Текст книги "The Bronze Horseman"

Автор книги: Paullina Simons

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 32 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

When Tatiana, biting her lip shut, didn’t say anything, Alexander continued. “I don’t want to grapple with him. And I don’t want to have to pretend to Zoe as she brushes her tits against me. I won’t do it just to keep peace in this house.”

That made Tatiana look up. “Zoe does what?” Shaking her head, she muttered, “Vova doesn’t go around brushing anything against me.”

Standing very close against her, Alexander said, “No?” He paused. His breath quickened. Tatiana’s breath quickened. And very lightly Alexander brushed against Tatiana. “You will tell him to leave you alone, do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” she said faintly. He let go of her, and they resumed walking.

“But frankly,” she continued, even more faintly, “I think Vova is the least of our problems.”

Alexander walked faster down the village road. “Where are we going?”

“I thought you wanted to see my grandparents’ house.”

Alexander let out his breath and laughed without much humor.

“What’s funny?” Tatiana did not sound amused herself.

Neither was Alexander. “I didn’t think it was possible,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t, after what I had seen at Fifth Soviet, but somehow you managed to do it.”

“Do what?” Tatiana said, no longer faintly.

“Explain to me how,” he snapped. “How did you manage to find and surround yourself with people even more needy than your family?”

“Don’t talk about my family that way, all right!”

“Why does everyone flock around you, why? Can you explain it?”

“Not to you.”

“Why do you submerge yourself in their life this way?”

“I’m not discussing this with you. You’re just being mean.”

“Do you even have a moment to yourself in that fucking house?” Alexander exclaimed. “A moment!”

“Not a moment!” Tatiana retorted. “Thank God.”

They walked in resentful silence the rest of the way, through the village, past the banya and the village Soviet, past the tiny hut that said “Library” and a small building with a gold cross on top of a white kupola.

They walked into the woods and down the path leading to the Kama. Finally they came to a wide, slightly sloping clearing surrounded by tall pines and clusters of leaning white birches. Willows and poplars framed the sparkling, streaming river.

On the left side of the clearing under the pines stood a boarded-up izba, a wooden cabin. It had a small covering on the side that served as a woodshed, but there was no wood.

“This is it?” Alexander said, walking around the cabin in thirty long strides. “It’s not very big.”

“There were only two of them,” said Tatiana, walking around with him in fifty short ones.

“But they were waiting for three grandchildren. Where would you all have fit?”

“We would have fit,” said Tatiana. “How do we fit in Naira’s house?”

“Extremely tightly,” declared Alexander, reaching into his rucksack. He pulled out his trench tool and started to break off the boards on the windows.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to see what’s inside.”

Alexander watched her walk to the sandy riverbank, sit down, and take off her sandals. He lit a cigarette and continued to break off the boards.

“Did you bring a key for the padlock?” he called to her.

He didn’t hear her response. Fed up, he strode over and said loudly, “Tatiana, I’m speaking to you. Did you bring the key for the padlock, I asked?”

“And I replied to you,” she snapped without glancing up. “I said no.”

“Fine,” he said, getting out his semiautomatic from his belt and pulling back the breechblock. “If you didn’t bring the key, I will shoot the fucking padlock off.”

“Wait, wait,” she said, tutting and taking a rope from her neck on which the key hung. “Here. Don’t snatch!” She turned away. “You’re not at war, you know. You don’t have to bring that gun everywhere.”

“Oh, yes, I do.” He started to walk away and glanced back—at her blonde hair, at her back exposed at the waist, at her shoulders. Alexander dropped the padlock key into his trouser pocket and, holding his pistol in one hand and his trench tool in the other, strode into the water, still in his boots, stood in front of her with his feet apart, and said in a determined voice, “All right, let’s have it.”

“Have what?” Still sitting down, she backed away from him slightly on her haunches.

