like everybody else, and don’t ask stupid questions.”

Tatiana waited. The line moved another meter. She asked for the time again.

“Ten minutes after the last time you asked me!” barked the woman.

When she heard the young woman in front of the grumpy lady say the word “banks” Tatiana perked up.

“No more money,” the young woman was saying to an older woman standing next to her. “Did you know that? The savings banks have run out. I don’t know what they’re going to do now. Hope you have some in your mattress.”

The older woman shook her head worriedly. “I had 200 rubles, my life savings. That’s what I have with me now.”

“Well, buy, buy. Buy everything. Canned goods are especially—”

The older woman shook her head. “Don’t like canned goods.”

“Well, then buy caviar. I heard one woman bought ten kilos of caviar at Elisey on Nevsky. What’s she going to do with this caviar? But it’s none of my business. I’m buying oil. And matches.”

“Buy some salt,” the older woman said wisely. “You can drink tea without sugar, but you can’t eat porridge without salt.”

“Don’t like porridge,” the younger woman said. “Never liked it. Won’t eat it. It’s gruel, that’s what it is.”

“Well, buy caviar then. You like caviar, don’t you?”

“No. Maybe some sausage,” the younger woman said thoughtfully. “Some nice smoked kolbasa. Listen, it’s been over twenty years that the proletariat has been the tsar. I know by now what to expect.”

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 br?lée?”

“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 br?lée 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.

The soldier didn’t. Tatiana could tell he sat very calmly, looking out his window. Occasionally he would turn toward the front of the bus, and then Tatiana could swear he was looking at her.

After crossing Liteiny Bridge over the river Neva, the bus continued across town. The few stores Tatiana saw out the window either had long lines or were closed.

The streets became progressively emptier — bright, deserted Leningrad streets.

Stop after stop after stop went by. She was getting farther into north Leningrad.

Her head clearing briefly, Tatiana realized she had long since passed Marina’s stop near Polustrovsky. Now she couldn’t even tell where she was anymore. Unsettled, she moved tensely around on the seat.

Where was she going? She didn’t know, but she couldn’t get off the bus. First of all, the soldier was making no move to ring the bell, and second, she didn’t know where she was. If Tatiana got off here, she would have to cross the street and take the bus back.

What was she hoping for anyway? To watch where he got off and then come back here another day with Marina? The thought made Tatiana twitch with disquiet.

Come back to find her soldier.

It was ridiculous. Right now she was hoping merely for a graceful retreat and a way back home.

Little by little, other people trickled off the bus. Finally there was no one left except Tatiana and the soldier.

The bus sped on. Tatiana didn’t know what to do anymore. The soldier was not getting off the bus. What have I gotten myself into? she thought. She decided to get off, but when she rang the bell, the bus driver turned around and said, “You want to get off here, girl? Nothing here but industrial buildings. You meeting somebody?”

“Uh, no,” she stammered.

“Well, then wait. Next will be the last stop.”

Mortified, Tatiana sat back down with a thump.

The bus pulled into a dusty terminal.

The driver said, “Last stop.”

Tatiana got off the bus into a hot, earth-covered bus station, which was a square lot at the end of an empty street. She was afraid to turn around. She put her hand on her chest to still her relentless heart. What was she supposed to do now? Nothing to do but take the bus back. Slowly she walked out of the station.

After — and only after — taking the deepest breath, Tatiana finally looked to her right, and there he was, smiling cheerfully at her. He had perfect white teeth — unusual for a Russian. She couldn’t help but smile back. Relief must have shown in her face. Relief and apprehension and anxiety; all that, and something else, too.

Grinning, the soldier said, “All right, I give up. Where are you going?”

What could Tatiana say?

His Russian was slightly accented. It was correct Russian, just slightly accented. She tried to figure out if the accent and the white teeth came from the same place and, if so, where that place was. Georgia, maybe? Armenia? Somewhere near the Black Sea. He sounded as if he came from around salt water.

“Excuse me?” Tatiana said at last.

The soldier smiled again. “Where are you going?”

Looking up at him, Tatiana got a crick in her neck. She was a waif of a girl, and the soldier towered over her. Even in her high heels she barely came up to the base of his throat. Another thing she must ask him, if she could get her tongue back from him — the height. The teeth, the accent, and the height, all from the same place, comrade?

They had stopped stupidly in the middle of the deserted street. There wasn’t much activity around the bus terminal on a Sunday when war had started. Instead of hanging around near buses, people were standing in lines buying food. Not Tatiana, no, she was stopped stupidly in the middle of the street.

“I think I missed my stop,” Tatiana muttered. “I have to go back.”

“Where were you going?” he repeated politely, still standing across from her, not moving, not making a move to move. Standing completely still, eclipsing the sun.

“Where?” she asked rhetorically. Her hair was a big mess, wasn’t it? Tatiana never wore makeup, but she wished she had a little lipstick. Something, anything, so she wouldn’t feel so plain and silly.

“Let’s get out of the street,” the soldier said. They crossed. “You want to sit?” He pointed to a bench by the bus stop sign. “We can wait for the next bus here.” They sat. He sat too close to her.

“You know, it’s the oddest thing,” Tatiana began after a prolonged throat clearing. “My cousin Marina lives on Polustrovsky Prospekt — I was going there—”

“That was several kilometers ago. A dozen bus stops.”

“No,” Tatiana said, flustered. “I must have just missed it.”

He made a serious face. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you right back. The bus will come in a few minutes.”

Glancing at him, she asked, “Where were . . . you going?”

