Текст книги "The Bronze Horseman"

Автор книги: Paullina Simons

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

Alexander leaned in to her. “Tania, you want to know something?”

“What?” she said, leaning away.

“The less you’ve been out at night, the better I like it.”

Speechless, she staggered ahead, looking at her feet.

He walked alongside, narrowing his soldier’s stride to stay by her. It was a warm night; her bare arms twice touched the rough material of his army shirt.

“This is the best time, Tatiana,” Alexander said. “Do you want to know why?”

“Please don’t tell me.”

“There will never be a time like this again. Never this simple, this uncomplicated.”

“You call this uncomplicated?” Tatiana shook her head.

“Of course.” Alexander paused. “We’re just friends, walking through Leningrad in the lucent dusk.”

They stopped at the Fontanka Bridge. “I’ve got duty at ten,” he said. “Otherwise I’d walk you home—”

“No, no. I’m going to be fine. Don’t worry. Thank you for dinner.”

Looking into Alexander’s face was not possible. Her saving grace was her height. Tatiana stared at his uniform buttons. She was not afraid of them.

He cleared his throat. “So tell me,” he asked, “what do they call you when they want to call you something other than Tania or Tatiana?”

Her heart jumped. “Who’s they?”

Alexander said nothing for what seemed like minutes.

Tatiana backed away from him, and when she was five meters away, she looked at his face. All she wanted to do was look into his wonderful face. “Sometimes,” she said, “they call me Tatia.”

He smiled.

The silences tormented her. What to do during them?

“You are very beautiful, Tatia,” said Alexander.

“Stop,” she said—inaudibly—as sensation left her legs.

He called after her, “If you wanted to, you could call me Shura.”

Shura! That’s a marvelous endearment. I would love to call you Shura, she wanted to tell him. “Who calls you Shura?”

“Nobody,” Alexander replied with a salute.

Tatiana didn’t just walk home. She flew. She grew brilliant red wings, and on them she sailed through the azure Leningrad sky. Closer to home, her heavy-with-guilt heart brought her down and the wings disappeared. She tied up her hair and made sure his books were at the very bottom of her bag. But she couldn’t go upstairs for a number of minutes as she stood against the wall of the building, clenching both fists to her chest.

Dasha was sitting at the dining table with—surprisingly—Dimitri.

“We’ve been waiting for you for three hours,” said Dasha petulantly. “Where have you been?”

Tatiana wondered if they could smell Alexander walking next to her through Leningrad. Did she smell of fragrant summer jasmine, of the warm sun on her bare forearms, of the vodka, of the caviar, of the chocolate? Could they see the extra freckles on the bridge of her nose? I’ve been walking under the lights of the North Pole. I’ve been walking and warming my face with the northern sun. Could they see it all in her exquisitely anguished eyes?

“I’m sorry you’ve been waiting. I work too late these days.”

“Are you hungry?” Dasha asked. “Babushka made cutlets and mashed potatoes. You must be starved. Have some.”

“I’m not hungry. I’m tired. Dima, will you excuse me?” said Tatiana, going to wash.

Dimitri stayed for another two hours. The grandparents wanted their room back at eleven, so Dimitri and Dasha and Tatiana went out onto the roof and sat until dusk fell after midnight, talking in the waning light. Tatiana couldn’t talk much. Dimitri was friendly and light on the tongue. He showed the girls blisters on his hands from digging trenches for two straight days. Tatiana would feel him glancing at her, seeking eye contact and smiling when he got it.

Dasha, said, “So tell me, Dima, are you very close to Alexander?”

“Yes, Alexander and I go back a very long way,” replied Dimitri. “We are like brothers.”

Tatiana, through her haze, blinked twice as her brain tried to focus on Dimitri’s words.

Dear God, Tatiana prayed in bed that night, turning to the wall and pulling the white sheet and the thin brown blanket over herself. If You are there somewhere, please teach me how to hide what I never knew how to show.