“Have what?” he exclaimed. “Why are you upset? What did I do, or not do? What did I do too much of, or not enough of? Tell me. Tell me now.”

“Why are you talking to me like that?” Tatiana said, jumping to her feet. “You have no right in the world to be upset with me.”

“You have no right in the world to be upset with me!” he said loudly. “Tania, we are wasting our precious breath. And you’re wrong—I have plenty of right to be upset with you. But unlike you, I’m too grateful you’re alive and too happy to see you to be too upset with you.”

“I have more reason to be upset with you.” Tatiana paused. “And I am grateful you are alive.” She couldn’t look at him when she spoke. “I am happy to see you.”

“It’s hard for me to tell, your wall against me is so thick.” When she didn’t reply, Alexander said, “Do you understand that I came all the way to Lazarevo without hearing from you once in six months?” He raised his voice. “Not once in six months! I should have just thought you both were dead, no?”

“I don’t know what you thought, Alexander,” said Tatiana, looking past him at the river.

“I’m going to tell you what I thought, Tatiana. In case it’s not clear. For six months I didn’t know if you were alive or dead, because you couldn’t be bothered to pick up a fucking pen!”

“I didn’t know you wanted me to write to you,” Tatiana said, grabbing a couple of pebbles and tossing them past him into the water.

“You didn’t know?” he repeated. Was she mocking him? “What are you talking about? Hello, Tatiana. I’m Alexander. Have we met before? You didn’t know I would have wanted to hear that you were all right, or perhaps that Dasha had died?”

He saw her recoil from his words, and from him.

“I am not talking about Dasha with you!” She walked away.

He followed her. “If not with me, then with who? With Vova, perhaps?”

“Better with him than with you.”

“Oh, that’s charming.” Alexander was still trying to be rational, but if she kept saying things like that, all reason was going to leave him.

Tatiana said, “Look, I didn’t write to you because I thought Dimitri would tell you. He said he definitely would. So I thought for sure you knew.” Something unspoken remained in her after that, but Alexander’s temper didn’t let him get to it.

“You thought Dimitri would tell me?” Alexander repeated in disbelief.

“Yes!” she said challengingly.

“Why didn’t you just write me yourself?” he yelled, coming close and looming over her. “Four thousand rubles, Tatiana, you’d think I’d deserve a fucking letter from you, no? You’d think my four thousand rubles would buy you a pen to write me and not just vodka and cigarettes for your village lover!”

“Put your weapons down!” she yelled back. “Don’t you dare come near me with those things in your hands!”

Hurling away his gun and his trench tool, he came for her, making her back away, and came for her again, without touching her, making her back away once more. “What’s the matter, Tania?” he said. “Am I crowding you? Getting too close?” He paused, leaning into her face. “Scaring you?” he added bitingly.

“Yes and yes,” she said. “And yes.”

Alexander picked up a handful of pebbles and threw them hard into the water.

For a minute, maybe two, maybe three, neither of them spoke, getting their breath. He waited for her to say something, and when she didn’t, Alexander tried again to lure her back into what they felt when it was just the two of them, at Kirov, at Luga, at St. Isaac’s. “Tania, when you first saw me here…” He trailed off. “You were so happy.”

“What gave my happiness away?” she asked. “Was it my sobbing?”

“Yes,” he said. “I thought you were crying from happiness.”

“Have you seen much of that, Alexander?” Tatiana asked, and for a second, just for a moment, he wondered if there was a double meaning behind her words, but he was too confounded to think carefully.

“What did I say?” he asked.

“I don’t know. What did you say?”

“Do we have to play these guessing games?” he said in exasperation. “Can’t you just tell me?” When she didn’t say anything, Alexander sighed. “All I asked was where Dasha was.”

Tatiana almost curled into herself.

