Текст книги "The Bronze Horseman"
Автор книги: Paullina Simons
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Текущая страница: 39 (всего у книги 47 страниц)
Tatiana looked at Alexander with her clearest eyes.
Perplexed, he stared at her. She stretched out her arms to him and said quietly, “Shura, look, look here.”
He looked at her.
“All around you is darkness,” she said. “But in front of you I stand.”
He looked at her.
“Do you see me?” she said faintly.
“Yes.” Just as faintly.
She came closer to him, stepping over the broken granite. Alexander sank to the ground.
Tatiana studied him for a few moments and then descended to her knees. Alexander put his face into his shaking hands.
Tatiana said, “Darling, soldier, husband. Oh, God, Shura, don’t be afraid. Will you listen to me, please? Look at me.”
Alexander would not.
“Shura,” Tatiana said, clenching her fists to keep her composure. Stop. Breathe. Beg for strength. “You think your death is our only choice? Remember what I told you in Lazarevo? Do you not remember me in Lazarevo? I cannot bear the thought of you dying. And I will do everything in my pathetic, powerless life to keep that from happening. You have no chance here in the Soviet Union. No chance. The Germans or the Communists will kill you. That’s their sole objective. And if you die at war, your death will mean that for the rest of my life I will be eating poisoned mushrooms in the Soviet Union, alone and without you! And you know it. Your greatest sacrifice will be for my life in darkness.” Come on, Tania, be strong. “You wanted me to let you go? You wanted my faithful face to free you?” Her voice could not keep from breaking. “Well, here I am! Here is my face.” She wished he would look at her. “Go, Alexander. Go!” she said. “Run to America, and never look back.” Stop. Breathe. Breathe again. She couldn’t even wipe her eyes. All right, I cried, but I think I did well, Tatiana thought. And besides, he wasn’t looking at me.
Taking his hands away from his face, Alexander glared at her for several moments before he spoke. “Tatiana, are you out of your mind? I need you right now,” he said slowly, “to stop being ridiculous. Can you do that for me?”
“Shura,” Tatiana whispered, “I never imagined that I could love anyone like I love you. Do this for me. Go! Return home, and don’t think about me again.”
“Tania, stop it, you don’t mean a word of that.”
“What?” she exclaimed, still on her knees. “Which part don’t you think I mean? Have you be alive in America or dead in the Soviet Union? You think I don’t mean that? Shura, it’s the only way, and you know it.” She paused when he did not speak. “I know what I would do if I were you.”
Alexander shook his head. “What would you do? You would leave me to die? Leave me in the Fifth Soviet apartment, living with Inga and Stan, orphaned and alone?”
Frantically Tatiana chewed her lip. It was love or truth.
Love won.
Steeling herself, she said, “Yes,” in a fragment of a voice. “I would choose America over you.”
Alexander broke down. “Come here, you lying wife,” he said, bringing her close, encompassing her.
The ice on the Fontanka Canal was just forming where they were crumbled against the granite parapets.
“Shura, listen to me,” Tatiana said into Alexander’s chest, “if no matter which way we twist in this world, we are faced with this impossible choice, if no matter what we do, I cannot be saved, then I beg of you, I beg of you—”
“Tania! God, I will not listen to this anymore!” he shouted, pushing her away and jumping to his feet, holding the rifle in his hands.
She stared at him pleadingly, still on the ice. “You can be saved, Alexander Barrington. You. My husband. Your father’s only son. Your mother’s only son.” Tatiana extended her hands to him in supplication. “I am Parasha,” she whispered. “And I am the cost of the rest of your life. Please! There was once a time I saved myself for you. Look at me, I’m on my knees.” She was weeping. “Please, Shura, please. Save your one life for me.”
“Tatiana!” Alexander pulled her up to him so hard, he lifted her off her feet. She clung to him, not letting go. “You are not going to be the cost of the rest of my life!” he said, setting her down. “Now, I need you to stop this.”
She shook her head into his chest. “I won’t stop.”
“Oh, yes, you will,” he said, squeezing her to him.
“You’d rather we both perish?” she cried. “Is that what you would prefer? You’d prefer all the suffering, all the sacrifice, and no Leningrad at the end of it?” She shook him. “Are you out of your mind? You must go! You will go, and you will build yourself a new life.”
