Silently she shook her head.

“Don’t shake your head at me!” Alexander yelled. “There is a war on, for fuck’s sake! A war! Millions of people are already dead. What do you want, to be just another dead body without an ID tag in a mass grave?”

She started to convulse. “I have to come with you,” she said in her smallest whisper. “Please.”

“Look,” he said, “I’m a soldier. This country is at war. I have to go back. But you are safe here. I came to get away from the fighting, and you and I had a good time—” Was it possible to actually choke on words? “But now it’s over, do you understand? Over,” he said loudly. “I have to go back, and you can’t come.” He paused, panting. “I don’t want you to come. I’m not even going to be at the garrison. I’ve been moved.”

“Moved where?”

“I can’t tell you. But Leningrad cannot have another winter like we had last year.”

“You’re breaking the blockade? Where?”

“Can’t tell you.”

“You tell me everything.” She paused. “Don’t you, Alexander?” Tatiana asked pointedly. “Don’t you tell me everything?”

What was that in her voice? God. He wasn’t about to ask. “Not this.”

“Oh,” Tatiana said, sitting on the bed, looking down at him. “On the third day after we met, you told me you were from America, just like that. You poured out your entire life to me on our third day. But now you can’t tell me where you’re posted?”

Tatiana jumped down. Alexander backed away. He couldn’t be far enough from her eyes and her body and her open palms.

“Tell me, Shura,” she said pleadingly. “You didn’t marry me to keep secrets.”

“Tania, I’m not having this with you! Do you understand?”

“No!” she yelled. “Why in the world did you marry me then, if all you wanted was to continue to lie!”

“I married you,” Alexander yelled in a breaking voice, “so I could fuck you anytime I felt like it! Don’t you get it by now? Anytime, Tania! What else do you think a soldier on furlough could possibly want? And if I hadn’t married you, all of Lazarevo would now be calling you my whore!”

Alexander could see by Tatiana’s sunken face she could not believe the words that had just come out of his mouth. She staggered back against the wall, not knowing what to cover on herself, her face or her body. “You married me so you could what?”

“Tatia . . .”

“Don’t Tatia me!” she screamed. “First your insults, then Tatia? Your whore, Alexander?” She groaned helplessly and put her face into her hands.

“Tania, please . . .”

“You think I don’t know what you’re doing? That I don’t know you’re trying to make me hate you? Well, you know what,” she said through gritted teeth. “After trying for days, I think you’ve finally succeeded!”

“Tania, please—”

“For days you’ve been trying to push me away so you could leave me easier!”

“I’m coming back,” Alexander said hoarsely.

“Who’ll have you!” she cried. “And are you really? Are you sure you haven’t come here for this?” She ran to her trunk, rummaged through it, found the Bronze Horseman book, and tore from it a handful of hundred- and thousand-dollar bills.

“What’s this?” she yelled, throwing the money at him. “Did you come for this, for your American money? For your ten thousand American dollars I found in your book? Did you come for this, so you could run to America without me? Or were you going to leave me some, as a kind of a thank you for opening your legs, Tatiana?”

“Tania . . .”

Grabbing his rifle by the barrel, she went up to Alexander and furiously shoved the butt of the gun into his stomach, pointing the muzzle at herself. “I want back what you took from me.” She nearly couldn’t continue. “I’m sorry I ever saved myself for you, but now shoot me, you liar and thief — that’s what you want anyway. Take your damn hand away from my throat and pull the trigger.” She jabbed him again, high in the solar plexus, putting the barrel between her breasts. “Go ahead, Alexander,” she said. “Thirty-five rounds, right here in my heart.”

He took the weapon from her without saying a word.

Tatiana raised her hand and slapped him hard on the face. “I want you to leave right now,” she said, a tear rolling down her cheek. “We had some good times. We’re certainly not going to have them again. You fucked me,” she said, “anytime you felt like it. I get it by now. It’s the only thing you wanted from day one. Well, you got what you wanted, you’re done, so go.” Tatiana ripped the wedding ring off her finger and flung it at him. “There — you can give it to your next whore!”

Her shoulders hunched and quaking, she climbed onto the bed, wrapping herself in a white sheet, like a body dead from the hunger.

Alexander went outside and went swimming in the cold Kama waters, wishing for his pain, his remorse, his love, for his whole life to be washed away into the tundra. The blue moon was three nights from full. If I stay in the water, maybe I can float in the river, down to the Volga, into the Caspian Sea, and no one will find me. I will float on my pain and my heart; I will float and feel no more. That’s all I want. To feel no more.

Eventually he came back inside.

Climbing onto the bed, Alexander lay silently next to his Tania, listening for her breath. Every few minutes her breathing would break into the shudder of someone who had been crying for a long time. She lay in a fetal position, turned away from him to the wall.

Finally he unraveled her from the sheet and rubbed against her. Slightly parting her legs, he entered her, pressing his mouth to the nape of her neck and then to the top of her head. His left hand slipped under her to hold her to him, his right hand embraced her hip. He cradled her in himself, like always, as she cradled him in herself, like always.

Tatiana barely stirred. She did not pull away from him, but neither did she make a single sound. She is punishing me, Alexander thought, closing his eyes. I deserve much worse. Still, it was unbearable to hear her silence. Alexander kissed her head, her hair, her shoulders. He could not be deep enough in her enslaving warmth to find peace. At last she couldn’t help herself, she groaned and shuddered and clutched his hand, and he did not stop himself from release this time. Afterward he remained inside her and then heard her crying.

“Tatiasha, I am so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I said those heartless things. I didn’t mean them.” He held her stomach into him.

“You meant them,” Tatiana said emptily. “You’re a soldier. You meant them all.”