“Tania, if you’re unhappy because I’m making you remember things you want to forget then we will deal with that—”

“If only—”

“Wait!” he said loudly, raising his hand. “I said if that’s what it is. But if it’s something else—” He stopped. Her face looked so upset. Lowering his voice back to calm, opening his hands to her, looking at her with everything he felt for her, Alexander said, “Listen. How about this? I will forgive you for not writing me, if you will forgive me for one thing that’s bothering you.” He smiled. “Is there only one?”

“Alexander, there are so many things that are bothering me, I don’t even know where to begin.”

He saw that she really didn’t. And through it all, the hurt remained in her eyes.

It was Tatiana’s eyes that Alexander reacted to now: they were the same eyes he had seen on the Fifth Soviet pavement when she yelled to him that she could forgive him for his indifferent face but not for his indifferent heart. Weren’t they past that? He wore his heart for her as a medal on his chest; weren’t they beyond all the lies?

How much was there beyond that Fifth Soviet pavement?

Alexander realized, only death was beyond that. They had never fixed that fight. And all the things that preceded it. And all the things that surpassed it.

And through all those things ran Dasha, whom Tatiana had tried to save and could not. Whom Alexander had tried to save and could not.

“Tania, is all this because Dasha and I were planning to get married?”

She didn’t reply.

Aha.

“Is all this because of the letter that I wrote to Dasha?”

She didn’t reply.

Aha.

“Is there more?”

“Alexander,” Tatiana said, shaking her head, “how petty you manage to make it all sound. How trivial. All my feelings have now been reduced to your contemptuous ‘all this.’ ”

“I’m not contemptuous,” he said, with surprise. “It’s not trivial. It’s not petty, but it’s all in the past—”

“No!” she cried. “It’s all right here, right now, all around me and inside, too! I live here now. And here,” she said raising her voice even more, “they have been waiting for you to come to marry my sister! And I don’t mean just the old women. I mean everybody in the village. Since I came to live here, it’s all I’ve heard, and not just every day but every dinner, every lunch, every sewing circle. Dasha and Alexander. Dasha and Alexander. Poor Dasha, poor Alexander.” She shuddered. “Does that seem like the past to you?”

Alexander tried to reason with her. “How is that my fault?”

“Oh, did they perhaps ask Dasha to marry you?”

“I told you, I didn’t ask her to marry me—”

“Don’t play this game with me, Alexander, don’t toy with me! You told her you would be married this summer.”

“And I did this why?” he said sharply.

“Oh, just stop it! At St. Isaac’s we agreed to keep away from each other. Except you couldn’t keep away from me, so you made plans to marry my sister.”

“He left you alone after that, didn’t he?” Alexander declared grimly.

“He would have left me alone if you’d never come to the apartment again, too!” she yelled.

“Which would you have preferred?”

She stopped moving for a moment. “Are you really asking me,” she said, panting, “what I would have preferred?” Her eyes were wide. “Are you in all honesty asking me if I would have preferred your marrying my sister to not seeing you again?”

“Yes! At St. Isaac’s you were ready to beg me not to stay away from you. So don’t give me this shit. It’s only easy to say now, in retrospect.”

“Oh, is that what this is—easy?” Tatiana was walking around the clearing in such furious circles she was almost spinning. With his long strides Alexander kept up with her, but she was making him dizzy.

“Stop moving!” he shouted. She stopped. “I see, so you set the rules and then you don’t like that I play by them. Well, live with it.”

“I am living with it,” Tatiana retorted. “Every single damned day since the day I met you.”

“Oh, this is the fight you want?” Alexander yelled. “This fight? You won’t win this one, because this one goes right back to you—”

“I don’t want to hear it!”

“Of course you don’t!”

Breathing hard, Tatiana said, “You told Dasha you would get married, she told my grandmother, my grandmother told the village. You wrote her a letter saying you were coming to marry her. Words have meaning, you know.” Tatiana fell briefly quiet. “Even words you don’t mean.”

Why did he think she wasn’t talking about Dasha now?