“Me? I’m with the garrison. I’m on city patrol today.” His eyes were twinkling.

Oh, perfect, Tatiana thought, looking away. He was merely on city patrol, and I was headed practically to Murmansk. What an idiot. Embarrassed, her face all red, she suddenly felt light-headed. She looked down at her shoes. “Except for the ice cream, I haven’t eaten all day,” she said feebly, her consciousness yielding to unconsciousness in a matter of suspended seconds. The soldier’s arm went around her back, and his calm, firm voice said, “No. No, don’t faint. Stay up.”

And she did.

Woozy and disoriented, she didn’t want to see his tilted head looking at her solicitously. She smelled him, something pleasant and masculine, not alcohol or sweat like most Russians. What was it? Soap? Cologne for men? Men in the Soviet Union did not wear cologne. No, it was just him.

“I’m sorry,” Tatiana said weakly, attempting to stand up. He helped her. “Thank you.”

“Not at all. Are you all right?”

“Absolutely. Just hungry, I think.”

He was still holding her. The perimeter of her upper arm was inside his hand, which was the size of a small country, perhaps Poland. Trembling slightly, Tatiana straightened herself, and he let her go, leaving a warm empty space where his hand had been.

“Sitting on the bus, now out in the sun . . .” the soldier said with some concern in his voice. “You’ll be all right. Come on.” He pointed. “There’s our bus.”

The bus came, driven by the same driver, who looked at them with raised eyebrows and said nothing.

This time they sat together, Tatiana near the window, the soldier with his uniformed arm draped over the wooden back of the seat behind her.

Looking at him in this proximity was truly impossible. There was just no hiding from his eyes. But it was his eyes that Tatiana wanted most to see.

“I don’t normally faint,” she said, looking out the window. That was a lie. She fainted all the time. All someone had to do was bump a chair against her knee and she was on the floor unconscious. The teachers at school used to send home two or three notes a month about her fainting.

She glanced at him.

Smiling irrepressibly, the soldier said, “What’s your name anyway?”

“Tatiana,” she said, noticing the slight stubble on his face, the sharp line of his nose, his black brows, and the small gray scar on his forehead. He was tanned under the stubble. His white teeth were outstanding.

“Tatiana,” he repeated in his deep voice. “Tatiana,” he said, slower, gentler. “Tania? Tanechka?”

“Tania,” she replied and gave him her hand. Before he told her his name, he took it. Her small, slender, white hand disappeared in his enormous, warm, dark one. She thought he must have heard her heart through her fingers, through her wrist, through all the veins under her skin.

“I am Alexander,” he said.

Her hand remained outstretched in his.

“Tatiana. Such a good Russian name.”

“Alexander, too,” she said and lowered her eyes.

Finally, reluctantly, she pulled her hand away. His large hands were clean, his fingers long and thick, and his nails trimmed. Neat nails on a man were another anomaly in Tatiana’s Soviet life.

She looked away onto the street. The window of the bus was dirty. She wondered who washed it and when and how frequently. Anything not to think. What she felt though, was almost as if he were asking her not to turn away from him, almost as if his hand were about to come up and turn her face to him. She turned to him, lifted her eyes, and smiled. “Want to hear a joke?”

“Dying to.”

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

Alexander laughed so instantly and loudly, his merry eyes never leaving her face, that Tatiana felt herself — just a little bit — melting within.

“That’s funny, Tania,” he said.

“Thank you.” She smiled and said quickly, “I have another joke: ‘General, what do you think about the upcoming battle?’ ”

Alexander said, “I know this one. The general says, ‘God knows it will be lost.’ ”

Tatiana continued, “ ‘Then why should we try?’ ”

And Alexander finished, “ ‘To find out who is the loser.’ ”

They both smiled and looked away from each other.

“Your straps are untied,” she heard him say.

“My what?”

“Your straps. At the back of the dress. They’ve come undone. Here, turn your back to me a little more. I’ll tie them for you.”

She turned her back to him and felt his fingers pulling on the satin ribbons. “How tight do you want them?”

“That’s good,” she said hoarsely, not breathing. It occurred to her that he must be seeing down to the small of her bare back underneath the straps, and she became suddenly and keenly self-conscious.

When she turned to him, Alexander cleared his throat and asked, “Are you going to get off at Polustrovsky? To see your cousin Marina? Because it’s coming up. Or do you want me to take you home?”

“Polustrovsky?” Tatiana repeated, as if hearing the word for the first time. It took her a moment. “Oh, my.” Placing her hand on her forehead, she said, “Oh, no, you won’t believe — I can’t go home. I’m going to get in so much trouble.”

“Why?” Alexander said. “What can I do to help?”

Why did she think he meant it? And moreover, why did she suddenly find herself relieved and strengthened and not afraid of going home?

After she told him about the rubles in her pocket and the failed quest for food, Tatiana finished with, “I don’t know why my father would delegate this task to me. I’m the least capable of anyone in my family of actually succeeding.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Tatiana,” said Alexander. “Besides, I can help you.”

“You can?”

He told her he would take her to one of the officers-only army stores called Voentorgs, where she could buy many of the things she needed.

“But I’m not an officer,” she pointed out.

“Yes, but I am.”

“You are?”

“Yes,” he said. “Alexander Belov, first lieutenant. Impressed?”

“Skeptical,” she said. Alexander laughed. Tatiana didn’t want him to be old enough to be a first lieutenant. “What’s the medal for?” she asked, looking at his chest.

“Military valor,” he said with an indifferent shrug.

