Tatiana crawled to him on the blanket. “Let’s not talk about this anymore,” she said, hugging him tightly.

“Please let’s not,” said Alexander. “Let’s go and dive into the evening Kama.”



The next morning Tatiana was screaming from inside the cabin. Her shrieks carried to Alexander through the pines, over the sound of his ax falling down on the cracking wood. He dropped the axe and ran to the house to find her crouching on top of the high counter. Her legs were drawn up to her neck.

“What?” he exclaimed, panting.

“Shura, a mouse ran by my feet as I was cooking.”

Alexander stared at the eggs on the hearth, at the small pot of bubbling coffee on the Primus stove, at the tomatoes already on their plates, and then at Tatiana, ascended a meter from the floor. His mouth reluctantly, infectiously drew into a wide grin. “What are you” — he was trying to keep from laughing — “what are you doing up there?”

“I told you!” she yelled. “A mouse ran by and brushed his” — she shivered — “his tail against my leg. Can you take care of it?”

“Yes, but what are you doing up there?”

“Getting away from the mouse, of course.” She frowned, looking at him unhappily. “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to catch it?”

Alexander walked to the counter and picked her up. Tatiana grabbed his neck but did not put her feet down. He hugged her, kissed her, kissed her again with enormous affection, and said, “Tatiasha, you goose, mice can climb, you know.”

“No they can’t.”

“I’ve seen mice climb the pole of the commander’s tent in Finland, trying to get to the piece of food at the very top.”

“What was food doing at the top of the tent pole?”

“We put it there.”

“Why?”

“To see if mice could climb.”

Tatiana almost laughed. “Well, you’re not getting breakfast, or coffee, or me in this house until that mouse is gone.”

After carrying her outside, Alexander went back for the breakfast plates. They ate on the bench, side by side. Alexander turned and stared at her incredulously. “Tania, are you . . . afraid of mice?”

“Yes. Have you killed it?”

“And how would you like me to do that? You never told me you were afraid of mice.”

“You never asked. How would I like you to kill it? You are a captain in the Red Army, for goodness’ sake. What do they teach you there?”

“How to kill human beings. Not mice.”

She barely touched her food. “Well, throw a grenade at it. Use your rifle. I don’t know. But do something.”

Alexander shook his head. “You went out into the streets of Leningrad while the Germans were throwing five-hundred-kilo bombs that blew arms and legs off the women standing ahead of you in line, you stood fearless in front of cannibals, you jumped off a moving train to go and find your brother, but you are afraid of mice?”

“Now you got it,” Tatiana said defiantly.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Alexander said. “If a person is fearless in the big things—”

“You’re wrong. Again. Are you done with your questions? Anything else you want to ask? Or add?”

“Just one thing.” Alexander kept his face serious. “It looks like,” he said slowly, his voice calm, “we’ve found three uses for that too-high potato countertop I built yesterday.” And he burst out laughing.

“Go ahead, laugh,” Tatiana said. “Go ahead. I’m here for your amusement.” Her eyes twinkled.

Putting his own plate on the bench, Alexander took the plate out of her hands and brought her to him to stand between his legs. Reluctantly she came. “Tania, do you have any idea how funny you are?” He kissed her chest, looking up at her. “I adore you.”

“If you really adored me,” she said, trying to twist herself out of his arms, unsuccessfully, “you wouldn’t be sitting here idly flirting when you could be militarizing that cabin.”

Alexander stood up. “Just to point out,” he said, “it’s not called flirting once you’ve made love to the girl.”

After Alexander went inside, a smiling Tatiana sat on the bench and finished her food. In a few minutes he emerged from the cabin holding his rifle in one hand, his pistol in the other, and a bayonet attachment between his teeth. The dead mouse was swinging at the end of the bayonet.

He spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “How did I do?”

Tatiana failed to keep a straight face. “All right, all right,” she said, chortling. “You didn’t have to bring out the spoils of war.”

“Ah, but I know you wouldn’t believe in a dead mouse unless you saw it with your own eyes.”

“Will you stop quoting me back to me? Shura, you tell me, I will believe it,” said Tatiana. “Now, go on, get out of here with that thing.”

“One last question.”

“Oh, no,” said Tatiana, covering her face, trying not to laugh.

“Do you think this dead mouse is worth the price of a . . . killed mouse?”

“Will you just go?”

Tatiana heard his boisterous laughter all the way to the woods and back.


18


They were sitting on their rock fishing. Rather they were attempting to fish. Tatiana was holding her fishing line in the water, but Alexander had put his down and was lying on the rock, rubbing her bare back. Ever since she had sewn herself a new blue cotton sundress, which was open from the nape of her neck to the small of her back, Alexander seemed unable to concentrate on small tasks at hand, such as hunting and gathering. He didn’t want her to wear anything else, but he couldn’t do anything else either.

“Shura, please. We haven’t caught a thing. I don’t want Naira Mikhailovna to go hungry because you won’t catch her a fish.”

“Hmm. Because that’s what I’m thinking of right now — Naira Mikhailovna. And I told you we should have gotten up at five.”

Tatiana sighed, smiling, looking out onto the shimmering river. “You said you were going to read to me. You brought the Pushkin book out here. Read to me from ‘The Bronze Horseman.’ ” She began, “There was a time, our memories keep its horrors fresh and near us . . .”

“I’d rather—”

“Read. I’ll hunt and gather.”

Alexander was kissing her back. “Put the fishing line down. I can’t take it.”

“It’s nearly six in the evening, and we have no dinner!”

“Come on,” he said, taking the fishing line out of her hands. “When do you ever deny me?” Alexander lay down on his back. “Pull up your dress and sit on me.” Groaning slightly, he paused and said, “No, not like that. Turn around. Sit facing the river, away from me.”

