Текст книги "The Bronze Horseman"

Автор книги: Paullina Simons

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

“Yes.”

Alexander heard her groaning. “It hurts?”

Her arms around his neck squeezed him. “It’s not bad.”

Alexander carried Tatiana on his back for three kilometers to Luga Station, which despite his hope was not repaired yet. “What now?” she asked anxiously when he stopped to rest.

He offered her a drink of water. “Now we walk through the woods to the next station.”

“How many kilometers is that?”

“Six,” he replied.

She shook her head. “Alexander, no. You can’t carry me for six more kilometers.”

“Do you have any other ideas?” he asked, crouching in front of her. “Let’s go.”

They were on a forest road making their way to the next train station north when they heard the planes just over the trees. Alexander himself would have continued walking, but he did not want to be walking with Tatiana on his back. If a bomb fell, she would be the first one to get hit.

He walked off the path, bringing her into the woods and setting her down by a fallen tree. “Lie down,” he told her, helping her lean back. He lay by her side, holding on to his rifle. “Turn onto your stomach,” he said. “And cover your head.” She didn’t move. “Don’t be afraid, Tania.”

“How can I be afraid now?” she said haltingly, lying on her back looking up at him. She wasn’t moving. She placed her hands on his chest.

“Go on,” he said, staring at her. “What? Do you need me to help? I should have taken your green helmet from the station.”

“Alexander—”

“Now that it’s morning, I’m suddenly Alexander again?”

Gazing up at him, Tatiana whispered, “Oh, Shura…” And Alexander could no longer bear it. He bent to her face and kissed her.

Her lips were as soft and young and full as he had imagined them to be. Tatiana’s whole body started to tremble as she kissed him back with such tenderness, such passion, such need that Alexander involuntarily emitted a small groan. He was bewildered by her hands pressing his head into hers and not letting go. “Oh, God…” he whispered into her parted mouth.

The crashing noise of the bombs overhead stopped them. Alexander felt that something had to stop him. The tip of the pine tree nearby caught fire, and bits of burning branches fell down into the damp forest very close to them. He turned her onto her stomach and lay next to her in the moss with his arm and half his body covering her. “Are you all right?” he whispered. “Bombs frighten you?”

“Bombs are the least of it,” she whispered back.

As soon as the shelling stopped, Alexander said, “Let’s go. We’ve got to get to the train. Let’s hurry.”

As she got up, she wouldn’t raise her eyes at him. Turning his back to her, he crouched, and she climbed on. He carried her, his arms under her knees, his hands holding his rifle.

“I’m heavy,” she said into his back.

“You’re no heavier than my ruck,” he said, panting. “Just hang on. We’ll be there soon.”

Every once in a while his rifle bumped her broken leg, and Alexander would feel her constrict in pain, but she didn’t moan, didn’t cry out. At one point he felt her put her head down on his back. He hoped she was all right.

Under a black smoky sky, amid burning woods, Alexander carried Tatiana on his back six kilometers to the next station. The nearby shelling had stopped, but the sound of explosions and artillery guns carried on all around.

At the station Alexander set her down on the ground and sank down next to her. She sidled closer to him and closer still.

“Tired?” she asked him gently.

He nodded.

They waited. The station was full of other people—women with little babies, with their elderly parents, with all their belongings. Grimy and shell-shocked, they waited for the train. Alexander took out a piece of his remaining bread and split it with Tatiana.

“No, you have it,” she said. “You need it more than I do.”

“Did you eat anything yesterday?” Alexander asked her. “No, of course you didn’t.”

“I had a raw potato, some blueberries in the forest. And the chocolate you gave me.” The length of her body and leg pressed against his side. She leaned her head on his arm and closed her eyes.

Alexander put his arm around her. “You’re going to be all right,” he said, kissing her forehead. “You’ll see. Just a little longer, and you’re going to be fine. I promise.”

The train came. It was a cattle train, with no room to sit. “Do you want to wait, maybe?” he asked. “For a passenger train?”

