The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman #1)

The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman #1) Page 74

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So they lived. From morning until night, from the first swell of the river to the last song of the lark, from the smell of the nettles to the scent of the pinecones, from the peaceful morning sun to the pale blue moon in the clearing, Alexander and Tatiana so spent their lilac days.

Alexander cut wood for her and made it into small bundles tied together with twigs. She made him blueberry pie and blueberry comp?te and blueberry pancakes. The blueberries were plentiful that summer.

He built things for her, and she made bread for him.

They played dominoes. They sat on Naira’s porch and played dominoes on the days it rained, and Tatiana beat Alexander every time, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not win. Alone they played strip poker. Tatiana always lost.

They played war-hide-and-seek, Alexander’s favorite.

Tatiana sewed him five more tops and two new pairs of army skivvies. “So you feel me under your uniform,” she told him.

They went mushroom picking together.

He taught her English. He taught her poems in English that he still remembered, some by Robert Frost: The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep . . .

And some by Emma Lazarus: Here at our sea-washed sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman . . .

After building a fire in the cabin, Alexander would read Pushkin to her while she cooked dinner on their hearth, though eventually he stopped reading “The Bronze Horseman.” It was too much for them both.

In the book he had found a picture of himself that he had given to Dasha the year before. The photo was of him getting his medal of valor for Yuri Stepanov. “Is my wife proud of her husband?” he asked, showing Tatiana the picture.

“Hopelessly,” she replied with a grin. “Think about this, Shura,” she said. “When I was still a kid rowing on Lake Ilmen, you had already lost your father and mother, joined the army, and become a hero.”

“Not a kid rowing on Lake Ilmen,” he said, grabbing her. “A queen rowing on Lake Ilmen. Waiting for me.”

“You know we still haven’t gotten those wedding photos,” Tatiana said.

“Who has time to go to Molotov?” remarked Alexander.

They did not speak about his leaving, but just the same the days sped on. By the end they didn’t just speed on, they seemed to race ahead of them in triple time, as if the spring had broken on the hands of the pitiless clock.

Alexander and Tatiana did not speak about the future.

No, not did not.

Could not.

Not after the war, not during the war, not after July 20. Alexander found himself barely able to speak to Tatiana about the next day. They had no past. They had no future. They just were. Young in Lazarevo.

As they ate and played, and talked and told jokes, as they fished and wrestled, as they walked in the woods practicing Tatiana’s English and swam naked across the river and back, as he helped her with their laundry and the laundry of four old women, as he carried the water from the well for her and her milk pails, as he brushed her hair each morning and made love to her many times a day, never tiring, never ceasing to be aroused by her, Alexander knew that he was living the happiest days of his life.

He held no illusions. Lazarevo was not going to come again, neither for him nor for her.

Tatiana held those illusions.

And he thought — it was better to have them.

Look at him.

And look at her.

Tatiana so ceaselessly and happily did for him, so constantly smiled and touched him and laughed — even as their twenty-nine moon-cycle days spun faster around the loop of grief — that Alexander had to wonder if she ever even thought about the future. He knew she sometimes thought about the past. He knew she thought about Leningrad. She had a stony sadness around her edges that she had not had before. But for the future, Tatiana seemed to harbor a rosy hope, or at the very least a sense of humming unconcern.

What are you doing? she would ask him when he was sitting on the bench and smoking. Nothing, Alexander would reply. Nothing but growing my pain.

He smoked and wished for her.

It was like wishing for America when he was a few years younger.

Wishing for a life with her, a life that was full of nothing else but her, a simple, long, married life of being able to smell her and taste her, to hear the lyre of her voice and see the honey of her hair. To feel her staggering comfort. All of it, every day.

Could he find a way to turn his back on Tatiana and have her faithful face free him? Would she forgive him? For leaving her, for dying, for killing her?