6

All Thursday long, as she worked on the flamethrowers, Tatiana thought about Alexander. And after work he was waiting for her. Tonight she didn’t ask why he had come. And he didn’t explain. He had no presents and no questions. He just came. They barely spoke; just their arms banged against each other, and once when the tram screeched to a stop, Tatiana fell into him, and he, his body unmoving, straightened her by placing his hand around her waist.

“Dasha talked me into coming by tonight,” he said quietly to Tatiana.

“Oh,” Tatiana said. “That’s fine. Of course. My parents will be glad to see you again. They were in a great mood this morning,” she continued. “Yesterday Mama got through to Pasha on the telephone, and apparently he is doing great—” She stopped talking. Suddenly she felt too sad to continue.

They walked as slowly as they could to tram Number 16 and stood silently, their arms pressed against each other, until it stopped at Grechesky Hospital.

“I’ll see you, Lieutenant.” She wanted to say Shura but could not.

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

Later that night was the first time the four of them met at Fifth Soviet and all went out for a walk together. They bought ice cream, a milk shake, and a beer, and Dasha clung to Alexander’s arm like a barnacle. Tatiana maintained a polite distance from Dimitri, using every faculty in her meager possession of faculties not to watch Dasha clinging to Alexander. Tatiana was surprised at how profoundly unpleasant she found it to look at her sister touching him. Dasha going to see him in some nebulous, unimagined, unexplored Leningrad, unseen by Tatiana’s eyes, was infinitely preferable.

Alexander seemed as casual and content as any soldier would be with someone like Dasha on his arm. He barely glanced at Tatiana. How did Dasha and Alexander look together? Did they look right? Did they look more right than she and Alexander? She had no answers. She didn’t know how she looked when she was close to Alexander. She knew only how she was when she was close to Alexander.

“Tania!” Dimitri was talking to her.

“Sorry, Dima, what?” Why did he raise his voice?

“Tania, I was saying don’t you think Alexander should transfer me from the rifle guard division to somewhere else? Maybe with him to the motorized?”

“I guess. Is that possible? Don’t you have to know how to drive a tank or something in the motorized?”

Alexander smiled. Dimitri said nothing.

“Tania!” exclaimed Dasha. “What do you know about what you have to do in the motorized? Be quiet. Alex, are you going to be storming rivers and charging at the enemy?” She giggled.

“No,” said Dimitri. “First Alexander sends me. To make sure it’s safe. Then he goes himself. And gets another promotion. Right, Alexander?”

“Something like that, Dima,” Alexander said, walking beside him. “Though sometimes when I go myself, I also take you.”

Tatiana could barely listen. Why was Dasha walking so close to him? And how could he go himself and take Dimitri with him? What did that mean?

“Tania!” Dimitri said. “Tania, are you listening to me?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. Why does he keep raising his voice?

“You seem distracted.”

“No, not at all. It’s a nice evening, isn’t it?”

“Do you want to take my arm? You look like you’re ready to fall down.”

Carelessly glancing at Tatiana, Dasha said, “Watch out, or any minute she is going to faint.”

That night when Tatiana got into bed, she pulled the blanket over her head, pretending to be asleep even when Dasha lay down next to her and whispered, “Tania, Tania, are you sleeping? Tania?” and nudged her lightly. Tatiana didn’t want to talk to Dasha in the dark, divulging confidences. She just wanted to say his name once out loud. Shura.

7

Friday at work Tatiana noticed that hardly anyone worthwhile was left at Kirov. Only the very young, like her, and the very old. The few men that remained were all over sixty or in management positions, or both.

In the first five days of war there had been suspiciously little news from the front. The radio announcers lauded wide-scale Soviet victories, while saying nothing at all of the German military power, nothing at all of the German position in the Soviet Union, nothing at all of danger to Leningrad or of evacuation. The radio was on all day as Tatiana filled her flamethrowers with thick petroleum and nitrocellulose, while through the open double doors the metal machine poured projectiles of different sizes onto the conveyor belt.

She heard clink, clink, clink from the metal rounds like the passing of seconds, and there were many seconds in her long day, and all she heard during them was clink, clink, clink.

And all Tatiana thought about was seven o’clock.

During lunch she heard on the radio that rationing might start next week. Also during lunch Krasenko told his waning staff that probably by Monday they were going to start military exercises, and that the working day was going to be extended until eight in the evening.