“Oh?” Her mouth lifted in a timid, admiring smile. “What did you do that was so military and valiant?”

“Nothing much. Where do you live, Tania?”

“Near Tauride Park — on the corner of Grechesky and Fifth Soviet,” she instantly replied. “Do you know where that is?”

Alexander nodded. “I patrol everywhere. You live with your parents?”

“Of course. With my parents, my grandparents, my sister, and my twin brother.”

“All in one room?” Alexander asked, without inflection.

“No, we have two!” Tatiana exclaimed happily. “And my grandparents are on a housing list to get another room when one becomes available.”

“How long,” asked Alexander, “have they been on this housing list?”

“Since 1924,” replied Tatiana, and they both laughed.

They were on the bus forever and a second.

“I’ve never known anyone who was a twin,” said Alexander as they got off. “Are you close?”

“Yes, but Pasha can be very irritating. He thinks because he is a boy he always has to win.”

“You mean he doesn’t?”

“Not if I can help it,” said Tatiana, glancing away from his teasing eyes. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No,” said Alexander. “I was my mother and father’s only child.” He blinked and then quickly continued, “We’ve come full circle, haven’t we? Fortunately, we’re not far from the store. Do you feel like walking, or do you want to wait for bus 22?”

Tatiana watched him.

Did he just say, was?

Did he just say, I was my mother and father’s only child? “We can walk,” Tatiana let out slowly, staring thoughtfully into his face and not moving. From his high forehead to his square jaw, his facial bones were prominent and clearly visible to her curious eyes. And all were set in what seemed like cement at the moment. As if he were grinding his teeth together. Carefully, she asked, “So where are you from, Alexander? You have a slight . . . accent.”

“I don’t, do I?” he asked, looking down at her feet. “Are you going to be all right walking in those shoes?”

“Yes, I’ll be fine,” she replied. Was he trying to change the subject? Her dress strap had fallen off her shoulder. Suddenly Alexander reached out and with his index finger pulled the strap back up, his fingertip tracing her skin. Tatiana turned red. She hated that about herself. She turned red all the time for no reason.

Alexander stared at her. His face relaxed into — what was that in his eyes? It looked almost like bedazzlement. “Tania—”

“Come on, let’s walk,” Tatiana said, mindful of the protracted daylight and the burning embers and his voice. There was something nauseating about these sudden feelings clinging to her like wet clothes.

The sandals were hurting her feet, but she didn’t want to let him know it. “Is the store far from here?”

“Not far,” he said. “We will have to stop at the barracks for a minute. I’ve got to sign out. I’ll have to blindfold you the rest of the way. I can’t have you knowing where the soldiers’ barracks are, can I?”

Tatiana was not about to look at Alexander to see if he was joking.

“So,” she said, trying to sound casual, “here we are, and we haven’t talked about the war.” She put on her purposeful serious face. “Alexander, what do you think of Hitler’s actions?”

Why did he look infinitely amused by her? What had she said that was so amusing? “Do you really want to talk about the war?”

“Of course,” she maintained. “It’s a grave matter.”

The look of wonder did not leave his eyes. “It’s just war,” he said. “It was so inevitable. We’ve been waiting for it. Let’s go this way.”

They walked past Mikhailovsky Palace or Engineer’s Castle, as it was sometimes called, over the short Fontanka Canal bridge at the aqueous intersection of the Fontanka and Moika canals. Tatiana loved the slightly arched granite bridge, and sometimes she would climb on top of the low parapets and walk the ledge. Not today, of course. She wasn’t going to be a child today.

They walked past the western end of Letniy Sad, the Summer Garden, and came out onto the grassy parade grounds of Marsovo Póle, the Field of Mars. “We need to leave this country to Hitler,” said Alexander, “or we need to stay and fight for Mother Russia. But if we stay, it’s a fight to the death.” He pointed. “The barracks are just across the field.”

“To the death? Really?” Tatiana looked up excitedly and slowed down on the grass. She wanted to take off her shoes. “Are you going to go to the front?”

“I go where they send me.” Alexander slowed down, too, then stopped. “Tania, why don’t you take off your shoes? You’ll be more comfortable.”

“I’m fine,” she said. How did he know her feet were killing her? Was it that obvious?

“Go on,” he prodded gently. “It will be easier for you to walk on the grass.”

He was right. Breathing a sigh of relief, she bent, unstrapped the sandals, and slipped them off. Straightening up and raising her eyes to him, she said, “That is a little better.”

Alexander was silent. “Now you’re really tiny,” he said at last.

“I’m not tiny,” she returned. “You’re just outsized.” Blushing, she lowered her gaze.

“How old are you, Tania?”

“Older than you think,” Tatiana said, wanting to sound old and mature. The warm Leningrad breeze blew her blonde hair over her face. Holding her shoes with one hand, she attempted to sort out her hair with the other. She wished she had a rubber band for her ponytail. Standing in front of her, Alexander reached out and brushed the hair away. His eyes traveled from her hair to her eyes to her mouth where they stopped.

Did she have ice cream all around her lips? Yes, that must be it. How awkward. She licked her lips, trying to clean the corners. “What?” she said. “Do I have ice cream—”

“How do you know how old I think you are?” he asked. “Tell me, how old are you?”

“I’m going to be seventeen soon,” she said.

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“You’re not even seventeen,” Alexander echoed.

“Seventeen tomorrow!” she repeated indignantly.

“Seventeen, right. Very grown up.” His eyes were dancing.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two,” he said. “Twenty-two, just.”

