“What was she thinking?” muttered Alexander, closing his eyes and imagining his Tania.

“She was determined. It was like some kind of a personal crusade with her,” Ina said. “She gave the doctor a liter of blood for you—”

“Where did she get it from?”

“Herself, of course.” Ina smiled. “Lucky for you, Major, our Nurse Metanova is a universal donor.”

Of course she is, thought Alexander, keeping his eyes tightly shut.

Ina continued. “The doctor told her she couldn’t give any more, and she said a liter wasn’t enough, and he said, ‘Yes, but you don’t have more to give,’ and she said, ‘I’ll make more,’ and he said, ‘No,’ and she said, ‘Yes,’ and in four hours, she gave him another half-liter of blood.”

Alexander lay on his stomach and listened intently while Ina wrapped fresh gauze on his wound. He was barely breathing.

“The doctor told her, ‘Tania, you’re wasting your time. Look at his burn. It’s going to get infected.’ There wasn’t enough penicillin to give to you, especially since your blood count was so low.” Alexander heard Ina chuckle in disbelief. “So I’m making my rounds late that night, and who do I find next to your bed? Tatiana. She’s sitting with a syringe in her arm, hooked up to a catheter, and I watch her, and I swear to God, you won’t believe it when I tell you, Major, but I see that the catheter is attached to the entry drip in your IV.” Ina’s eyes bulged. “I watch her draining blood from the radial artery in her arm into your IV. I ran in and said, ‘Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? You’re siphoning blood from yourself into him?’ She said to me in her calm, I-won’t-stand-for-any-argument voice, ‘Ina, if I don’t, he will die.’ I yelled at her. I said, ‘There are thirty soldiers in the critical wing who need sutures and bandages and their wounds cleaned. Why don’t you take care of them and let God take care of the dead?’ And she said, ‘He’s not dead. He is still alive, and while he is alive, he is mine.’ Can you believe it, Major? But that’s what she said. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I said to her. ‘Fine, die yourself. I don’t care.’ But the next morning I went to complain to Dr. Sayers that she wasn’t following procedure, told him what she had done, and he ran to yell at her.” Ina lowered her voice to a sibilant, incredulous whisper. “We found her unconscious on the floor by your bed. She was in a dead faint, but you had taken a turn for the better. All your vital signs were up. And Tatiana got up from the floor, white as death itself, and said to the doctor coldly, ‘Maybe now you can give him the penicillin he needs?’ I could see the doctor was stunned. But he did. Gave you penicillin and more plasma and extra morphine. Then he operated on you, to get bits of the shell fragment out of you, and saved your kidney. And stitched you. And all that time she never left his side, or yours. He told her your bandages needed to be changed every three hours to help with drainage, to prevent infection. We had only two nurses in the terminal wing, me and her. I had to take care of all the other patients, while all she did was take care of you. For fifteen days and nights she unwrapped you and cleaned you and changed your dressings. Every three hours. She was a ghost by the end. But you made it. That’s when we moved you to critical care. I said to her, ‘Tania, this man ought to marry you for what you did for him,’ and she said, ‘You think so?’ ” Ina tutted again. Paused. “Are you all right, Major? Why are you crying?”



That afternoon, when Tatiana came to feed him, Alexander took her hand and for a long time couldn’t speak.

“What’s the matter, darling?” she whispered. “What hurts?”

“My heart,” he answered.

She leaned from her chair to him. “Shura, honey, let me feed you. I need to feed ten other very sick people after you. One of them doesn’t have a tongue. Imagine the difficulty there. I’ll come back tonight if I can. Ina knows me. She thinks I’ve taken a shine to you.” Tatiana smiled. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Alexander still couldn’t speak.

Later that night Tatiana came back. The lights were out, and everyone was asleep; she sat by Alexander’s side.

“Tatia . . .”

Quietly she said, “Ina’s got a big mouth. I told her not to upset my patient. I didn’t want you to worry. She couldn’t help herself.”

“I don’t deserve you,” he said.

“Alexander, what do you think? You think I was going to let you die when I knew we were meant to get out of here? I couldn’t get that close and then lose you.”

“I don’t deserve you,” he repeated.

“Husband,” she said, “did you forget Luga? God, did you forget Leningrad? Our Lazarevo? I haven’t. My life belongs to you.”


6


Alexander woke up and found Tatiana sitting in the chair. She was sleeping, leaning forward on his bed by his side, her blonde head covered with a white nurse’s kerchief. It was quiet and dark in the large room, and cold. He pulled the kerchief off her and touched the wispy strands of hair falling on her eyes, touched her eyebrows, traced his fingers around her freckles, her little nose, her soft lips. She woke up. “Hmm,” she said, lifting her hand to pat him. “I’d better go.”

“Tania . . .” he whispered, “when am I going to be whole again?”

“Darling,” she said soothingly, “you don’t feel whole?” She bent over him, cradling him. “Hug me, Shura,” she said. “Hug me tight.” She paused, and added in a whisper, “Like I love . . .”

Alexander put his arms around her. Tatiana’s arms went around his neck as she tenderly kissed his face, her hair brushing against him. “Tell me a memory,” he whispered.

“Mmm, what kind of memory are you looking for?”

“You know what I’m looking for.”

