Текст книги "The Bronze Horseman"

Автор книги: Paullina Simons

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Текущая страница: 42 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

“You’re not powerless!” she exclaimed. “Everything you are, you still remain, even wounded. So don’t give me that. This is all temporary. You are permanent. So courage, soldier. Look what I found for you—eggs. I have an assurance from Dr. Sayers these are real eggs and not dehydrated. You tell me.”

Alexander shuddered as he thought of going from Helsinki to Stockholm in trucks on ice for 500 kilometers under German fire. He wouldn’t even look at the eggs she was holding out for him.

He heard her sigh. “Why is this the nature of your beast?” she asked. “Why do you always get like this?”

“How do I get?”

“Like this,” she said, giving him the fork for the eggs. “Eat, please—”

Alexander threw the fork on the metal tray. “Tania, have an abortion,” he said adamantly. “Have Dr. Sayers take care of it. We’ll have other babies. We’ll have many, many babies, I promise. All we’ll do is have babies, we’ll be like Catholics, all right, but we can’t do what we’re planning with you pregnant, we just can’t. I can’t,” he added. He took hold of her hand, but she yanked it away and stood up.

“Are you joking?” she said.

“Of course I’m not. Girls have them all the time.” He paused. “Dasha had three.” Alexander saw by Tatiana’s face that she was horrified.

“With you?” she asked weakly.

“No, Tatia,” he said tiredly, rubbing his eyes. “Not with me.”

With a breath of relief but still white, Tatiana whispered, “But I thought abortion has been illegal since 1938?”

“Oh, God!” Alexander exclaimed. “Why are you so naïve?”

Her hands shook as she fought for control, and through her closed teeth she said, “That’s right. Yes. Well, perhaps, I could have had three illegal abortions myself before I met you. Perhaps that would have made me more attractive and less naïve in your eyes.”

Alexander’s heart squeezed. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean that.” He paused. She was too far away and too upset for him to take her hand. “I thought Dasha might have told you.”

“No, she didn’t tell me,” Tatiana said in a low, agonized voice. “She never talked to me about those things. And yes, my family protected me as best they could. Still, we lived in close quarters in a communal apartment. I knew that my mother had half a dozen abortions in the mid-thirties, I knew that Nina Iglenko had eight, but that’s not even what I’m talking about—”

“So? What’s the problem? What are you talking about?”

“Knowing how I feel about you—do you think it’s something I could ever do?”

Tightening his lips, Alexander said, “No, of course not. Why would you?” He raised his voice. “Why would you ever do anything that would give me peace of mind!”

Leaning over him, Tatiana whispered angrily, “You’re right. Your peace of mind or your baby. The choice is tough.” She threw the plate of eggs down on the metal tray and walked away without another word.

When she did not return all day, Alexander concluded that having Tatiana be angry with him was more than he could endure—for a minute, let alone for the sixteen hours it took her to come back. He asked Ina and Dr. Sayers to bring her to him, but apparently she was very busy and could not come. Very late that night she finally returned, bringing with her a piece of white bread with butter. “You’re upset with me,” Alexander said, taking the bread out of her hands.

“Not upset,” she said. “Disappointed.”

“That’s even worse.” Alexander shook his head in resignation. “Tania, look at me.” Tatiana raised her eyes to him, and there, around the edges of her ocean current irises, he saw her love for him flow out. “We will do exactly as you want,” Alexander said, sighing heavily. “Like always.”

Smiling, Tatiana sat on the edge of his bed and took a cigarette from her pocket. “Look what I brought you. Want a quick smoke?”

“No, Tania,” said Alexander, reaching for her, bringing her to him. “I want to feel your breasts on my face.” He kissed her, undoing her uniform.

“You’re not going to recoil in terror, are you?”

“Just come here. Bend over me.”

It was dark in the ward, and everyone else was sleeping. Tatiana pulled up her shirt. Alexander lost his breath. She bent over and pressed herself into him. Keeping his eyes open, he cupped her full warm breasts, nesting his face in between them. He inhaled deeply and kissed the white skin in front of her heart. “Oh, Tatiasha…”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, soldier.” She lightly rubbed her breasts back and forth across his mouth, his nose, his cheeks. “I’ll have to shave you,” she whispered. “You’re very stubbly.”