He felt punched in the gut when he watched her skip stark naked out of the cabin in the morning, and throw herself squealing into the river, and then get out and head across the clearing to him, sitting on his stump of a heart. Watching her nipples hard from the cold, her flawless body trembling to be held by him, Alexander gritted his teeth and smiled and thanked God that when he pressed her to him, she could not see his contorted face.

Alexander smoked and watched her from his tree stump bench.

What are you doing? she would ask him.

Nothing, he would reply. Nothing but growing my pain into madness.

His temper flared up constantly.

It irritated him to no end seeing her fetch and carry for other people. Tatiana, seeing his displeasure, would only sublimate herself further to him, fetching and carrying for him until he couldn’t breathe. “What can I get you? What else can I get you? What do you need?” came out of her mouth with heartbeat regularity.

He would say, no, I don’t need anything. And she would come, carrying his cigarette, put it in his mouth, light it, and kiss the corner of his lip, her loving eyes centimeters away from his tortured ones. Alexander wanted to say, stop, back away. What will happen to you after I’m gone and you’re left without me? What will be left of you after I’m gone when you have given me everything?

Alexander knew that Tatiana didn’t know how to give to him any other way. She had one way — and that’s what he got. Her devotion to him was indelible; her inability to hide her true self was the reason he fell in love with her in the first place. Soon she would have to learn, Alexander thought, as he swung his ax and crashed it down hundreds of times a day. Learn how to hide him even from her true self.

Alexander grew upset with her over the pettiest things. Her constant cheeriness vexed him constantly. She was always singing and bouncing around with a little spring in her step. He didn’t understand how she could be so carefree when she knew he was leaving in fifteen days, ten days, five days, three days.

He grew bitterly jealous of her; even he was surprised at himself. He could not stand to see anyone looking at her. He could not stand to see her smiling at anyone. He could not stand to see her talking to Vova, much less serving him. He lost his temper with heartbeat regularity, but he couldn’t stay upset with her for five minutes. The arsenal Tatiana carried to ease Alexander out of his bottomless hole had too many weapons.

Alexander could never get close enough to her. Not when they walked, not when they ate, not when they slept, not when they made love. His feelings teetering between intense tenderness and unrestrained lust, he needed her many times a day. His body would begin to physically ache when he remained without her while she went to her sewing circle or to help the old women. Tatiana’s shy eagerness, her engulfing sweetness, her unconcealed vulnerability tore at Alexander’s heart. All he hungered for was to feel her velvet flesh surround him as she cried out, whispering, Oh, Shura.

He grew unable to bear coming on top of her and watching her face and seeing her watch his. To finish, he would repeatedly have to turn her over, because when he was behind her, she could not see him.

It was all about making him feel better about leaving her.

To leave her was unthinkable.

The question Alexander had asked himself many times, he had started to forget the answer to.

At what price Tatiana?

In the beginning the answer was clear.

Tatiana was the answer.

But this wasn’t the beginning anymore. This was the end.

She had gone to the fish plant, having heard there might be herring, while Alexander remained at the clearing, walking around numbly waiting for her to come back. He went to the house and was looking in her trunk for something to hold when he found something at the very bottom, almost as if that something had been hidden. The trunk had belonged to Tatiana’s grandfather, so Alexander didn’t give it much thought at first, but when he removed the top layer of sheets and clothes and some papers and three books, he pulled out a black canvas backpack. Immediately curious, he opened it. Inside he found his old P-38 pistol, bottles of vodka, winter boots, cans of tushonka, dried crackers, a flask, and rubles. There were warm clothes, too, all dark-colored.

Alexander smoked ten unhappy cigarettes waiting for her to return.

He heard Tatiana before he saw her. She was humming the waltz tune he had sung for her. “Shura!” she called out to him joyfully. “You won’t believe it. Herring! Real herring. We’re going to have a feast tonight.”

She skipped to him and lifted her arms up to his neck. Breaking in two, Alexander kissed her, thinking that her face felt a bit wet, and then showed her the backpack. “What’s this?”