She continued to kiss his face lightly as her breathy voice whispered, “I remember one rainy night running home from Naira’s and putting our blankets in front of the fire, and you making the most tender love to me, telling me you would stop only when I begged you to stop.” Tatiana smiled, her lips on his cheek. “And did I beg you to stop?”

“No,” he said huskily. “You are not for the weak, Tatiasha.”

“Nor you,” she whispered. “And afterward, you fell asleep right on top of me. I was awake a long time holding your sleeping body. I didn’t even move you, I fell asleep, too, and in the morning you were still on top of me. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” he said, closing his eyes. “I remember.” I remember everything. Every word, every breath, every smile you took, every kiss you laid upon my body, every game we played, every Bronze Horseman cabbage pie you cooked for me. I remember it all.

“You tell me a memory,” she whispered. “But quietly. That blind man across the ward is going to have a heart attack.”

Alexander pulled the hair away from her face and smiled. “I remember Axinya standing by the door of the banya while we were alone and inside and so hot and soapy, and I kept saying to you, shh.”

“Shh,” Tatiana whispered breathlessly, glancing over at the sleeping man across the ward.

Alexander felt her trying to pull herself away. “Wait,” he said, holding her to him and looking around the dark ward. “I need something.”

She smiled into his face. “Yes? Like what?” Alexander knew she knew the look in his eyes. “You must be healing, soldier.”

“Faster than you can imagine.”

Bringing her face flush to his, she whispered, “Oh, I can imagine.”

Alexander began to unbutton the top of her nurse’s uniform.

Tatiana backed away. “No, don’t,” she said softly.

“What do you mean, don’t? Tatia, open your uniform. I need to touch your breasts.”

“No, Shura,” she said. “Someone will wake up, see us. Then we’ll all get in trouble. Somebody will definitely see. Maybe as a nurse I can get away with holding your hand, but I think this would be frowned upon. I think maybe even Dr. Sayers wouldn’t understand.”

Not letting go of her hand, Alexander said, “I need my mouth on you. I want to feel your breasts against my face, just for a second. Come on, Tatiasha, open the top of your uniform, lean over as if you’re adjusting my pillow, and let me feel your breasts on my face.”

Sighing and obviously uncomfortable, she undid her uniform. Alexander wanted to feel her so much that he didn’t care about propriety. Everyone is sleeping, he thought, watching her hungrily as she opened the uniform to her waist, stood very close to him, and lifted her undershirt.

Alexander gasped so loudly when he saw her breasts that she reeled back and quickly pulled her shirt down. Her breasts had grown to twice their previous size; they were swollen and milky white. “Tatiana,” he groaned, and before she could back away farther, he grabbed her arm and brought her close to him.

“Shura, stop, let go,” she said.

“Tatiana,” Alexander repeated. “Oh, no, Tania . . .”

She wasn’t fighting his hand anymore. Bending over, she kissed him. “Come on, let go,” she murmured.

Alexander did not let go. “Oh my God, you’re . . .”

“Yes, Alexander. I’m pregnant.”

Speechlessly he stared at her shining face.

“What the hell are we going to do?” he asked finally.

“We,” she said, kissing him, “are going to have a baby! In America. So hurry up and get well, so we can get out of here.”

At a loss for better words, Alexander found a way to ask, “How long have you known?”

“Since December.”

He was clammy. “You’ve known since before you came to the front?”

“Yes.”

“You went out on the ice, knowing you were pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“You gave me your blood, knowing you were pregnant?”

“Yes.” She smiled. “Yes.”

Alexander turned his head to the isolation tent, away from the wall, from the chair she was next to, and away from her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Shura,” she said. “This is why I didn’t tell you. I know you — you’d be worried frantic about me, especially because you’re still not well yourself. You feel like you can’t protect me. But I’m fine,” she said, smiling. “I’m better than fine. And it’s still early. The baby is not due till August.”

Alexander put his arm over his eyes. He couldn’t look at her. He heard her whisper, “You want to see my breasts again?”

Shaking his head, he said, “I’ll sleep now. Come and see me tomorrow.” He felt her kiss his forearm. After she left, Alexander was awake until morning.

How could Tania not understand the terrors that haunted him, the fear that clutched his heart when he imagined trying to get through NKVD border troops and hostile Finland with a pregnant wife? Where was her sense, her good judgment?

What am I even thinking? This is the girl who blithely walked 150 kilometers through Manstein’s Group Army Nord to bring me money so I could run and leave her. She has no sense at all.

I am not getting my wife and baby out of Russia on foot, Alexander said to himself. His thoughts turned to the Fifth Soviet communal apartment, to the filth, to the stench, to the air-raid sirens every morning and night, to the cold. He remembered seeing a young mother last year, sitting in the snow, frozen, holding her frozen infant on her lap, and he trembled. What was worse to him as a man, remaining in the Soviet Union or risking Tatiana’s life to get her home?

A soldier, a decorated officer in the largest army in the world, Alexander felt unmanned by his impossible choices.



The next morning when Tatiana came to feed him breakfast, Alexander said quietly, “I hope you know, I hope you understand that I’m not going anywhere with you pregnant.”

“What are you talking about? Of course you are.”

“Forget it.”

“God, Shura, that’s why I didn’t want to tell you. I know how you get.”

“How do I get, Tatiana?” he said hotly. “Tell me, how do I get? I can’t get out of bed. How am I supposed to get? Lying here powerless, while my wife—”

“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—”