Before she left, Tatiana scrubbed her hands for ten minutes to get the petroleum smell out and failed. As she hurried out of the factory doors with Zina and made her way down the Kirov wall, she wanted to tell someone of her ambivalence and distress.

But then she saw Alexander’s officer’s cap tilted to the side, and she saw him take the cap off his head and hold it in his hands as he waited for her to walk up to him, and Tatiana forgot everything. She had to keep herself from breaking into a run. They crossed the street and made their way to Ulitsa Govorova.

“Let’s walk a bit.” Tatiana couldn’t believe it was she who uttered those words after her day. But she didn’t feel her day. She knew she wasn’t going to have a minute with him on the weekend.

“What’s a bit?”

She took a deep breath. “Let’s walk all the way.”

Slowly they strolled through the nearly deserted streets, anonymous to everyone. The railroad tracks and farm fields lay to their right, the industrial buildings of the Kirov borough rose to their left. There were no air-raid sirens, no planes flying overhead, just the pale sun shining. There were no other people.

“Alexander, why isn’t Dima an officer like you?”

Alexander paused for a few moments. “He wanted to be an officer. We entered Officer Candidate School together.”

Tatiana didn’t know that. She told him Dimitri had not said a word about it.

“He wouldn’t. We went in together, thinking we were going to stay together, but unfortunately Dima didn’t make it.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened. He couldn’t stay underwater long enough without panicking, couldn’t hold his breath, couldn’t be quiet enough under false fire, didn’t keep his cool, lost his nerve, his time in the five-mile wasn’t good enough. Couldn’t do fifty push-ups in a row. He just didn’t make it. On many levels. He is a good soldier. A pretty good soldier,” Alexander amended. “But he wasn’t cut out to be an officer.”

“Not like you,” said Tatiana, taking an excited breath on the you.

With amusement Alexander glanced at her and shook his head. “I,” he said, “am too angry a fighter.”

The tram stopped right in front of them. Reluctantly they climbed aboard.

“How does Dimitri feel about it all?”

Tatiana had stopped trying to avoid Alexander as the tram bumped them together. She lived for that bumping now. Every time the tram moved, she moved with it in Alexander’s direction, barely holding on to the handle. And he stood there like an inverted pyramid, catching her waist with his arm. Tonight, as he caught her, his hand remained around her. He motioned her to continue talking. But she couldn’t until he took his hand away.

He took his hand away. “About what? Not becoming an officer?”

“No. About you.”

“About how you’d think.”

The tram stopped. To steady her, Alexander took hold of Tatiana’s upper arm. Goose bumps broke out all over her body. Letting her go, he continued. “I think Dimitri often feels that things come too easily to me.”

“What things?” Tatiana asked bravely.

“Don’t know. Things in general. The army, the shooting range…” He stopped.

She looked at him, waiting. What was he going to say next? What else came too easily to Alexander?

“Nothing comes easily to you, Alexander,” Tatiana said at last. “You’ve had the hardest life.”

“And it has barely begun,” he said. But when he spoke again, Tatiana detected a forced mildness. “Listen, Dimitri and I have a long history together. If I know Dima, in due course he will tell you things about me that you will not want to believe. I’m surprised he hasn’t already.”

“Things that are true or things that are complete lies?”

“I cannot answer that,” Alexander replied. “Some will be true, some will be complete lies. Dimitri’s got a gift, if you will, for mixing lies with just enough of the truth to drive you crazy.”

“Some gift,” she said. “So how will I know?”

“You won’t. It will all sound true.” Alexander glanced at her. “If you want to know the truth, ask me and I will tell you.”

“If I ask, you’ll tell me the truth about anything?” She looked up at him.

“Yes.”

Tatiana held her breath because for a moment her heart had stopped beating. It stopped as she bit her lip to keep the question off her tongue. Do you love me? she wanted to ask him. She wanted to slap herself into a terror that would paralyze her and make even thinking that impossible, but she could not. He wanted a question? That was the question yelling through her closed teeth and her silence and her breathless heart.

