Текст книги "The Bronze Horseman"

Автор книги: Paullina Simons

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Текущая страница: 44 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

Alexander grabbed the doctor’s wrist. “Well, that will depend on you, Doctor! The only chance she has of living is if you get her out. If you waver, if you’re unconvincing, if when faced with her grief you weaken and she sees for a split second that you are not telling her the truth, she will not go. If she thinks I’m still alive, she will never go, remember that, and if she doesn’t go, know that she has days before they come for her.” Stricken, Alexander said, “When she sees my empty bed, she will break down in front of you, her façade will crumble, and she will raise her tearful face to yours and say, ‘You’re lying, I know you’re lying. I can feel he’s still alive,’ and that’s when you will look at her and you’ll want to comfort her, because you’ve seen her comfort so many. Her grief will be too much for you to take. She will say to you, ‘Tell me the truth, and I will go with you anywhere.’ You will pause just for a second, you will blink, you will purse your lips, and in that instant know, Doctor, that you are condemning her and our baby to prison or death. She is very persuasive, and she is very hard to say no to, and she will keep on at you until you break down. Know—that when you comfort her with the truth, you will have killed her.” Alexander let go of Sayers’s wrist. “Now, go. Look her in the eye and lie. Lie with all your heart!” His voice nearly gone, Alexander whispered, “And if you save her, you will help me.”

There were tears in Sayers’s eyes as he stood up. “This fucking country,” he said, “is too much for me.”

“Me, too,” said Alexander, extending his hand. “Now, can you get her for me? I need to see her one last time. But come with her. Come with her and stand by my side. She is shy with other people around. She will have to be distant.”

“Maybe alone for just a minute?”

“Doctor, remember what I told you about looking her in the eye? I can’t face her alone. Maybe you can hide, but I cannot.”

Alexander kept his eyes closed. In ten minutes he heard footsteps and her choral voice. “Doctor, I told you he’s sleeping. What made you think he was restless?”

“Major?” Dr. Sayers called.

“Yes,” said Tatiana. “Major? Can you wake up?” And Alexander felt her warm, familiar hands on his head. “He doesn’t feel hot. He feels fine.”

Reaching up, Alexander placed his hand on hers.

Here it is, Tatiana.

Here is my brave and indifferent face.

Alexander took a breath and opened his eyes. Tatiana was gazing down at him with a look of such unrelenting affection that he closed his eyes again and said, his lips carrying the cracked words mere centimeters from his mouth, “I’m just tired, Tatia. How are you? How are you feeling?”

“Open your eyes, soldier,” Tatiana said fondly, caressing his face. “Are you hungry?”

“I was hungry,” Alexander said. “But you fed me.” His body was shaking underneath his sheet.

“Why is your IV disconnected?” she said, taking hold of his hand. “And why is your hand all black and blue, like you ripped the IV out of the vein? What have you been doing here this afternoon while I was gone?”

“I don’t need the IV anymore. I’m almost all better.”

She felt his head again. “He does feel a bit cold, Doctor,” she said. “Maybe we can give him another blanket?”

Tatiana disappeared. Alexander opened his eyes and saw the doctor’s anguished face. “Stop it,” Alexander mouthed inaudibly.

Returning, she covered Alexander and studied him for a moment. “I’m fine, really,” he said to her. “I have a joke for you. What do you get when you cross a white bear with a black bear?”

She replied, “Two happy bears.”

They smiled at each other. Alexander did not look away.

“You’ll be all right?” she asked. “I’ll come back tomorrow morning to give you breakfast.”

Alexander shook his head. “No, not in the morning. You’ll never guess where they’re taking me tomorrow morning.” He grinned.

“Where?”

“Volkhov. Don’t be too proud of your husband, all right, but they’re finally making me lieutenant colonel.” Alexander glanced at Dr. Sayers, who stood by the foot of the bed with a pasty grimace.

“They are?” Tatiana beamed.

“Yes. To go with my Hero of the Soviet Union medal for helping our doctor. What do you think of that?”