“Oh,” she said, and couldn’t hide the disappointment in her voice.

“What? Is that very old?” Alexander asked, failing to keep the smile off his face.

“Ancient,” Tatiana replied, failing to keep the smile off her face.

Slowly they walked across the Field of Mars, Tatiana barefoot and carrying the red sandals in her slightly swinging hands.

Once they got to the pavement, she put her sandals back on and they crossed the street, stopping at a nondescript brown stucco four-story building, distinguished by its lack of a front door. A deep, darkened passageway ran inside. “These are the Pavlov Barracks,” Alexander said, “where I’m stationed.”

“These are the famous Pavlov Barracks?” Tatiana looked up at the grubby building. “Surely this can’t be it.”

“What were you expecting? Maybe a snowcapped palace?”

“Do I come in?”

“Just to the gate. I’m going to turn in my weapon and sign out. You’ll wait, all right?”

“I’ll wait.” After walking through the long archway, they came to a manned iron gate, deep inside the entranceway. A young sentry lifted his hand in salute to Alexander. “Proceed, Lieutenant. Who is this with you?”

“Tatiana. She’ll wait for me here, Sergeant Petrenko.”

“Of course she will,” the guard said, eyeing Tatiana surreptitiously, but not so surreptitiously that she didn’t notice. Tatiana watched Alexander walk beyond the iron gate across a courtyard, salute a tall officer, then stop and chat briefly to a cluster of smoking soldiers, breaking into a laugh and striding off. Nothing distinguished Alexander from the others, except that he was taller than anyone else and had darker hair and whiter teeth, broader shoulders and a wider stride. Nothing but that he was vivid and they were muted.

Petrenko asked if she wanted to sit down.

She shook her head. Alexander had told her to wait right here, and she wasn’t going to move. Certainly she wasn’t going to be sitting in some other soldier’s chair, though she would have liked to sit.

As she stood looking through the garrison gate, waiting for Alexander, Tatiana felt herself floating on the cloud of fate that laced her afternoon with improbability and desire.

Desire for life.

One of her Deda’s favorite sayings was, “Life is so unpredictable. That’s what I like least about it. If only life were more like math.”

This one day Tatiana had to disagree with him.

She would take a day like this over any day in school or in the factory. She decided she would take a day like this over any other day in her life.

Taking a short step toward the guard, Tatiana asked, “Tell me, are civilians allowed inside?”

Smiling, Petrenko said with a wink, “Well, it depends what the sentry gets for it.”

“That will be quite enough, Sergeant,” Alexander said, walking briskly past him. “Let’s go, Tania.” He didn’t have his rifle anymore.

Just as they were about to walk through the passageway onto the street, a soldier jumped out at them from a secret door Tatiana had not seen. He startled her so much that she actually yelped as if stung. Placing his hand on Tatiana’s back, Alexander shook his head. “Dimitri, why?”

The soldier laughed noisily. “Your faces! That’s why.”

Tatiana composed herself. Was she wrong, or did Alexander move not just closer to her but closer and to the front, as if to stand not next to her but to shield her? How absurd.

Smiling, the soldier said, “So, Alex, who is your new friend?”

“Dimitri, this is Tatiana.”

Dimitri shook Tatiana’s hand vigorously, not letting go. Graciously, she pulled away.

Dimitri was average height by Russian standards, short compared to Alexander. He had a Russian face: broad, slightly washed-out features, as if the colors had all run dry. His nose was wide and turned up, his lips extremely thin. They were two rubber bands loosely strung together. His throat was nicked in several places by his razor. Underneath his left eye he had a small black birthmark. Dimitri’s sidecap did not have an enameled red star like Alexander’s, nor were his shoulder boards metallic. Dimitri’s were red, with one thin blue stripe. His uniform tunic bore no medals.

“Very nice to meet you,” said Dimitri. “So where are you two headed?”

Alexander told him.

“If you like,” said Dimitri, “I’ll be glad to help carry the purchases back to your house.”

“We can manage, Dima, thanks,” said Alexander.

“No, no, it’s nothing.” Dimitri smiled. “It’ll be my pleasure.” He was looking at Tatiana.

“So, Tatiana, how did you happen to run into our lieutenant?” asked Dimitri, walking alongside her while Alexander trailed behind. Tatiana turned around and found him staring at her with anxiety. Their glances touched and moved apart. Alexander caught up and led them down the street. The Voentorg store was just around the corner.

“I ran into him on the bus,” Tatiana replied to Dimitri. “He took pity on me and offered his help.”

“Well, it was certainly lucky for you,” Dimitri said. “No one likes to help out a damsel in distress as much as our Alexander.”

“I’m hardly a damsel in distress,” Tatiana muttered, while Alexander prodded her with his hand, directing her inside the store and ending the conversation.

Tatiana was amazed at what she found behind a simple glass door with a sign on it that said officers only. First, there was no line. Second, the store was stocked full of sacks and bags and smelled of smoked ham and fish, enveloped in the aroma of cigarettes and coffee.

Alexander asked her how much money she had, and she told him, thinking the sum would stun him. He merely shrugged and said, “We could spend it all on sugar, but let’s be provident, shall we?”

“I don’t know what I’m buying for. So how can I be provident?”

“Buy,” he said, “as if you’re never going to see these goods again.”

She gave him her money without a second thought.

He bought for her four kilos of sugar, four kilos of white flour, three kilos of oats, five kilos of barley, three kilos of coffee, ten cans of marinated mushrooms, and five cans of tomatoes. Also she bought a kilo of black caviar, and with the few rubles that were left she bought two cans of ham to please her Deda. To please herself she bought a small bar of chocolate.