She stared at it. “What?”

“This? What’s this?”

“Are you going through my things? Come and help me with the herring.”

“I’m not touching the herring until you tell me what this is.”

“Whether or not I tell you, we still have to eat. It’ll take me thirty—”

“Tatiana!”

She sighed loudly. “It’s a pack for me.”

“For what? Are you planning to go camping?”

“No . . .” She put the herring down and sat on the bench.

Alexander pulled out the drab, all-brown clothing and a brown hat. “Why so attractive?” He saw how she tensed.

“Just to make myself more inconspicuous.”

“More inconspicuous? You’d better hide those take-me lips of yours then. Where are you going?”

“What’s gotten into you?” she asked.

Alexander raised his voice. “Where are you going, Tania?”

“I just want to be ready for anything.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, lowering her gaze. “To go with you.”

“Go with me where?” he gasped.

“Anywhere.” She turned her eyes up. “Anywhere you go,” Tatiana said, “I will go with you.”

Alexander tried to speak but couldn’t; he found himself without words. “But, Tania . . . I’m going back to the front.”

She was looking down at the ground. “Are you, Alexander?” she asked quietly without looking up.

“Of course. Where else would I be going?”

Her eyes stared at him with profound emotion. “You tell me.”

Blinking and stepping away from her, as if being too close to her left him unprotected, Alexander said, still holding her backpack, “Tania, I’m going back to the front. Colonel Stepanov gave me extra time to come here. I gave him my word I would return.”

“And that’s one thing about you Americans,” she said, “you always keep your word.”

“Yes, that’s one thing about us,” Alexander said bitterly. “It’s no use talking about it. You know I have to go back.”

Shivering, Tatiana raised her seaweed eyes to him and in a small voice said, “Then I’ll go back with you. I’ll go back to Leningrad.” She must have taken his speechlessness to mean he was relieved, and continued, “I thought if you were back at the barracks—”

“Tatiana!” he shouted, aghast. “Are you joking? Are you f*cking joking?”

Alexander was so upset that he had to walk away into the woods for a few minutes until reason got hold of him again. When he came back, she was cleaning the herring. Typical. He was mortified, she was cleaning herring. He walked up to her and knocked the fish hard out of her hands.

“Ouch!” she yelled. “Stop! What’s the matter with you?”

Alexander went back into the woods to calm down and watched her pick up the herring, wash the sand and dirt off it, and proceed to clean it again.

Returning, he took the damned herring, put it down on the paper on the ground, stood Tatiana up in front of him, and took her by the shoulders. “Look at me, Tania. I’m trying to stay calm, all right? Do you see what an effort it is?” He paused. “What the hell are you thinking? You are not coming back with me.”

She shook her head, but the soft words that came out of her were “I am.”

“No!” Alexander said. “You’re absolutely not. Not while there is breath in my body. You’ll have to kill me to come with me. Forget it. I will come and see you on my next furlough.”

“No,” she said. “You will never come back. You will die out there without me. I can feel it. I’m not staying here.”

“Tania, who will let you go back? I won’t. Did you forget that Leningrad is under full blockade? You can’t get back into Leningrad. We’re still getting people out! Have you forgotten? Have you forgotten what Leningrad was? I can’t imagine you have, because it was only six months ago, and you still wake up in the middle of the night. Leningrad is a city under siege. Leningrad is still bombed every single f*cking day. There is no life in Leningrad. It’s very dangerous, and you are not going back there.” He was panting.

“Well, if you have another idea, let me know. I have to clean this herring.”

Alexander picked up the herring and was going to throw the whole damn thing into the Kama, but Tatiana grabbed his arm, and said, “No! It’s our dinner, and the old women are looking forward to it.”

“You are not coming with me. And I’m done talking about it.” Turning her backpack upside down, he threw all of her supplies onto the ground.

Tatiana watched him calmly and then said, “And who’s going to pick all that up?”