“And you are very soft,” he muttered, his mouth closing around her enlarged nipple. Alexander could tell that Tatiana tried very hard not to moan. Once she moaned, she backed away, pulling her shirt down. “Shura, no, don’t excite me. Every one of those men will wake up, I guarantee it. They can smell desire.”

“So can I,” Alexander said thickly.

All buttoned up and more composed, Tatiana hugged him. “Shura,” she whispered, “don’t you see? Our baby is a sign from God.”

“It is?”

“Absolutely,” she said, her face sparkling.

Suddenly Alexander understood. “That’s the radiance,” he exclaimed. “That’s why you’re like a flame walking through this hospital. It’s the baby!”

“Yes,” she said. “This is what is meant for us. Think about Lazarevo—how many times did we make love in those twenty-nine days?”

“I don’t know.” He smiled. “How many? How many zeros follow the twenty-nine?”

She laughed quietly. “Two or three. We made love to wake the dead, and yet I didn’t get pregnant. You come to see me for one weekend, and here I am—how do you say, up the stick?”

Alexander laughed loudly. “Thank you for that. But, Tania, I want to remind you, we did make love quite a bit that weekend, too.”

“Yes.”

They stared at each other for a silent, unsmiling moment. Alexander knew. They had both felt too close to death that gray weekend in Leningrad. And, yet, here it was—

As if to confirm what he was thinking, Tatiana said, “This is God telling us to go. Can’t you feel that, too? He is saying, this is your destiny! I will not let anything happen to Tatiana, as long as she has Alexander’s baby inside her.”

“Oh?” said Alexander, his hands tenderly stroking her stomach. “God is saying that, is He? Why don’t you tell that to the woman in the Ladoga truck with you and Dasha, holding her dead baby all the way from the barracks across to Kobona?”

“I feel stronger now than ever,” Tatiana said, hugging him. “Where is your famous faith, big man?”

“Tania, have you talked to Dr. Sayers?” Alexander was caressing her hands under his blanket, kneading her fingers, feeling her knuckles, her wrists, her palms.

“Of course. All I do is talk to him, go over all the details. We’re waiting for you to walk. Everything is set. He’s already filled out my new Red Cross travel documents.” She purred, leaning closer to him. “That feels so nice, Shura. I’m going to fall asleep.”

“Don’t fall asleep. Under what name?”

“Jane Barrington.”

“That’s nice. Jane Barrington and Tobe Hanssen.”

“Tove.”

“My mother and a Finn. Some couple we make.”

“Don’t we?” She half-closed her eyes. “That feels very nice, Shura,” she murmured. “Don’t stop.”

“I won’t stop,” he whispered huskily, gazing at her. That made her open her eyes.

A moment. They stared at each other. Remembering. Blink.

Tatiana smiled. “In America can I please carry your name?” she whispered.

“In America I will insist on it.” Alexander was thoughtful.

“What’s the matter?”

“We don’t have passports,” he said.

“So? You’ll go to the U.S. consulate in Stockholm. We’ll be fine.”

“I know. We still have to get from Helsinki to Stockholm. We can’t stay in Helsinki for a second. It’s too dangerous. Crossing the Baltic Sea. It’s not going to be easy.”

Tatiana grinned. “What were you going to do with your limping demon? Same thing with me.” She paused. “Eugene calls to the wherryman—and he, with daring unconcern is willing, to take him for a quarter-shilling, across that formidable sea.” Smiling happily, she said, “Your mother, you, your ten thousand dollars will get us back to your America.” Both her tiny delicate hands were threaded through his.

Alexander was suffocating under the weight of his love.

“Shura,” Tatiana said, her voice tremulous, “remember the day you gave me your Pushkin book? When you fed me in the Summer Garden?”

“Like it was yesterday.” Alexander smiled. “It was the night you fell in love with me.”