“No, Tania,” Alexander said, hating himself. “I didn’t. I’m your husband first.” He held her close. “Feel me, Tania, feel my body, feel my hands, my lips on you, feel my heart. I didn’t mean them.”

“Shura, I wish you would stop saying things you don’t mean.”

He breathed in her smells, rubbing his face in her hair. “I know. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t reply, but her hand remained on his. “Turn to me?” he asked, pulling himself away.

“No.”

“Please. Turn to me, and tell me you forgive me.”

Tatiana turned, lifting her swollen eyes to Alexander.

“Oh, honey . . .” He paused, closing his eyes. He could not endure her expression. “Breathe on me,” he whispered. “I want to smell your blueberry breath on my face.”

She did. Alexander inhaled the warm spirit out of her lungs into his mouth and into his lungs. He hugged her. “Please tell me you forgive me, Tania.”

“I forgive you.” Her voice was flat.

“Kiss me. I want to feel your lips forgive me.”

She kissed him. He watched her close her eyes.

“You have not forgiven me. Again.”

Tatiana kissed him again softly. She kissed him, and then her mouth parted, and she made a small forgiving moaning sound. Her hands drifted down to take hold of him. Quietly she caressed him and caressed him. And caressed him.

“Thank you,” Alexander said, gazing at her. “Say to me, Shura, I know you didn’t mean it. You were just angry.”

Sighing, she said, “I know you didn’t mean it.”

“Say to me, I know you love me to insanity.”

“I know you love me.”

“No, Tania,” he said, raw emotion in his voice. “I love you to insanity.” He ran his lips back and forth against her silken eyebrows, unable to breathe, afraid he would exhale her breath out of him.

“I’m sorry I hit you,” Tatiana whispered.

“I’m surprised you didn’t kill me.”

“Alexander,” she said, “is that why you came here?” She couldn’t keep her voice from breaking. “For your . . . money?”

Crushing her with his arms, he said, looking at the wall, “Tania, stop it. No, I did not come for my money.”

“Where did you get the American dollars from?”

“My mother. I told you my family had money in America. My father decided he was going to come to the Soviet Union with nothing, and my mother agreed, but she brought this money with her just in case and hid it from him. This was the last thing my mother left me, a few weeks before she was arrested. We carved out the inside covers of the Pushkin book. We hid the money together. Ten thousand dollars on one side, four thousand rubles on the other. She thought that maybe it could help me get out.”

“Where did you put it when you were arrested in 1936?”

“I hid it in the Leningrad Public Library. And there it remained until I gave the book to you.”

“Oh, my prescient Alexander,” said Tatiana, “you gave it to me just in time, didn’t you? The library shipped out most of its priceless items, including the entire Pushkin collection, way back last July and moved the rest of its books down to the cellar. Your money would have been long lost.”

Alexander said nothing.

“Why did you give it to me? You wanted it to be in a safe place?”

Alexander turned his gaze back to her. “Because I wanted to trust you with my one life,” he said.

Tatiana was quiet.

“The book wasn’t in the library the whole time, though, was it?”

He made no reply.

“In 1940, when you went to fight Finland, you took the money with you, didn’t you?”

He made no reply.

“Oh, Alexander.” Tatiana buried her face in his chest.

Alexander wanted to speak. He just could not.

It was Tatiana who spoke. “One more thing for Dimitri not to forgive you for, as if there weren’t enough already. When you went back for Stepanov’s son, you took Dimitri with you because you two were going to escape through Finland, weren’t you?”

Nothing moved on Alexander.

“You were going to run, through the swamps, right to Vyborg, and then to Helsinki, and then to America! You had brought your money, you were ready. It was the moment you had dreamed about for years.” She kissed his chest. “Wasn’t it, my husband, my heart, my Alexander, my entire life right here in this cabin, wasn’t it, tell me?” She was crying.

Alexander had lost his powers of speech. He was very nearly losing his powers over everything. He never wanted to have this out with Tatiana.

Her voice trembled. “It was a great plan. You would have disappeared, and no one would have ever gone to look for you — they would just have assumed you had died. You didn’t count on Yuri Stepanov being alive. You thought he’d be dead. It was just an excuse to return to the woods. Suddenly he was alive!” Tatiana emitted a low laugh. “Oh, Dimitri must have been extremely surprised when you said you were going back with Yuri. What are you thinking, he must have said. Are you crazy? You’ve wanted to go back to America for years. Here’s your chance, here’s my chance.” She paused. “How close am I?”

Nuzzling into her blonde head, Alexander finally said in a stunned whisper, “As if you were there. How do you know this?”

She cupped his face in her hands. “Because I — better than anybody — know who you are.” Tatiana paused, leaving her hands on his face. “So you returned to the Soviet Union with Stepanov’s son, thinking you would have another chance to run. What did you have to do, Shura?” she asked. “Promise Dimitri that if you didn’t die, one way or another you would get him to America?”

He pushed away her hands and turned on his back, shutting his eyes. “Tania, stop. I can’t continue this anymore. I just can’t.”

She stopped only to get control of her faltering speech.

“So now what?”

“Now nothing,” Alexander said darkly, looking up at the beamed ceiling. “Now you stay here and I go back to the front. Now Dimitri is crippled. Now I fight for Leningrad. Now I die for Leningrad.”

“God! Don’t say that!” Tatiana grabbed his arms, turning him to her and, crying, clutched at his chest. He held her as close as he could, but it wasn’t close enough, not for her, not for him. “Don’t say that, Shura!” She was sobbing uncontrollably. “Shura, please,” she barely whispered. “Please don’t leave me by myself in the Soviet Union.”