“Away from you?”

“Yes,” Alexander said, closing his eyes. “I want to see your back when you’re on top of me.”

Afterward, as she was still facing away from him, a released and confined and perplexed Tatiana said inaudibly, “Perhaps I could have continued to fish. After all, I’m facing the right way.”

Softly stroking the small of her back, Alexander said nothing.

Tatiana got off him. “Do you want to kiss me?” she asked.

He lay with his eyes closed. “Yes.” But he did not move. “How many days left, Tatiana?” he asked in a gutted voice.

Turning quickly away from him and to the Kama, she picked up her fishing line. “I don’t know,” she whispered, staring at the water. “I’m not keeping time.”

Then Tatiana heard Alexander’s voice from behind. “Why don’t I read to you now? Oh, here. Here’s a passage you’ll like:


“Get married? I? And yet why not?

Of course it won’t be easy sailing.

But what of that? I’m young and strong,

Content to labor hard and long,

I’ll build us soon, if not tomorrow,

A simple nest for sweet repose

And keep—”


He paused. Tatiana knew that the name of the woman in Pushkin’s poem was Parasha. She waited, her eyes glazing over from the ache in her heart. Alexander resumed reading, his cracked voice lower.


“And keep Tatiana free of sorrow,

And in a year or two, who knows,

I may obtain a snug position,

And it shall be Tatiana’s mission

To tend and rear our children . . . yes,

So we will live, and so forever

Will be as one, till death us sever

And grandsons lay us both to rest . . .”


He stopped. Tatiana heard him slam the book shut. “Like that?”

“Read on, soldier,” she said, her trembling hands gripping the fishing line. “Read bravely on.”

“No,” Alexander said from behind her. Tatiana did not turn to look at him. Instead, staring out onto the languid river, she continued from memory:


“Thus ran his reverie. Yet sadly

He wished that night the wind would still

Its mournful wail, the rain less madly

Be rattling at the windowsill . . .”


Alexander and Tatiana did not speak again until they returned to the cabin.

After coming back from Naira’s in the late evening, Alexander built a fire, Tatiana made some tea, and they sat, Tatiana in a lotus position, Alexander next to her. He was very quiet, she thought, quieter than usual.

“Shura,” she said softly, “come here. Put your head on me. Like always.”

He lay down, his head in her lap. Gently, tenderly, full of aching affection, Tatiana stroked his face. “What’s the matter, soldier?” she whispered, bending to smell him. Tea and cigarettes. She cradled his head between her thighs and her breasts, kissing his eyes. “What’s bothering you?”

“Nothing,” he replied. And said nothing else.

Tatiana sighed. “Want to hear a joke?”

“As long as it’s one you haven’t told Vova.”

Tatiana said, “The paratroopers go to the parachute packer. ‘Hey,’ they ask, ‘are your parachutes any good?’ ‘Well,’ he replies, ‘I’ve had no complaints.’ ”

Alexander almost laughed. “Funny, Tania.” He jumped up away from her and took her cup. “I’m going to smoke.”

“Smoke here. Leave the cups. I’ll take care of them later.”

“I don’t want you to take care of them later,” he said. “Why do you always do that?”

She chewed her lip.

Before he walked away, Alexander said, “And why do you always have to serve Vova? What? Are his hands broken? He can’t serve himself?”

“Shura, I serve everybody.” She paused and said quietly, “You first.” She looked up at Alexander. “How would it look if I served everybody but him?”

“I don’t give a shit how it would look, Tania. I just need you not to do it.”

She didn’t answer. Was he displeased with her?

Tatiana continued to sit in front of the flickering flame with her legs crossed. It was dark except for the circle around the fire and the waxing half-moon in the sky. The air smelled of fresh water and burning wood and night. She knew that Alexander was sitting on the bench by the house, slightly behind her, and that he was watching her. He was doing that more and more often. Watching her as he smoked. And smoked. And smoked.

She turned to him. Alexander was watching her, and smoking.

Rising, Tatiana walked to him and stopped at his legs. Stepping on his feet, she asked shyly, “Shura . . . want to go inside?”

He shook his head. “You go ahead. I’ll sit here for a while and wait for the fire to burn out.”

Tatiana looked him over, studied him, searched his eyes, his lips, his slightly unsteady hands.

Chewing her lip again, she didn’t move.

“Go ahead,” Alexander repeated.

Coming closer to him, she pulled his legs apart and knelt on the ground in front of him. His shallow breathing became more rapid. Looking up into his face and rubbing his legs, Tatiana said, “What do I love?”

Alexander didn’t reply.

Tatiana prodded him again. “What do you love?”

“Your soft mouth on me,” he said thickly.

“Mmm,” she said, undoing the ties on his trousers. “Is it too dark? Or can you see?”

“I can see,” he said, taking hold of her head as she took hold of him.

“Shura?”

“Mmm?”

“I love you.”


19


Alexander was in the darkening woods collecting kindling. Tatiana called for him, but he did not answer. She wanted to see him before she ran quickly to Naira’s. On the bench she set out for him a plate of warm fried potatoes, two tomatoes, and a cucumber. When he came back from the woods, he was always hungry. Near his plate she left a cup of sweet black tea, and next to it a cigarette and a lighter.

Tatiana’s funny husband had lost interest in funny things. He had interest in smoking and in chopping wood. That’s all he did now. Smoked for himself, chopped wood for her. They continued to occasionally wake before dawn and go fishing when the Kama was still as glass, the air dewy and blue, go silently and sleepily to their rock in the secluded river pool, just to the side of their clearing. Alexander was right, of course. It was the best time to go fishing. They would catch half a dozen trout in four or five minutes. He would leave them alive in the net basket lowered from a poplar branch into the river. Then he would smoke, and Tatiana would brush her teeth and go back to bed.