“No,” she replied weakly. “I’m not feeling well. Best get to Leningrad soon. Let’s get on. I’ll stand on one leg.”

Alexander lifted her onto the platform first and then jumped up himself. The carriage was crowded with dozens of other people. They stood near the edge, where they could see the countryside through the open doors. For several hours they stood compressed against each other, Tatiana leaning on him, her head on his chest, and Alexander supporting her as best he could by her arms. He couldn’t hold her tightly around her ribs or on her back. At one point he felt her body start to drift down. “No, stay up, stay up,” he said to her, keeping her upright.

And she stayed up, her arms going around him.

The doors to the carriage were left open in case people wanted to jump off. The train moved past fields and dirt roads that were filled with Soviet farmers dragging their cows and pigs and goats behind them and refugees pulling carts filled with their earthly possessions. Ambulances tried to get through the same roads past the crowds of people; motorcyclists, too. Alexander watched Tatiana’s somber face.

“What are you thinking, Tatia?”

“Why are those silly people carrying their whole lives on their backs? If I were leaving, I wouldn’t take anything. Just myself.”

He smiled. “What about all your things? You have things, don’t you?”

“Yes. But I wouldn’t take any of them.”

“Not even my Bronze Horseman book? You should take that.”

She looked up, attempting a smile. “Maybe that. But either I’m leaving to save myself or I’m saddling myself, slowing myself down, making it easier for the enemy. Don’t you think we should ask ourselves what our purpose is? Are we leaving our home? Are we starting a new life? Or are we planning to continue the old one elsewhere?”

“Those are all good questions.”

“Yes.” Pensively, she stared out at the fields.

Alexander bent and rubbed his cheek against Tatiana’s shorn head, his hand pressing her to him a little tighter. He had only one thing left over from his former life; otherwise America did not exist, except in his memory.

“I wish I could have found my brother,” he heard her whisper.

“I know,” said Alexander with emotion. “I wish I could have found him for you.”

After a pained breath, Tatiana remained silent.

The train arrived at Warsaw Station in the early evening. They sat quietly on the bench overlooking the Obvodnoy Canal and waited for the Number 16 tram to take them to Grechesky Hospital near Tatiana’s house. The tram came. Alexander said, “You want to get on?”

“No,” she replied.

They sat.

The second tram came.

“This one?”

“No,” she replied.

The third came.

“No,” Tatiana said before he even asked, and put her head on his arm.

Four trams came and went—and still they sat, close to each other, not speaking, looking out on the canal.

“In just one more breath,” Tatiana said finally, “on the next tram, you are going to take me back to my old life.”

Alexander said nothing.

Uttering a small cry, Tatiana whispered, “What are we going to do?”

He didn’t reply.

“At Kirov that day,” she asked, “when we fought, did you… have a plan?”

He did want to get her out of Leningrad. She wasn’t safe in the city. “Not really.”

“I didn’t think so,” she said, her head against his arm.

Another tram came and went.

“Shura, what do I tell my family about Pasha?”

Tightening his lips, he touched her face. “Tell them you’re sorry. Tell them you did your absolute best.”

“Maybe, like me, he’s alive somewhere?”

“You’re not somewhere,” said Alexander. “You’re with me.”

Tatiana swallowed before she continued. “Yes, but until yesterday, I wasn’t. I was somewhere, too.” She looked at him hopefully. “Maybe?”

Alexander shook his head. “Oh, Tania.”

Tatiana looked away. “Did you have trouble finding me?”

“Not much.” He didn’t want to tell her how he had searched every meter of Luga for her.

“But how did you know to look for me in Luga?”

“I looked for you in Tolmachevo, too.”

“But how did you know to look for me at all?” Tatiana asked.

Alexander saw her looking at him with an expression of want and hope he couldn’t endure. “Listen…” he said. “It was Dasha who asked me to find you.”

“Oh?” Tatiana’s face fell. “Oh.” She moved away from him until no part of her body was touching his.

