They came to the tram stop. Alexander stood in front of her. “Tania, look at me.”
She turned her head away. “No.”
“Look at me,” he said, taking both her hands in his.
She raised her eyes to Alexander. His big hands felt so comforting.
“Tatia, look at me and say, Alexander, I don’t want you to come anymore.”
“Alexander,” she said in a whisper, “I don’t want you to come anymore.”
He did not let go of her hands, nor did she pull away.
“After yesterday you don’t want me to come anymore?” he asked, his voice faltering.
Tatiana could not look at him when she spoke. “After yesterday most of all.”
“Tania!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Let’s tell her!”
“What?” She thought she had misheard.
“Yes! Let’s tell her.”
“Tell her what?” Tatiana said, her tongue suddenly full of frozen fear. She shivered in her sleeveless top. “There is nothing to tell her.”
“Tatiana, please!” Alexander’s eyes flashed at her. “Let’s tell the truth and live with the consequences. Let’s do the honest thing. She deserves that. I’m going to end it with her and then—”
“No!” She tried to pull her hands away. “Please, no. Please. She’ll be devastated.” She paused. “We have to think about other people.”
“What about us?” He squeezed her hands. “Tania . . .” he whispered, “what about you and me?”
“Alexander!” Her nerves were raw. “Please . . .”
“You please!” he said loudly. “I’m sick to death of this—all because you don’t want to do the honorable thing.”
“When is it honorable to hurt other people?”
“Dasha will get over it.”
“Will Dimitri?”
When Alexander did not reply, Tatiana repeated, “Will Dimitri?”
“Let me worry about Dimitri, all right?”
“And you’re wrong. Dasha will not get over you. She thinks you’re the love of her life.”
“She thinks wrong. She doesn’t even know me.”
Tatiana couldn’t listen anymore. She yanked her hands away. “No, no. Stop talking.”
Alexander stood in front of her on the pavement. “I’m a soldier in the Red Army. I’m not a doctor in America. I’m not a scientist in Britain. I’m a soldier in the Soviet Union. I could die any minute a thousand different ways to Sunday. This might be the last minute we will have together. Don’t you want to spend that minute with me?”
Mesmerized by him, Tatiana muttered, “Right now, I just want to crawl into bed—”
“Yes,” he exclaimed fervently, “crawl into bed with me!”
Weakening, Tatiana shook her head. “We have nowhere to go . . .” she whispered.
Alexander came up close and cupped her face as he said in a trembling, encouraged voice, “We’ll work it out, Tatiasha, I promise, somehow we’ll—”
“No!” she cried.
His hands lowered.
“You . . . misunderstood,” she stammered. “I meant that there is nothing for us to do.”
And then his eyes lowered.
And hers, too. “She is my sister,” Tatiana said. “Why can’t you just understand? I will not break my sister’s heart.”
Alexander took a step back and said coldly, “Oh, that’s right, you already told me. There will be other boys. But never another sister.” Without another word he turned around and began walking away.
Tatiana ran after him. “Alexander, wait!”
He kept walking.
Tatiana could not keep up. “Please, wait!” she called into Ulitsa Govorova. She held on to the wall of a yellow stucco building, whispering, “please come back.”
Alexander came back. “Let’s go,” he said flatly. “I have to get back to the barracks.”
Tatiana persisted. “Listen to me. If we stop now, at least there will be nothing to tell the people who are close to us, who love us, who depend on us not to betray them. Dasha—”
“Tatiana!” Alexander came at her so suddenly that she staggered back, letting go of the wall and nearly falling to the pavement. He grabbed her by the arms. “What are you talking about?” he said. “The betrayal—it’s an objective thing. What, you think just because we haven’t told them yet it’s not betrayal?”
“Stop.”
He didn’t. “You think when you can’t look at me because you’re afraid that everybody will see what I see, it’s not betrayal? When your face lights up a block away as you fly out of your stupid job? When you leave your hair down, when those lips of yours quiver? Are they not betraying you?” He was breathing hard.