Without a word, Alexander picked up the clothes and shredded them into pieces with his army knife.

Her eyes set yet frightened, Tatiana watched him from the bench. “Oh, this is calm?” she said. “Shura, I can make myself new clothes.”

Cursing, Alexander clenched his fist and bent down to her. “God, are you deliberately trying to provoke me?”

Picking up the backpack, he was about to rip it to shreds when Tatiana grabbed his arm and the knife, her hand right on the blade, and said, “No. No. Please.” She hung on to him, wrestling for the knife, pulling on the backpack. She was no match for him, and Alexander was about to shove her away, but what stopped him was that she still continued to struggle knowing she was outmatched. To stop her, Alexander would have had to hurt her. He let her have the knife and the backpack.

Out of breath, she went to clean the herring. With his knife.

Over at Naira’s for dinner, Alexander didn’t talk much; he was too upset. When Tatiana asked him if he wanted some more blueberry pie, he snapped at her, “I said no!” and saw the reproach in her eyes. He wanted to apologize but couldn’t.

They didn’t speak as they walked through the woods, but at home, as they undressed and got into bed, Tatiana said, “You’re not still angry, are you?”

“No!” Alexander said. He left his shorts on as he got under the covers and turned away from her.

“Shura?” She stroked his back and kissed his head. “Shura.”

“I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.”

He didn’t want her to stop touching him, and she, of course, didn’t.

What was wrong with her?

“Come on,” Tatiana whispered. “Come on, big man. Feel, I’m naked. Do you feel?”

He felt. Turning onto his back without meeting her eyes, Alexander said, “Tatiana, I want you to promise me you will stay right here where it’s safe for you.”

“You know I can’t stay here,” she said quietly. “I can’t be without you.”

“Of course you can, and you will. Just like before.”

“There is no before.”

“Stop. You don’t understand anything.”

“Then tell me everything.”

Alexander didn’t reply.

“Tell me,” she pleaded, her small, warm hand on his arms, on his stomach, moving lower.

Pushing it away, he said, “We have only three days left. I’m not ruining them this way.”

“No, but you’re willing to ruin them with your sulkiness and bad behavior.” Her forgiving hand returned to caressing him.

Pushing her hand away again, Alexander said, suddenly understanding, “Oh, so that’s why you’ve been so damn chipper, as if you couldn’t care less I was leaving? Because you thought you were coming with me?”

She pressed her body softly against his side, kissing his arm. “Shura,” Tatiana whispered, “how do you think I’ve been able to live out these days with you? I couldn’t continue if I thought you were leaving me. Husband,” she said, her voice like a black pit, “everything I have I gave to you. If you leave, you’re going to take it all.”

Alexander had to get off the bed before he lost his mind. He jumped down to stand on the floor. “Well, you’d better get more from somewhere, Tania!” he exclaimed. “Because I am leaving, and I’m leaving without you.”

Silently she shook her head.

“Don’t shake your head at me!” Alexander yelled. “There is a war on, for f*ck’s sake! A war! Millions of people are already dead. What do you want, to be just another dead body without an ID tag in a mass grave?”

She started to convulse. “I have to come with you,” she said in her smallest whisper. “Please.”

“Look,” he said, “I’m a soldier. This country is at war. I have to go back. But you are safe here. I came to get away from the fighting, and you and I had a good time—” Was it possible to actually choke on words? “But now it’s over, do you understand? Over,” he said loudly. “I have to go back, and you can’t come.” He paused, panting. “I don’t want you to come. I’m not even going to be at the garrison. I’ve been moved.”

“Moved where?”

“I can’t tell you. But Leningrad cannot have another winter like we had last year.”

“You’re breaking the blockade? Where?”

“Can’t tell you.”

“You tell me everything.” She paused. “Don’t you, Alexander?” Tatiana asked pointedly. “Don’t you tell me everything?”

