“Well, you caught me, all right,” said Tatiana.

“Tania, look at you, how could you let him do that to you?”

“I ask myself that question over and over,” Tatiana said. “And not just about him.”

Alexander blinked. “Tania—”

“I don’t want to talk to you right now!” Tatiana screamed. And then, taking another step back, her lip shaking and her eyes filled with tears, she said, much more quietly, “I don’t want to talk to you ever.”

“Tania, can I just explain—”

“No.”

“Will you for a second—”

“No!”

“Tania . . .”

“NO!” She came up to him, her teeth gritted, and she couldn’t believe herself: she wanted to hit him. She clenched her fists. She wanted to hit Alexander.

He stared at her fists and at her and said with upset incredulity, “You promised me you would forgive me—”

“Forgive you,” Tatiana hissed through her teeth, tears streaming down her face, “for your brave and indifferent face, Alexander!” She groaned in pain. “Not your brave and indifferent heart.”

Before he had a chance to respond or to stop her, Tatiana ran from him, through the doors, flying up three flights of stairs to her apartment.

At home Papa was lying on the floor in the hallway, still drunk, but also unconscious. Mama and Dasha were crying in the room. Oh, my God, thought Tatiana, wiping her own face. Will this never end?

Marina whispered to Tatiana, “Tania, what a mess! You cannot believe the things Alexander said when he stormed in here. Look what he did to the wall!” She pointed with a thrill to some broken plaster in the hallway. “Alexander said that with his drinking your Papa had turned his back on his family just when they needed him most. That he had failed in his responsibilities to the people he was supposed to protect, not harm. Alexander was like a growling tank!” Marina said, looking extremely impressed. “He said, ‘Where can she go if outside the Nazis are bombing her, and inside her own father is trying to kill her?’ Tania, he was unstoppable!” Marina exclaimed. “He told your mother to put your father in the hospital. He said, ‘You are a mother, for God’s sake — save your children!’ ” Tatiana lowered her eyes away from Marina. “Your father was very drunk and went to hit him, and Alexander grabbed him by both shoulders and shoved him against the wall and cursed and screamed and then stormed out. How he didn’t kill him, I swear I don’t know. Can you believe it?”

“I can believe it,” Tatiana whispered. Alexander carried his own father with him wherever he went. He carried his own father, his own mother, his own self. Tatiana was the only person in the world he trusted, and so she bore some of that cross with him. Not much of it, but just enough to remember him at this time. For a moment — but it was all that she needed — Tatiana stopped feeling for herself and felt for Alexander, and when she did, she became less angry with him.

“Has he just passed out?” Tatiana said, sitting down on the sofa and looking at her father.

“No, I think he fell from fear. Tania, did you hear me? Alexander looked ready to kill him!”

“I heard you,” said Tatiana.

“Oh, Tania,” said Marina, lowering her voice to a whisper in the hallway, two meters away from one room, three meters away from another. “Tania, whatever are you two going to do?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tatiana said. “I, for one, am going to try to help Papa.”

Papa remained unconscious, and the Metanovs became worried. Mama suggested that maybe they really should put Papa in the hospital for a few days to sober up. Tatiana thought it was a good idea. Papa had not been sober for many days.

Tatiana asked Petr Petrov down the hall for help with carrying Papa to the drunk ward at Suvorovsky Hospital. There were no beds available at Grechesky, where Tatiana worked.

The girls and Petr carried Papa to the hospital — on the north side of an east-west street — where he was admitted and put into a large room with four other drunk men. Tatiana asked for a sponge and some water and washed her father’s face, and then sat with him for a few minutes, holding his flaccid hand. “I’m really sorry, Papa,” she said.

She sat with him, holding his hand, every once in a while squeezing it and saying, “Papa, can you hear me?”

Finally he groaned in a way that told her maybe he could. He opened his unfocused eyes.

“Right here, Papa,” she kept saying. “I’m right here. Look at me.”

His head bobbed on the pillow. She continued to hold his hand. “You’re in the hospital for just a few days. Until you get sober. Then you’ll come home. Everything will be all right then.” Tatiana felt him squeeze her hand. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to bring Pasha back for you. But you know, the rest of us are all still here.”

She saw tears in his eyes. His mouth opened as he squeezed her hand again, whispering hoarsely, “It’s all my fault . . .”

Tatiana kissed him on the head and said, “No, darling Papa. It’s not. It’s just war. But you do need to get sober.” He closed his eyes, and Tatiana went home.

At home Dasha was upset at Tatiana and shouted at her while Marina mediated. Tatiana sat on the sofa in the room and remained silent, imagining herself sitting peacefully between Deda and Babushka. At one point Dasha got herself so worked up that she leaned forward to hit Tatiana and was pulled away by Marina, who said, “Dasha, this is ridiculous. Stop it!”

Dasha ripped herself from Marina’s grasp, but Marina exclaimed, “Stop yourself. She is hurt enough! Can’t you see she’s hurt enough?”

Tatiana watched Marina with soft eyes and Dasha with harder ones, and then she got up wearily and went to walk past them to the other room. She needed to lie down and never have another day like this one. Or like the last one. Or the one before. Dasha grabbed her. Tatiana twisted away, raised her face to her sister, and said, “Dasha, in one minute I’m going to lose my patience. Stop and leave me alone. Can you do that?”

Her eyes remained unblinking on her sister, who let go of her and left Tatiana alone.

Later that night in bed Marina stroked Tatiana’s back, whispering, “It’s all right, Tania. It’ll be all right.”

“And you know this how?” Tatiana whispered. “We’re bombed every day, we’re blockaded, soon there will be no food, Papa can’t stop drinking—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” whispered Marina.

“Then I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tatiana whispered back, “but before you tell me, stop talking.”

