Axinya whooped.

Dusia crossed herself.

“I know, Naira Mikhailovna. We don’t need much.” She looked down on the floor. “We have some things, we have my trunk. Alexander said he will make us a bench. I’ll bring my desk with the sewing machine . . . we’ll be fine.”

“But how—”

“Oh, Naira,” said Axinya, “leave the girl alone, will you?”

Dusia glared at the rumpled bedsheets on top of the stove. A flustered Tatiana smiled. Alexander was right. It was better to go and visit them. She asked when would be a good time to come for dinner.

Naira said, “Come tonight, of course. We’ll celebrate. But you come every night. Look, you won’t be able to eat here at all. There’s nowhere even to sit or cook. You’ll starve. Come every night. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”



“Yes, it’s too much to ask,” Alexander said when he returned with no ice (“Tomorrow”) but with an ax, a hammer and nails, a saw, a wood plane, and a kerosene-burning Primus stove. “I didn’t marry you so we could go over there every night.” He laughed. “You invited them inside? That’s very brave of you, my wife. Did you at least make the bed before they came in?” He laughed harder.

Tatiana was sitting down on the cool iron hearth, shaking her head. “You’re just impossible.”

“I’m impossible? I’m not going there for dinner, forget it. Why don’t you just invite them here afterward then, for the post-dinner vaudeville—”

“Vaudeville?”

“Never mind.” He dropped all of his goods on the floor in the corner of the cabin. “Invite them here for the entertainment hour. Go ahead. As I make love to you, they can walk around the hearth, clucking to their hearts’ content. Naira will say, ‘Tsk, tsk, tsk. I told her to go with my Vova. I know he could do it better.’ Raisa will want to say, ‘Oh, my, oh, my,’ but she’ll be shaking too much. Dusia will say, ‘Oh, dear Jesus, I prayed to You to spare her from the horrors of the marriage bed!’ And Axinya will say—”

“ ‘Wait till I tell the whole village about his horrors,’ ” said Tatiana.

Alexander laughed and then went to the water to swim.

Tatiana nested inside the cabin, arranging their things, neatening up, and making the bed. She got herself ready to go to Naira’s and was sitting by the iron hearth waiting for the water to boil on the little Primus stove so she could make some tea when Alexander came back inside. He took off his wet shorts and came close to her. She glanced up, her heart giving out at the sight of him. He nudged her with his leg. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said, quickly turning her gaze back to the kettle. But he nudged her again, and she wanted to look at him so much.

Wanted to taste him so much.

Overcoming her shyness, Tatiana knelt on the wide-plank wood floor in front of Alexander, taking him into her tender hands. “Are all men this beautiful,” she whispered fondly, “or just you?”

“Oh, just me,” replied a grinning Alexander. “All other men are repellent.” He lifted her off the floor. “Too hard on your knees on the wood.”

“In America do they have carpets?”

“Wall to wall.”

“Get me a pillow, Shura,” whispered Tatiana.



They went over to Naira’s for dinner. Tatiana cooked while Alexander fixed the broken fence. Vova and Zoe came, too, ostensibly confounded by the twisted hand of fate that had allowed their little, unassuming, innocent Tania to be married to a soldier in the Red Army.

Tatiana saw that everyone was watching her and Alexander’s every move and interaction. So when she served Alexander and stood close against him as he looked up at her, she could not look down at him, her body throbbing with remembrance. She was afraid that every person at the table would know instantly what she was remembering.

After dinner Alexander didn’t ask anyone to help her. He helped her himself, and when they were outside, bent over the dishpan, he turned her chin to him and said, “Tatia, don’t turn your face away from me again. Because now you’re mine, and every time I look at you, I need to see you’re mine in your eyes.”

Tatiana gazed at him, adoring him.

“There I am,” he whispered, kissing her, their hands entwined in the warm, soapy water.


13


The following tranquil afternoon a barebacked and barefooted Alexander was crouching and fiddling with two metal bowls while Tatiana danced in little steps behind him, jumping up and down and asking him what he was doing. It occurred to her that she didn’t like surprises. She liked to know things up front. Finally he had to get up, take her by the shoulders, and lead her away, asking her to go and cook something, read, practice her English — something, anything other than bother him for the next twenty minutes.

Tatiana could not. She stopped jumping but tiptoed near him, bending over his back to see.

Alexander put milk, heavy cream, sugar and eggs into the smaller metal bowl and mixed the ingredients briskly.

She lifted her shirt and rubbed her breasts against his bare back.

“Hmm,” he said. “What I need right now, though, is a cup of blueberries.”

Tatiana got those for him, glad to help. After filling the large bowl with ice and rock salt, Alexander put the small metal bowl inside the large metal bowl and with a long wooden spoon started stirring the milk and sugar mixture.

“What are you doing? When will you tell me?”

“Very soon you’ll know.”

“How soon? Just tell me now.”

“You’re impossible. You’ll know in thirty minutes. Can you wait thirty minutes?”

“Thirty minutes? What are we going to do for thirty minutes?” She was bouncing up and down.

“You’re too much.” He laughed. “Look, I have to mix this. Come back in thirty minutes.”

Tatiana walked around the clearing in circles, watching him.

She was deliriously happy. She was speechlessly, wordlessly, infinitely happy.

“Shura, are you watching? Look!” She cartwheeled and then balanced herself upside down on one hand.

“Yes, sweet girl,” he said. “I’m watching.”

Thirty minutes later Alexander called her over.

Tatiana skipped up and looked at the thick, blue-colored mixture in the bowl. “What is it?”