Alexander pushed her away and walked a few strides from her. “If you don’t keep quiet,” he said, “I swear to God, I am going to leave you here and go”—he pointed down the street—”and I will never come back!”
Tatiana nodded, pointing in the same direction. “That’s exactly what I want. Go. But far, Shura,” she whispered. “Far.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Alexander yelled, slamming his rifle on the ice. “What kind of crazy world do you live in? What, you think you can come here, fly in on your little wings, and say, all right, Shura, you can go, and I just go? How do you think I can leave you? How do you think it’ll be possible for me to do that? I couldn’t leave a dying stranger in the woods. How do you think I can leave you?”
“I don’t know,” Tatiana said, crossing her arms. “But you better find a way, big man.”
They fell quiet. What to do? She watched him from a distance.
“Do you see how impossible it is what you’re saying?” Alexander said. “Do you even see, or have you completely lost your senses?”
She saw how impossible it was what she was saying. “I’ve completely lost my senses. But you must go.”
“Tania, I’m not going anywhere without you,” he said, “except to the wall.”
“Stop it. You must go.”
He yelled, “If you don’t stop—”
“Alexander!” Tatiana screamed. “If you don’t stop, I am going back to Fifth Soviet and I’m going to hang myself over the bathtub, so you can run to America free of me! I’m going to do it on Sunday, five seconds after you leave, do you understand?”
They stared at each other for a mute, unspeakable moment.
Tatiana stared at Alexander.
Alexander stared at Tatiana.
Then he opened his arms, and she ran into them; he lifted her off her feet, they hugged and did not let go. For many silent minutes they stood on the Fontanka Bridge, wrapped around each other.
At last Alexander spoke into her neck. “Let’s make a deal, Tatiasha, all right? I will promise you that I’ll do my best to keep myself alive, if you promise me that you’ll stay away from bathtubs.”
“You got yourself a deal.” Tatiana looked into his face. “Soldier,” she said clutching him, “I hate to point out the obvious at a time like this, but still… I need to point out that I was completely right. That’s all.”
“No, you were completely wrong. That’s all,” Alexander said. “I said to you that some things were worth a great sacrifice. This is just not one of those things.”
“No, Alexander. What you said to me—your exact words to me—was that all great things worth having required great sacrifices worth giving.”
“Tania, what the hell are you going on about? I mean, just for a second, step away from the world in which you live and into mine, for a millisecond, all right, and tell me, what kind of life do you think I could build for myself in America knowing that I left you in the Soviet Union—to die—or to rot?” He shook his head. “The Bronze Horseman would indeed pursue me all through that long night into my maddening dust.”
“Yes. And that would be your price for light instead of darkness.”
“I’m not paying it.”
“Either way, Alexander, my fate is sealed,” Tatiana said without acrimony or bitterness, “but you have a chance, right now, while you are still so young to kiss my hand and to go with God because you were meant for great things.” She took a breath. “You are the best of men.” Her arms were around his neck, and her feet were off the ground.
“Oh, yes,” said Alexander, clamping her to him. “Running to America, abandoning my wife. I’m just fucking priceless.”
“You’re just impossible.”
“I’m impossible?” Alexander whispered, setting her down. “Come on, let’s walk a bit before we freeze.” She held on to him as they stepped slowly through the trampled snow down Fontanka to the Field of Mars. Silently they crossed the Moika Canal and walked into the Summer Garden.
Tatiana opened her mouth to speak, but Alexander shook his head. “Don’t say a word. What are we even thinking, walking through here? Let’s go. Quick.”
Their heads bent and his arm around her, they walked quickly down the path among the tall, bare trees, past the empty benches, past the statue of Saturn devouring his own child. Tatiana remembered that the last time they were here in the warmth, she had yearned for him to touch her, and now in the cold she was touching him and feeling that she did not deserve what she had been given—a life in which she was loved by a man like Alexander.
“What did I tell you then?” he said. “I told you that was the best time. And I was right.”
“You were wrong,” Tatiana said, unable to look at him. “The Summer Garden was not the best time.”