Smiling, Alexander told her he would pay for the chocolate out of his own money and bought her five bars.

He suggested she buy matches. Tatiana mildly scoffed at this, because, she pointed out — she thought cleverly — you couldn’t eat matches. He suggested she buy some motor oil. She told him she didn’t have a car. He said to buy it anyway. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be spending her father’s money on something as silly as oil and matches.

“But, Tania,” Alexander pointed out, “how are you going to put the flour you’re buying to good use if you don’t have a match to light the fire? It’ll be hard to bake that bread.”

She relented only after she found out the matches were a few kopecks, and even then she bought only one box of 200.

“Don’t forget the motor oil, Tania.”

“When I get a car, I’ll buy the motor oil.”

“What if there is no kerosene this winter?” said Alexander.

“So what?” she said. “We have electricity.”

He folded his arms. “Buy it,” he said.

“Did you say this winter?” Tatiana waved him off. “What are you talking about, winter? It’s June. We’re not going to be fighting the Germans this winter.”

“Tell that to the Londoners,” said Alexander. “Tell that to the French, to the Belgians, to the Dutch. They’ve been fighting . . .”

“If you can call what the French did fighting.”

Laughing, Alexander said, “Tatiana, buy the motor oil. You won’t regret it.”

She would have listened to him, but the voice of her father in her head was stronger, admonishing her for wasting his money. She refused.

She asked the shop assistant for a rubber band and tied up her hair nice and neat while Alexander was paying. Tatiana asked how they were going to get all the provisions home.

Dimitri said, “Don’t worry. That’s why I came along.”

“Dima,” said Alexander. “I really think we’ll be all right.”

“Alexander,” said Tatiana. “We do have a lot of . . .”

“Dimitri the packhorse,” said Dimitri. “Glad to be of service to you, Alexander.” He smirked.

Tatiana noted the smirk, remembering her feeling that when Dimitri walked into the store, past the glass door with the sign officers only, he had been as surprised as Tatiana to find himself inside the Voentorg.

“Are you and Alexander in the same unit?” Tatiana asked Dimitri as they piled her provisions into wooden apple crates and left the store.

“Oh, no, no,” said Dimitri. “Alexander is an officer, and I’m just a lowly private. No, he is a number of ranks above me. Which,” Dimitri said with his smirk, “allows him to send me to the front in Finland.”

“Not Finland,” corrected Alexander mildly. “And not to the front, but to check out reinforcements at Lisiy Nos. What are you complaining about?”

“I am not complaining. I’m lauding your farsightedness.”

Tatiana stole a glance at Alexander, uncertain how to respond to the ironic stretching of Dimitri’s rubber lips.

“Where is this Lisiy Nos?” she asked.

“The Karelian Isthmus,” Alexander replied. “Are you going to be all right walking?”

“Of course.” Tatiana couldn’t wait to get home. Her sister would die when Tatiana showed up with two soldiers. She carried the lightest crate, the one with the caviar and coffee.

“Is that too heavy for you?” Alexander asked.

“No,” she said. Actually, it was quite heavy, and she didn’t know how she was going to get to the bus. They were going to the bus, weren’t they? They weren’t planning to walk to Fifth Soviet from the Field of Mars?

The pavement was narrow, so they walked in single file, Alexander leading, Tatiana second, and Dimitri bringing up the rear.

“Alexander,” Tatiana panted, “are we planning to . . . walk home?” She was out of breath.

Alexander stopped walking. “Give me that,” he said.

“I’m really fine.”

He put down his crate, took hers, and placed it on top, lifting both crates easily. “Your feet must be killing you in those shoes. Come on. Let’s go.”

The pavement expanded, and now she could walk next to Alexander. Dimitri flanked her on the left. “Tania, do you think we’ll get some vodka for our trouble?”

“I think my father might find some vodka for you, yes.”

“So, Tania, tell us,” Dimitri asked, “do you go out much?”

Go out? What a strange question. “Not much,” she said shyly.

“Ever go to a place named Sadko?”

“No,” she said. “But my sister often does. She says it’s nice.”

Dimitri leaned over a little. “Next weekend, do you want to come to Sadko with us?”

“Umm, no, thank you,” she said, lowering her eyes.

“Come on,” Dimitri said. “It’ll be fun. Right, Alexander?”

Alexander did not respond.

They walked three in a row along the wide pavement. Tatiana was in the middle. When other pedestrians headed toward them, it was Dimitri who stepped behind Tatiana to let them pass.

Tatiana noticed that Dimitri moved behind her with a reluctant sigh, as if it were a last resort, a battle, as if he were ceding territory to the enemy. At first Tatiana thought the passersby were the enemy, but soon she realized that, no, she and Alexander were the enemy because they never moved over, continuing to walk side by side, shoulder to shoulder.

Quietly Alexander asked, “Are you tired?”

Tatiana nodded.

“You want to rest a minute?” He put down his crates.

Dimitri did, too, eyeing Tatiana. “So, Tania, where do you go for fun?”

“Fun?” she said. “I don’t know. I go to the park. We go to our dacha in Luga.” Turning to Alexander, she asked, “So will you tell me where you’re from, or am I going to have to guess?”

“I think you’re going to have to guess, Tania.”

“Somewhere around salt water, Alexander.”

“You mean he didn’t tell you yet?” said Dimitri, standing very close to them.

“I can’t get a straight answer out of him.”

“Now, that’s surprising.”