“If you felt so strongly about this,” he said, “then why didn’t you write me a letter back, saying, ‘You know what, Alexander, Dasha didn’t make it, but I’m right here.’ “ I would have come sooner. And I wouldn’t have lived the six months I lived not knowing if you had survived!”

“After the letter you wrote her,” Tatiana said incredulously, “you think I’d be writing you and asking you to come here? You think after that letter I’d be asking you for anything? I’d be an idiot to do that, wouldn’t I? An idiot, or—” She stopped.

“Or what?” he demanded.

“Or a child,” she said, not looking at him.

Alexander took a deep breath. “Oh, Tania—”

“These games you grown-ups play,” she said, backing away from him. “These lies—you’re just too good at them.” She lowered her head. “Too good for me.”

All Alexander wanted that instant was to touch her. Her lips, her anger, her face—he wanted to touch it all. “Tania…” he whispered, holding out his hands to her. “What are you talking about? What games, what lies?”

“Why did you come here, why?” she said coldly.

He felt himself about to choke on his words. “How can you even ask me that?”

“How? Because the last thing you wrote was that you were coming to marry Dasha. How much you loved her. How she was the woman for you. The only woman for you. I read that letter. That’s what you wrote. Because one of the last things I heard you say on Lake Ladoga was that you never—”

“Tatiana!” Alexander screamed, the pin falling to the ground. “What the hell are you talking about? Did you forget you made me promise to lie till the last? You made me promise. As late as November I was still saying, let’s tell the truth. But you! Lie, lie, lie, Shura, marry her, but promise me you won’t break my sister’s heart. Do you remember?”

“Yes, and you did commendably well,” Tatiana said acidly. “But did you have to be so convincing?”

Running his hand through his hair, Alexander shook his head. “You know I didn’t mean it.”

“Which part?” she said loudly, stepping up close and looking up at him, angry and unafraid. “The marrying Dasha part? The loving her part? Which part of all those lies do I know you didn’t mean?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he exclaimed. “What answer did you want me to give her as she lay dying in your arms?”

“The only answer you could give her,” she replied. “The only answer you meant to give, living your life of lies.”

“We both live that life of lies, Tatiana—because of you!” he yelled, wanting to tear her hair out. “But you know I didn’t mean what I said.”

“I thought you didn’t mean it,” Tatiana said. “I hoped you didn’t mean it. But can you understand that it was the only thing I heard all the way on the train to Molotov and all the way across the Volga ice and for two months in the hospital as I struggled for my breath, can you understand that?”

She struggled for her breath now as Alexander stood and watched her, feeling unbearable remorse.

“I wouldn’t have cared,” Tatiana continued. “I told you, I don’t need much, I don’t need much comfort.” She clenched her fists again. And the hurt was in her eyes. “But I do need a little bit,” she said, her voice unsteady. “I need a little bit for me, and then you could have said what you needed to say to Dasha, as you absolutely had to!” She took a breath. “I wanted your eyes on me for a second to let me know that I wasn’t nothing, so I could have a little faith. But no,” she said. “You treated me like you always do—as if I weren’t there.”

“I don’t treat you as if you aren’t there,” Alexander said, paling with confusion. “What are you talking about? I hide you from everyone. That’s not the same thing.”

“Ah, that’s a fine difference for a girl like me,” said Tatiana. “But if you can hide your heart so well even from my eyes, then maybe you can hide your heart for Dasha, too—the same way. And maybe for Marina and for Zoe, and for every girl you’ve ever been with. Maybe that’s what you grown men do—in private look at us one way and then blatantly deny us in public, as if we mean absolutely nothing.” She stared at the ground.

“Are you crazy?” asked Alexander. “Are you forgetting that the only one who did not see the truth was your blinded sister? Private, public, Marina saw it in five minutes.” He paused. “On second thought, the only two people who seem not to have seen the truth are your sister and you, Tatiana.”