“Stop it,” she said, red, upset, trying unsuccessfully to wrest herself away from him.
“Tatiana, every single minute that you have spent with me, you have lied to your sister, lied to Dimitri, to your parents, to God, and to yourself. When will you stop?”
“Alexander,” Tatiana said in a whisper, “you stop.”
He let go.
She was panting. “You’re right,” Tatiana said, unable to get a breath out. “But I haven’t lied to myself. That’s why I can’t do this anymore.” She paused. “Please . . . I don’t want to fight with you. And I don’t have the strength to hurt Dasha. I don’t have the strength for any of this.”
“The strength or the desire, Tania?”
Opening her hands pleadingly, she said, “The strength. I’ve never lied like this in my life.” Realizing what she was admitting, Tatiana flushed with embarrassment, but what could she do? She had to bravely continue. “You have no idea what it costs me every day, every minute, every night to hide from Dasha. My blank stare, my gritted teeth, my casual disregard—do you have any idea what it costs me?”
“Oh, I do,” he said, the grimmest of soldiers. “I’m the one who knows the truth. That’s why I want to end this charade.”
“End it and then what?” Tatiana exclaimed, flaring up. “Have you thought this all the way through?” She raised her voice. “End it and then what? I’ve still got to live with Dasha!” She laughed with exasperation. “What do you think, you think you can call on me after you are through with her? You think after you tell him, after I tell her, you’ll be able to come over, have dinner? Chat with my family? And, Alexander, what about me? Where am I supposed to go? To the barracks with you? Don’t you understand that I sleep in the same bed with her? And that I have nowhere else to go!” Tatiana yelled. “Understand,” she said, “you can do what you like, you can end it with Dasha, but if you do, you will never be able to see me again.”
“Don’t threaten me, Tatiana,” Alexander said loudly, his eyes blazing. “And I thought that was the whole point of this.”
Tatiana groaned, ready to cry.
Lowering his voice, he said, “All right, don’t be upset.” He rubbed her arm.
“Then stop upsetting me!”
He took his hand away.
“Go on with your life,” Tatiana said. “You’re a man.” She lowered her eyes. “Go on with Dasha. She is right for you. She is a woman and I’m—”
“Blind!” Alexander exclaimed.
Tatiana stood on Ulitsa Govorova, desolately failing in the battle of her heart. “Oh, Alexander,” she said, “what do you want from me . . .”
“Everything!” he whispered fiercely.
Tatiana shook her head, clenching her fists to her chest.
Running his hand down the length of her hair, Alexander said, “Tatia, I’m asking you for the last time.”
“And I’m telling you for the last time,” she said, barely able to get the words out.
Standing tall, Alexander stopped touching her.
She took a step forward, putting her gentle hand on him. “Shura . . . I don’t own Dasha’s life,” Tatiana said. “I cannot sacrifice my sister’s life. I can’t give it away to please you and me—”
“That’s fine,” he interrupted, pulling his ar
m away. “You’ve made it very clear. I can see I was wrong about you. You can stop now. But I’m telling you, I’m going to do it my way, not your way. I will end it with Dasha, and you will not see me again.”
“No, please . . .”
“Will you just go?” Alexander said, pointing down the street. “Walk away from me to the canal. Go home. Go to your Dasha.”
“Shura . . .” she said with anguish.
“Don’t call me that.” His voice was cold. He folded his arms. “Go, I said! Walk away.”
Tatiana blinked. Every night when they parted, an aching breath left her lungs where Alexander had been. She felt physically emptier in his absence. And up in her room she surrounded herself with other people to feel him less, to want him less. But invariably every night Tatiana had to climb into bed with her sister, and every night Tatiana would turn to the wall begging for strength.
I can do this, she thought. I’ve spent seventeen years with Dasha and only three weeks with Alexander. I can do this. Feel one way. Behave one way, too.
Tatiana turned and walked away.