“Tatia…”

“Look, our tram is here,” she said, trying to get herself up. “Let’s go.”

Alexander took her arm. “Let me help.”

“I’m fine,” she said, and hopped once while still holding on to him, groaning in pain.

The tram doors opened. “Stop,” Alexander urged. “Let me help you, I said.”

“And I said I’m fine.”

“Stop,” he said more firmly. “Or I’m going to let go of you.”

“Then let go.”

With exasperation he sighed and went around to stand in front of her. “Stop hopping. Do your ribs like that? Hold on to me,” he said, “and I’ll carry you inside.”

When they were sitting down and on their way, Alexander asked, “Why are you upset?”

“I’m not upset.”

After a moment he put his arm around her. Tatiana sat stolidly looking out the window.

In fifteen minutes of not talking they were at the hospital on Grechesky. Alexander carried her inside, where the nurses immediately found a bed for her, put her in a clean hospital gown, and instantly gave her something for the pain.

“Much better with the morphine?” He smiled. “The doctor will be here in just a minute. He’ll set your leg and put it in a cast; you’ll sleep. Meantime I’m going to go. I’ll tell your family you’re here, and then I’m going to go and retrieve my men.” He sighed. “I’m sure they’re still stuck in Luga.”

Tatiana leaned back against the pillows and said coolly, “Thank you for helping me.”

Alexander sat on the edge of the bed. Tatiana turned her head away. He placed two fingers under her chin and turned her face back to him. There were tears in her eyes. “Tatia?” he said. “Why are you upset? Had Dasha not come to me, I never would have gone and found you.” He shrugged. “I don’t know why, but this is how it’s supposed to be. You’re home, you’re all right.” He caressed her cheek. “You’re just going through too much right now, too much is broken…”

She sniffed, trying to turn her head away again, but he wouldn’t let her, feeling overwhelming, crushing tenderness. “Shh… come here,” he said, and hugged her gently. “Tania, whatever questions you have, the answer is yes to all of them,” he whispered, kissing her hair. He felt her attempting to move away.

“I have no questions,” she said evenly. “They’ve all been answered. You did this for Dasha. She will be so grateful.”

Shaking his head, Alexander laughed once with disbelief. Allowing Tatiana to slip down on the pillow, he said, “Did I kiss you for Dasha, too?”

She turned red.

“Tania,” he said quietly, “we cannot be having this conversation. Not after what we’ve just been through.”

“You’re right. We should not be talking at all.” She wouldn’t look at him.

“We should. Just not about this.”

“Go, Alexander. Go and tell my sister how you saved me for her.”

“I didn’t save you for her,” he said, standing up. “I saved you for me. And you’re not being very fair, Tania.”

“I know.” She nodded sadly, staring at the blanket. “There is nothing fair about any of this.”

Alexander took Tatiana’s hand, struggling with himself not to kiss her again, not to cause her further pain and himself further pain. In the end, with a hurting heart, he pressed his lips into the trembling palm of her hand and left.

Impaled in Space

AFTER Alexander left, Tatiana wanted to cry, but her ribs hurt too much. She put her arm over her face when the nurse, Vera, came in and said, “Now, now, there, there, you’ll be all right. Your family will be here soon. Don’t cry, you’ll hurt yourself. You’ve got broken ribs. Why don’t you sleep? I’ll give you something to sleep.”

“Do you have some more morphine?”

“I already gave you two grams. How much more do you want?” Vera chuckled.

“Another kilo?”

Tatiana slept.

When she opened her eyes, her family was sitting on chairs around her bed, looking alternately endeared and horrified by her. Dasha was holding her hand. Mama was wiping her face. Babushka was anxiously tapping on Deda’s hand. Papa was looking at her with reproachful eyes.

“Tania, you’ve been out for two days,” said Dasha, who would not stop kissing Tatiana’s cut hair.

Mama stroked her hands. “What were you thinking?” she kept repeating in a wailing voice.

“I wanted to get our Pasha,” Tatiana said, squeezing her mother’s hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t.”

“Tania, what nonsense you talk,” said Papa, walking to the window. “Didn’t you go to school? Didn’t you graduate a year early? What did they teach you there? Obviously not sense.”

Mama said, “Tanechka, you are our baby girl, our angel baby girl. What would we have done if we had lost you, too?” She sobbed. “How could we go on?”

Papa told Mama not to talk nonsense. “We have not lost Pasha! Volunteers come back from the line all the time. There is hope.”

“Tell that to Nina Iglenko,” said Dasha. “You can’t step into the corridor without hearing her cries for Volodya.”

“Nina has four sons,” Papa said grimly, “who are all going to the front if this war is not over soon. She better get used to losing them.” He lowered his head. “But we have only one, and I have to have hope.”

If Tatiana had had the strength, she would have turned away from all of them, unable to face them with the truth of what she had seen on the Luga River. If she told them that she had wrapped dead bodies, that she had watched people die in front of her, that she had seen burning and mangled limbs and small children struck down, her family would not have believed her. Tatiana hardly believed it herself.

“You really are completely insane, Tania,” said Dasha. “Putting us all through such hell, and risking my poor Alexander’s life. He went to find you, you know. I begged him to do it. He didn’t want to; he had to go over his commanding officer’s head.”

“Tatiana,” said Deda, “he saved your life.”

“Did he?” she said feebly.

“Oh, you poor thing,” said Mama, rubbing Tatiana’s hand. “You don’t remember anything. Georg, she doesn’t remember. What you must have gone through.”

“Mama, didn’t you hear?” said Dasha. “The station fell on her. Alexander dug her out from fallen bricks!”

“That man, Dashenka!” exclaimed Papa. “Where did you find him? He’s gold, pure gold. Hold on to him.”

“I intend to, Papa.”

At that moment the man who was pure gold walked in with Dimitri. The family flocked to him. Papa and Deda shook his hands vigorously. Mama and Babushka hugged him. Dasha bent him to her and kissed him on the mouth.

And kissed him and kissed him.

And kissed him.

“Enough, Daria Georgievna,” said Papa. “Let the soldier breathe.”

Dimitri came over to Tatiana and put his arm around her. His eyes were concerned and amused. “Well, Tanechka,” he said, kissing her head, “you seem to be quite fortunate to have your life.”

“Tatiana, I think you have something to say to Lieutenant Belov,” said Papa solemnly.

“They are going to give our lieutenant another medal for military valor,” Dimitri snorted. “After dropping off Tatiana, he returned for his men, bringing eleven out of twenty of them back to Leningrad. And most of these men were untrained. Better even than Finland, right, Alex?”

Stepping up to the bed, Alexander said, “Tania, how are you feeling?”

“Wait, what happened in Finland?” asked Dasha, glued to Alexander’s arm.

“How are you feeling, Tania?” Alexander repeated.

“Great,” Tatiana replied, unable to look at him. She smiled at her mother. “I’m all right, Mama. I’ll be home soon.”

Dasha said, “What happened in Finland?” Still glued to Alexander.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Alexander said.

“I’ll tell them,” Dimitri said brightly. “In Finland, Alexander brought back only four out of thirty men, yet somehow he managed to turn even that defeat into a victory. A medal and a promotion. Didn’t you, Alexander?”

Not replying to Dimitri, Alexander asked Tania, “How is your leg?”

“Fine,” she replied. “It will be as good as new soon.”

“Not soon!” exclaimed Mama. “September! You’re in a cast until September, Tania. What are you going to do?”

“I guess,” said Tatiana, “I will be in a cast until September.”

Mama, shaking her head and sniffling, said, “No, Alexander carried her on his back, Georg, on his back.” She grabbed Alexander’s hands and said, “How can we ever thank you?”

“No thanks necessary,” Alexander replied, smiling at Tatiana’s mother. “Just take care of Tania.”

“Alex, it’s a good thing our Tania only weighs about three kilos,” Dasha said with a giggle.

“Thank him, Tania,” persisted Papa, practically storming Tatiana’s bed in his anxiety and gratitude. “Thank the man for saving your life, for goodness’ sake!”

Forming a thin smile, with Dimitri still holding her hand, Tatiana somehow managed to look straight at Alexander as she said, “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

Before he had a chance to respond, Dasha hugged him again. “Alexander, you see what you’ve done for our family? How can I ever thank you?” She smiled, rubbing up to him.

Blessedly, the nurse came in and told everyone they had to leave.

Dimitri leaned down and pressed his rubbery mouth to the corner of Tatiana’s mouth. “Good night, dear,” he said. “I’ll come and see you tomorrow.”

She wanted to scream.

Dasha remained behind to straighten Tatiana’s blankets and move a pillow under her leg. She seemed agitated in a way Tatiana had not seen in weeks. “Tania,” she whispered, “if there is a God, thank God for you. After he brought you back, we had a long talk. I was so grateful to him for finding you, and I convinced him to give us another chance. With the war so close, I said, what did we have to lose? I said, Alexander, look at what you did for me; you wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t have feelings for me. And he said, Dasha, I never said I didn’t have feelings for you.” Dasha kissed Tatiana’s head. “Thank you, my lovely baby, thank you for staying alive long enough for him to find you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Tatiana in a dull voice. If he was in Dasha’s life again, he would be in her life again.

Why did that feel so hollow?

“Tania… do you think Pasha is alive somewhere?”

Tatiana thought of the leaflets floating down from the sky like confetti, of the shells exploding in midair like metal rain, of the bleakness of the artillery guns pointed at her and at Alexander. And at Pasha.

“I don’t think so,” said Tatiana, closing her eyes. Whatever had happened to him, Pasha felt permanently lost.

Tatiana’s eyes were still closed an hour later when she thought she heard the door creak. As she opened her eyes, Alexander was sitting on her bed. How did he do that, carry his body and his rifle with such quiet?

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Came to see how you were.”

“You just leave Dasha?”

He nodded. “I’m on my way to St. Isaac’s. I do air-raid duty above the dome, in the rotunda arcade. Until one. Petrenko is on duty before me. He is a good soldier. He covers me if I’m a little late.” St. Isaac’s Cathedral was the tallest structure in Leningrad.

“What are you doing here?” Tatiana repeated.

“Wanted to make sure you were all right. And I wanted to talk to you about Dasha—”

“I’m great. Really. And you shouldn’t do this. Come around like this. Dasha is right. I’ve made enough of a mess already. You shouldn’t be late for your patrol.”

“Don’t worry about me. How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” she said, glaring at him. “You’re quite the hero, aren’t you, Alexander?” she said. “My family thinks Dasha could not have done better.” Tatiana lowered her eyes.

“Tatia…”

“She told me that you two are back together,” Tatiana said with false brightness. “Why not? With the war so close, what have you got to lose, right? The whole Luga fiasco really worked out all the way around.”

“Tatia…”

“Don’t Tatia me,” she snapped.

Alexander sighed. “What would you like me to do?”

“Just leave me alone, Alexander.”

“How can I, Tatiana?”

“I don’t know. But you better find a way. And you see how solicitous Di-mitri is being? This has brought out all his best qualities, too,” Tatiana said. “I never knew he could be so kind.”

“Yes, he’s kissing you kindly,” said Alexander, his eyes darkening.

“He is being very kind.”

“And you’re letting him.”

“Oh?” Tatiana said, “Well, at least I’m not knocking him.”

Alexander sucked in his breath. So did Tatiana. She couldn’t believe herself.

“What?” he said scathingly. “Is that next for you two?”

Shaken, she did not reply.

A nurse came in and left the door open, “for some fresh air.”

When they were alone again, he said, “Tania, I don’t know what you want me to do. I told you from the beginning, let’s not play this game.” He paused. “But now it’s too late. Now Dimitri—” Alexander broke off, shaking his head. “Now it’s become doubly difficult.”