She was sitting on his bare shoulders in the water, waiting for him to throw her over into the Kama. He wasn’t moving. “Shura,” she said, “what are you waiting for?” He wasn’t moving. “Shura!”
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said. “What kind of man would throw off a girl sitting naked around his neck?”
“A ticklish man!” she shouted.
Exiting through the gilded iron gates on the Neva embankment, they headed mutely upriver. Weakening by minutes, Tatiana took Alexander’s arm and slowed him down. “Can’t walk our streets with you anymore,” she said hoarsely.
From the embankment they turned to Tauride Park. They passed their bench on Ulitsa Saltykov-Schedrin, walked a little farther along the wrought-iron fence, stopped, stared at each other and turned around. They sat down in their coats. Tatiana sat for a minute next to Alexander, then got up and climbed into his lap. Pressing her head to his, she said, “That’s better.”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s better.”
Silently they sat together on their bench in the cold. Tatiana’s whole body struggled with heartbreak. “Why,” she whispered into his mouth, “why can’t we have even what Inga and Stan have? Yes, in the Soviet Union, but together twenty years, still together.”
“Because Inga and Stan are Party spies,” replied Alexander. “Because Inga and Stan sold their souls for a two-bedroom apartment, and now they don’t have either.” He paused. “You and I want too much from this Soviet life.”
“I want nothing from this life,” said Tatiana. “Just you.”
“Me, and running hot water, and electricity, and a little house in the desert, and a state that doesn’t ask for your life in return for these small things.”
“No,” Tatiana said, shaking her head. “Just you.”
Moving her hair back under her scarf, Alexander studied her face. “And a state that doesn’t ask for your life in return for me.”
“The state,” she said with a sigh, “has to ask for something. After all, it protects us from Hitler.”
“Yes,” Alexander said. “But, Tania, who is going to protect you and me from the state?”
Tatiana held him closer. One way or another she had to help Alexander. But how? How to help him? How to save him?
“Don’t you see? We live in a state of war. Communism is war on you and me,” Alexander said. “That’s why I wanted to keep you in Lazarevo. I was just trying to hide my artwork until the war was over.”
“You’re hiding it in the wrong place,” said Tatiana. “You told me yourself there was no safe place in the Soviet Union.” She paused. “Besides, this war is going to be a long one. It’s going to take some time to reconstruct our souls.”
Squeezing her, Alexander muttered, “I have to stop talking to you. Do you ever forget anything I tell you?”
“Not a word,” she said. “Every day I’m afraid that’s all I’ll have left of you.”
They sat.
Tatiana brightened. “Alexander,” she said, “want to hear a joke?”
“Dying to.”
“When we get married, I’ll be there to share all your troubles and sorrows.”
“What troubles? I don’t have any troubles,” said Alexander.
“I said when we get married,” replied Tatiana, her tearful eyes twinkling. “You have to admit that you getting killed at the front so I can live in the Soviet Union, and me hanging myself over a bathtub so you can live in America is an ironic tale quite well told, don’t you think?”
“Hmm. But since we are not leaving a scrap of family behind,” said Alexander, “there will be no one to tell it.”
“There is that,” said Tatiana. “But still… how Greek of us, don’t you think?” She smiled and squished his face.
Alexander shook his head. “How do you do that?” he asked. “Find comfort? Through anything. How?”
“Because I’ve been comforted by the master,” she said, kissing his forehead.
He tutted. “Some master I am. Couldn’t even get one tiny tadpole of a wife to stay in Lazarevo.”
Tatiana watched him stare at her. “What, husband?” she said. “What are you thinking?”
“Tania… you and I had only one moment…” said Alexander. “A single moment in time, in your time and mine… one instant, when another life could have still been possible.” He kissed her lips. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”
When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.
“I know that moment,” whispered Tatiana.
“Regret that I crossed the street for you?”
“No, Shura,” she replied. “Before I met you, I could not imagine living a life different from my parents, my grandparents, Dasha, me, Pasha, our children. Could not have conceived of it.” She smiled. “I didn’t dream of someone like you even when I was a child in Luga. You showed me, in a glimpse, in our tremor, a beautiful life…” She peered into his eyes. “What did I ever show you?”
