6
Tatiana thought she could take it. Tatiana thought she could take it all. But one night — two weeks after the burning of Badayev warehouses — when they all came home from work and instead of making dinner were sitting in the bomb shelter, hungry and tired, Dasha plopped down next to Tatiana and in a thrilled voice exclaimed, “Guess what, everybody? Alexander and I are getting married!”
The kerosene lamps gave too much light to hide what exploded inside Tatiana. Marina gasped. But the jubilant Dasha, who continued to smile while the bombs fell outside, remained oblivious to Tatiana’s feelings.
Marina said, “That’s great, Dasha. Congratulations!”
Mama said, “Dashenka, finally, one of my daughters is going to have a family of her own. When?”
Papa, sitting next to Mama, mumbled something.
“Tania? Did you hear me?” asked Dasha. “I’m getting married!”
“I heard you, Dasha,” Tatiana said. Turning away, she was faced with Marina’s sympathetic, pitying glance. Tatiana didn’t know which was worse. She turned back to her smiling sister. “Congratulations. You must be so happy.”
“Happy? I’m delirious! Can you imagine? I’m going to be Dasha Belova.” She giggled. “As soon as he gets a couple of days’ furlough, we’ll go to the registry office.”
“You’re not worried?”
“I’m not worried,” said Dasha with a wave of her healthy-looking arm. “Worried about what? Alexander is not worried. We’ll make it.”
“I’m glad you’re so sure.”
“What’s the matter?” Dasha put her arm around Tatiana, who didn’t know how she was still sitting. “I won’t kick you out of your bed. Babushka will give us her room for a couple of days.” Dasha kissed her. “Married, Tania! Can you believe it?”
“I can’t believe it.”
“I know!” Dasha exclaimed excitedly. “I can hardly believe it myself.”
“It’s war. He could die, Dasha.”
“I know that. Don’t you think I know that? Don’t be flip about him dying.”
“I’m not flip,” said Tatiana, trembling. About him dying. She shut her eyes.
“Thank God, he’s finally out of that awful Dubrovka and up across from Shlisselburg. It’s quieter there.” Dasha smiled. “You know, that’s what I do now — I close my eyes and I feel for him out there somewhere, and I know he’s still alive.” She added with pride, “I have a sixth sense, you know.”
Marina coughed loudly. Opening her eyes, Tatiana glared at Marina with an expression that instantly stifled Marina’s coughing fit.
“What do you want, Dash?” she whispered. “You want to be a widow, instead of just a dead soldier’s girl?”
“Tania!”
Tatiana said nothing. Where was relief going to come from? Not from the night, not from Mama or Papa, not from Deda and Babushka, far away, not from Babushka Maya, too old to care, not from Marina, who knew too much without knowing anything, not from Dimitri, who was mired in his own hell, and certainly not from Alexander, the impossible, maddening, unforgivable Alexander.
The absence of comfort was so compelling that Tatiana could no longer continue to sit. She left the shelter in the middle of the raid, hearing only Dasha’s puzzled voice: “What is wrong with her?”
How did she spend the night next to her wall, next to Marina, next to Dasha? How did she do it? She didn’t know. It was the worst night of Tatiana’s life.
The next morning she got up late and, instead of going to her regular store on Fontanka and Nekrasova, went to one on Old Nevsky, near her former school. She’d heard they had good bread there. The air-raid siren sounded. She didn’t even take cover.
Tatiana walked with her eyes to the ground. The whistling bombs, the wind-induced piercing shrieks, followed by the sound of brick exploding and then distant human cries were nothing compared to the screaming hurt inside her body.
Tatiana realized that war no longer scared her. This was new to her, the acknowledgment of the absence of fear. It was Pasha who had always been intrepid. Dasha was confident. Deda was ruthlessly honest, Papa was strict — and drunk — Mama bossy, and Babushka Anna arrogant. Tatiana carried everyone’s hidden insecurities on her thin shoulders. Insecurities, yes. Timidity, yes. Their fears, yes again. But not her own. She wasn’t afraid of random war. It was like being struck by lightning, even if the lightning did strike a thousand times a day. No, it wasn’t war that terrified Tatiana. It was the resolute chaos of her broken heart.
She went to work, and when five o’clock came, she stayed at work, and when six came, she stayed at work, and when seven came, she stayed at work. At eight o’clock she was washing the floor in the nurses’ station when she saw Marina come through the doors and head in her direction. Tatiana did not want to see Marina.