“What truth?” She stood a stride away from him, and her fists were shaking. “I couldn’t have done it,” she said. “Lied so well. But you are a man. You did. You denied me in your last words, and you denied me in your last glance. And for a while it almost seemed right. How could you feel for me? I thought. Who could feel for anything after that Leningrad…” Tatiana paused, panting hard. “But still I wanted to believe in you so much! So when we got your letter to Dasha, I ripped it open, hoping I was wrong, praying that maybe there was a word in it for me—” Tatiana raised her voice. “A single word, a single syllable that I could keep for my own, needing it so desperately, to show me that my entire life had not been a complete lie!” She broke off. “A single word!” she yelled, hitting Alexander with both fists in the chest. “Just one word, Alexander!”

He tried to remember what he had written. He could not. But it was her hurting eyes he wanted to heal most of all. He took her into his arms, fighting with him, clutching him, and then crying. “Tania, please. You knew I was in agony—”

But she was so upset and volatile that she wrested herself out of his arms and cried, “I knew this? How did I know this?”

“You are supposed to just know,” Alexander said, coming toward her. “That’s the whole point of you.”

“Well, what’s the point of you?” she yelled, backing away.

“The point of me,” he yelled back, “is that I stood with my arms around you and my whole heart in my eyes in the back of that fucking Ladoga truck and pleaded with you to save yourself for me!”

“How do I know you don’t ask every girl you send across the Road of Life to save herself for you with those eyes of yours?”

“Oh, my God, Tatiana.”

In a broken voice she said, “I don’t know anything other than you. Not how to act, or how to play games, or how to lie, or anything.” She lowered her head. “You show me one thing in private, and then suddenly you plan to marry my sister. On Ladoga you tell her you never felt for me, you tell her you love only her, you don’t look at me as you leave me to face death, and then you don’t send a word my way. How in the world do you expect someone like me to know what the truth is without a little help from you? All I’ve ever known in my life is your damn lies!”

“Tatiana!” he cried. “Have you forgotten St. Isaac’s?”

“How many other girls went to visit you there, Alexander?”

“Have you forgotten Luga?”

“I was just a damsel in distress,” she said bitterly. “Dimitri himself told me how much you liked to help us girls out.”

Alexander was about to lose control completely. “What did you think I was doing coming to Fifth Soviet every chance I got, bringing you all my food?” he shouted. “Who did you think I was doing that for?”

“I never said you didn’t feel pity for me, Alexander!”

“Pity?” he exclaimed. “For fuck’s sake, pity?”

Folding her arms across her chest, Tatiana said, “That’s right.”

“You know what?” he said, nearly right up against her. “Pity is too good for you. That’s the price you pay for living your life as a lie. Don’t like it much, do you?”

“No, I hate it,” Tatiana said, looking up and not backing away one centimeter. “And knowing that I hate it, why in the hell did you come here? Just to torture me further?”

“I came because I didn’t know Dasha had died!” he yelled. “You couldn’t be bothered to fucking write me!”

“So you did come to marry Dasha,” Tatiana said in a calm voice. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

Growling helplessly, Alexander clenched his fists and stepped quickly away from her.

“Can’t keep all the lies straight in your head, can you?”

“Tatiana, you are completely out of line,” he said. “I told you from the first day we met, let’s come clean, let’s not live this life. Let’s choose a different one. I told you that from the start. Let’s tell them the truth and live with the consequences. You were the one who said no. I didn’t like it. But I said fine.”

“No! You did not say fine, Alexander! Had you said fine, you would not have been coming to Kirov every single day against my wishes.”

“Against your wishes?” he said, staggering back.

Tatiana shook her head at him. “You are unbelievable. What, whose head do you think you won’t sway, Alexander Barrington, with your rifle and your height and your life? You think that just because I, a seventeen-year-old child, opened my mouth and my eyes and gaped at you as if I’d never seen anything quite like it, you had the right to ask my sister to marry you? You think because I’m so young that wouldn’t break me? You think I need nothing from you, while you just take and take and take from me—”

“I don’t think you need nothing from me, and I have not taken and taken and taken from you,” Alexander said through his own clenched teeth.

