The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman #1)

The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman #1) Page 50

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One more day, another shot of vitamin C. Another two hundred grams of blackened bread. Tatiana pretended to go to work so she could continue to receive a worker’s ration, but there was nothing for her to do at work, except sit by the dying.

A week after Marina died, Tatiana, Dasha, and Mama were sitting on the sofa in the quiet night in front of a nearly extinguished bourzhuika. All the books were gone, except for what Tatiana hid under her bed. The embers did not light up the room. Mama was sewing in the dark.

“What are you sewing, Mama?” Tatiana asked.

“Nothing,” Mama said. “Nothing important. Where are my girls?”

“Here, Mama.”

“Dasha, remember Luga?”

Dasha remembered.

“Dashenka, remember when Tania got a fish bone stuck in her throat, and we couldn’t get it out for anything?”

Dasha remembered. “She was five.”

“Who got it out, Mama?”

“Pasha. He had such small hands. He just stuck his hand in your throat and pulled it out.”

“Mama,” Dasha said, “remember when our Tania fell out of the boat in Lake Ilmen, and we all jumped after her, because we thought she couldn’t swim, and she was already dog-paddling away from the boat?”

Mama remembered. “Tania was two.”

“Mama,” Tatiana said, “remember how I dug that big hole in our yard to trap Pasha and then forgot to fill it up, and you fell in?”

“Don’t remind me,” said Mama. “I’m still angry about that.”

They tried to laugh.

“Tania,” said Mama, her hands moving on her sewing work, “when you and Pasha were born, we were in Luga, and while the whole family was clucking around our new boy Pasha, saying what a great boy he was and what a fine boy, Dasha over here, all seven years of her, picked you up and said, ‘Well, you can all have the black one. I’m taking the white one. This baby is mine.’ And we all teased her and said, ‘Fine then. Dasha, you want her? You can name her.’ ” Mama’s voice cracked once, twice. “And our Dasha said, ‘I want to name my baby Tatiana . . . ’ ”

One more day, one more shot of vitamin C for Tatiana, whose fingers trickled blood onto the two hundred grams of bread she cut up for her mother and sister.

One more day, a bomb fell in the corner of the Fifth Soviet roof. No Anton to put it out, no Mariska, no Kirill, no Kostia, and no Tatiana. It caught fire and burned through the fourth floor, which faced the church on Grechesky Prospekt. No one came to put it out. It smoldered for a day and then gradually burned itself out.

Was it Tatiana’s imagination, or was the city quieter? Either she was going deaf or there was less bombing. There was still some every day, but shorter in duration, milder in intensity, almost as if the Germans were bored with the whole thing. And why not? Who was left to bomb?

Well, Tatiana.

And Dasha.

And Mama.

No, not Mama.

Her hands still held the white camouflage uniform she was sewing, and underneath her wool hat she wore her kerchief. In front of the frail fire from the small bourzhuika, Mama said, “I can’t anymore. I just can’t.” Her hands stopped moving, and her head, too. Her eyes remained open. Tatiana could see short spasms of breath leaving her mouth, short, brief, then gone.

Tatiana and Dasha kneeled by their mother. “I wish we knew a prayer, Dasha.”

“I think I know part of something called the Lord’s Prayer,” said Dasha.

Tatiana’s back was to the fire, and her back was warm, but her front was cold. “Which part do you know?”

“Only the part with Give us this day our daily bread.”

Tatiana placed her hand on her mother’s lap. “We’ll bury Mama with her sewing.”

“We’ll have to bury her in her sewing,” Dasha said, and her voice was weak. “Look, she was sewing herself a sack.”

“Dear Lord,” said Tatiana, holding her mother’s cold leg. “Give us this day our daily bread . . .” She paused. “What else, Dasha?”

“That’s all I know. What about Amen?”

“Amen,” said Tatiana.

For dinner they cut the bread into three pieces. Tatiana ate hers. Dasha ate hers. They left their mother’s on her plate.

That night Tatiana and Dasha held each other in their bed. “Don’t leave me, Tania. I can’t make it without you.”

“I’m not going to leave you, Dasha. We are not going to leave each other. We can’t be left alone. You know that we all need one other person. One other person to remind us we are still human beings and not beasts.”

“We’re the only two left, Tania,” said Dasha. “Just you and me.”

Tatiana held her sister closer. You. Me. And Alexander.