“That there is a God,” whispered Alexander.
“There is!” exclaimed Tatiana. “And I felt your need for me clear across the steppes. I’m here for you. And one way or another we will fix this.” She squeezed him. “You’ll see. You and I will fix this together.”
“How? And now what?” came Alexander’s voice at her head.
Taking a frigid breath, Tatiana spoke, trying to sound as cheerful as possible. “How, I don’t know. What now? Now we go blindly into the thick forest at the other side of which awaits the rest of our short but oh-so-blissful time on this earth. You go and fight me a nice war, Captain, and you stay alive, as promised, and keep Dimitri off your back—”
“Tania, I could kill him. Don’t think I haven’t thought about it.”
“In cold blood? I know you couldn’t. And if you could, how long do you think God would look after you then in war? And me in the Soviet Union?” She paused, trying to get hold of her departing senses. It wasn’t as if she herself hadn’t thought about it… but Tatiana had the feeling that it was not the Almighty who was keeping Dimitri alive.
“And what about you?” asked Alexander. “What now for you? I don’t suppose you might consider going back to Lazarevo?”
Smiling, Tatiana shook her head. “Don’t worry about me. You must know that having survived last winter’s Leningrad, I’m ready for the worst.” She traced her glove along Alexander’s cheeks, thinking, and the very best, too. “And though I do sometimes wonder,” she continued, “what’s ahead of me if I needed Leningrad to pave my way into it… it doesn’t matter. I’m here for the long haul, or the short haul. I’m here to stay. And I’m paved and ready for it all.” Her heart throbbing, Tatiana hugged him to her. “Regret crossing the street for me, soldier?”
Taking her hand into both of his, Alexander said, “Tania, I was spellbound by you from the first moment I saw you. There I was, living my dissolute life, and war had just started. My entire base was in disarray, people were running around, closing accounts, taking money out, grabbing food out of stores, buying up the entire Gostiny Dvor, volunteering for the army, sending their kids to camp—” He broke off. “And in the middle of my chaos, there was you!” Alexander whispered passionately. “You were sitting alone on this bench, impossibly young, breathtakingly blonde and lovely, and you were eating ice cream with such abandon, such pleasure, such mystical delight that I could not believe my eyes. As if there were nothing else in the world on that summer Sunday. I give you this so that if you ever need strength in the future and I’m not there, you don’t have to look far. You, with your high-heeled red sandals, in your sublime dress, eating ice cream before war, before going who knows where to find who knows what, and yet never having any doubt that you would find it. That’s what I crossed the street for, Tatiana. Because I believed that you would find it. I believed in you.”
Alexander wiped the tears from her eyes and, pulling off her glove, pressed his warm lips to her hand.
“But I would’ve come back empty-handed that day if it weren’t for you.”
He shook his head. “No. You didn’t start with me. I came to you because you already had yourself. You know what I bring you?”
“What?”
His voice choking with emotion, he said, “Offerings.”
Alexander and Tatiana sat a long time with their wet, cold faces pressed against each other, his arms around her, her hands cradling his head, while the wind blew the last dead leaves off the trees, while the sky was a leaky November gray.
A tram went by. Three people walked down the street at the end of which Smolny Monastery stood, concealed with scaffolding and camouflage. Down by the granite carapace the river was icy and still. And past the empty Summer Garden the Field of Mars lay flat under blackened snow.
A Window to the West
AFTER Alexander left, Tatiana wrote to him every day until her ink ran out. When her ink ran out, she went across the street to Vania Rechnikov’s apartment. She had heard he had ink he lent sometimes. Vania was dead at his writing table. He had put his head down on the letter he had been writing and died. Tatiana couldn’t pry the pen from his stiff fingers.
Tatiana went to the post office every day in hopes of hearing from Alexander. She couldn’t take the silence in between the letters. Alexander wrote her a stream, but the stream would come in a flood instead of a steady trickle. The damn mail.
She stayed in her room when she was not working and practiced her En-glish. During air raids she read her mother’s cookbook. Tatiana started cooking dinner for Inga, who was sick and alone.