Tatiana blushed and cleared her throat. “Were you… if I weren’t such a shy chicken… would you have—” She broke off, looking away momentarily.

“What? What?” He squeezed her hand. “Would I have kissed you?”

“Hmm.”

“Tania, you were so terrified of me.” Alexander shook his head at the memory, his body aching. “I was completely gone for you. Kissed you? I would have ravished you right on the bench by the child-eating Saturn if you had given me half a sign.”

7

Alexander got stronger every day. He could get up and stand near his bed. It still hurt him to be upright, but he was off morphine completely, and now his back throbbed from morning until night, reminding him of his mortality. He was carving constantly. He had just carved a cradle out of another piece of wood. Soon, soon, he kept saying to himself. He wanted to be moved over into the convalescent ward, but Tatiana talked him out of it. She said his location and care were too good to give up his place in critical.

“Remember,” Tatiana said to him one afternoon as they were both standing by his bed, his arm around her. “You have to get better so that no one thinks you’re getting better. Or before you know it, they’ll send you back to the front with your stupid mortar.” She smiled up at him.

Alexander removed his arm. He saw Dimitri walking toward them. “Courage, Tania,” he whispered.

“What?”

“Tatiana! Alexander!” Dimitri exclaimed. “No, how incredible is this? The three of us together again. If only Dasha were here.”

Alexander and Tatiana said nothing. They did not look at each other.

“Tania, how are the terminal cases coming along? I just got you some more white sheets.”

“Thanks, Dimitri.”

“Oh, sure. Alexander, here are some cigarettes for you. Don’t worry about paying me. I know you probably don’t have any money on you. I can get your money and bring it to you—”

“Don’t worry, Dimitri.”

“It’s not a problem.” He stood at the foot of Alexander’s bed, his eyes darting from Alexander to Tatiana. “So, Tania, what are you doing here in critical care? I thought you were in the terminal ward.”

“I am. But I see my crossover patients, too. Leo in bed number thirty used to be terminal. Now he is always asking for me.”

Dimitri smiled. “Tania, not just Leo. Everybody is asking for you.” Tatiana didn’t say anything. Neither did Alexander, who sat down on his bed. Dimitri continued to study them. “Listen, it was good to see you both. Alexander, I’ll come by and visit you tomorrow, all right? Tania, you want to walk me out?”

“No, I have to change Alexander’s dressing.”

“Oh. It’s just that Dr. Sayers was looking for you. ‘Where is my Tania?’ Dr. Sayers said.” Dimitri smiled warmly. “Those were his exact words. You’re getting to be quite friendly with him, aren’t you?” He raised his eyebrows to her. “You know what they say about those Americans.”

Tatiana did not nod, did not blink. She just turned to Alexander and said, “Come on, lie down.” Alexander did not move.

“Tania, did you hear me?” Dimitri asked.

“I heard you!” Tatiana said, not looking at Dimitri. “If you see Dr. Sayers, you can tell him I’ll be with him as soon as I can.”

After Dimitri left, Alexander and Tatiana looked at each other. “What are you thinking?” he asked her.

“That I need to change your dressing and go. Lie down.”

“Do you want to know what I’m thinking?”

“Absolutely not,” she replied.

Lying down on his stomach, Alexander said, “Tania, where is the rucksack with my things?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Why? What do you need it for?”

“It was on my back when I got hit…”

“It wasn’t on your back when we got to you. It’s probably lost, honey.”

“Yes…” he drew out. “But usually the rear units clean up once the battle is over. Pick up things like that. Can you ask around for it?”

“Of course,” she said, unwrapping his bandages. “I’ll ask Colonel Stepanov.” She paused, and Alexander heard her purr. “You know, Shura, the only thing I want to do when I see your back is play rail tracks, rail tracks.” She kissed his bare shoulder.

“The only thing I want to do when I see your back,” he said, closing his eyes, “is play rail tracks, rail tracks.”

Later that night when she was sitting by him, Alexander said to her, “Tatiana, you have to promise me—God help me—that if something happens to me, you will still go.” He held on to her when he said it.

“Don’t be ridiculous. What can happen to you?” She didn’t look at him when she said it.