Grinning, Tatiana leaned into him and said happily, “I think you’re going to become really insufferable. I’ll have to obey your every command, won’t I?”

“Tania, to get you to obey my every command, I’ll have to become a general,” Alexander replied.

She laughed. “When are you coming back?”

“The following morning.”

“Why then? Why not tomorrow afternoon?”

“They transport across the lake only in the very early mornings,” said Alexander. “It’s a little safer. There is less shelling.”

Sayers said in a weak voice, “Tania, we must go.”

Alexander shut his eyes. He heard Tatiana say, “Dr. Sayers, can I have a moment with Major Belov?”

No! Alexander thought, opening his eyes and staring at the doctor, who said, “Tatiana, we really have to be going. I have rounds to make in three wards.”

“It’ll take but a second,” she said. “And look, Leo in bed number thirty is gesturing for you.”

The doctor left. He can’t even say no to her when she is asking simple things, Alexander thought, shaking his head.

Coming close, Tatiana brought her freckled face to him. She glanced around, saw that Dr. Sayers was looking right at them, and said, “God, I won’t get a chance to kiss you, will I? I can’t wait until I can kiss you out in the open.” Her hands patted his chest. “Soon we’ll be out of the thick forest,” she whispered.

“Kiss me anyway,” Alexander said.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Tatiana bent, her serene hand remaining on his chest, and her honey lips softly kissed Alexander’s own lips. She pressed her cheek against his. “Shura, open your eyes.”

“No.”

“Open them.”

Alexander opened them.

Tatiana gazed at him, her eyes shining, and then she blinked three times quick.

Straightening up, she put on her serious face and raising her hand in a salute, said, “Sleep well, Major, and I’ll see you.”

“I’ll see you, Tania,” said Alexander.

She walked to the end of his bed. No! he wanted to cry out. No, Tania, please come back. What can I leave her with, what can I say, what one word can I leave with her, for her? What one word for my wife?

“Tatiasha,” Alexander called after her. God, what was the curator’s name… ?

She glanced back.

“Remember Orbeli—”

“Tania!” Dr. Sayers yelled across the ward. “Please come now!”

She made a frustrated face and said quickly, “Shura, darling, I’m sorry, I have to run. Tell me when I see you next, all right?”

He nodded.

Tatiana walked away from Alexander, past the cots, touching a convalescent’s leg and bringing a small smile to the man’s bandaged face. She said good night to Ina and stopped for a second to adjust someone’s blanket. At the door she said a few words to Dr. Sayers, laughed, and then turned to Alexander one last time, and in Tatiana’s eyes he saw her love, and then she was out the door and gone.

Alexander whispered after her, “Tatiana! Thou shall not be afraid for the terror by night… nor for the arrow that flieth by day… nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near thee.”

Alexander crossed himself, folded his arms, and began to wait. He thought back to his father’s last words to him.

Dad, I have watched the things I gave my life to broken, but will I ever know if I have built them up with my worn-out tools?

Barefoot, Tania stood at attention in front of Alexander, in her yellow dress and with her golden braids peeking out from under his cap. Her face was ablaze with an exuberant smile. She saluted him.

“At ease, Tania,” he said, saluting her.

“Thank you, Captain,” she said, coming up and standing on tiptoe on top of his boot-clad feet. Lifting her face to him, she kissed his chin—it was as high up as she could reach without him bending his head to her. With one hand he held her to him.

She stepped a meter away and turned her back to Alexander. “All right, I’m falling. You better catch me. Ready?”

“I’ve been ready for five minutes. Fall already.”

Her chortling squeals chimed as she fell, and Alexander caught her, kissing her from above. “All right,” Tatiana said, straightening up, opening her arms, and laughing joyously. “Now your turn.”

Good-bye, my moonsong and my breath, my white nights and golden days, my fresh water and my fire. Good-bye, and may you find a better life, find comfort again and your breathless smile, and when your beloved face lights up once more at the Western sunrise, be sure what I felt for you was not in vain. Good-bye, and have faith, my Tatiana.