“Very good, Tania,” Alexander said. “I’m from Krasnodar, by the Black Sea.”

“Yes, Krasnodar,” said Dimitri. “Have you ever been there?”

“No,” she replied. “I’ve never been anywhere.”

Dimitri glanced at Alexander, who picked up his crates and said curtly, “Let’s go.”

They passed a church and crossed Grechesky Prospekt. Tatiana was so lost in thinking of a way to see Alexander again that she walked right past her apartment building. She was a few hundred meters down the block, almost near the corner of Suvorovsky, when she stopped.

“You want another rest?” Alexander asked.

“No,” she said, trying to hide the feelings from her voice. “We missed my apartment building.”

“Missed it?” exclaimed Dimitri. “How can that be?”

“We just did, that’s all,” said Tatiana. “It’s at the other corner.”

Smiling, Alexander lowered his head. Slowly they walked back.

After entering the front door, Tatiana said, “I’m on the third floor. Will you two be all right?”

“Do we have a choice?” Dimitri asked. “Is there an elevator? Of course not,” he added. “This isn’t America. Is it, Alexander?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” Alexander replied.

They climbed the stairs in front of Tatiana. “Thank you,” she whispered behind Alexander, mostly to herself; in fact, she was just thinking out loud. The thoughts were too loud, that was all.

“You’re welcome,” he said, without turning around.

Stumbling, she continued upward.

When she opened the door to her communal apartment, Tatiana hoped that crazy Slavin would not be lying on the floor in the middle of the corridor. This time her hopes went unanswered. He was there, his torso in the corridor, his legs inside his room, a snake of a man, thin, unkempt, malodorous, his ragged mop of greasy gray hair covering most of his face.

“Slavin has been pulling his hair out again,” she whispered to Alexander, who was right behind her.

“I think that’s the least of his problems,” Alexander whispered back.

With a growl, Slavin let Tatiana walk by but grabbed hold of Alexander’s leg and laughed hysterically.

“Comrade,” said Dimitri, coming up behind Alexander and sticking his boot on top of Slavin’s wrist, “let go of the lieutenant.”

“It’s all right, Dimitri,” said Alexander, moving Dimitri away with his elbow. “I can handle him.”

Slavin squealed with delight and squeezed Alexander’s boot harder. “Our Tanechka is bringing home a handsome soldier,” Slavin shrieked. “Excuse me . . . two handsome soldiers! What’s your father going to say, Tanechka? Is he going to approve? I don’t think so! I don’t think so at all. He doesn’t like you to bring home boys. He’ll say two is too much for you. Give one to your sister, give her one, my sweet.” With glee, Slavin laughed wildly. Alexander yanked his leg away.

Slavin reached out to grab hold of Dimitri, then looked up into Dimitri’s face and let his hand drop without touching him.

Calling after all three of them, Slavin screeched, “Yes, Tanechka, bring them home. Bring more! Bring them all — because they’ll all be dead in three days. Dead! Shot by Comrade Hitler, such a good friend of Comrade Stalin!”

“He was in a war,” Tatiana said by way of explanation, relieved to be past him. “He ignores me when I’m alone.”

“Why do I doubt that?” said Alexander.

Flushing, Tatiana said, “He really does. He is bored with us because we ignore him.”

Leaning into her, Alexander said, “Isn’t communal living grand?”

That surprised her. “What else is there?”

“Nothing,” he replied. “This is what it’s going to take to reconstruct our selfish, bourgeois souls.”

“That’s what Comrade Stalin says!” Tatiana exclaimed.

“I know,” said Alexander, keeping a serious face. “I’m quoting him.”

Trying not to laugh, Tatiana led him to her front door. Before opening it, she glanced back at Alexander and Dimitri and said with an excited sigh, “All right. Home.” Opening the door, she said, smiling, “Come in, Alexander.”

“Can I come in, too?” Dimitri asked.

“Come in, Dimitri.”

Tatiana’s family were in Babushka and Deda’s room around the big dining table. Tatiana stuck her head in from the hallway. “I’m home!”

No one even looked up. Mama said blankly, “Where’ve you been?” She could have been saying, more bread?

“Mama, Papa! Look at the food I’ve bought.”

Papa looked up briefly from his glass of vodka. “Good, daughter,” he said. She could have returned empty-handed. With a small sigh, she glanced at Alexander standing in the hallway. What was that on his face? Sympathy? No, not quite. Warmer. She whispered to him, “Put the crates down and come in with me.”

“Mama, Papa, Babushka, Deda,” said Tatiana, walking into the room and trying to keep the thrill out of her voice for the imminent introduction, “I want you to meet Alexander—”

“And Dimitri,” said Dimitri quickly, as if Tatiana had forgotten him.

“And Dimitri,” Tatiana finished.

Everyone shook hands and stared incredulously at Alexander and then at Tatiana. Mama and Papa remained seated at the table with a bottle of vodka between them and two shot glasses. Deda and Babushka went to sit on the couch to give the soldiers more room at the table. Tatiana thought her parents looked sad. Were they drinking to Pasha and chasing him down with pickles?

Papa stood up. “You did very well, Tania. I’m proud of you.” He motioned to Alexander and Dimitri. “Come. Have some vodka.”

Alexander politely shook his head. “No, thank you. I have duty later.”

“Shake your head for yourself,” said Dimitri, stepping forward.

Papa poured, frowning at Alexander. What kind of man refused a drink of vodka? Alexander may have had his reasons for refusing her father’s hospitality, but Tatiana knew that because of that, her father was going to like Dimitri better. Such a small act, yet the feelings that would follow would be so permanent. And yet because he refused, Tatiana liked Alexander better.

