“Sad for him!” Alexander exclaimed. “Whose side are you on?”

Tatiana didn’t speak for a moment. “Shura, look at you. And look at him. Dimitri needs you, he is fed and sheltered and grown by you, and if you’re stronger, he becomes stronger, too. He knows that and depends on you blindly for so many things that you are glad to provide. And yet . . . the more you have, the more he hates you. Self-preservation may be his driving force, but all the same, every time you get a promotion, you go up in rank, you get a new medal, you get a new girl, every time you laugh with joy in the smoky corridor, it diminishes and lessens him. Which is why the more powerful you become, the more he wants from you.”

“Eventually,” said Alexander, glancing at Tatiana, “he is going to want from me something I can’t give. And then what?”

“Coveting from you the best of what you have will eventually lead him into hell.”

“Yes, but me into death.” Alexander shook his head. “Unspoken underneath all his pleas and requests is that one word from him about my American past to the NKVD general at the garrison, one vague accusation, and I instantly vanish into the maw of Soviet justice.”

Nodding sadly, Tatiana said, “I know it. But maybe if he had more, he wouldn’t want so much.”

“You’re wrong, Tania. I have a bad feeling about Dimitri. I have a feeling he is going to want more and more from me. Until,” Alexander said, “he takes it all.”

“No, you’re wrong, Shura. Dimitri will never take all away from you. He will never have that much power.” He might want to. He just doesn’t know who he is dealing with, Tatiana thought, raising her venerating eyes to Alexander. “Besides, we all know what happens to the parasite when something happens to the host,” she whispered.

Alexander gazed down at her. “Yes. He finds himself a new host. Let me ask you,” he finally said, “what do you think Dimitri wants the most from me?”

“What you want most.”

“But, Tania,” said Alexander intensely, “it’s you that I want most.”

Tatiana looked into his face. “Yes, Shura,” she said. “And he knows it. As I said from the beginning — Dimitri has not fallen for me at all. All he wants is to hurt you.”

Alexander was quiet for a spate of eternity under the August sky.

So was Tatiana until she whispered, “Where is your brave and indifferent face? Put it on and he will back away and ask you to give him what you wanted most before me.”

Alexander did not move and did not speak.

“Before me.” Why was he so silent? “Shura?” She thought she felt him shudder.

“Tania, stop. I can’t talk to you about this anymore.”

She could not steady her hands. “All of this — all this between us, and my Dasha, too, now and forever, and still you come for me every chance you can.”

“I told you, I cannot stay away from you,” said Alexander.

Flinching with sadness, Tatiana said, “God, we need to forget each other, Shura. I can’t believe how not meant to be we are.”

“You don’t say?” Alexander smiled. “I will bet my rifle that your ending up on that bench two months ago was the most unlikely part of your day.”

He was right. Most of all, Tatiana remembered the bus she had decided not to take so she could buy herself an ice cream. “And you would know this how?”

“Because,” said Alexander, “my walking by that bench was the most unlikely part of mine.” He nodded. “All this wedged between us — and when we do our best, and grit our teeth, and move away from one another, struggling to reconstruct ourselves, fate intervenes again, and bricks fall from the sky that I remove from your alive and broken body. Was that also not meant to be, perhaps?”

Tatiana inhaled a sob. “That’s right,” she said softly. “We can’t forget that I owe you my life.” She gazed at him. “We can’t forget that I belong to you.”

“I like the sound of that,” Alexander said, hugging her tighter.

“Retreat, Shura,” Tatiana whispered. “Retreat and take your weapons with you. Spare me from him.” She paused. “He just needs to believe you don’t care for me, and then he will lose all interest. You’ll see. He’ll go away, he’ll go to the front. We all have to get through the war before we get to what’s on the other side. So will you do that?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Are you going to stop coming around?” she asked tremulously.

“No,” said Alexander. “I can’t retreat that far. Just stay away from me.”

“All right.” Her heart skipped. She clutched him.

“And forgive me in advance for my cold face. Can I trust you to do that?”

Nodding, Tatiana rubbed her cheek against his arm, pressing her head to him. “Trust me,” she whispered. “Trust in me. Alexander Barrington, I will never betray you.”

“Yes, but will you ever deny me?” he asked tenderly.

“Only in front of my Dasha,” she replied. “And your Dimitri.”

Lifting her face to him, with an ironic smile Alexander said, “Aren’t you glad now that God stopped us at the hospital?”

Tatiana smiled lightly back. “No.” She sat wrapped in his arms. They stared at each other. She put her palm out to him. He put his palm against hers. “Look,” she said quietly. “My fingertips barely come up to your second knuckle.”

“I’m looking,” he whispered, threading his fingers through hers and squeezing her hand so hard that Tatiana groaned and then blushed.

Bringing his face to hers, Alexander kissed the skin near her nose. “Have I ever told you I adore your freckles?” he murmured. “They are very enticing.”

She purred back. Their fingers remained entwined as they kissed.

“Tatiasha . . .” Alexander whispered, “you have amazing lips . . .” He paused and pulled away. “You are” — reluctantly she opened her eyes to meet his gaze — “you are oblivious to yourself. It’s one of your most endearing, most infuriating qualities . . .”

“Don’t know what you mean . . .” She had no brain left. “Shura, how can there be not a single place in this world we can go?” Her voice broke. “What kind of a life is this?”

“The Communist life,” Alexander replied.

They huddled closer.

“You crazy man,” she said fondly. “What were you doing fighting with me at Kirov, knowing all this was stacked against us?”