What was that in her voice? God. He wasn’t about to ask. “Not this.”

“Oh,” Tatiana said, sitting on the bed, looking down at him. “On the third day after we met, you told me you were from America, just like that. You poured out your entire life to me on our third day. But now you can’t tell me where you’re posted?”

Tatiana jumped down. Alexander backed away. He couldn’t be far enough from her eyes and her body and her open palms.

“Tell me, Shura,” she said pleadingly. “You didn’t marry me to keep secrets.”

“Tania, I’m not having this with you! Do you understand?”

“No!” she yelled. “Why in the world did you marry me then, if all you wanted was to continue to lie!”

“I married you,” Alexander yelled in a breaking voice, “so I could f*ck you anytime I felt like it! Don’t you get it by now? Anytime, Tania! What else do you think a soldier on furlough could possibly want? And if I hadn’t married you, all of Lazarevo would now be calling you my whore!”

Alexander could see by Tatiana’s sunken face she could not believe the words that had just come out of his mouth. She staggered back against the wall, not knowing what to cover on herself, her face or her body. “You married me so you could what?”

“Tatia . . .”

“Don’t Tatia me!” she screamed. “First your insults, then Tatia? Your whore, Alexander?” She groaned helplessly and put her face into her hands.

“Tania, please . . .”

“You think I don’t know what you’re doing? That I don’t know you’re trying to make me hate you? Well, you know what,” she said through gritted teeth. “After trying for days, I think you’ve finally succeeded!”

“Tania, please—”

“For days you’ve been trying to push me away so you could leave me easier!”

“I’m coming back,” Alexander said hoarsely.

“Who’ll have you!” she cried. “And are you really? Are you sure you haven’t come here for this?” She ran to her trunk, rummaged through it, found the Bronze Horseman book, and tore from it a handful of hundred- and thousand-dollar bills.

“What’s this?” she yelled, throwing the money at him. “Did you come for this, for your American money? For your ten thousand American dollars I found in your book? Did you come for this, so you could run to America without me? Or were you going to leave me some, as a kind of a thank you for opening your legs, Tatiana?”

“Tania . . .”

Grabbing his rifle by the barrel, she went up to Alexander and furiously shoved the butt of the gun into his stomach, pointing the muzzle at herself. “I want back what you took from me.” She nearly couldn’t continue. “I’m sorry I ever saved myself for you, but now shoot me, you liar and thief — that’s what you want anyway. Take your damn hand away from my throat and pull the trigger.” She jabbed him again, high in the solar plexus, putting the barrel between her breasts. “Go ahead, Alexander,” she said. “Thirty-five rounds, right here in my heart.”

He took the weapon from her without saying a word.

Tatiana raised her hand and slapped him hard on the face. “I want you to leave right now,” she said, a tear rolling down her cheek. “We had some good times. We’re certainly not going to have them again. You f*cked me,” she said, “anytime you felt like it. I get it by now. It’s the only thing you wanted from day one. Well, you got what you wanted, you’re done, so go.” Tatiana ripped the wedding ring off her finger and flung it at him. “There — you can give it to your next whore!”

Her shoulders hunched and quaking, she climbed onto the bed, wrapping herself in a white sheet, like a body dead from the hunger.

Alexander went outside and went swimming in the cold Kama waters, wishing for his pain, his remorse, his love, for his whole life to be washed away into the tundra. The blue moon was three nights from full. If I stay in the water, maybe I can float in the river, down to the Volga, into the Caspian Sea, and no one will find me. I will float on my pain and my heart; I will float and feel no more. That’s all I want. To feel no more.

Eventually he came back inside.

Climbing onto the bed, Alexander lay silently next to his Tania, listening for her breath. Every few minutes her breathing would break into the shudder of someone who had been crying for a long time. She lay in a fetal position, turned away from him to the wall.