14
True to his word, the next time Dasha came to see him, Alexander took her for a short walk down Nevsky and told her that he needed some time to himself to think things through. Dasha cried, which he hated, because he hated to see women cry, and she pleaded, which he also did not like much. But he did not relent. Alexander could not tell Dasha he was furious with her younger sister. Furious with a shy, tiny thing who could fit into the palm of his hand if she crouched, yet who would not surrender one stride, not even for him.
A few days later Alexander almost felt glad he wasn’t seeing Tatiana’s face anymore. He found out that the Germans were just eighteen kilometers south of the barely fortified Luga line, which in turn was just eighteen kilometers south of Tolmachevo. Information came into the garrison that the Germans had combed through the entire town of Novgorod in a matter of a few hours. Novgorod, the town southeast of Luga, was where Tatiana cartwheeled into Lake Ilmen.
The People’s Volunteer Army, though tens of thousands strong, had just begun digging the trenches in Luga.
Anticipating the threat of the Finns, most of the resources for field mining, antitank trenching, and concrete reinforcements had gone to the north of Leningrad. The Finnish-Soviet front line in southern Karelia was the best-defended line in the Soviet Union—and the quietest. Dimitri must be happy, Alexander thought. Hitler’s precipitous advance south of Leningrad, however, had caught the Red Army by surprise. They scrambled to build a line of defense along 125 kilometers of the Luga River from Lake Ilmen to Narva. There were some entrenchments, some gun emplacements, some tank traps dug, but not nearly enough. The Leningrad command, realizing that something had to be done and done immediately, loaded the concrete tank barriers from Karelia and trucked them down to Luga.
And all the while the Red Army had been retreating after days of constant fighting.
It wasn’t just retreating. It was relinquishing ground to the Germans at the rate of 500 kilometers in the first three weeks of war. There was no more air support, and the few tanks the Red Army had were insufficient, despite Tatiana’s best efforts. In the middle of July the army comprised mostly rifle squads against the German Panzer units of tanks, mobile artillery, planes, and foot soldiers. The Soviets were running out of arms and out of men.
The hope for defending the Luga line now fell to the hordes of People’s Volunteers, who had no training and, worse, no rifles. They were just a wall of old men and young women standing up against Hitler. What weapons they could pick up, they picked up from the dead Red Army soldiers. Some volunteers had shovels, axes, and picks, but many did not have even that.
Alexander didn’t want to think about how sticks held up to German tanks. He knew.
SMOKE AND THUNDER
TATIANA’S world changed after Alexander stopped coming to see her. She was now one of the last people to leave work. As she slowly walked out the double doors of the factory, she still turned her head expectantly, hoping that maybe she would see his head, his uniform, his rifle, his cap in his hands.
Down the length of the Kirov wall Tatiana walked, waiting for the buses to pick up passengers. She sat on the bench and waited for him. And then she walked the eight kilometers back to Fifth Soviet, looking for him, seeing him, in fact, everywhere. By the time she would get home at eleven or later, the dinner her family had prepared at seven was old and cold. At home everyone listened tensely to the radio, not speaking about the only thing that was on their minds—Pasha.
Dasha came home one evening in tears and told Tatiana that Alexander wanted to take a break. She cried for five straight minutes while Tatiana gent-ly patted her back. “Well, I’m not going to give up, Tania,” said Dasha. “I’m not. He means too much to me. He is going through something. I think he is afraid of commitment, like most soldiers. But I’m not going to give up. He said he needed a little time to think. That doesn’t mean forever; that’s just until he sorts himself out, right?”
“I don’t know, Dashenka.” What kind of person said he was going to do something and then did? No person Tatiana knew.
Dimitri came to see her once, and they spent an hour together surrounded by her family. She was mildly surprised that he hadn’t been by more often, but he made some—Tatiana thought lame—excuse. He seemed distracted. He had no information on the position of the Germans in the Soviet Union. His mouth on her cheek at the end of the night was as distant as Finland.
Up on the roof the kids from the building looked for excitement, for incendiary bombs to put out. There weren’t any bombs. It was quiet at night, except for the laughing of Anton and his friends next to her, except for the beating of her heart.