In the Moonlight’s Pallid Glamour

LATE the next morning Tatiana came into the critical care ward at the field hospital, the wooden building that was once a school, and found someone else in Alexander’s bed. She had expected his bed to be empty. She did not expect to see a new patient in Alexander’s bed, a man with no arms or legs.

Staring at the man with incomprehension, she thought she had made a mistake. She had woken up late and rushed and then spent too many hours in the terminal ward. Seven soldiers had died that morning.

But no, it was the critical ward. Leo in bed number thirty was reading. The two beds next to Alexander had also been emptied and refilled by new patients. Nikolai Ouspensky, the lieutenant with one lung next to Alexander, was gone, and so was the corporal next to him.

Why would they have filled Alexander’s bed? Tatiana went to check with Ina, who knew nothing; she wasn’t even on shift duty yet. Ina told Tatiana that late last night Alexander had asked for his dress uniform, which she brought him and then left for the night. Past that she knew nothing. Ina said that maybe Alexander had been moved to the convalescent wing.

Tatiana went to check. He hadn’t been.

She came back to the critical ward and looked under the bed. His rucksack was gone. Alexander’s medal of valor was no longer hanging on the wooden chair that stood by the new patient, whose face was covered in gauze, oozing blood near his right ear. Absentmindedly Tatiana said that she would get a doctor to take a look at him and groggily ambled away. She was feeling as well as she could for a woman four months pregnant. Her stomach was beginning to show, she knew. It was a good thing they were leaving, because she could not imagine explaining herself to the nurses and her patients. She was on her way to the mess to eat but found a nagging tick mowing through her insides. She became afraid that Alexander had been sent back to the front, that he had gone across the lake and been made to stay. She couldn’t eat a bite. She went to look for Dr. Sayers.

She couldn’t find him anywhere, but when she found Ina, who was getting ready to start her shift, Ina told her that Dr. Sayers had been looking for her.

“He couldn’t have been looking very hard,” said Tatiana. “I’ve been in terminal all morning.” Tatiana found Dr. Sayers in the terminal ward himself, with a patient who had lost most of his stomach. “Dr. Sayers,” she whispered, “what’s going on? Where is Major Belov?” She saw that the patient had mere minutes to live.

Sayers didn’t look up from the man’s wounds when he said, “Tatiana, I’m almost done here. Help me hold his sides together while I sew.”

“What’s going on, Doctor?” Tatiana repeated as she helped him.

“Let’s just finish with him first, all right?”

Tatiana looked at the doctor, looked at the patient, and put her gloved and bloodied hand on the patient’s forehead. For a few moments she kept her hand on him and then said, “He is dead, Doctor, you can stop suturing.”

The doctor stopped suturing.

Tatiana ripped off her gloves and walked outside. The doctor followed her. It was nearly the middle of March and unremittingly windy. “Listen, Tania,” Sayers said, taking hold of her hands and looking white. “I’m sorry. Something terrible has happened.” His voice half broke on happened. The circles under his eyes were so dark, it looked as if he had been beaten. Tatiana stared at him for a moment, another moment—

She pulled her hands away. “Doctor,” Tatiana said, paling and looking around for something to hold on to. “What’s happened?”

“Tania, wait, don’t shout—”

“I’m not shouting.”

“I’m very sorry to tell you this, very sorry, but Alexander—” He broke off. “Early this morning, when he was taken with two other soldiers to Volkhov…” Sayers couldn’t continue.

Tatiana listened motionlessly, her insides becoming anesthetized. She tried to say, “What?”

“Listen, they were going across the lake when enemy fire—”

“What enemy fire?” Tatiana whispered vehemently.

“They left to cross before the shelling started, but we’re fighting a war. You hear the bombing, the German shells flying from Sinyavino? A long-range rocket hit the ice in front of the truck and exploded.”

“Where is he?”

“I’m sorry. Five people in that truck… nobody survived.”

Tatiana turned her back to the doctor and shook so violently that she thought she would split open. Without looking back, she asked, “Doctor, how do you know this?”

