Alexander had never seen Tatiana so upset. He didn’t know what to do. “Come on,” he said, his voice breaking, his heart breaking. Come on, Tatiana, love me less, let me go, free me.

Hours went by. In the deepest night, Alexander made love to her again. “Go on, Tatiasha,” he whispered, “spread your legs for me like I love.”

She tasted as if she were crying tears of nectar into his throat.

“Promise me,” he said, kissing her blonde downy hair, licking the soft inside of her thighs, “promise me you will not leave Lazarevo.”

There was no answer from her, just stifled moans.

“Are you my good girl?” he whispered, his fingers more tender, more persistent. “Are you my lovely girl?” he whispered, his mouth more gentle, more persistent, his hot breath imploring into her. “Swear to me you will stay here and wait for me. Promise me you’ll be a good wife and wait for your husband.”

“I promise, Shura. I will wait for you.”

Then, later, “I’ll be waiting a long time,” Tatiana said brokenly, lying relieved and unrelieved in his arms, “here alone in Lazarevo.”

Hugging her to him so hard she could barely breathe, an utterly unrelieved Alexander whispered, “Alone, but safe.”

How they spent the next three days Alexander did not know. Awash in a flood of hostility and despair, they battled and railed and shattered their bodies on one another, unable to find one strand, one sobering swallow of solace.


22


The morning Alexander was leaving, they could not touch.

Tatiana sat on the bench outside while he packed. Alexander put on his dress uniform that she had washed and ironed for him with an iron warmed on the hearth, brushed his hair, and put on his sidecap. He made sure he had his helmet tied to him and his tent on his back. He had his pistol, his ammunition, his passport, his grenades, and his rifle.

He left her all of his money save for the few rubles it was going to cost him to get back.

When he came out of the house, Tatiana, who had been sitting, got up and disappeared into the house, appearing a few minutes later with a cup of coffee, full of milk and sugar, and a plate of food. Some black bread, three eggs, a sliced tomato.

Alexander took the plate from her. He was choking. “Thank you,” he said.

Holding her stomach, she sat down heavily. “Of course,” she said. “Eat. You have a long journey ahead of you.”

Listlessly he ate as they sat almost side by side, if only she weren’t turned one way and he another.

“Do you want me to come to the train station with you?”

“No,” he said. “I can’t.”

Tatiana nodded. “I can’t either.”

Finishing his food, Alexander put the plate on the ground. “I’ve left you plenty of wood, don’t you think?” he said, turning to her and pointing to the woodshed at the side of the cabin.

“Plenty,” she said. “It should last me a good long while.”

Gently Alexander pulled the white satin ribbons from her braids. Taking his comb, he brushed out her smooth blonde hair, rubbing the silken strands between his fingers. “How do I arrange for my money to come to you here?” Alexander asked. “I get two thousand rubles a month. That’s a lot of money for you. I can send you fifteen hundred. I’ll keep five hundred for cigarettes.”

She shook her head. “Don’t do it. You’ll only get yourself into further trouble. Leningrad isn’t Lazarevo, Shura. Protect yourself. Don’t tell anyone we’re married. Take the ring off your finger. You don’t want Dimitri to find out somehow. We don’t need more trouble for you. You already have plenty. I don’t need your money.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Then send it to me when you write to me.”

“Can’t. The censors will steal it immediately.”

“Censors? So I should avoid writing to you in my English?”

“If you want me to live, yes.”

Tatiana didn’t turn around when she said, “It’s the only thing I want.”

“I will send the money to the local Soviet in Molotov,” said Alexander. “Go there once a month and check, all right? I’ll say I’m sending it to Dasha’s family.” Closing his eyes, Alexander pressed his lips to her gleaming hair. “I’d better go. There is only one train a day.”

Tatiana said in a stricken voice, “I’ll walk you to the road. Have you got everything?”

“Yes.”

All this without looking at each other.

They left together and walked up the path through the woods. Before the clearing disappeared from view, Alexander turned around one last time to look at the blue river and the deep green pines, at their wood cabin and their bench, at their log in the water, at the place where his tent had stood just yesterday. At their fire.

“Write to me,” Alexander said to Tatiana, “and let me know how you’re doing.” He paused. “So I don’t worry.”

“All right.” Her arms were twisted around her stomach. “You, too.”

They got to the road. The pine needles smelled strong, the woods were quiet, the sun was warm overhead. They stood in front of each other, Tatiana in her yellow dress, looking at her bare feet, Alexander in his army uniform, rifle on his shoulder, looking down the road.

Her hand came up and patted him gently on the chest, pressing into his heart. “You keep yourself alive for me, soldier, you hear?” Tears were running down her face.

Alexander took her hand and brought it to his lips. She was wearing his ring. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t say her name aloud.

Tatiana placed her trembling palm on Alexander’s face. “It’ll be all right, my love,” she whispered. “It’ll be all right.”

She let go of his face. He let go of her hand. “Turn around and go home,” he said. “Don’t watch me. I can’t walk away with you standing here.”

Tatiana turned away. “Go ahead. I won’t watch you.”

Alexander couldn’t come near her. “Please,” he said. “I can’t leave you like this. Please go home.”

“Shura,” she said. “I don’t want you to go.”

“I know. I don’t want to go, but please let me. Knowing you’re safe is the only chance I have of staying alive. I will make my way back to you, but you have to be safe.” He stopped. “Now I must go. Come on, lift your head to me. Lift your head to me, and smile.”

Turning around, Tatiana lifted her crying face to him and smiled.