Finally he unraveled her from the sheet and rubbed against her. Slightly parting her legs, he entered her, pressing his mouth to the nape of her neck and then to the top of her head. His left hand slipped under her to hold her to him, his right hand embraced her hip. He cradled her in himself, like always, as she cradled him in herself, like always.

Tatiana barely stirred. She did not pull away from him, but neither did she make a single sound. She is punishing me, Alexander thought, closing his eyes. I deserve much worse. Still, it was unbearable to hear her silence. Alexander kissed her head, her hair, her shoulders. He could not be deep enough in her enslaving warmth to find peace. At last she couldn’t help herself, she groaned and shuddered and clutched his hand, and he did not stop himself from release this time. Afterward he remained inside her and then heard her crying.

“Tatiasha, I am so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I said those heartless things. I didn’t mean them.” He held her stomach into him.

“You meant them,” Tatiana said emptily. “You’re a soldier. You meant them all.”

“No, Tania,” Alexander said, hating himself. “I didn’t. I’m your husband first.” He held her close. “Feel me, Tania, feel my body, feel my hands, my lips on you, feel my heart. I didn’t mean them.”

“Shura, I wish you would stop saying things you don’t mean.”

He breathed in her smells, rubbing his face in her hair. “I know. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t reply, but her hand remained on his. “Turn to me?” he asked, pulling himself away.

“No.”

“Please. Turn to me, and tell me you forgive me.”

Tatiana turned, lifting her swollen eyes to Alexander.

“Oh, honey . . .” He paused, closing his eyes. He could not endure her expression. “Breathe on me,” he whispered. “I want to smell your blueberry breath on my face.”

She did. Alexander inhaled the warm spirit out of her lungs into his mouth and into his lungs. He hugged her. “Please tell me you forgive me, Tania.”

“I forgive you.” Her voice was flat.

“Kiss me. I want to feel your lips forgive me.”

She kissed him. He watched her close her eyes.

“You have not forgiven me. Again.”

Tatiana kissed him again softly. She kissed him, and then her mouth parted, and she made a small forgiving moaning sound. Her hands drifted down to take hold of him. Quietly she caressed him and caressed him. And caressed him.

“Thank you,” Alexander said, gazing at her. “Say to me, Shura, I know you didn’t mean it. You were just angry.”

Sighing, she said, “I know you didn’t mean it.”

“Say to me, I know you love me to insanity.”

“I know you love me.”

“No, Tania,” he said, raw emotion in his voice. “I love you to insanity.” He ran his lips back and forth against her silken eyebrows, unable to breathe, afraid he would exhale her breath out of him.

“I’m sorry I hit you,” Tatiana whispered.

“I’m surprised you didn’t kill me.”

“Alexander,” she said, “is that why you came here?” She couldn’t keep her voice from breaking. “For your . . . money?”

Crushing her with his arms, he said, looking at the wall, “Tania, stop it. No, I did not come for my money.”

“Where did you get the American dollars from?”

“My mother. I told you my family had money in America. My father decided he was going to come to the Soviet Union with nothing, and my mother agreed, but she brought this money with her just in case and hid it from him. This was the last thing my mother left me, a few weeks before she was arrested. We carved out the inside covers of the Pushkin book. We hid the money together. Ten thousand dollars on one side, four thousand rubles on the other. She thought that maybe it could help me get out.”

“Where did you put it when you were arrested in 1936?”

“I hid it in the Leningrad Public Library. And there it remained until I gave the book to you.”

“Oh, my prescient Alexander,” said Tatiana, “you gave it to me just in time, didn’t you? The library shipped out most of its priceless items, including the entire Pushkin collection, way back last July and moved the rest of its books down to the cellar. Your money would have been long lost.”

Alexander said nothing.

“Why did you give it to me? You wanted it to be in a safe place?”

Alexander turned his gaze back to her. “Because I wanted to trust you with my one life,” he said.

Tatiana was quiet.

“The book wasn’t in the library the whole time, though, was it?”

He made no reply.