“I was called to the scene. We tried to save the men, the truck. But the truck was too heavy. It sank.” His voice was below a whisper.

Tatiana gripped her stomach and was sick in the snow. Her pulse tearing through her body at over 200 beats a minute, she reached down, grabbed a handful of snow, and wiped her mouth. She took another handful and pressed it to her face. Her heart would not quieten. She could not stop retching. She felt the doctor’s hand on her back, heard his voice dimly calling for her, “Tania, Tania.”

She did not turn around. “Did you see him yourself?” she asked, panting.

“Yes. I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I got his cap—”

“Was he alive when you saw him?”

“I’m sorry, Tatiana. No.”

She couldn’t stand any more.

“No, please,” she heard Dr. Sayers’s voice and felt his arms holding her up. “Please.”

Straightening herself, willing herself to remain upright, Tatiana turned around and leveled her gaze at Dr. Sayers, who touched her face and said, very concerned, “You need to go and sit down immediately, you’re in a state of—”

“I know what I am in,” Tatiana said. “Give me his cap.”

“I’m sorry. It breaks my—”

“I’ll take his cap,” said Tatiana, but her hand was shaking so badly that she couldn’t grasp it for a moment, and when she did, it fell out of her hands and onto the snow.

She couldn’t hold the death certificate either. Dr. Sayers had to hold it up for her. She saw only his name and the place of death. Lake Ladoga.

The Ladoga ice.

“Where is he?” she said faintly. “Where is he now—” She could not finish.

“Oh, Tania… what could we do? We…”

Waving him off, she doubled over. “Don’t speak to me anymore. How could you not have woken me? How could you not have told me instantly?”

“Tania, look at me.” She felt herself being pulled upright. Sayers had tears in his eyes. “I did look for you after I returned. But I can barely stand in front of you now when you’ve come for me, when I’ve got no choice. If I could, I would have sent you a telegram.” He shivered. “Tania, let’s get out of here! You and I. Let’s be done with this place! I have to get out of here, I can’t do it anymore. I need to be back in Helsinki. Come on, we’ll get our things. I’ll call Leningrad, let them know.” He paused. “I have to leave tonight.” He glanced at her. “We have to leave tonight.”

Tatiana did not respond. Her mind was playing tricks on her. For some reason she couldn’t get past the death certificate. It wasn’t a Red Army certificate. It was a Red Cross death certificate.

“Tatiana,” said Sayers, “can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she said indistinctly.

“You will come with me.”

“I can’t think right now,” she managed to utter. “I need to think for a few minutes.”

“Will you…” Sayers let out. “Will you please come back to my office? You’re not—Come, sit in my chair. You’ll—”

Backing away from Sayers, Tatiana watched him with an intensity she knew was excruciating to him. She turned and walked as fast as she could to the main building. She had to find Colonel Stepanov. The colonel was busy and refused to see her at first.

She waited outside the front door until he came out.

“I’m headed for the mess tent. Walk with me?” Stepanov said to her, not catching her eye and hurrying forward.

“Sir,” Tatiana said into his back, not taking a step, “what happened to your officer—” She couldn’t say his name out loud.

Stepanov slowed down, stopped, and faced her. “I’m sorry about your husband,” he said gently.

Tatiana didn’t speak. Coming close to him, she took Colonel Stepanov’s hand. “Sir, you are a good man, and you were his commanding officer.” Wind was whipping her face. “Please tell me what happened to him.”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

Tatiana stood small before the uniformed colonel.

The colonel sighed. “All I know is that one of our armored trucks carrying your husband, Lieutenant Ouspensky, one corporal, and two drivers exploded this morning under what appeared to be enemy fire and eventually sank. I have no other information.”

“Armored? He told me he was going to Volkhov to get promoted this morning,” she said in a faint whisper.

“Nurse Metanova,” said Colonel Stepanov, pausing and blinking. “The truck sank. Everything else is moot.”

Tatiana never looked away from him for a moment.