They stared at each other for a long moment. Tatiana blinked. Alexander blinked.

“What’s that in your eyes?”

“I’m watching all my wooden crates descend the ramp from the Winter Palace,” she whispered.

“Got to have a little more faith, my wife.” Alexander raised his shaking right hand to his temple, to his lips, to his heart.


DESOLATE WAVES

TATIANA went back to their house, lay down on their bed, and did not get up.

During her semiconscious sleep Tatiana kept hearing the four old women in the room. They were talking quietly while fixing her blankets, adjusting the pillows under her head, stroking her hair.

Dusia said, “She needs to trust in the Lord. He will get her out of this.”

Naira said, “I told her it wasn’t a good idea to fall in love with a soldier. All they do is break your heart.”

Raisa tremulously said, “I think the problem isn’t that he’s a soldier. The problem is she loves him too much.”

Axinya whispered, patting Tatiana’s back, “Lucky girl.”

“What’s lucky?” Naira said indignantly. “If only she had listened to us and stayed at our house, none of this would have happened.”

“If only she came to church with me more often,” said Dusia. “The Lord’s rod and His staff, they would comfort her.”

“What do you think, Tanechka?” Axinya said, standing close to Tatiana. “You think the Lord’s rod and staff would comfort you right now?”

Naira said, “This is no good. We are not helping her.”

Dusia: “I never liked him.”

Naira: “Me neither. Never understood what Tania saw in him.”

Raisa: “She is too good for him.”

Naira: “She is too good for anybody.”

Dusia: “She can be even better, closer to the Lord.”

Naira: “My Vova is such a kind, gentle boy. He cared for her.”

Raisa: “I bet you Alexander’s not going to come back for her. He’s left her here for good.”

Naira: “I’m sure you’re right. He married her—”

Dusia: “Soiled her—”

Raisa: “And discarded her.”

Dusia: “I always suspected he was godless.”

Axinya whispered to Tatiana, “The only thing that will keep him away is death.”

Thank you, Axinya, thought Tatiana, opening her heavy eyes and lifting her body out of bed. But that’s exactly what I’m afraid of.

The old girls convinced Tatiana without much effort to come back and live with them. Vova helped her to carry the trunk and sewing machine back to Naira’s house.

At first Tatiana could not get through her day without physically holding herself together. There was no comfort inside her, and she knew it. There was nowhere she could turn to inside herself to leave the darkness. No memory she could fondly think of, no gentle joke, no musical refrain. There was no part of her body she could touch without shuddering. Nowhere she could look without seeing Alexander.

This time she didn’t have the hunger to dull her sorrow. She didn’t have infected lungs. There was nothing for her healthy body to do but grit its teeth and lift the buckets that went on her shoulders every morning, and milk the goat and pour the warm milk for Raisa, who could not pour it herself, and hang the clothes on the line and have the women say at night how wonderful the clothes smelled, having been hung by Tania in the sunshine.

Tatiana sewed for them and for herself, she read to them and to herself, she bathed them and herself, she tended their garden and looked after their chickens and took the apples off the trees, and little by little, bucket by bucket, book by book, shirt by shirt, their need enveloped her again, and Tatiana was comforted.

Just like before.


2


After two weeks came the first letter from Alexander.


Tatiasha,

Can there be anything harder than this? Missing you is a physical aching that grips me early in the morning and does not leave me, not even as I draw my last waking breath.

My solace in these waning empty summer days is the knowledge that you’re safe, and alive, and healthy, and that the worst that you have to go through is serfdom for four well-meaning old women.

The wood piles I’ve left are the lightest in the front. The heaviest ones are for the winter. Use them last, and if you need help carrying them, God help me, ask Vova. Don’t hurt yourself. And don’t fill the water pails all the way to the top. They’re too heavy.

Getting back was rough, and as soon as I came back, I was sent right out to the Neva, where for six days we planned our attack and then made a move in boats across the river and were completely crushed in two hours. We didn’t stand a chance. The Germans bombed the boats with the Vanyushas, their version of my rocket launcher, the boats all sank. We were left with a thousand fewer men and were no closer to crossing the river. We’re now looking at other places we can cross. I’m fine, except for the fact that it’s rained here for ten days straight and I’ve been hip deep in mud for all that time. There is nowhere to sleep, except in the mud. We put our trench coats down and hope it stops raining soon. All black and wet, I almost felt sorry for myself until I thought of you during the blockade.

I’ve decided to do that from now on. Every time I think I have it so tough, I’m going to think of you burying your sister in Lake Ladoga.

I wish you had been given a lighter cross than Leningrad to carry through your life.

Things are going to be relatively quiet here for the next few weeks, until we regroup. Yesterday a bomb fell in the commandant’s bunker. The commandant wasn’t there at the time. Yet the anxiety doesn’t go away. When is it going to come again?

I play cards and soccer. And I smoke. And I think of you.

I sent you money. Go to Molotov at the end of August.

Don’t forget to eat well, my warm bun, my midnight sun, and kiss your hand for me, right in the palm and then press it against your heart.

Alexander


Tatiana read Alexander’s letter a hundred times, memorizing every word. She slept with her face on the letter, which renewed her strength.


My love, my dear, dear Shura,

Don’t talk about my cross — first heave your own off your shoulders.

How did I live last winter? I don’t know, but I think almost longingly of it now. Because I moved. There was movement inside me. I had energy to lie, to pretend to Dasha, to keep her alive. I walked, I was with Mama, I was too busy to die myself. Too busy hiding my love for you.