“In 1940, when you went to fight Finland, you took the money with you, didn’t you?”

He made no reply.

“Oh, Alexander.” Tatiana buried her face in his chest.

Alexander wanted to speak. He just could not.

It was Tatiana who spoke. “One more thing for Dimitri not to forgive you for, as if there weren’t enough already. When you went back for Stepanov’s son, you took Dimitri with you because you two were going to escape through Finland, weren’t you?”

Nothing moved on Alexander.

“You were going to run, through the swamps, right to Vyborg, and then to Helsinki, and then to America! You had brought your money, you were ready. It was the moment you had dreamed about for years.” She kissed his chest. “Wasn’t it, my husband, my heart, my Alexander, my entire life right here in this cabin, wasn’t it, tell me?” She was crying.

Alexander had lost his powers of speech. He was very nearly losing his powers over everything. He never wanted to have this out with Tatiana.

Her voice trembled. “It was a great plan. You would have disappeared, and no one would have ever gone to look for you — they would just have assumed you had died. You didn’t count on Yuri Stepanov being alive. You thought he’d be dead. It was just an excuse to return to the woods. Suddenly he was alive!” Tatiana emitted a low laugh. “Oh, Dimitri must have been extremely surprised when you said you were going back with Yuri. What are you thinking, he must have said. Are you crazy? You’ve wanted to go back to America for years. Here’s your chance, here’s my chance.” She paused. “How close am I?”

Nuzzling into her blonde head, Alexander finally said in a stunned whisper, “As if you were there. How do you know this?”

She cupped his face in her hands. “Because I — better than anybody — know who you are.” Tatiana paused, leaving her hands on his face. “So you returned to the Soviet Union with Stepanov’s son, thinking you would have another chance to run. What did you have to do, Shura?” she asked. “Promise Dimitri that if you didn’t die, one way or another you would get him to America?”

He pushed away her hands and turned on his back, shutting his eyes. “Tania, stop. I can’t continue this anymore. I just can’t.”

She stopped only to get control of her faltering speech.

“So now what?”

“Now nothing,” Alexander said darkly, looking up at the beamed ceiling. “Now you stay here and I go back to the front. Now Dimitri is crippled. Now I fight for Leningrad. Now I die for Leningrad.”

“God! Don’t say that!” Tatiana grabbed his arms, turning him to her and, crying, clutched at his chest. He held her as close as he could, but it wasn’t close enough, not for her, not for him. “Don’t say that, Shura!” She was sobbing uncontrollably. “Shura, please,” she barely whispered. “Please don’t leave me by myself in the Soviet Union.”

Alexander had never seen Tatiana so upset. He didn’t know what to do. “Come on,” he said, his voice breaking, his heart breaking. Come on, Tatiana, love me less, let me go, free me.

Hours went by. In the deepest night, Alexander made love to her again. “Go on, Tatiasha,” he whispered, “spread your legs for me like I love.”

She tasted as if she were crying tears of nectar into his throat.

“Promise me,” he said, kissing her blonde downy hair, licking the soft inside of her thighs, “promise me you will not leave Lazarevo.”

There was no answer from her, just stifled moans.

“Are you my good girl?” he whispered, his fingers more tender, more persistent. “Are you my lovely girl?” he whispered, his mouth more gentle, more persistent, his hot breath imploring into her. “Swear to me you will stay here and wait for me. Promise me you’ll be a good wife and wait for your husband.”

“I promise, Shura. I will wait for you.”

Then, later, “I’ll be waiting a long time,” Tatiana said brokenly, lying relieved and unrelieved in his arms, “here alone in Lazarevo.”

Hugging her to him so hard she could barely breathe, an utterly unrelieved Alexander whispered, “Alone, but safe.”

How they spent the next three days Alexander did not know. Awash in a flood of hostility and despair, they battled and railed and shattered their bodies on one another, unable to find one strand, one sobering swallow of solace.