“Of course you don’t!”

Breathing hard, Tatiana said, “You told Dasha you would get married, she told my grandmother, my grandmother told the village. You wrote her a letter saying you were coming to marry her. Words have meaning, you know.” Tatiana fell briefly quiet. “Even words you don’t mean.”

Why did he think she wasn’t talking about Dasha now?

“If you felt so strongly about this,” he said, “then why didn’t you write me a letter back, saying, ‘You know what, Alexander, Dasha didn’t make it, but I’m right here.’ ” I would have come sooner. And I wouldn’t have lived the six months I lived not knowing if you had survived!”

“After the letter you wrote her,” Tatiana said incredulously, “you think I’d be writing you and asking you to come here? You think after that letter I’d be asking you for anything? I’d be an idiot to do that, wouldn’t I? An idiot, or—” She stopped.

“Or what?” he demanded.

“Or a child,” she said, not looking at him.

Alexander took a deep breath. “Oh, Tania—”

“These games you grown-ups play,” she said, backing away from him. “These lies — you’re just too good at them.” She lowered her head. “Too good for me.”

All Alexander wanted that instant was to touch her. Her lips, her anger, her face — he wanted to touch it all. “Tania . . .” he whispered, holding out his hands to her. “What are you talking about? What games, what lies?”

“Why did you come here, why?” she said coldly.

He felt himself about to choke on his words. “How can you even ask me that?”

“How? Because the last thing you wrote was that you were coming to marry Dasha. How much you loved her. How she was the woman for you. The only woman for you. I read that letter. That’s what you wrote. Because one of the last things I heard you say on Lake Ladoga was that you never—”

“Tatiana!” Alexander screamed, the pin falling to the ground. “What the hell are you talking about? Did you forget you made me promise to lie till the last? You made me promise. As late as November I was still saying, let’s tell the truth. But you! Lie, lie, lie, Shura, marry her, but promise me you won’t break my sister’s heart. Do you remember?”

“Yes, and you did commendably well,” Tatiana said acidly. “But did you have to be so convincing?”

Running his hand through his hair, Alexander shook his head. “You know I didn’t mean it.”

“Which part?” she said loudly, stepping up close and looking up at him, angry and unafraid. “The marrying Dasha part? The loving her part? Which part of all those lies do I know you didn’t mean?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he exclaimed. “What answer did you want me to give her as she lay dying in your arms?”

“The only answer you could give her,” she replied. “The only answer you meant to give, living your life of lies.”

“We both live that life of lies, Tatiana — because of you!” he yelled, wanting to tear her hair out. “But you know I didn’t mean what I said.”

“I thought you didn’t mean it,” Tatiana said. “I hoped you didn’t mean it. But can you understand that it was the only thing I heard all the way on the train to Molotov and all the way across the Volga ice and for two months in the hospital as I struggled for my breath, can you understand that?”

She struggled for her breath now as Alexander stood and watched her, feeling unbearable remorse.

“I wouldn’t have cared,” Tatiana continued. “I told you, I don’t need much, I don’t need much comfort.” She clenched her fists again. And the hurt was in her eyes. “But I do need a little bit,” she said, her voice unsteady. “I need a little bit for me, and then you could have said what you needed to say to Dasha, as you absolutely had to!” She took a breath. “I wanted your eyes on me for a second to let me know that I wasn’t nothing, so I could have a little faith. But no,” she said. “You treated me like you always do — as if I weren’t there.”

“I don’t treat you as if you aren’t there,” Alexander said, paling with confusion. “What are you talking about? I hide you from everyone. That’s not the same thing.”

“Ah, that’s a fine difference for a girl like me,” said Tatiana. “But if you can hide your heart so well even from my eyes, then maybe you can hide your heart for Dasha, too — the same way. And maybe for Marina and for Zoe, and for every girl you’ve ever been with. Maybe that’s what you grown men do — in private look at us one way and then blatantly deny us in public, as if we mean absolutely nothing.” She stared at the ground.

“Are you crazy?” asked Alexander. “Are you forgetting that the only one who did not see the truth was your blinded sister? Private, public, Marina saw it in five minutes.” He paused. “On second thought, the only two people who seem not to have seen the truth are your sister and you, Tatiana.”

“What truth?” She stood a stride away from him, and her fists were shaking. “I couldn’t have done it,” she said. “Lied so well. But you are a man. You did. You denied me in your last words, and you denied me in your last glance. And for a while it almost seemed right. How could you feel for me? I thought. Who could feel for anything after that Leningrad . . .” Tatiana paused, panting hard. “But still I wanted to believe in you so much! So when we got your letter to Dasha, I ripped it open, hoping I was wrong, praying that maybe there was a word in it for me—” Tatiana raised her voice. “A single word, a single syllable that I could keep for my own, needing it so desperately, to show me that my entire life had not been a complete lie!” She broke off. “A single word!” she yelled, hitting Alexander with both fists in the chest. “Just one word, Alexander!”

He tried to remember what he had written. He could not. But it was her hurting eyes he wanted to heal most of all. He took her into his arms, fighting with him, clutching him, and then crying. “Tania, please. You knew I was in agony—”

But she was so upset and volatile that she wrested herself out of his arms and cried, “I knew this? How did I know this?”

“You are supposed to just know,” Alexander said, coming toward her. “That’s the whole point of you.”

“Well, what’s the point of you?” she yelled, backing away.