All she wanted was for him to kiss her again. “Which leads me for the third time to my next question,” she said angrily. “What are you doing here?”

“Don’t be upset.”

“I’m not upset!”

Alexander lifted his hand to touch her. She whirled her face away.

“Oh,” he said, getting up. “From me you turn away.” He was at the door when he spun around. “And for your information,” he barked, “it’s impossible for you to be knocking him.”

Tatiana was told by vivacious Vera that she would have to remain in the hospital until the middle of August, until her ribs healed enough for her to walk around on crutches. Her shinbone was fractured in three places and had been set in a cast from her knee to her toes.

Tatiana’s family brought her food, which she ate with relish. Pirozhki with cabbage, chicken cutlets, some hamburger patties, and blueberry pie, which she didn’t enjoy as much as she used to, having practically lived on blueberries during her stint in the volunteer army.

First Mama and Papa visited her every day. Soon it became every other day. Dasha would breeze in, radiant, healthy, cheerful, arm in arm with the uniformed Lieutenant Alexander Belov, kiss Tatiana on the head, and say she really couldn’t stay. Dimitri would come over and, with his arm around her, sit by her side and then leave with them.

One night when to pass the time the four of them were playing cards, Dasha told Tatiana that her dentist had evacuated. He had asked Dasha to come with him to Sverdlovsk on the other side of the Urals, but Dasha had refused, finding work instead with Mama at the uniform factory. “Now I can’t evacuate. I’m indispensable to the war effort, too,” said Dasha, smiling at Alexander and showing Tatiana a handful of gold teeth.

“Where did you get those?” Tatiana asked.

Dasha replied that she got them as payment from the patients who came to the dentist in the last month, asking that the gold be taken out of their mouths.

“You took their gold teeth?” Tatiana asked with surprise.

“The gold teeth were my payment,” Dasha said unapologetically. “We can’t all be so pure as you.”

Tatiana didn’t pursue it. Who was she to pontificate to Dasha?

Tatiana changed the subject to war. War was like weather—always something to talk about. Alexander said the Luga line was about to fall any day, and she again felt the stamp of failure. All that effort on the part of thousands, only to have it crumble in a few days. She stopped asking. Being in the hospital imbued her with a sense of the unreal, even more than being in the deserted Dohotino village. She was stuck between four gray walls with a window, and she saw no one except the people who sporadically came to see her. She knew nothing except what she chose to ask about. Maybe if she didn’t ask about war, by the time she left the hospital, the war would somehow be over.

And then what? Tatiana would ask herself.

Nothing, she would answer in the dark of night. Nothing except the life I had. I’ll go back to work. Maybe next year I’ll go to university, as I planned. Yes, I’ll go to university, I’ll study English, and I’ll meet someone. I’ll meet some nice Russian university student who is studying to be an engineer. We’ll get married and go to live with his mother and grandmother in their communal apartment. And then we’ll have a child.

Tatiana could not imagine that life. She could not imagine any life except this hospital bed, except this hospital window facing the buildings on Grechesky Prospekt, except eating oatmeal for breakfast and soup for lunch and boiled chicken for dinner. All she wanted was for Alexander to come and see her on his own. She wanted to say she was wrong, to say she had no right to behave badly. She wanted to feel him close to her again.

She read Zoshchenko’s funny short stories about the ironic realities of Soviet life but couldn’t find any humor in them all of a sudden.

Tatiana lay in her room day in and day out, and the days were long, and at night she couldn’t sleep. The tears she saw in her mother’s eyes ate at her heart, and the silence of her father ate at her even more. The feeling of failure over Pasha sickened her. But the absence of Alexander ate at Tatiana most of all.

At first she was sorry, then she was angry, then she was angry at herself for being angry. Then she felt hurt. Finally she felt resigned.

And it was on the day she felt resigned that Alexander came in the middle of the afternoon when she wasn’t expecting him at all—right after lunch—and brought her an ice cream.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“You’re welcome,” he replied just as quietly, and then sat in the chair by her bed and watched her eat it. “I’m on city patrol,” he said. “I’m walking around the streets, making sure the windows are all taped, checking to see if there are any strange disturbances.”