“You have a question for me, Tania?” he asked mildly.

“No,” she replied, looking down at the metal handle and at the gray head of the woman in front of her.

“Here we are,” Alexander said, as they got off at Obvodnoy Canal. They didn’t take their second tram as usual. They ambled the five kilometers back home.

They passed an iron gate with a door behind it. The gate and the door did not look like an entryway to a building, but as if they had been built and now led to nowhere. Pointing, Alexander said, “Those gates, those doors, they can all be listening, now, yesterday, tomorrow, to you at Kirov, lying with a glass to the wall on the other side of your bed—”

“I know you’re kidding. My grandparents are on the other side of my bed. You’re not saying they’re informers?”

“I’m not saying that.” He paused. “What I’m saying is… no one at all can be trusted. And no one is safe.”

“No one?” Tatiana asked teasingly, looking at him. “Not even you?”

“Especially not me.”

“Can’t be trusted or is not safe?” She smiled.

He smiled back. “Is not safe.”

“But you’re an officer in the Red Army!”

“Yes? Tell that to the officers in the Red Army in 1937 and 1938. They were all shot. Which is why now no one wants to take responsibility for this war.”

Silently she sidled up to him and finally asked, “Am I safe?”

“Tatiana,” he whispered, leaning close to her ear, “we are followed, always, everywhere. The day might come when someone will jump out at you from a secret door, and then you will be presented to a man behind a desk, and he will want to know what Alexander Belov spoke to you about on your walks home.”

“You have told me way too much, Alexander Belov,” Tatiana declared, leaning away from him. “Why did you do that if you thought I was going to be interrogated about you?”

“I needed to trust someone.”

“Why didn’t you tell Dasha and risk her life?”

Alexander paused before he replied. “Because I needed to trust you.”

“You can trust me,” Tatiana said cheerfully, shoving him lightly with her body. “But do me a favor, don’t tell me anything else, all right?”

“It’s too late,” he said, shoving her lightly back.

“Are you saying we’re doomed?” she asked, laughing.

“Eternally,” replied Alexander. “Can I buy you an ice cream?”

“Yes, please.” She beamed.

“Crème brûlée, right?”

“Always.”

They sat on a bench while she ate it, but even after she was done, they continued to sit and talk and not move until Alexander glanced at his watch and got up.

It was nearing ten o’clock by the time they stopped at the corner of Grechesky and Second Soviet, three blocks away from her building.

Tatiana paused. “So are you coming a little later?” She sighed. “Dasha said you might be.”

“Yes.” He sighed also. “With Dimitri.”

Tatiana was silent. They stood facing each other.

He was so near her she could smell him. Tatiana had never known anyone to smell as good and as clean as Alexander.

She thought he wanted to say something to her. He had opened his mouth, bent his head forward, frowned. She waited tensely, wanting it desperately, not wanting it, hating her ugly brown work boots, wishing she were wearing red sandals, remembering they were Dasha’s, remembering she had no nice shoes of her own, wanting to be barefoot in front of him, and swelling with feeling and guilt previously unknown to her. Tatiana took a step back.

Alexander took a step back. “Go,” he said. “I will see you tonight.”

She walked away, feeling his eyes behind her. Turning around, she found him looking at her from a distance.

8

Alexander and Dimitri came by after eleven. It was still bright outside. Dasha was not home yet. Her boss had her working overtime, taking gold out of people’s teeth. During times of crisis people liked to have gold instead of hard currency to barter with; gold kept its value. Dasha worked later and later, hating it, wanting everyone to behave as if life could still go on in the Leningrad summer as it had been—slow, warm, dusty, and full of young people in love.

Tatiana, Dimitri, and Alexander stood awkwardly in the kitchen as water dripped into the cast-iron sink. “So what’s the matter with you two glum kids?” said Dimitri, looking from Tatiana to Alexander.

“Well, I’m tired,” said Tatiana. It was only a partial lie.

“And I’m hungry,” said Alexander, glancing at her.

“Tania, let’s go for a walk.”

“No, Dima.”

“Yes. We’ll leave Alexander here to wait for Dasha.” Dimitri smiled. “They don’t need us. Those two would love to be left by themselves. Am I right, Alexander?”