“The point of me,” he yelled back, “is that I stood with my arms around you and my whole heart in my eyes in the back of that fucking Ladoga truck and pleaded with you to save yourself for me!”

“How do I know you don’t ask every girl you send across the Road of Life to save herself for you with those eyes of yours?”

“Oh, my God, Tatiana.”

In a broken voice she said, “I don’t know anything other than you. Not how to act, or how to play games, or how to lie, or anything.” She lowered her head. “You show me one thing in private, and then suddenly you plan to marry my sister. On Ladoga you tell her you never felt for me, you tell her you love only her, you don’t look at me as you leave me to face death, and then you don’t send a word my way. How in the world do you expect someone like me to know what the truth is without a little help from you? All I’ve ever known in my life is your damn lies!”

“Tatiana!” he cried. “Have you forgotten St. Isaac’s?”

“How many other girls went to visit you there, Alexander?”

“Have you forgotten Luga?”

“I was just a damsel in distress,” she said bitterly. “Dimitri himself told me how much you liked to help us girls out.”

Alexander was about to lose control completely. “What did you think I was doing coming to Fifth Soviet every chance I got, bringing you all my food?” he shouted. “Who did you think I was doing that for?”

“I never said you didn’t feel pity for me, Alexander!”

“Pity?” he exclaimed. “For fuck’s sake, pity?”

Folding her arms across her chest, Tatiana said, “That’s right.”

“You know what?” he said, nearly right up against her. “Pity is too good for you. That’s the price you pay for living your life as a lie. Don’t like it much, do you?”

“No, I hate it,” Tatiana said, looking up and not backing away one centimeter. “And knowing that I hate it, why in the hell did you come here? Just to torture me further?”

“I came because I didn’t know Dasha had died!” he yelled. “You couldn’t be bothered to fucking write me!”

“So you did come to marry Dasha,” Tatiana said in a calm voice. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

Growling helplessly, Alexander clenched his fists and stepped quickly away from her.

“Can’t keep all the lies straight in your head, can you?”

“Tatiana, you are completely out of line,” he said. “I told you from the first day we met, let’s come clean, let’s not live this life. Let’s choose a different one. I told you that from the start. Let’s tell them the truth and live with the consequences. You were the one who said no. I didn’t like it. But I said fine.”

“No! You did not say fine, Alexander! Had you said fine, you would not have been coming to Kirov every single day against my wishes.”

“Against your wishes?” he said, staggering back.

Tatiana shook her head at him. “You are unbelievable. What, whose head do you think you won’t sway, Alexander Barrington, with your rifle and your height and your life? You think that just because I, a seventeen-year-old child, opened my mouth and my eyes and gaped at you as if I’d never seen anything quite like it, you had the right to ask my sister to marry you? You think because I’m so young that wouldn’t break me? You think I need nothing from you, while you just take and take and take from me—”

“I don’t think you need nothing from me, and I have not taken and taken and taken from you,” Alexander said through his own clenched teeth.

“You’ve taken everything but that!” she screamed. “And that you don’t deserve!”

He came up close to her and hissed, “I could have taken that, too.”

“That’s right,” she said, furiously shoving him away. “Because you haven’t broken me enough.”

“Stop shoving me!”

“Stop menacing me! Stay away from me!”

He stood back. “None of this would be happening if you had listened to me from the beginning. None of it! Let’s tell them, I told you.”

“And I told you,” Tatiana said vehemently, “that my sister was more important to me than some need of yours I couldn’t comprehend. She was more important to me than some need of my own I couldn’t understand either. All I wanted was for you to respect my wishes. But you! Oh, you kept coming at me and coming at me and coming at me, and little by little you tore me apart, and when it wasn’t enough, you came for me in the hospital and tore me apart some more, and when that wasn’t enough, you got me up on the roof of St. Isaac’s with you to finish me off—”

“I have not finished you off,” he said.

“To finish off my heart for good,” continued Tatiana with clenched everything. “And you knew it. And when you had it all, and had me, and knew it, that’s when you showed me how much I really meant to you by planning to marry my sister!”

“Well, what do you think?” Alexander shouted. “What do you think happens when you can’t be fucking bothered to fight from the start for what you want? What do you think happens when you give the people you want away? That’s what happens! They go on with their lives, they get married, they have children. You wanted to live that lie!”

“Don’t tell me I wanted to live that lie! I was living the only truth I knew. I had a family I did not want to sacrifice for you! That’s what I fought for.”

Unsteady on his feet, Alexander could not believe the words that were coming out of her. “That was your only truth, Tatiana?”

She blinked and lowered her eyes.

“No,” she said. “You came for me, and I did not push you away far enough. How could I? I was—” She broke off. “I was in this with my eyes open, and my eyes were only for you. I hoped you were smarter, but I saw you were not smarter by much, and so I continued with you, knowing that I would stand by you and believe in you. I would give you anything and everything you needed, wanting so little back for myself.” She couldn’t look at him bravely anymore. “Give me a glance at the end of your proclamation of love to someone else,” Tatiana said, “and that would have been enough for me. Give me one word in your letter of love for someone else, and that would have been enough for me. But you didn’t feel enough for me to know I might need even so little—”

“Tatiana!” he screamed into her face. “I will stand here and be accused of anything, but don’t you dare tell me I didn’t feel enough for you! Don’t even pretend to yourself you can speak that lie and have it come out of your mouth as the truth. Everything I have fucking done with my life since the day I met you was because of how I felt about you, so if you continue to give me your bullshit now, I swear to God—”