“By yourself?”

“No,” he said, rolling his eyes. “With a group of seven forty-year-old men who have never carried a rifle.”

“Teach them how, Alexander. You must be a good teacher.”

Glancing at her, he said, “We’ve just spent the whole morning putting up tank barricades on Moscow Prospekt leading south. No trams are running there now.” He paused. “But Kirov is still open and pushing out those tanks. They’re just now deciding to move the production east. Little by little, other industries are leaving in trucks and the last of the trains.” He paused again. “Tania? Are you listening to me?”

“What?” She broke free of the deafening noise in her head.

“How is the ice cream?”

“Very good. An unexpected treat.”

“I think that’s a good way to think about many things in life,” Alexander said, getting up. “I have to be going.”

“No!” Tatiana said quickly, and then more quietly, “Wait.”

Alexander sat back down.

“About the other night…” she said. “I’m sorry. I—”

Alexander shook his head. “Forget it.”

Tatiana couldn’t think of anything to say besides low-spirited words. “Why did you take so long to come by?”

“What do you mean? I come by and see you every day.”

Tatiana didn’t say anything, and neither did he.

They looked at each other.

“I would have come alone,” he said. “I just thought there was little point. It wasn’t going to make you or me feel better.”

An image sprang up, an image of him bending over her, washing blood from her naked body. She breathed with difficulty. Another image… sleeping next to him, in his arms, her lips pressed to his chest, her hands touching him. Feeling closer to him than to anyone on earth. Standing with her arms around him on the train. And worse—the visceral sensation of his lips parting her lips. She turned her face from him. “You’re right, I know,” she whispered.

Alexander got up, and this time Tatiana didn’t stop him. “I’ll see you,” he said, bending over her and pressing his lips to her head.

Well, my head, that’s something, thought Tatiana. When he was by the door, she asked, “Will you come again? If you can. For just a few minutes.”

With his cap in his hands, he said, “Tania…”

“I know. You’re right. Don’t.”

“Tania, all the nurses here… someone will mention my visit in front of your family. It’ll just end badly.”

But it will end. “You’re right,” she said. “Don’t.”

After he left, Tatiana thought in loathing self-flagellation, I’m a very bad sister. I’ve always thought of myself as a good sister, but I realize that I have never been tested before. The first time I have been—look how I’m behaving.

2

One night a week later, Tatiana woke up feeling her face being stroked. She wanted to open her eyes, but it felt so much like a dream, and she felt so drugged and tired that she let her eyes stay closed. A man with big hands and vodka on his breath was stroking her face. She knew only one man with big hands. She kept her eyes shut, but she knew that her breathing pattern had changed from sleepy breaths to shallow rasps. He stopped touching her. “Tatia?”

She so wanted the illusion to continue. The illusion of being touched by Alexander in the middle of an August night. Tatiana opened her eyes.

It was Alexander. He wasn’t wearing his hat. There was that look in his molasses eyes again; even in the dark she could make it out.

“Did I wake you?” He smiled.

She sat up. “Yes. I think.” She reached out and touched his arm. “It seems like the middle of the night.”

“It is,” he said. He stared at her blanket, and she looked at the top of his black head. “It’s around three.”

They were speaking in just above a whisper.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I just wanted to see if you were all right. I keep… thinking of you here by yourself. Are you sad? Lonely?”

“Yes and yes,” Tatiana said. She smelled vodka on him. “Have you been drinking?”

“Hmm.” His wandering eyes were slightly unfocused. “For the first time in a while. I had a night off tonight. Marazov and I went out, had a few drinks.” He stopped. “Tatia…”

Her heart pounding, she waited breathlessly. His hands were on her blanket. Her legs were underneath the blanket. “Shura,” she said, and suddenly, for an instant, felt happy. The way she felt coming out of Kirov and turning her head and seeing his smile. Happier.