“Are you trying to be brave?”

“Not at all,” she said. “As soon as you’re fit, we’re leaving. Dr. Sayers is ready to go anytime. In fact, he is itching to go. He is a big grumbler. Keeps complaining about everything. Doesn’t like the cold, doesn’t like the help, doesn’t like—” Tatiana stopped. “So what are you talking about? What can happen? I won’t let you go back to the front. And I won’t leave without you.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. Of course you will.”

“Of course I won’t.”

Alexander took her hand. “Now listen to me—”

Tatiana moved to get up from him, turning her head. “I don’t want to listen.” He wouldn’t let her hand go. “Alexander, please don’t scare me,” she said. “I’m trying to be so brave. Please,” Tatiana said calmly, her breath shallow.

“Tania, many things can go wrong.” He paused. “You know that there is always the danger I will be arrested.”

She nodded. “I know. But, if you’re taken by Mekhlis’s henchmen, I will wait.”

“Wait for what?” he exclaimed in frustration. Alexander had learned the hard way that the best he could hope for was that Tatiana would agree with him. If she had her own opinion, he didn’t have an icy hope of talking her out of it.

His emotion must have shown on his face, because she took both his dark war-beaten hands into her flawless white ones, pressed them to her lips and said, “Wait for you.” Then she tried to disentangle herself from him. He wasn’t having any of it. Pulling her off the chair, he brought her to sit next to him on the bed. “Wait for me where?” he asked.

“In Leningrad. In my apartment. Inga and Stan have left. I have two rooms. I will wait. And when you come back, I will be there with your baby.”

“The Soviet council will take the hallway and the room with the stove away.”

“Then I will wait in the room that’s left.”

“For how long?”

She looked over at the other sleeping patients, at the darkened windows. At anything but him. The hospital room was quiet, with no sound except for his breathing, except for hers. “I will wait as long as it takes,” she said.

“Oh, for God’s sake! You would rather be an old maid in a cold room without plumbing than make yourself a better life?”

“Yes,” she said. “There is no other life for me, so you can just forget it.”

Alexander whispered, “Tania, please…” He couldn’t continue. “And what about when Mekhlis comes for you? What are you going to do then?”

“I’ll go where they send me. I’ll go to Kolyma,” she said. “I’ll go to Taymir Peninsula. Eventually Communism will fall—”

“You sure about this?”

“Yes. Eventually there won’t be any more people left to reconstruct. And then they’ll let me out.”

“Dear sweet Jesus,” Alexander whispered. “It’s not just you anymore. You have to think about our baby!”

“What are you even talking about? Dr. Sayers is not going to take me without you. I have no right to—no claim on—America,” Tatiana said. “Alexander, I will go anywhere in the world with you. You want to go to America? I say yes. You want to go to Australia? Yes, I say. Mongolia? The Gobi Desert? Dagestan? Lake Baikal? Germany? The cold side of hell? I say, when are we leaving? Anywhere you go—I will go with you. But if you are staying, then I’m staying, too. I’m not leaving my baby’s father in the Soviet Union.”

Leaning over an overwhelmed Alexander, Tatiana pressed her breasts into his face, kissing his head. Then she sat back and kissed his shaking fingers. “What did you say to me in Leningrad? ‘What kind of a life can I build,’ you said, ‘knowing I have left you to die—or to rot—in the Soviet Union?’ I’m quoting you back to you. Those were your words.” She smiled. “And on this one point I will have to agree with you.” She nodded and said softly, “If I left you, no matter which road I would take, with ponderous clatter indeed, the Bronze Horseman would pursue me all through that long night into my own maddening dust.”

Alexander said with emotion, “Tatiana—it’s war. All around us is war.” He couldn’t look at her. “Men die in war.”

A tear escaped Tatiana’s eye, no matter how strong she tried to be. “Please don’t die,” she whispered. “I don’t think I can bury you. I already buried everyone else.”

“How can I die,” Alexander said, his voice breaking, “when you have poured your immortal blood into me?”