Stepanov nodded. “I’m sorry. Your husband was—”

“I know what he was, sir,” Tatiana broke in, holding the cap and the certificate to her chest.

With a small shiver of his voice, staring at her with hurting blue eyes, Colonel Stepanov said, “Yes. We both do.”

Mutely they stood in front of each other.

“Tatiana!” said Colonel Stepanov emotionally. “Go back with Dr. Sayers. As soon as you can. It’ll be easier and safer for you in Leningrad. Maybe Molotov? Go with him.”

Tatiana saw him button the top of his uniform. She didn’t take her eyes off him. “He brought your son back,” she whispered.

Stepanov lowered his eyes. “Yes.”

“But who is going to bring him back?”

The bitter wind whistled through her words.

How to move, how to move now, can I get on my hands and knees and crawl, no, I will walk, I will look at the ground, and I will walk away, and I won’t stumble.

I will stumble.

She fell on the snow, and the colonel came over and picked her up, patting her back, and she closed her coat around her and, without looking again at Stepanov, staggered down the road to the hospital, holding on to the walls of buildings.

To hide him her whole life, to hide him every step of the way, to hide him from Dasha, from Dimitri, to hide him from death, and now to hide him even from herself. Her weakness felt insuperable.

Finding Dr. Sayers in his small office, Tatiana said, “Doctor, look at me, look me in the eye and swear to me that he is dead.”

Sinking to her knees, she looked at him, her hands in a plea.

Dr. Sayers crouched down and took Tatiana’s hands. “I swear,” he said, “he is dead.” He did not look at her.

“I can’t,” she said in a guttural voice. “I can’t take it. I can’t take the thought of him dying in that lake without me. Do you understand? I can’t take it,” she whispered wrenchingly. “Tell me he’s been taken by the NKVD. Tell me he’s been arrested and he’ll be storming bridges next week, tell me he’s been sent to the Ukraine, to Sinyavino, to Siberia—tell me anything. But please tell me he did not die on the ice without me. I’ll bear anything but that. Tell me, and I will go with you anywhere, I promise, I will do exactly as you say, but I beg you, tell me the truth.”

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Sayers said, “I couldn’t save him. With my whole heart I’m sorry I couldn’t save him for you.”

Tatiana crawled away to the wall and put her face into her hands.

“I am not going anywhere,” she said. “There is no point.”

“Tania,” Sayers said, coming after her and putting his hand on her head, “please don’t say that. Honey… please… let me save you for him.”

“There is no point.”

“No point? What about his baby?” exclaimed the doctor.

She took her hands away from her face and stared dully at Sayers. “He told you we are having a baby?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Flustered, the doctor said, “I don’t know.” His hand was still on Tatiana’s head. “You don’t feel good. You’re all cold. You’re—”

She did not reply. She was convulsing.

“Are you going to be all right?”

She covered her face.

“Will you stay here? Just stay in my office and wait. Don’t get up, all right. Sleep maybe?”

Tatiana made a rasping noise that sounded like an animal pressing its gaping wound into the ground, hoping to die before it bled to death.

“Your patients were asking for you,” Sayers said softly. “Do you think—”

“No.” Through her hands. “Please leave me. I need to be alone.”

Until night fell, she sat on the floor in Dr. Sayers’s office. She put her head into her knees, and sat against the wall. Until she couldn’t sit up anymore, and then she lay down, curled into a ball.

Dimly she heard the doctor return. She heard his gasp and tried to get up but couldn’t. Helping her up, Sayers sucked in his breath when he saw her face. “God, Tania. Please. I need you—”

“Doctor!” Tatiana exclaimed. “All the things you need me to be, I can’t be right now. I’ll be what I can. Is it time?”

“It’s time, Tania. Let’s go.” He lowered his voice. “Look, I went to your bed and got your backpack. It’s yours, right?”

“Yes,” she said, taking it.

“Do you have anything else you need to bring?”

“No,” Tatiana whispered. “The backpack is all I have. Is it just you and me going?”