He handed her a spoon. “Try it.”

She tasted it. “Ice cream?” she said incredulously.

He nodded with a grin. “Ice cream.”

“You made me ice cream?”

“Yes. Happy birthday.” Pause. “Now, why are you crying? Eat. It’ll melt.”

Tatiana sat on the ground with the bowl between her legs and ate her ice cream and cried. Alexander opened his hands with perplexed incomprehension and went to wash.

“I saved you some ice cream. Have some,” Tatiana said tearfully when he returned.

“No, have it all,” he said.

“It’s too much for me. I had half of it. Have the rest. Otherwise what are we going to do with it?”

“I was thinking,” Alexander said, kneeling by her, “that I’d like to undress you, spread the ice cream all over your body, and lick it off you.”

Dropping the spoon, Tatiana said hoarsely, “Sounds like a waste of perfectly good ice cream.”

Though she didn’t think so when he was done with her.

Afterward they swam, and then he sat and smoked. “Tatia, show me your naked cartwheels.”

“What, here? No, this isn’t a good place.”

“If not here, where? Go on, right into the river.”

Tatiana stood up, smiling and sparkling naked, lifted her arms, and said, “Are you ready?” And then catapulted herself upside down in jubilant rainbow somersaults one two three four five six seven times into the Kama.

“How was that?” she called to him from the water.

“Spectacular,” he replied, sitting on the ground, smoking and watching her.


14


Even without his watch, Alexander, still on military time, woke first in the early blue morning and went to wash and smoke, while Tatiana sleepily waited for him, curled into a ball like a warm bun, as if she had just come out of the oven. When he jumped into bed, he immediately pressed his ice-cold body into her. She yelped and futilely tried to get away. “Please, no! That’s just merciless. I hope they fine you for that in the army. I bet you never did that to Marazov twice.”

“I bet you’re right,” he replied, “But I don’t have inalienable rights to Marazov. You’re my wife. Now, turn to me.”

“Let go and I’ll turn.”

“Tania . . .” whispered Alexander. “I don’t need you to turn to me.” He continued to press himself into her. “But I’m not letting go until I’ve had enough of you. Until you’ve warmed me from the inside out and the outside in.”

After they made love, Tatiana made Alexander breakfast. Twelve potato pancakes, and then she sat on the blanket next to him in the crisp sunrise, every glittering day warmer than before. Alexander ate ravenously. She watched him.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She smiled. “You’re always so hungry. How did you survive last winter?”

“How did I survive last winter?”

She gave him the rest of her own pancakes. He protested, but not for long when she scooted closer to him, a breath away, and fed him herself, unable to look away from his face. She felt melted before him.

“What, Tatia?” Alexander asked softly, taking the last bite from the fork in her hands. He smiled. “Did I do something you liked?”

Blushing and shaking her head once, she emitted a small excited sound and kissed him on his unshaven cheek. “Come on, husband,” she murmured. “Let’s go and shave you.”

While she was shaving him, she said, “Did I tell you that Axinya offered to fire up the banya tomorrow morning if we want to have a hot bath, and to stand guard by the door to make sure no one comes in?”

“Hmm. You told me,” Alexander replied. “I like that Axinya, but you know she’ll be standing at the door to hear us.”

“You’ll have to be quieter, then, won’t you?” Tatiana said, wiping the soap off his smooth cheek.

“I’ll have to be quieter?”

She blushed, and he smiled.

“What are we going to do today?” Tatiana asked as she finished the other cheek and dried his face. “We should go pick some blueberries later, so I can make blueberry pie.”

“We should. But first I’m going to drag that log into the water so we can have a place to sit and brush our teeth, and then I’m going to build us a table to clean our fish,” Alexander replied. “You will go to your damn sewing circle. To your women. I won’t be happy.”

“I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” she told him.

“I’ll be happy.”

“Your job is to be happy.”

“I have only one job here in Lazarevo,” Alexander said, catching her around the waist. “To make love to my nubile wife.”

Tatiana almost moaned out loud. “I see a lot of talking and not a lot of—”



“How is my English?” Tatiana asked Alexander in English.

“It’s good,” Alexander replied in English. It was late morning. They were walking through the dense deciduous riverbank woods a few kilometers from home, with two buckets for blueberries, and they were supposed to be talking only in English, but Tatiana backtracked and said in Russian, “I’m reading much better than I’m talking, I think. John Stuart Mill is simply unreadable now instead of unintelligible.”

Alexander smiled. “That’s a fine distinction.” He yanked up a couple of mushrooms. “Tania, can we eat these?”

Taking them out of his hands and throwing them back on the ground, Tatiana said, “Yes. But we will only be able to eat them once.”

Alexander laughed. She said, “I have to teach you how to pick mushrooms, Shura. You can’t just rip them out of the ground like that.”

“I have to teach you how to speak English, Tania,” said Alexander.

In English, Tatiana continued, “This is my new husband, Alexander Barrington.”

And in English, Alexander replied with a smile of pleasure on his face, “And this is my young wife, Tatiana Metanova.” He kissed the top of her braided head and in Russian said, “Tatiana, now say the other words I taught you.”

She turned the color of a tomato. “No,” she stated firmly, in English. “I am not saying them.”

“Please.”

“No. Look for blueberries.” Still in English.

She saw that Alexander couldn’t have been less interested in blueberries. “What about later? Will you say them later?” he asked.

“Not now, not later,” Tatiana replied bravely. But she was not looking at him.

Alexander drew her to him. “Later,” he continued in English, “I will insist that you please me by using your English-speaking tongue in bed with me.”