And then Dimitri came one cold morning, holding Alexander’s rucksack in his hands. He was limping badly on his right leg. The errand boy for the generals, the worthless lackey, constantly shuffling cigarettes and vodka and books between camps and tents in the rear, the runner who refused to bear arms, Dimitri hobbled forward, handing Alexander the rucksack. “Oh, so it was found,” Alexander said steadily. “What happened?”

“Wouldn’t you know it? Some stupidity at the embankment. Some guys… I don’t know, they were pissed off. Look at my face.”

Alexander saw the bruises.

“I was charging too much for smokes, they said. Take it, I said, take it all. They did. Beat the shit out of me anyway.” Dimitri smirked. “Well, they won’t be laughing for long.” He came and sat in the chair under the window. “Tatiana did a marvelous job on me. Fixed me right up.” Something in Di-mitri’s voice twisted Alexander’s stomach. “She’s marvelous, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Alexander. “She is a good nurse.”

“Good nurse, good woman, good—” Dimitri broke off.

“That’s great,” said Alexander. “Thanks for my ruck.”

“Oh, sure.” Dimitri got up to go and then, almost as an afterthought, sat back down and said, “I wanted to make sure you had all you needed in your ruck: your books, your pen and paper. As it turned out, you didn’t have any pen or paper, so it was a good thing I checked, because I put some in for you. In case you wanted to write letters.” He smiled pleasantly. “I also added some cigarettes and a new lighter.”

Holding his rucksack, Alexander, with darkening eyes, said, “You looked through my things?” The twisting in his stomach intensified.

“Oh, just to be helpful.” Dimitri again made as if to go. “But you know…” He turned back. “I found something very interesting in it.”

Alexander turned his face away. Tatiana’s letters he had reluctantly burned. But there was one thing he could not burn. One beacon of hope for light that he continued to carry with him. “Dimitri,” Alexander said, throwing the rucksack by the side of his bed and crossing his arms in silent defiance, “what do you want?”

Picking up the rucksack, Dimitri, in a friendly, polite manner, unbuttoned the flap and pulled out Tatiana’s white dress with red roses.

“Look what I found at the very bottom.”

Alexander said, “So?” His voice was calm.

“So? Well, you’re so right. Why shouldn’t you be carrying around a dress owned by your dead fiancée’s sister?”

“What’s the surprise to you, Dimitri? That you found the dress? Can’t be that much of a surprise, can it?” Alexander said acidly. “You were going through my personal belongings looking for it.”

“Well, yes and no,” Dimitri said jovially. “I was a little surprised, I admit. A little taken aback.”

“Taken aback? By what?”

“Well, I thought, this is so interesting. A whole dress, and there is Tatiana here at the front, working side by side with a Red Cross doctor, and there is Alexander in the same hospital. I suspected it was not a coincidence. I always thought you had feelings for each other.” He glanced at Alexander. “Always, you know. From the beginning. So then I went to Colonel Stepanov, who remembered me from the old days and was very warm to me. I really like that man. I told him that I would be glad to bring you your pay so you could buy tobacco and papers and extra butter and some vodka, and he sent me to the CO adjutant, who gave me five hundred rubles, and when I expressed surprise that all you were getting was five hundred rubles being a major and all, do you know what the adjutant told me?”

With a grinding of his teeth to lessen the throbbing in his temples, Alexander said slowly, “What did he tell you?”

“That you were sending the rest of your money to a Tatiana Metanova on Fifth Soviet!”

“I am, yes.”

“Absolutely, why not? So I went back to Colonel Stepanov and said, ‘Colonel, isn’t it fantastic that our wanton Alexander has finally found himself a nice girl, like our Nurse Metanova,’ and the colonel said he had been surprised himself that you got married in Molotov on your summer furlough and told no one.”

Alexander said nothing.

“Yes!” exclaimed Dimitri in a frank and cheerful manner. “I said that was quite surprising because I was your best friend, and even I didn’t know, and the colonel agreed that you were indeed a very secretive fellow, and I said, ‘Oh, you have no idea, sir.’ ”

Alexander looked away from Dimitri, sitting in the chair, and looked at the other soldiers lying on the beds. He wondered if he could get up. Could he get up? Walk around? What could he do?