Up on the roof Tatiana thought about the evening minute, the minute she used to walk out the factory doors, turn her head to the left even before her body turned, and look for his face. The evening minute as she hurried down the street, her happiness curling her mouth upward to the white sky, the red wings speeding her to him, to look up at him and smile.
At night she was still turned to the wall, her back to the absent Dasha, who was never home.
Tatiana would have continued this wretched way, but one morning the Metanovs heard on the radio that the Germans were trouncing their way through the countryside and, despite all measures taken by the heroic Soviet soldiers, were nearly at Luga. It wasn’t the Luga part that stunned the family and made them unable to eat or talk to each other. It was that they all knew that Luga was mere kilometers from Tolmachevo, where Pasha was safely, they thought—no, were sure—ensconced at camp.
If the Germans were about to steamroll through Luga, what was to happen to Tolmachevo? Where was their son, their grandson, their brother?
Tatiana tried to console her family with hollow words. “He is fine, he’ll be all right.” When that didn’t work, she tried, “We’ll get in touch with him. Come on, Mama, don’t cry.” When that didn’t work, she tried, “Mama, I can feel him still out there. He is my twin brother. He is all right, I’m telling you.” Nothing worked.
There remained no word on Pasha, and Tatiana, despite her brave talk, became increasingly afraid for her brother.
The local Soviet had no answers. The borough Soviet also had no answers. Tatiana and her mother went there together.
“What can I tell you?” the stern, mustachioed woman told Mama. “My information says only that the Germans are near Luga. It doesn’t say anything about Tolmachevo.”
“Then why isn’t there any answer when we try to call the camps?” Mama demanded. “Why are the phones not working?”
“Who do I look like, Comrade Stalin? Do I have all the answers?”
“Can we get to Tolmachevo?” Mama asked.
“What are you talking about? Can you get to the front? Can you take a bus, comrade, to the front? Yes, sure. Good luck to you.” The woman’s gray mustache moved as she laughed. “Natalia, come here, you have to hear this.”
Tatiana wanted to say something rude back, but she couldn’t muster the courage. Wishing she had tried harder to convince her family about Pasha, she led her mother out of the borough council office.
* * *
That night when Tatiana was pretending to sleep, her face to the wall, her hand on the floor below on Alexander’s copy of The Bronze Horseman, she overheard her parents whispering tearfully to each other. It started with her mother’s quiet sobbing, followed by her father’s comforting “Shh, shh.” Then he was sobbing, too, and Tatiana wanted to be anywhere but where she was.
Little whispers came to her, fragmented sentences, mournful longings.
“Maybe he is all right,” she heard her mother say.
“Maybe,” echoed her father.
“Oh, Georg. We can’t lose our Pasha. We can’t.” She moaned. “Our boy.”
“Our favorite boy,” added Papa. “Our only son.”
Mama sobbed.
Tatiana heard the sheets rustling. Her mother sniffed.
“What kind of God would take him away?”
“There is no God. Come now, Irina,” Papa said in a comforting voice. “Not so loud. You’ll wake the girls.”
Mama cried out. “I don’t care,” she said, nonetheless lowering her voice to a whisper once more. “Why couldn’t God take one of them?”
“Irina, don’t say that. You don’t mean it.”
“Why, Georg, why? I know you feel the same way. Wouldn’t you give up Tania for our son? Or even Dasha? But Tania is so timid and weak, she’s never going to amount to anything.”
“What kind of a life can she have here anyway, timid or not?” said Tatiana’s father.
“Not like our son,” said Mama. “Not like our Pasha.”
Tatiana put the sheet over her ears so she wouldn’t hear any more. Dasha continued to sleep. Mama and Papa soon fell asleep themselves. But Tatiana remained awake, the words crashing their agonizing tune on her ears. Why couldn’t God take Tania instead of Pasha?
2
The next day after work, filled with apprehension, not believing her own nerve, Tatiana went to Pavlov Barracks. To a smiling Sergeant Petrenko she gave Alexander’s name and waited, standing against the wall, hoping for some strength in her legs.
The Bronze Horseman Page 16
