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—”