One afternoon the postmaster wouldn’t give her any of Alexander’s letters, offering her not only his letters but a bag of potatoes, too, in return for something from her.
She wrote to Alexander about it, afraid that none of his future letters would get through.
Tania,
Please go to the barracks and ask for Lieutenant Oleg Kashnikov. He is on base duty, I think from eight to six. He has three bullets lodged in his leg and can’t fight anymore. He is the one who helped me dig you out in Luga. Ask him for some food. I promise he won’t ask for anything in return. Oh, Tatia.
Also, give him your letters, and he will bring them to me in a day. Please don’t go to the post office.
What do you mean, Inga is alone? Where is Stan?
Why are you still working such crazy hours? The winter is getting harsher.
I wish you knew how much solace I have thinking of you not too far from me. I’m not going to tell you that you were right to come back to Leningrad, but… Did I mention that we were promised ten days off after we broke the blockade?
Ten days, Tania!
I wish until then there were a place you could be comforted. But you hang on until then.
Don’t be worried about me, we’re not doing anything but bringing troops and munitions in for our assault on the Neva sometime very early in the new year.
Wait till you hear this! I don’t even know what I did to deserve it, but I’ve received not only another medal but a promotion to go with it. Maybe Dimitri is right about me—somehow I manage to turn even a defeat into a victory, don’t know how.
We’re testing the ice on the Neva. The ice doesn’t seem strong enough. It’ll hold up a man, a rifle, maybe a Katyusha, but will it hold a tank?
We think yes. Then no. Then yes. Then one general engineer who had been designing the Leningrad subway gets the idea to put the tank on a wooden outrigger, flat wood boards on ice, sort of a wooden railroad, to distribute the pressure from the treads evenly. The tanks and all the armored vehicles would use this outrigger to cross. All right, we say.
We build the outrigger.
Who is going to drive the tank out on the water to test it?
I step up and say, sir, I’ll be glad to do it.
The next day my commander is not pleased at all when all five generals show up for our little demonstration. Including Dimitri’s new friend. Commander motions to me: don’t blow it.
So here I go, I get into our best and heaviest, the KV-1—you remember them, Tatia? And I drive this monster out onto the ice with my commander walking beside the tank and the five generals right behind us, saying, well done, well done, well done.
I went about 150 meters, and then the ice started to crack. I heard it and thought, oops. The generals from the back yelled at my commander, run, run!
So he ran, they ran, the tank broke a canyon in the ice and sank into it, like a, well, like a tank.
Me with it.
The turret was open, so I swam up.
The commander pulled me out and gave me a swig of vodka to warm me up.
One general said, give this man the order of the Red Star. I’ve also been made a major.
Marazov says I have become really insufferable. He says I think everyone should listen only to me. You tell me—does that sound like me?
Alexander
Dearest MAJOR Belov!
Yes, Major, it does sound like you.
I’m very proud of you. You’ll be a general yet.
Thank you for letting me give my letters to Oleg. He is a very nice, polite man and yesterday even gave me some dehydrated eggs, which I found amusing and didn’t know quite what to do with. I added water to them, they’re kind of—oh, I don’t know. I cooked them without oil on Slavin’s Primus. Ate them. They were rubbery.
But Slavin liked them and said Tsar Nicholas would have enjoyed them in Sverdlovsk. Sometimes I don’t know about our crazy Slavin.
Alexander—there is one place I’m comforted. I wake up there, and I go to sleep there; I am at peace there, and loved there: your subsuming arms.
Tatiana
2
In December the International Red Cross came to Grechesky Hospital.
There were too few doctors left in Leningrad. Out of the 3,500 that were there before the war, only 2,000 remained, and there was a quarter of a million people in various city hospitals.
Tatiana met Dr. Matthew Sayers when she was washing out a throat wound on a young corporal.
The doctor came in, and before he opened his mouth, Tatiana suspected he was an American. First of all he smelled clean. He was thin and small and dark blond, and his head was a little big for the rest of his body, but he radiated confidence that Tatiana had not seen in any man but Alexander and now this man, who entered the room, swung up the chart, looked at the patient, glanced at her, glanced back to the patient, clicked his tongue, shook his head, rolled his eyes, and said, in English, “Doesn’t look so good, does he?”