“Tania, I don’t suppose you bought any milk?” Mama asked her.

“Papa told me dry goods only.”

“Where are you from?” Tatiana’s father asked Alexander.

“Krasnodar region,” he said.

Papa shook his head. “I lived in Krasnodar in my youth. You don’t sound like you’re from there.”

“Well, I am,” said Alexander mildly.

To change the subject, Tatiana asked, “Alexander, would you prefer some tea instead? I can make you some tea.”

He moved closer to her, and she had to summon her breath. “No, thank you,” he said warmly. “I can’t stay long, Tania. I’ve got to get back.”

Tatiana took off her sandals. “Excuse me,” she said. “My feet are . . .” She smiled. She had tried hard to pretend they did not bother her, but the blisters on her big toe and little toe were bleeding.

Alexander glanced at her feet, shaking his head. Then he looked into her face. That expression seeped into his almond eyes again. “Barefoot is better,” he said very quietly.

Dasha came into the room. She stopped and stared at the two soldiers.

She looked healthy, radiant with the day, and Tatiana suddenly thought her sister looked too healthy and too radiant, but before she could utter a sound, Dasha exclaimed, her voice thick with pleasure, “Alexander! What are you doing here?” Dasha didn’t even glance at Tatiana, who, perplexed, looked at Alexander and said, “You know Dasha . . . ?” but then broke off in the middle of the question, seeing realization and conscience and unhappiness strike his mute, comprehending face.

Tatiana looked at Dasha, then back to Alexander. She felt herself paling from the inside out. Oh, no, she wanted to say. Oh, no, how can this be?

Alexander’s face became impassive. He smiled easily at Dasha and said, not looking at Tatiana, “Yes. Dasha and I have met.”

“You can say that again!” Dasha said with a laugh and a pinch of his arm. “Alexander, what are you doing here?”

Tatiana glanced around the room to see if anyone else had noticed what she had noticed. Dimitri was eating a pickle. Deda was reading the newspaper, his glasses on. Papa was having another drink. Mama was opening up some cookies, and Babushka had her eyes closed. No one else saw.

Mama said, “The soldiers just came back with Tatiana. Brought food.”

“Really?” Dasha said, her face turning up to Alexander, full of mild curiosity. “How do you know my sister?”

“I don’t,” said Alexander. “I ran into her on the bus.”

“You ran into my little sister?” said Dasha. “Incredible! It’s like destiny!” She tweaked him lightly on the arm again.

“Let’s go sit down,” said Alexander. “I think I will have that drink after all.” He moved to the table in the middle of the room by the wall, while Dasha and Tatiana remained by the door. Dasha leaned over and whispered, “He is the one I told you about!” Dasha must have thought she was whispering.

“One what?”

“This morning,” hissed Dasha.

“This morning?”

“Why are you being so dumb? He’s the one!”

Tatiana got it. She hadn’t been dumb. There was no morning. There was only waiting for the bus and meeting Alexander. “Oh,” she said, refusing to allow herself to feel anything. She was too stunned.

Dasha went to sit in the chair next to him. Glancing sadly at Alexander’s uniformed back, Tatiana went to put the food away.

“Tanechka,” Mama called after her, “put it away in the right place, not like usual.”

Tatiana heard Alexander say, “Don’t bother with shots. Pour mine straight into a glass.”

“Good man,” said Papa, pouring him a glass. “A toast. To new friends.”

“To new friends,” everyone chimed in.

Dimitri said, “Tania, come and have a toast with us,” and Tatiana came in, but Papa said, no, Tania was too young to drink, and Dimitri apologized, and Dasha said she would drink for herself and her sister, and Papa said like she didn’t already, and everyone laughed except Babushka, who was trying to nap, and Tatiana, who wanted the day to be instantly over.

From the hallway, as she picked up the crates and carried them one after the other into the kitchen, she heard tidbits of conversation.

“Work on the fortifications must be speeded up.”

“Troops must be moved to the frontiers.”

“Airports must be put in working order. Guns must be installed in forward positions. All of this must go ahead at fever pace.”

A little later she heard Papa say, “Oh, our Tania works at Kirov. She’s just graduated from school — a year early! She plans to go to Leningrad University next year when she turns eighteen. You’d never know it by looking at her — but she graduated a year early. Did I already say that?”

Tatiana smiled at her father.

“I don’t know why she wanted to work at Kirov,” said Mama. “It’s so far, it’s practically outside Leningrad. She can’t take care of herself,” she added.

“Why should she, when you’ve been doing everything for her all her life,” Papa snapped.

“Tania!” yelled Mama. “Wash our dishes from dinner while you’re out there, won’t you?”

In the kitchen Tatiana put away all she had bought. As she carried the crates, she would glance into the room to see Alexander’s back. Karelia and the Finns and their borders, and the tanks, and weapons superiority and the treacherous marshy woods where it was so hard to gain ground and the war with Finland of 1940 and . . .

She was in the kitchen when Alexander and Dasha and Dimitri came out. Alexander did not look at her. It was as if he were a pipeline full of water, and Dasha had turned the faucet off.

“Tania, say good-bye,” Dasha said. “They’re going.”

Tatiana wished she were invisible. “Good-bye,” she said from a distance, wiping her floured hands on her white dress. “Thanks again for your help.”

Dasha said, holding on to Alexander’s arm, “I’ll walk you out.”