Dimitri got up. “Listen, it’s great! I just wanted to say congratulations. I’m going to go find Tania now and congratulate her.”

Tatiana came to Alexander later that afternoon. After she fed him, she went to get a pail of warm water and some soap. “Tania, don’t carry that,” he said. “It’s too heavy for you.”

“Stop it,” she said, smiling. “I’m carrying your baby. You think a backet is too heavy for me?”

They didn’t speak much. Tatiana washed Alexander and shaved him with a razor and then dried his face. He kept his eyes closed so she wouldn’t see through him. Every once in a while Alexander smelled her warm breath on him, and every once in a while her lips touched his eyebrows or his fingers. He felt her stroking his face and heard her sigh.

“Shura,” she said heavily, “I saw Dimitri today.”

“Yes.” It was not a question.

“Yes.” She paused. “He was… he told me you told him we got married. He said he was happy for us…” She sighed. “I guess it was inevitable he was going to find out sooner or later.”

“Yes, Tatiana,” said Alexander. “We did as well as we could hiding ourselves from Dimitri.”

“Listen, I may be wrong, but he didn’t seem to have as much of his usual nervous tension. As if he really didn’t care about you and me anymore. What do you think?” she asked hopefully.

You think maybe this war has made him into a human being? Alexander wanted to ask her. You think this war is a school for humanity, and Dimitri is now ready to graduate with honors? But then Alexander opened his eyes and saw Tatiana’s frightened expression. “I think you’re right,” he said quietly. “I don’t think he cares about you and me anymore.”

Tatiana cleared her throat and touched Alexander’s clean-shaven face. Leaning closer to him, she whispered, “Do you suppose you can get up soon? I don’t want to rush you. I saw you yesterday trying to get around. It’s painful for you to stand? Your back hurts? It’s healing, Shura. You’re doing great. As soon as you’re ready, we’ll go. And we’ll never have to see him again.”

Alexander looked at her for interminable minutes.

Before he opened his mouth, Tatiana said, “Shura, don’t worry. My eyes are open. I see Dimitri for what he is.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. Because like all of us, he, too, is the sum of his parts.”

“He cannot be redeemed, Tania. Not even by you.”

“You don’t think so?” She tried to smile.

Alexander squeezed her hand. “He is exactly what he wants to be. How can he be redeemed when he has constructed his life on what he believes is the only way to live it? Not your way, not my way, his way. He has built himself on lies and deceit, on manipulation and malice, on contempt for me and disrespect for you.”

“I know.”

“He has found himself a dark corner of the universe and wants us all there with him.”

“I know.”

“Be very careful with him, all right? And tell him nothing.”

“All right.”

“What would it take for you, Tatiana, to reject him, to turn your back on him? To say, I cannot take his hand because he does not want salvation. What?”

Her thoughts trickled out from her eyes. “Oh, he’ll want salvation, Shura. He’ll just have no hope of it.”

Walking with the help of a cane, Dimitri came to see Alexander the next day. This is becoming my life, Alexander thought. There is fighting across the river, there is healing in the next room, the generals are making plans, the trains are bringing food into Leningrad, the Germans are slaughtering us from Sinyavino Heights, Dr. Sayers is getting ready to leave the Soviet Union, Tatiana sits with the terminal soldiers, growing life inside her, and I lie here in my crib and get my bedding changed and watch the world rush by me. Watch my minutes rush by me. Alexander was so fed up that he pulled back his covers and got out of bed. He stood up and began unhooking his IV bag when Ina ran up and laid him back down, muttering that he’d better never try that again. “Or I’ll tell Tatiana,” she whispered, leaving Alexander alone with Dimitri, who sank down in the chair.

“Alexander, I need to talk to you. Are you strong enough to listen?”

“Yes, Dimitri, I’m strong enough to listen,” said Alexander, with a supreme effort turning his head in Dimitri’s direction. He could not meet his eyes.