“You’ve taken everything but that!” she screamed. “And that you don’t deserve!”

He came up close to her and hissed, “I could have taken that, too.”

“That’s right,” she said, furiously shoving him away. “Because you haven’t broken me enough.”

“Stop shoving me!”

“Stop menacing me! Stay away from me!”

He stood back. “None of this would be happening if you had listened to me from the beginning. None of it! Let’s tell them, I told you.”

“And I told you,” Tatiana said vehemently, “that my sister was more important to me than some need of yours I couldn’t comprehend. She was more important to me than some need of my own I couldn’t understand either. All I wanted was for you to respect my wishes. But you! Oh, you kept coming at me and coming at me and coming at me, and little by little you tore me apart, and when it wasn’t enough, you came for me in the hospital and tore me apart some more, and when that wasn’t enough, you got me up on the roof of St. Isaac’s with you to finish me off—”

“I have not finished you off,” he said.

“To finish off my heart for good,” continued Tatiana with clenched everything. “And you knew it. And when you had it all, and had me, and knew it, that’s when you showed me how much I really meant to you by planning to marry my sister!”

“Well, what do you think?” Alexander shouted. “What do you think happens when you can’t be fucking bothered to fight from the start for what you want? What do you think happens when you give the people you want away? That’s what happens! They go on with their lives, they get married, they have children. You wanted to live that lie!”

“Don’t tell me I wanted to live that lie! I was living the only truth I knew. I had a family I did not want to sacrifice for you! That’s what I fought for.”

Unsteady on his feet, Alexander could not believe the words that were coming out of her. “That was your only truth, Tatiana?”

She blinked and lowered her eyes.

“No,” she said. “You came for me, and I did not push you away far enough. How could I? I was—” She broke off. “I was in this with my eyes open, and my eyes were only for you. I hoped you were smarter, but I saw you were not smarter by much, and so I continued with you, knowing that I would stand by you and believe in you. I would give you anything and everything you needed, wanting so little back for myself.” She couldn’t look at him bravely anymore. “Give me a glance at the end of your proclamation of love to someone else,” Tatiana said, “and that would have been enough for me. Give me one word in your letter of love for someone else, and that would have been enough for me. But you didn’t feel enough for me to know I might need even so little—”

“Tatiana!” he screamed into her face. “I will stand here and be accused of anything, but don’t you dare tell me I didn’t feel enough for you! Don’t even pretend to yourself you can speak that lie and have it come out of your mouth as the truth. Everything I have fucking done with my life since the day I met you was because of how I felt about you, so if you continue to give me your bullshit now, I swear to God—”

“I won’t,” she said faintly, but it was too late then.

Alexander grabbed her and shook her. Tatiana felt so vulnerable, so soft in his arms. Utterly defeated by his anger and his remorse and his desire, he pushed her hard away, cursed, picked up his things off the ground, and ran up the hill and through the path.

6

Tatiana ran after him, yelling, “Shura, please stop! Please!”

She couldn’t catch up. He disappeared through the woods. She ran all the way home. His things were still there, but he was not.

“What’s the matter, Tanechka?” Naira asked, carrying a basket of tomatoes.

“Nothing,” Tatiana replied, panting. She took the basket from Naira.

“Where is Alexander?”

“Still at the old house,” she said. “Taking the boards off the windows.”

“I hope he nails them back,” Dusia said, looking up from the Bible, “when he is done. What’s he doing that for anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Tatiana said, turning away so they wouldn’t see her face. “Do you need your medicine, Raisa?”

“Yes, please.”