Dimitri came up to Tatiana and asked if he could call on her again. She may have said yes, she may have nodded. She barely heard him.

Leveling his eyes on her, Alexander said, “It was nice to meet you, Tatiana.”

Tatiana may have said, “You, too.” She didn’t think so.

The three of them went, and Tatiana was left standing in the kitchen. Mama came out and said, “The officer forgot his cap.”

Tatiana took it from Mama’s hands, but before she could take one step to the corridor, Alexander had returned — by himself. “Forgot my cap,” he said.

Tatiana gave it to him without speaking and without looking at him.

As he took the cap from her, his fingers rested against hers for a moment. That made her look up. Tatiana stared at him with sadness. What did grown-ups do? She wanted to cry. She could do nothing but gulp down the aching in her throat and act grown-up.

“I’m sorry,” Alexander said so quietly that Tatiana thought she might have misheard him. He turned and walked out.

Tatiana found her mother frowning at her. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Be grateful we got some food, Mama,” said Tatiana, and started to make herself something to eat. She buttered a piece of bread, ate part of it with absentminded abandon, then jumped up and threw the rest out.

There was nowhere for her to go. Not in the kitchen, not in the hallway, not in the bedroom. What she wanted was a little room of her own where she could go and jot down small things in her diary.

Tatiana had no little room of her own. As a result she had no diary. Diaries, as she understood them from books, were supposed to be full of personal writings and filled with private words. Well, in Tatiana’s world there were no private words. All private thoughts you kept in your head as you lay down next to another person, even if that other person happened to be your sister. Leo Tolstoy, one of her favorite writers, wrote a diary of his life as a young boy, an adolescent, a young man. That diary was meant to be read by thousands of people. That wasn’t the kind of diary Tatiana wanted to keep. She wanted to keep one in which she could write down Alexander’s name and no one would read it. She wanted to have a room where she could say his name out loud and no one would hear it.

Alexander.

Instead, she went back into the bedroom, sat next to her mother, and had a sweet biscuit.

Her parents talked about the money Dasha was not able to get out of the bank, which had closed early, and a little about evacuation, but said nothing about Pasha — for how could they? — and Tatiana said nothing about Alexander — for how could she? Her father talked about Dimitri and what a fine young man he seemed to be. Tatiana sat quietly at the table, summoning her teenage strength. When Dasha returned, she motioned for Tatiana to come into their bedroom. Tatiana dutifully went. Whirling around, Dasha said, “So what did you think?”

“Of what?” said Tatiana in a tired voice.

“Tania, of him! What did you think of him?”

“He’s nice.”

“Nice? Oh, come on! What did I tell you? You’ve never met anyone so handsome.”

Tatiana managed a small smile.

“Wasn’t I right? Wasn’t I?” Dasha laughed.

“You were right, Dasha,” said Tatiana.

“Isn’t it incredible that you met him?”

“Isn’t it?” said Tatiana without feeling, standing up and wanting to get out of the room, but Dasha blocked the door with her twitching body, unwittingly challenging Tatiana, who was not up to a fight, not a big one, not a small one. Challengeless, she said and did nothing. That’s the way it had always been. Dasha was seven years older. She was stronger, smarter, funnier, more attractive. She always won. Tatiana sat back down on the bed.

Dasha sat next to Tatiana. “What about Dimitri? Did you like him?”

“I guess. Listen, don’t worry about me, Dash.”

“Who’s worried?” Dasha said, ruffling Tatiana’s hair. “Give Dima a chance. I think he actually liked you.” Dasha said that almost as if she were surprised. “Must be your dress.”

“Must be. Listen, I’m tired. It’s been a long day.”

Dasha put her arm on Tatiana’s back. “I really like Alexander, Tania,” she said. “I like him so much, I can’t even explain.”

Tatiana felt a chill. Having met Alexander, having walked with Alexander, having smiled at Alexander, Tatiana grimly understood that Dasha’s relationship with him was not some transient fling soon to be ended on the steps of Peterhof or in the gardens of the Admiralty. Tatiana had no doubt her sister meant it this time. “Don’t explain anything, Dasha,” said Tatiana.

“Tania, someday you’ll understand.”

Squinting sideways, Tatiana looked up at her sister sitting on the edge of the bed. She opened her mouth. A moment passed.

She wanted to say, but, Dasha, Alexander crossed the street for me.

He got on the bus for me, and went to the outskirts of town for me.

But Tatiana couldn’t say any of that to her older sister.

What she wanted to say to Dasha was, you’ve had plenty. You can get yourself a new one any time you want. You’re charming and bright and beautiful, and everybody likes you. But him I want for myself.

What she wanted to say was, but what if he likes me best?

Tatiana said nothing. She wasn’t sure any of it was true. Especially the last part. How could he like Tatiana best? Look at Dasha with her hair and her flesh. And maybe Alexander crossed the street for Dasha, too. Maybe he went across town, across the river for Dasha at three o’clock in the bright morning when the Neva bridges were up. Tatiana had nothing to say. She closed her mouth. What a waste, what a joke it all had been.

Dasha studied her. “Tania, Dimitri is a soldier. . . . I don’t know if you’re quite ready for a soldier.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing, nothing. But we might need to spruce you up a bit.”

“Spruce me up, Dasha?” said Tatiana, her heart backing into her lungs.

“Yes, you know, maybe a little lipstick, maybe have a little talk . . .” Dasha pulled Tatiana’s hair.

“Maybe we’ll do that. Another day, though, all right?”

In her white dress with red roses, Tatiana curled up, facing the wall.