“Listen, I really am sincerely happy that you and Tania got married. I’m past bad feeling. Honestly. But, Alexander, as you know, there is one thing that’s left unfinished with us.”

“Yes,” Alexander replied.

“Tania, she’s very good, she keeps her composure well. I think I’ve underestimated her. She is less of a pushover than I first thought.”

Dimitri had no idea.

“I know you two are planning something. I know it. I feel it in my heart. I tried to get her to talk to me. She kept saying she didn’t know what I was talking about. But I know!” Dimitri sounded excited. “I know you, Alexander Barrington, and so I’m asking you if perhaps there is room for little old me in your plans.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Alexander steadfastly, thinking, there was once a time I had no one else to trust but this man. I put my life in this man’s hands. “Dimitri, I have no plans.”

“Hmm. Yes. But you see, I understand so many things now,” Dimitri said with an unctuous smile. “Tatiana is the reason you’ve been dragging your feet on running.” He paused. “Wanted to work out a way to run with her? Or didn’t want to desert and leave her behind? Either way I don’t blame you.” He cleared his throat. “But now I say we all must go together.”

“We don’t have any plans,” said Alexander. “But if something changes, I will let you know.”

An hour later Dimitri limped back, but this time with Tatiana. He sat her down in the chair while he hunkered down close to them on his haunches. “Tania, I need you to talk some sense into your wounded husband,” Dimitri said. “Explain to him that all I want is for you two to get me out of the Soviet Union. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. To get out of the Soviet Union. I’m getting very jittery, very nervous, you see, because I can’t take the chance that you two will run off and leave me here. In the middle of war. You understand?”

Alexander and Tatiana said nothing.

Alexander looked at his blanket. Tatiana stared straight at Dimitri. And it was when he saw Tania looking unflinchingly at Dimitri that Alexander felt stronger and stared at Dimitri, too.

“Tania, I’m on your side,” Dimitri said, “I don’t want any harm to come either to you or to Alexander. Just the opposite.” He smiled. “I wish you the best of luck. It’s so hard for two people to find happiness. I know. I’ve tried. That you two somehow managed—I don’t know how—is a miracle. Now all I want is a chance for myself. I just want you to help me.”

“Self-preservation,” said Alexander, “as an inalienable right.”

“What?” said Dimitri.

“Nothing,” replied Alexander.

Tatiana said, “Dimitri, I really don’t know what this has to do with me.”

“Why, everything, dearest Tanechka, why, it’s got everything in the world to do with you. Unless, of course, it’s the smooth, healthy American doctor you’re planning to run away with and not your injured husband. You’ve been making plans to go with Sayers when he returns to Helsinki, haven’t you?”

No one spoke.

“I don’t have time for these games,” Dimitri snapped coldly, rising to his feet and leaning on his cane. “Tania, I’m talking to you. Either you take me with you or I’m afraid I’m going to have to keep Alexander here in the Soviet Union with me.”

Her hand still in Alexander’s, Tatiana sat stoically in her chair and then looked at Alexander and raised her shoulders to form a faint question.

Alexander squeezed her hand so hard that she emitted a tiny cry.

“There, there,” exclaimed Dimitri. “That’s the moment I want to see. She convinces you, miraculously seeing everything. Tatiana, how do you do that? How do you have such an uncanny ability to see everything? Your husband, who’s got less of that ability, struggles against you but in the end gives in because he knows it’s the only way.”

Alexander and Tatiana didn’t say a word. He relaxed his hold on her hand, which remained nested in his.

Dimitri folded his arms and waited. “I’m not leaving here until I hear an answer. Tania, what do you say? Alexander has been my friend for six years. I care for both of you. I don’t want any trouble.” Dimitri rolled his eyes. “Believe me—I hate trouble. All I want is to have a small portion of what you are planning for yourselves. That’s not too much to ask, is it? I want a tiny piece of it. Don’t you feel you’ll be selfish, Tania, if you don’t allow me a chance for a new life, too? Come on, now—you, who gave away your oatmeal to a starving Nina Iglenko last year, surely you aren’t going to deny me so little when”—and here he looked at her and Alexander—”you have so much?”