Dasha was not in bed.

Tatiana slept with her face to the wall, her hand on Alexander’s The Bronze Horseman book, her brow throbbing. But in the morning it felt a little better. She dabbed some diluted iodine on the cut and went to work, her face discolored by the sienna antiseptic.

During her lunch hour she left the hospital and slowly walked to the Field of Mars. It had been made unrecognizable by the trenches dug around it and the concrete emplacements for artillery weapons erected around the perimeter. The field itself was mined; she could not walk there. All the benches had been removed. The only thing Tatiana could do was stand several hundred meters from the archway that led to Pavlov Barracks and watch smoking, laughing soldiers loudly filtering out.

She stood for half an hour. Then she went back to the hospital, thinking, not bombs nor my broken heart can take away from me walking barefoot with you in jasmine June through the Field of Mars.


7


That evening during the post-dinner bombing show the Suvorovsky Hospital where Papa lay was hit.

Three bombs fell on the hospital, which caught fire and burned into the night, despite the efforts of the firefighters. The hospital was not made of brick, which resisted fire, but of wattle and daub, the early-eighteenth-century material out of which most of Leningrad was built. The whole building collapsed onto itself, then went up in flames. The few people who were able to move jumped from the windows, screaming as they fell.

Papa, at forty-three years old, having been born in the previous century, wasted on remorse, unable to sober up, never rose from his bed.

Dasha and Tatiana and Marina and Mama ran down Suvorovsky and watched with unsteady, horrified impotence as the inferno conquered the firemen, the water hoses, the building, the night.

The girls helped to throw useless buckets of water on the ground-floor windows. They got sand from the rooftops of the surrounding buildings, but it was all just meaningless movement sustained by inertia. Tatiana wrapped charred bodies in wet sheets provided by Grechesky Hospital. She stayed until morning. Dasha and Marina went back home with Mama.

Only a handful of people had made it out alive. The firemen could not even find Papa’s body and made no apologies as they put out the last of the flames. They were not taking bodies out of that hospital. “Look at the building, girlie,” said one fireman. “Does it look like we can get anything out? It’s all cinder. Once it cools down, you’ll be able to touch it and watch it turn to black ash.” He patted her absentmindedly on the shoulder. “Time to let go. Your father, is it? Fucking Germans. Comrade Stalin is right. Don’t know how, but we’re going to bring it all home to them.”

As Tatiana walked slowly home at dawn, she thought of herself being buried beneath Luga station, feeling life ooze out of the three people she had crawled under. She hoped Papa had never woken up, never suffered.

At home she silently got the family’s ration cards — all except Papa’s — and went out to get bread.



If life in the two communal rooms was difficult for Tatiana before, it became nearly impossible after the death of her father.

Mama was inconsolable and not talking to Tatiana.

Dasha was angry and not talking to Tatiana.

Tatiana wasn’t sure if Dasha was angry because of Papa or if Dasha was angry because of Alexander. Dasha was certainly not saying. She wasn’t talking to Tatiana at all.

Marina visited her mother daily in Vyborg and continued to level her understanding eyes on Tatiana.

And Babushka painted. She painted an apple pie that Tatiana said looked good enough to eat.

A few days after Papa’s death Dasha asked Tatiana to come with her to the barracks to tell Alexander about what had happened. Tatiana dragged Marina along for strength. She wanted to see him, and yet . . . there was so little to say. Or was there too much to say? Tatiana wasn’t sure, couldn’t figure it out without Alexander’s help, and was afraid to face him.

Alexander was not at the barracks, and neither was Dimitri. Anatoly Marazov came into the passageway and introduced himself.

Tatiana knew of him well from Alexander. “Isn’t Dimitri under your command?” she asked.

“No, he is under Sergeant Kashnikov, who has one of the platoons under my command, but they’ve all been sent by powers higher than me to Tikhvin.”

“Tikhvin? On the other side of the river?” said Tatiana.

“Yes, in a barge across Ladoga. Not enough men up in Tikhvin.”

“And Alexander, too?” Tatiana said, short of breath.

“No, he’s up at Karelia,” Marazov replied, looking Tatiana over appreciatively. “So are you the girl?” Marazov smiled. “The girl he’s forsaken all others for?”

“Not her,” Dasha said rudely, coming up to Tatiana. “Me. I’m Dasha. Don’t you remember? We met in Sadko back in early June.”

“Dasha,” mumbled Marazov. Tatiana paled, leaning harder against the wall. Marina stared at her.

Marazov turned to Tatiana. “And what’s your name?”

“Tatiana,” she said.

Marazov’s eyes flared and then dimmed. Dasha asked, “Do you know each other?”

“No. We’ve never met,” he said.

“Oh,” said Dasha. “Just for a moment you looked as if you recognized my sister.”

Marazov left his gaze on Tatiana. “Not at all,” he said slowly, but his eyes flickered a confused familiarity at her. He shrugged. “I’ll tell Alexander you stopped by. I’m going to join him in Karelia in a few days.”

“Yes, please tell him that our father has died,” Dasha said. Tatiana turned and walked out of the passageway, pulling Marina with her.



The family was split apart like faulted earth. Mama could not move from her bed. Babushka took care of her. Mama didn’t want to have anything to do with Tatiana, or her apologies, or her pleas for forgiveness. Finally Tatiana stopped pleading.

The emptiness Tatiana felt overpowered her; the sense of guilt, the anchor of responsibility weighed her down. It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault, she kept repeating to herself in the mornings as she cut the bread, put some on her plate, and ate it silently. It would take her maybe thirty seconds to eat her share, and she would pick up all the little crumbs with her forefinger, and then she would turn the plate over and shake it onto the table. All that — thirty seconds. And thirty seconds of, it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault.