The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman #1)

The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman #1) Page 34

7

That evening during the post-dinner bombing show the Suvorovsky Hospital where Papa lay was hit.

Three bombs fell on the hospital, which caught fire and burned into the night, despite the efforts of the firefighters. The hospital was not made of brick, which resisted fire, but of wattle and daub, the early-eighteenth-century material out of which most of Leningrad was built. The whole building collapsed onto itself, then went up in flames. The few people who were able to move jumped from the windows, screaming as they fell.

Papa, at forty-three years old, having been born in the previous century, wasted on remorse, unable to sober up, never rose from his bed.

Dasha and Tatiana and Marina and Mama ran down Suvorovsky and watched with unsteady, horrified impotence as the inferno conquered the firemen, the water hoses, the building, the night.

The girls helped to throw useless buckets of water on the ground-floor windows. They got sand from the rooftops of the surrounding buildings, but it was all just meaningless movement sustained by inertia. Tatiana wrapped charred bodies in wet sheets provided by Grechesky Hospital. She stayed until morning. Dasha and Marina went back home with Mama.

Only a handful of people had made it out alive. The firemen could not even find Papa’s body and made no apologies as they put out the last of the flames. They were not taking bodies out of that hospital. “Look at the building, girlie,” said one fireman. “Does it look like we can get anything out? It’s all cinder. Once it cools down, you’ll be able to touch it and watch it turn to black ash.” He patted her absentmindedly on the shoulder. “Time to let go. Your father, is it? F*cking Germans. Comrade Stalin is right. Don’t know how, but we’re going to bring it all home to them.”

As Tatiana walked slowly home at dawn, she thought of herself being buried beneath Luga station, feeling life ooze out of the three people she had crawled under. She hoped Papa had never woken up, never suffered.

At home she silently got the family’s ration cards — all except Papa’s — and went out to get bread.

If life in the two communal rooms was difficult for Tatiana before, it became nearly impossible after the death of her father.

Mama was inconsolable and not talking to Tatiana.

Dasha was angry and not talking to Tatiana.

Tatiana wasn’t sure if Dasha was angry because of Papa or if Dasha was angry because of Alexander. Dasha was certainly not saying. She wasn’t talking to Tatiana at all.

Marina visited her mother daily in Vyborg and continued to level her understanding eyes on Tatiana.

And Babushka painted. She painted an apple pie that Tatiana said looked good enough to eat.

A few days after Papa’s death Dasha asked Tatiana to come with her to the barracks to tell Alexander about what had happened. Tatiana dragged Marina along for strength. She wanted to see him, and yet . . . there was so little to say. Or was there too much to say? Tatiana wasn’t sure, couldn’t figure it out without Alexander’s help, and was afraid to face him.

Alexander was not at the barracks, and neither was Dimitri. Anatoly Marazov came into the passageway and introduced himself.

Tatiana knew of him well from Alexander. “Isn’t Dimitri under your command?” she asked.

“No, he is under Sergeant Kashnikov, who has one of the platoons under my command, but they’ve all been sent by powers higher than me to Tikhvin.”

“Tikhvin? On the other side of the river?” said Tatiana.

“Yes, in a barge across Ladoga. Not enough men up in Tikhvin.”

“And Alexander, too?” Tatiana said, short of breath.

“No, he’s up at Karelia,” Marazov replied, looking Tatiana over appreciatively. “So are you the girl?” Marazov smiled. “The girl he’s forsaken all others for?”

“Not her,” Dasha said rudely, coming up to Tatiana. “Me. I’m Dasha. Don’t you remember? We met in Sadko back in early June.”

“Dasha,” mumbled Marazov. Tatiana paled, leaning harder against the wall. Marina stared at her.

Marazov turned to Tatiana. “And what’s your name?”

“Tatiana,” she said.

Marazov’s eyes flared and then dimmed. Dasha asked, “Do you know each other?”

“No. We’ve never met,” he said.

“Oh,” said Dasha. “Just for a moment you looked as if you recognized my sister.”

Marazov left his gaze on Tatiana. “Not at all,” he said slowly, but his eyes flickered a confused familiarity at her. He shrugged. “I’ll tell Alexander you stopped by. I’m going to join him in Karelia in a few days.”

“Yes, please tell him that our father has died,” Dasha said. Tatiana turned and walked out of the passageway, pulling Marina with her.

The family was split apart like faulted earth. Mama could not move from her bed. Babushka took care of her. Mama didn’t want to have anything to do with Tatiana, or her apologies, or her pleas for forgiveness. Finally Tatiana stopped pleading.

The emptiness Tatiana felt overpowered her; the sense of guilt, the anchor of responsibility weighed her down. It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault, she kept repeating to herself in the mornings as she cut the bread, put some on her plate, and ate it silently. It would take her maybe thirty seconds to eat her share, and she would pick up all the little crumbs with her forefinger, and then she would turn the plate over and shake it onto the table. All that — thirty seconds. And thirty seconds of, it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault.

After Papa died, his half-kilo-a-day bread ration stopped. Mama finally thrust 200 rubles into Tatiana’s hand and told her to go and buy some more food. She came back home, having spent the money on seven potatoes, three onions, half a kilo of flour, and a kilo of white bread, which was as rare as meat.

Tatiana continued to get the rations, and once or twice as she stood in line for their food, she thought with shame that if only they hadn’t told the authorities immediately that Papa had died, they could still be getting his ration until the end of September.

She thought it with shame, but she did not stop thinking it.

Because when September turned into October, and the rawness of her sorrow dulled yet the emptiness remained, Tatiana realized that the emptiness was not sorrow but hunger.