Though Tatiana understood him, she remained mute, remembering Alexander’s warnings.
In heavily accented Russian, the doctor repeated himself.
Nodding, Tatiana said, “I think he’ll be all right. I’ve seen worse.”
Emitting a good, non-Russian laugh, he said, “I bet you have, I just bet you have.” He came up to her and extended his hand. “I’m with the Red Cross. Dr. Matthew Sayers. Can you say Sayers?”
“Sayers,” Tatiana said perfectly.
“Very good! What’s Matthew in Russian?”
“Matvei.”
Letting go of her hand, he said, “Matvei. Do you like it?”
“I like Matthew better,” she told him, turning back to the gurgling patient.
Tatiana was right about the doctor, he was competent, friendly, and instantly improved the conditions in their dismal hospital, having brought miracles with him—penicillin, morphine, and plasma. Tatiana was also right about the patient. He lived.
3
Dear Tania,
I haven’t heard from you. What are you doing? Is everything all right? Oleg told me he has not seen you in days. I cannot worry about you, too. I’ve got enough craziness on my hands.
They’re getting better, by the way.
Write to me immediately. I don’t care if your own hands have fallen off. I forgave you once for not writing to me. I don’t know if I can be so charitable again.
As you know, it’s almost time. I need your advice—we’re sending out a reconnaissance force of 600 men. It’s actually more than a reconnaissance force, it’s a stealth attack with the rest of us waiting to see what kind of defense the Germans put up. If things go well, we will follow them.
I have to decide which battalion goes.
Any ideas?
Alexander
P.S. You haven’t told me what happened to Stan.
Dear Shura,
Don’t send your friend Marazov.
Can you send any supply units? Ah, a bad joke.
On that note, we must bear in mind that our own righteous Alexander Pushkin challenged Baron George d’Anthes to a duel and did not live to write a poem about it. So instead of seeking revenge, we will simply stay away from those who can hurt us, all right?
I’m fine. I’m very busy at the hospital. I’m hardly ever home. I’m not needed there. Shura, dear, please don’t go insane worrying about me. I’m here, and I’m waiting—impatiently—until I can see you again. That’s all I do, Alexander—wait until I can see you again.
It’s dark from morning until night with an hour off in the afternoon. Thinking of you is my sunshine, so my days are perpetually sunny. And hot.
Tatiana
P.S. The Soviet Union happened to Stan.
Dear Tania,
Pushkin never needed to write again after The Bronze Horseman—and never did, having died so young. But you’re right—the righteous do not always forge a path to glory. But often they do.
I don’t care how busy you are, you need to write me more than a couple of lines a week.
Alexander
P.S. And you wanted to have what Inga and Stan have.
Dearest Tatiasha,
How was your New Year? I hope you had something delicious. Have you been to see Oleg?
I’m not happy. My New Year was spent in the mess tent with a number of people, none of whom was you. I miss you. I dream sometimes of a life in which you and I can clink our glasses on New Year’s. We had a little vodka and many cigarettes. We hoped maybe 1943 would be better than 1942.
I nodded, but thought about the summer of 1942.
Alexander
P.S. We lost all 600. I did not send Tolya. He said he will thank me after this war is over.
P.S.S. Where are you, damn it? I haven’t heard from you in ten days. You haven’t gone back to Lazarevo, have you, now that I’ve finally grown accustomed to your strengthening spirit from only seventy kilometers away? Please send me a letter in the next few days. You know we’re going and we’re not coming back until the Leningrad front and the Volkhov front shake hands. I need to hear from you. I need one word. Don’t send me out on the ice without a single word from you, Tatiana.
Darling Shura!
I’m here, I’m here, can’t you feel me, soldier?
I myself spent New Year at the hospital, and I just want you to know that I clink my glass against yours every day.
I’ve been working I cannot tell you how many hours, how many nights I sleep in the hospital and don’t come home at all.
Shura! As soon as you’re back, you must come and see me instantly. Other than for the obvious reasons, I’ve got the most amazing wonderful fantastic thing I desperately need to talk to you about—and soon. You wanted a word from me? I leave you with one—the word is HOPE.
Yours,
Tania