Dr. Sayers paused before he answered her. “Chernenko came to me earlier today and asked if our plans had changed now that—”

“And you said…” Her weak legs weren’t holding her. She sank into the chair and looked up. “I can’t go with him,” she said. “I just can’t.”

“I don’t want to take him either, but what can I do? He told me, not in so many words, that without him we wouldn’t be able to get you through the first checkpoint. I want to get you out, Tania. What else can I do?”

“Nothing,” said Tatiana.

She helped Sayers collect his few things and carried his doctor’s bag and her nurse’s bag outside. The Red Cross vehicle was a big jeep without the enclosed solid steel body customary for ambulances. This one had glass covering the passenger cab but only canvas covering the back, not the safest for the wounded or medical personnel. But it had been the only truck available at the time in Helsinki, and Sayers could not wait for a proper ambulance. The square Red Cross badges were sewn into the tarpaulin.

Dimitri was waiting by the side of the truck. Tatiana did not look or acknowledge him as she opened the tarpaulin and climbed in to load the first aid kit and the box of plasma.

“Tania?” Dimitri said.

Dr. Sayers came up from behind, and said to Dimitri, “All right, let’s hurry along. You get in the back. Once we leave here, you can change into the Finnish pilot’s clothes. I don’t know how you’re going to get your arm through… Tania, where are those clothes?” Then to Dimitri, “Do you need morphine? How is your face doing?”

“Terrible. I can barely see. Is my arm going to get infected?”

Tatiana glanced at Dimitri from inside the truck. His right arm was in a cast and sling. His face was swollen black and blue. She wanted to ask what had happened to him, but she didn’t care.

“Tania?” Dimitri called to her. “I heard about this morning. I’m sorry.”

Tatiana retrieved the Finnish pilot’s clothes from their hiding place and threw them on the truck floor in front of Dimitri.

“Tatiana, come,” Dr. Sayers told her. “Let me help you down, we have to get going.”

Taking Sayers’s hand, Tatiana jumped down past Dimitri.

“Tania?” Dimitri repeated.

She lifted her eyes to him filled with such unwavering condemnation that Dimitri could not help but look away. “Just put on the clothes,” Tatiana said through her teeth. “Then get down on the floor and lie very still.”

“Look, I’m sorry. I know how you—”

Clenching her fists, Tatiana lunged furiously at Dimitri, and she would have punched him in his broken nose had Dr. Sayers not restrained her from behind, saying, “Tania, God. Please. No. No.”

Backing away, Dimitri opened his mouth and stammered, “I said I was very s—”

“I don’t want to hear your fucking lies!” she yelled, her arms still being held by Dr. Sayers. “I don’t want you to speak to me ever again. Do you understand?”

Dimitri, mumbling nervously that he didn’t understand why she should be upset with him, got into the back of the truck.

Dr. Sayers got behind the wheel and stared wide-eyed at Tatiana.

“Ready, Doctor. Let’s go.” Tatiana buttoned up her nurse’s white coat with the Red Cross badge on the sleeve, and she tied her little white hat over her hair. She had all of Alexander’s money, she had his Pushkin book, she had his letters and their photographs. She had his cap, and she had his ring.

They drove into the night.

Tatiana held Sayers’s open map but could not have helped him get to Lisiy Nos. Through the northern Russian woods Dr. Sayers drove his small truck, as they made their way on unpaved, muddy, snowy, liquid roads. Tatiana saw nothing at all, staring out the side window into the darkness, counting inside her head, trying to keep herself upright.

Sayers kept talking to her nonstop in English. “Tania, dear, it will be all right—”

“Will it, Doctor?” she asked, also in English. “And what are we going to do with him?”

“Who cares? He can do what he likes once we get to Helsinki. I’m not thinking about him at all. All I’m thinking about is you. We will get to Helsinki, drop off some supplies, and then you and I will take a Red Cross plane to Stockholm. Then from Stockholm we’ll ride the train to Göteborg on the North Sea, and we’ll take a protected vessel across the North Sea to England. Tania, can you hear me? Do you understand?”