“Raging against my fate,” said Alexander. “It’s the only fucking thing I ever do. I just refuse to be defeated.”

I love you, Alexander, Tatiana wanted to say to him, but couldn’t. I love you. She bowed her head. “I have too young a heart . . .” she whispered.

Alexander’s arms engulfed her. “Tatia,” he whispered, “you do have a young heart.” He tipped her back a little and kissed her between her breasts. “I wish with all of mine, I wasn’t forced to pass it by.”

Suddenly he moved away and jumped to his feet. Tatiana herself heard a noise behind them in the arcade. Sergeant Petrenko stuck his head out onto the balcony, saying it was time for a shift change.

Alexander carried Tatiana down on his back, and then, with his arm around her, they hobbled through the city streets, back to Fifth Soviet. It was after two in the morning. Tomorrow their day would begin at six, and yet here they both were, clinging to each other in the last remaining hours of night. He carried her in his arms down Nevsky Prospekt. She carried his rifle. He carried her on his back.

They were very alone as they made their way through dark Leningrad.


7


The next evening after work Tatiana found her mother moaning in the room and Dasha sitting in the hallway, crying into her cup of tea. The Metanovs had just received a telegram from the long-defunct Novgorod command, informing them that on 13 July 1941 the train carrying one Pavel Metanov and hundreds of other young volunteers was blown up by the Germans. There were no survivors.

A week before I went to find him, thought Tatiana, pacing dully through the rooms. What did I do on the day that my brother’s train blew up? Did I work, did I ride the tram? Did I even think once of my brother? I’ve thought of him since. I’ve felt him not being here since. Dear Pasha, she thought, we lost you and we didn’t even know it. That’s the saddest loss of all, to go on for a few weeks, a few days, a night, a minute, and think everything is still all right when the structure you’ve built your life on has crumbled. We should have been mourning you, but instead we made plans, went to work, dreamed, loved, not knowing you were already behind us.

How could we not have known?

Wasn’t there a sign? Your reluctance to go? The packed suitcase? The not hearing from you?

Something we could point to so that next time we can say, wait, here is the sign. Next time we will know. And we will mourn right from the start.

Could we have kept you with us longer? Could we have all hung on to you, held you closer, played in the park once more with you to stave off the unforgiving fate for a few more days, a few more Sundays, a few more afternoons? Would that have been worth it, to have you for one more month before you were claimed, before you were lost to us? Knowing your inevitable future, would it have been worth it to see your face for another day, another hour, another minute before you were blink and gone?

Yes.

Yes, it would have been worth it. For you. And for us.

Papa was drunk, spread out on the couch, and Mama was wiping the couch, crying into the bucket of water. Tatiana offered to clean up. Mama pushed her away. Dasha was in the kitchen, crying while she was cooking dinner. Tatiana was filled with an acute sense of finality, a sharp anxiety for the days ahead. Anything could happen in a future forged by the incomprehensible present in which her twin brother was no longer alive.

As they prepared dinner, Tatiana said to Dasha, “Dash, a month ago you asked me if I thought Pasha was still alive, and I said—”

“Like I pay any attention to you, Tania,” snapped Dasha.

“Why did you ask me?” questioned a surprised Tatiana.

“I thought you were going to give me some comforting pat answer. Listen, I don’t want to talk about it. You might not be shocked, but we all are.”

When he came for dinner, Alexander raised his questioning eyebrows to Tatiana, who told him about the telegram.

No one ate the cabbage with a little canned ham that Dasha had made, except Alexander and Tatiana, who, despite a small hope, had been living with a lost Pasha since Luga.

Papa remained on the couch, and Mama sat by his side listening to the tick-tock, tick-tock of the radio’s metronome.

Dasha went to put the samovar on, and Alexander and Tatiana were left alone. He didn’t say anything, just bent his head slightly and peered into her face. For a moment they held each other’s eyes.

“Courage, Alexander,” she whispered.

“Courage, Tatiana.”

She left and went out onto the roof, looking for bombs in the chilly Leningrad night. Summer was over. Winter wasn’t far off.


Part Two

WINTER’S FIERCE EMBRACE


BESET AND BESIEGED

WHAT did it cost the soul to lie? At every step, with every breath, with every Soviet Information Bureau report, with every casualty list and every monthly ration card?

From the moment Tatiana woke up until she fell into a bleary sleep, she lied.

She wished Alexander would stop coming around. Lies.

She wished he would end it with Dasha. Alas. More lies.

No more trips to St. Isaac’s. That was good news. Lies.

No more tram rides, no more canals, no more Summer Garden, no more Luga, no more lips or eyes or palpitating breath. Good. Good. Good. More lies.

He was cold. He had an uncanny ability to act as if there were nothing behind his smiling face, or his steady hands, or his burned-down cigarette. Not a twitch showed on his face for Tatiana. That was good. Lies.

Curfew was imposed on Leningrad at the beginning of September. Rations were reduced again. Alexander stopped coming every day. That was good. More lies.

When Alexander came, he was extremely affectionate with Dasha, in front of Tatiana and in front of Dimitri. That was good. Lies.

Tatiana put on her own brave face and turned it away and smiled at Dimitri and clenched her heart in a tight fist. She could do it, too. More lies.

Pouring tea. Such a simple matter, yet fraught with deceit. Pouring tea, for someone else before him. Her hands trembled with the effort.

Tatiana wished she could get out from the spell that was Leningrad at the beginning of September, get out from the circle of misery and love that besieged her.