Tatiana gave Raisa her medicine for the shakes, medicine that didn’t help at all, and then she folded the sheets she had washed yesterday, and then—so afraid he was going to come, take his things, and leave—she hid his tent and rifle in the shed behind the house, and then she went down to the river and washed all his uniforms by hand on the washboard.

Alexander still had not come back.

Tatiana took his helmet into the woods and picked a whole helmetful of blueberries. Returning home, she made a blueberry pie and blueberry compôte, a thick fruit drink.

Alexander still hadn’t come back.

Tatiana went and caught some fish and made ukha, fish soup, for dinner. He once said he really liked ukha.

Alexander still hadn’t come back.

Tatiana peeled some potatoes, grated them, and made potato pancakes.

Vova came and asked if she wanted to go swimming. She said no and got out some ribbed cotton material and made Alexander a new, larger sleeveless top.

And still he hadn’t come back.

Why couldn’t he just have stayed and finished their fight? She wasn’t going anywhere; she was staying until the end, why couldn’t he? The pit of her stomach was so empty and scared. Well, she wasn’t going to let him go until they finished it. She didn’t care how he lost his temper.

Now it was six o’clock and time to go to the banya. She left him a note. Dearest Shura, If you’re hungry, please eat the soup and the pancakes. We’re at the bathhouse. Or you could wait for us and we will eat together. On your bed is a new top for you. I hope it fits better. Tania.

In the bathhouse she scrubbed herself for him until she was glistening pink.

Zoe asked her if Alexander was going to join them by the fire this evening.

“I don’t know,” said Tatiana. “You’d have to ask him.”

Zoe said, flinging her great big breasts, “He is quite delicious. Do you think he is feeling awful over Dasha?”

“Yes.”

Zoe smiled. “Maybe he needs a little comfort.”

Tatiana looked Zoe straight in the face. As if Zoe had any idea about what comfort Alexander needed. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said coolly.

“No, you wouldn’t. Never mind.” Zoe laughed and went to get changed.

Tatiana dried off and dressed, brushing her wet hair and leaving it down past her shoulders. She put on a blue print cotton dress she had made; it was thin and sleeveless with a half-open back and a short hemline. When they all came out of the bathhouse, Alexander was waiting for them outside. Tatiana locked her relieved eyes on him for a moment and then, unable to take his expression, looked away.

“There he is!” Naira said. “Where have you been all day?”

Dusia asked, “How are the windows in the house?”

“Windows? What house?” he asked gruffly.

“Vasili Metanov’s house. Tania said you were taking the boards off the windows.”

“Oh,” he said, never taking his darkened eyes off Tatiana. She stood next to Raisa, hoping to hide behind Raisa’s shaking.

“Are you hungry? Have you eaten?” Tatiana asked him in her smallest voice. She couldn’t find a bigger one.

Mutely he shook his head.

They all started walking home. Axinya took Alexander’s arm. Zoe came up close on the other side of him, took his other arm and asked if Alexander wanted to go to the fire.

“No,” he replied, pulling away from Zoe and toward Tatiana, bending down to her and whispering, “What did you do with my things?”

“Hid them,” she whispered back, her heart throbbing. She wanted to put her hand on him, but she was afraid he’d lose his control, and they would have to have it out in front of everyone.

“Tania makes very good fish soup, Alexander,” Naira said. “You like fish soup?”

Dusia piped up, “And her blueberry pie is out of this world. I’m so hungry.”

“Why?” Alexander whispered.

“Why what?” Dusia asked.

“Never mind,” Alexander said, moving away from them all.

When they got home, Tatiana busied herself with setting the table. She looked up on her bed to see if he had read the note and taken the shirt. The note was gone. The shirt remained where she had left it.

Alexander came inside. The four ladies were out on the porch. “Where are my things?” he asked.

“Shura—”

“Stop it,” he snapped. “Give me my things so I can leave.”

“Alexander, can you come here?” Naira stuck her head in. “We need your help opening this bottle of vodka. The cap seems to be stuck.”