“They’re not going to have much luck here,” Tatiana muttered. Thank goodness.

Alexander walked over to the window and looked down into the courtyard.

“I really can’t,” Tatiana protested. “I’m…”

Dimitri took Tatiana by the arm. “Come on, Tanechka. You’ve eaten already, haven’t you? Let’s go. We’ll be back soon, I promise.”

Tatiana saw Alexander’s squared shoulders.

She wanted to call him Shura. “Alexander,” she said, “you want us to bring you something back?”

“No, Tania,” he replied, glancing back at her. His unhappy eyes flashed for a moment and were subdued by his own will.

“Why don’t you go inside? Babushka made meat pirozhki. Go have some. There is borscht, too.”

Dimitri’s hand was already yanking Tatiana down the hall. They stepped over Slavin in the corridor, who was resting quietly on the floor, and it looked as if they would pass him without incident, but just as Tatiana neared him, he stirred, lifted his head, and grabbed her ankle.

Roughly Dimitri stepped on his wrist, and Slavin yelped, letting go, looking up at Tatiana, and wailing, “Stay home, Tanechka dear, it’s too late for you to go out at night! Stay home!” He did not look at Dimitri, who cursed at him and stepped on his wrist again.

On the street Dimitri asked if she wanted an ice cream. She didn’t want him to buy her one but said, “All right. A vanilla cone.” She ate the ice cream unhappily as they walked. The night was warm. She was thinking about only one thing.

“What are you thinking about?”

“War,” she lied. “How about you?”

“You,” he replied. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Tania. You’re quite different from the kind of girl I usually meet.”

Tatiana muttered a hapless thank-you, concentrating on her ice cream.

“I hope Alexander goes inside and eats,” she said. “Dasha might not be home for another hour.”

“Tania,” Dimitri said, “is that what you want to talk about? Alexander?” Even Tatiana with her untrained ear heard a chill in Dimitri’s voice.

“No, of course I don’t,” she said hurriedly. “I’m just making conversation.” She changed the subject. “What did you do today?”

“Dug more trenches. The front line to the north is nearly complete. We’ll be ready for those Finns next week.” He smirked. “So Tania, I know you must be thinking it—why am I not an officer like Alexander?”

Tatiana said nothing.

“Why haven’t you asked me about it?”

“I don’t know.” Her heart beat a little faster.

“It’s almost as if you already know.”

“Know? No.” She wanted to throw out what was left of the ice cream and run home.

“Have you been speaking to Alexander about me?”

“No,” she said, high-strung.

“How come you haven’t asked why I’m just a frontovik and he’s an officer?”

Tatiana had no answer for that. This was too stupid. She hated lying. Not saying anything, keeping a straight face, averting her eyes was difficult enough. But outright lying? Her tongue and throat weren’t used to it.

“Alex and I had every intention of being officers together. That was our original plan.”

“What plan?”

Dimitri didn’t answer, and Tatiana’s question hung in the air and then got lodged in her head.

Her hands began to shake slightly.

She did not want to be out at night alone with Dimitri.

She did not feel safe.

They got to the corner of Suvorovsky and Tauride Park. Though the sun was still thirty degrees in the sky, under the trees the park was in shade.

“You want to walk around the gardens for a bit?” Dimitri asked.

“What time is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know what?” Tatiana said. “I really have to get back.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I do, Dimitri. My parents are not used to my being out late at night. They’ll get upset.”

“They won’t get upset. They like me.” He moved closer to her. “Your father likes me very much. Besides,” he added, “your parents are too busy thinking about Pasha to notice what time you come and go.”

Tatiana stopped and turned around. “I’m going back.” And she started to walk up Suvorovsky away from him.

He grabbed her arm. “Tania, don’t walk away from me.” Without letting go, he said, “Come. Come and sit with me on the bench over by the trees.”

“Dimitri,” she said, not moving, “I’m not going by the trees with you. Can you let go?”

“Come with me by the trees.”

“No, Dimitri, let me go now.”