“I can hear you,” she said faintly. “I understand.”

“In England I’ve got a couple of stops to make, but then we’ll either fly to the U.S. or take one of the passenger liners from Liverpool. And once you’re in New York—”

“Matthew, please,” whispered Tatiana.

“I’m just trying to make you feel better, Tania. It’s going to be all right.”

From the back Dimitri said, “Tania, I didn’t know you could speak En-glish.”

Tatiana did not reply at first. Then she picked up a metal pipe from under Dr. Sayers’s feet that she knew he kept in case of trouble. Swinging her arm, she smashed the pipe hard against the metal divider separating her from Dimitri, startling Dr. Sayers nearly off the side of the road. “Dimitri,” she said loudly, “you have to stay quiet and stop talking. You are a Finn. Not another Russian syllable out of you.”

Dropping the pipe onto the floor, she folded her arms around her stomach.

“Tania…”

“Don’t, Doctor.”

“You haven’t eaten, have you?” the doctor asked gently.

Tatiana shook her head. “I’m not thinking about food at all,” she replied.

In the middle of the night they stopped by the side of the road. Dimitri had already slipped on the Finnish uniform. “It’s very big,” Tatiana heard him say to Dr. Sayers. “I hope I don’t have to stand up in it. Anyone will see it doesn’t fit me. Do you have any more morphine? I’m—”

Dr. Sayers came back a few minutes later. “If I give him any more morphine, he’ll be dead. That arm is going to give him trouble.”

“What happened to him?” Tatiana asked in English.

Dr. Sayers was quiet. “He was nearly killed,” he said at last. “He has a very nasty open fracture.” He paused. “He may lose that arm. I don’t know how he is conscious, upright. I thought he’d be in a coma after yesterday, yet today he is walking.” Sayers shook his head.

Tatiana didn’t speak. How could he still be standing? she thought. How could the rest of us—strong, resolute, spirited, young—be falling on our knees, be demolished by our life, while he remains standing?

“Someday, Tania,” Sayers said in English, “you will have to explain to me the—” He broke off, pointing to the back of the truck. “Because I swear to Christ, I don’t understand at all.”

“I do not think I could explain,” whispered Tatiana.

On the way to Lisiy Nos they were stopped half a dozen times at checkpoints for papers. Sayers presented papers on himself and papers on his nurse, Jane Barrington. Dimitri, who was a Finn named Tove Hanssen, had no papers, just a metal dogtag with the dead man’s name on it. He was a wounded pilot being taken back to Helsinki for a prisoner exchange. All six times the guards opened the tarpaulin, shined a flashlight in Dimitri’s battered face, and then waved Sayers on.

“It’s nice to be protected by the Red Cross flag,” said Sayers.

Tatiana nodded.

The doctor pulled over by the side of the road, turning the engine off. “Are you cold?” he asked.

“I’m not cold.” Not cold enough. “Do you want me to drive?”

“You know how to drive?”

In Luga, when she was sixteen, the summer before she met Alexander, Tatiana had befriended an army corporal stationed with the local village Soviet. The corporal let Tatiana and Pasha drive around in his truck for the whole summer. Pasha was annoying because he always wanted to be behind the wheel, but the corporal was kind and let her behind the wheel, too. She drove the truck well, better than Pasha, she thought, and the corporal told her she was a quick learner.

“I know how to drive.”

“No, it’s too dark and icy.” Sayers closed his eyes for an hour.

Tatiana sat quietly, her hands in her coat. She was trying to remember the last time she and Alexander had made love. It was a Sunday in November, but where was it? She couldn’t recall. What did they do? Where were they? Did she look up at him? Was Inga outside their door? Was it in the bath, on the couch, on the floor? She couldn’t remember.

What did Alexander say to her last night? He made a joke, he kissed her, he smiled, he touched her hand, he told her he was going across to Volkhov to get promoted. Were they lying to him? Was he lying to her?

He had been trembling. She had thought he was cold. What else did he say? I’ll see you. So casual. Not even blinking. What else? Remember Orbeli.