He stepped up to her, holding her very hard. His fingers dug into her skin. “Well, what if I don’t want to let go, Tanechka? What are you going to do then?”

Tatiana did not move away from him. His free arm went around her waist, and he brought her close to him. “Dima,” said Tatiana, composed and unafraid, looking him right in the face, “what are you doing? Have you lost your mind?”

“Yes,” he said and bent his face to kiss her. With a small cry Tatiana turned her face down and sharply away.

“No! Let go of me, Dimitri,” she said. She did not lift her head.

Suddenly he let go of her. “I’m sorry,” he said with a tremor in his voice.

“I have to go home right now,” she said, walking as fast as she could. “Dima, you’re too old for me.”

“No. No. Please. I’m only twenty-three.”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m too young for you. I need someone who”—she paused in thought—”expects less,” she finished.

“How much less?”

“Who expects nothing.”

“I’m really sorry, Tania,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you off like that.”

“That’s fine,” she said, not looking at him. “I’m just not the kind of girl who goes by the trees.” With you, she thought with a pang in her heart, remembering the Summer Garden.

“I know that now. I think that’s why I really like you. I just don’t know how to act around you sometimes.”

“Be respectful and patient.”

“Fine, I’ll be as patient as Job.” Dimitri leaned in to her. “Because, Tanechka,” he said, “I have no intention of leaving you alone.”

She hurried up Suvorovsky.

Suddenly Dimitri said, “I hope Dasha likes Alexander.”

“Dasha does like Alexander.”

“Because he really likes her.”

“Oh, yes?” Tatiana said weakly. “How do you know?”

“He has almost stopped his previously uncontrolled extracurricular activities. Don’t say that to Dasha, of course. It’ll just hurt her feelings.”

Tatiana wanted to say to Dimitri that she had no idea what he was talking about, but she was too afraid that he would tell her.

When they got home, Dasha and Alexander were sitting together on the small sofa in the hallway, reading from a volume of Zoshchenko’s short stories and laughing. The only thing Tatiana could say was a sullen and grumpy, “That’s my book.”

For some reason Dasha found that very funny, and even Alexander smiled. As Tatiana walked past him, his legs were sticking so far out that she tripped over them and would have fallen face forward for sure, had he not instantly grabbed her. And just as instantly let go.

“Tania,” Alexander said, “what’s that on your arm?”

“What? Oh, it’s nothing.” Making hasty excuses about exhaustion, she said good night and disappeared into her grandparents’ room, where she sat between her Deda and Babushka on the sofa and listened to the radio. They chatted quietly about Pasha, and soon she felt better.

Later that night she was facing the wall when she heard Dasha whispering to her. “Tania? Tania?”

Tatiana turned to her sister. “What is it? I’m tired.”

Dasha kissed her shoulder. “Tania, we never talk anymore. Our Pasha left, and we never talk. You miss him, don’t you? He’ll be back soon.”

“I miss him. You’re busy. We’ll talk tomorrow, Dashenka,” said Tatiana.

“I’m in love, Tania!” Dasha whispered.

Tatiana whispered back, “I’m glad for you, Dasha.” And she turned to the wall.

Dasha kissed the back of Tatiana’s head. “I think this is really it, I do. Oh, Tanechka, I just don’t know what to do with myself!”

“Have you tried sleep?”

“Tania, I can’t think about anything else. He is driving me crazy. He is so… hot and cold. Tonight he was fine, relaxed and funny, but other days… I just can’t figure him out.”

Tatiana didn’t say anything.

Dasha continued, “I know I can’t expect too much at once. The fact that he is finally coming around at all is a miracle. I couldn’t get him to come over until last Sunday, when he came with Dima and you.”

Tatiana wanted to point out that it wasn’t Dasha who got Alexander to come over, but of course said nothing.

“I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth. I think he likes our family. Did you know he’s from Krasnodar? He hasn’t been back there since he joined the army. Doesn’t have any brothers or sisters. Doesn’t talk about his parents. He is… I can’t explain. So closemouthed. Doesn’t like to say too much about his own business.” She paused. “Asks me about mine, though.”

“Oh?” was all Tatiana could manage.

“He tells me he wishes it weren’t war.”

“Yes,” said Tatiana. “We all wish it weren’t war.”

“But that sounds hopeful, doesn’t it? As if a better life with him would be possible once the war was over. Tania,” said Dasha into Tatiana’s hair, “do you like Dimitri?”

Tatiana fought for her voice. “I like him fine,” she whispered.

“He really likes you.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Yes, he does. You have no idea about these things.”

“I have some idea, and he doesn’t.”

“Is there anything you want to talk to me about, want to ask me?”

“No!”

Dismissively, Dasha said, “Tania, you mustn’t be so shy. You’re seventeen already. Why can’t you just give in a little?”

“Give in to Dimitri?” whispered Tatiana. “Never, Dasha.”

In the minutes before she fell asleep, Tatiana realized she was less afraid of the intangible of war than she was of the tangible of heartbreak.

9

On Saturday, Tatiana went to the Leningrad public library and borrowed a Russian-English phrase book. She was already somewhat familiar with the odd alphabet, having learned it in school. She spent most of the afternoon trying to speak some of the more ridiculous phrases out loud. The Ths, Ws, and the soft Rs were very difficult. “The weather will be thunder and rain tomorrow” was constructed to torment her. She could say “be” pretty well.

On Sunday, when Alexander came by, he single-handedly glued paper strips on their windows to keep the glass from shattering in the explosive waves that might come during shelling, if and when bombs fell on Leningrad. “Everyone must tape their windows,” he said. “Soon the patrols are going to walk around the city to check that all the windows have been taped. We won’t be able to find replacement glass anywhere if the Germans get to Leningrad.”

The Metanovs watched him with great interest, with Mama commenting every few minutes on how tall he was, and on his good work and how steady his hands were, and how solidly he stood on the windowsill. Mama wanted to know where he’d learned how to do that. Dasha replied impatiently, “Well, he is in the Red Army, Mama!”

“Did they teach you to stand on the windowsill in the Red Army, Alexander?” Tatiana asked.

“Oh, shut up, Tania,” Dasha said, laughing, but Alexander laughed, too, and he did not say shut up, Tania.

“What is that design you made on our windows?” Mama said as Alexander jumped down from the sill.

Tatiana, Dasha, Mama, and Babushka looked at the shape of the glued paper on the window. Instead of being the white crisscross that the women had seen on other windows in Leningrad, Alexander’s design looked like a tree. A thick trunk, slightly bent to one side, with elongated leaves growing from it, longer at the bottom, tapering off at the top.

“What is that, young man?” Babushka demanded imperiously.

Alexander said, “That, Anna Lvovna, is a palm tree.”

“A what?” said Dasha, standing close to him. Why always so close?

“A palm tree.”

Tatiana, standing by the door, watched him without blinking.

“A palm tree?” Dasha said quizzically.

“It’s a tropical tree. Grows in the Americas and the South Pacific.”

“Hmm,” said Mama. “Strange choice for our windows, don’t you think?”

“Better than just an old crisscross,” muttered Tatiana.

Alexander smiled at her. And lightly she smiled back.

Gruffly, Babushka said, “Well, young man, when you do my windows, don’t do any fancy things. Just a simple crisscross for me. I don’t need any palm trees.”

Afterward Alexander and Dasha went out by themselves, leaving Tatiana with her moody and exhausted family. Tatiana went to the Leningrad library, where she spent hours mouthing alien English sounds to herself. It seemed extremely difficult: to read in this language, to speak it, to write it. Next time she saw Alexander, she would ask him to say a few things to her in English. Just to hear how they sounded. She was already thinking about the next time she saw Alexander, as if it were a certainty. She vowed to tell him that maybe, perhaps, he shouldn’t come to Kirov anymore. She made the promise to herself that night as she lay in bed and faced the wall, she made the promise to the wall, touching the old wallpaper with her fingers, stroking it up and down and saying, I promise, I promise, I promise. Then she reached down to the floor between the bed and the wall and touched the Bronze Horseman book Alexander had given her. Maybe she would tell him that another day. After she heard some English from him, and after he talked to her about the war, and after—