“Tania, what are you doing?” Marina said. “Everybody is worried sick about you. They think you’ve been killed.”
“I haven’t been killed,” Tatiana said. “I’m right here, washing the floor.”
“It’s three hours past quitting time. Why aren’t you home?”
“I’m washing the floor, Marina, can’t you see? Step out of my way. Your shoes will get wet.” Tatiana did not look up from the mop.
“Tania, they’re all waiting. Dimitri is there, Alexander is there. You’re being selfish. The family can’t celebrate Dasha’s betrothal, because they’re so worried about you.”
“All right,” Tatiana said through her teeth as she pushed the mop back and forth. “You found me. I’m right here. Tell them not to worry and go and celebrate. I have work to do. I’m doing a double shift. I’ll be home later.”
“Tania,” said Marina, “come on now, honey. I know it’s hard. But you have to come home and raise a glass to your sister. What are you thinking?”
“I’m working!” Tatiana yelled. “Can you leave me alone, please!” And she looked back down at her soapy mop, blinded by her tears.
“Tania, please.”
“Leave me alone!” repeated Tatiana. “Please.”
Reluctantly Marina left.
Tatiana mopped the nurses’ station, and the corridor nearby, and the bathrooms, and some of the patient rooms. And then a doctor asked her for help in bandaging five bomb victims, and Tatiana went with him. Four of the victims died within the hour. Tatiana sat with the last one, an old man of about eighty, until he died, too. He died holding her hand, and before he died, he turned to her and smiled.
By the time she came home, everyone was asleep, and Dimitri and Alexander were long gone. Tatiana slept on the small sofa in the hall, waking up before the rest of the family, washing, and again going to get their rations on Old Nevsky.
When she got home after work, Papa was in a fit. At first Tatiana couldn’t figure out what it was that was making him upset, nor did she care to find out. As her father came into the room, still shouting, Tatiana concluded that he must be upset with her.
“What did I do now?” she said tiredly. She couldn’t have cared less.
He was slurring his words, but Mama, who was also angry — but sober — came in from the hallway and told Tatiana that last night when she was God knows where while the family was celebrating Dasha’s imminent marriage, a little girl named Mariska came by, asking for some food. “Mariska said that someone named Tania has been feeding her for a week!” Mama shouted. “A week with our food!”
“Oh.” Tatiana looked at her parents. “Yes. Mariska’s parents are both drunk, and they’re not feeding her. She needed some food. I gave her a little. Mama, I thought we have plenty.” She went into the kitchen to get a knife. Papa and Mama followed her, still shouting and shouting and shouting.
The following day Alexander and Dimitri came by after dinner to take the girls for a short walk before the air raid and curfew. Tatiana did not raise her eyes to Dimitri, nor to Dasha, and certainly not to Alexander.
“What happened to you yesterday?” Dimitri asked. “We were waiting forever for you.”
“I was working yesterday,” said Tatiana, grabbing her cardigan from the hook on the wall and walking out past Alexander, her eyes to the floor.
It was quiet in Leningrad that evening. The four of them walked in peace down Suvorovsky heading toward Tauride Park. Relative peace, for on Eighth Soviet a corner building was shattered and glass was spread like fractured ice all over the street.
Dimitri and Tatiana walked in front of Alexander and Dasha. Dimitri asked why Tatiana kept staring at the ground. Tatiana shrugged and said nothing, her growing-out blonde hair covering half her face.
“Isn’t it fantastic about Alexander and Dasha?” Dimitri asked, putting his arm around Tatiana.
“Yes,” said Tatiana coldly and loudly. “It’s fantastic about Alexander and Dasha.” She did not look up, nor did she look back. She could feel Alexander’s eyes on her, and she simply did not know how she was going to continue walking straight.
Dasha giggled and said, “I sent Deda and Babushka a letter in Molotov. They’ll be so happy. They’ve always liked you, Alexander.” There were some chuckling noises from behind Tatiana. She stumbled on the curb. Dimitri grabbed her arm.
Dasha said, “Tania is a little glum these days, Dima. I think she wants you to propose, too.”
Squeezing her arm, Dimitri said, “Should I, Tanechka? What do you think? Should I ask you to marry me?”
Tatiana did not reply. They stopped at an intersection to let a tram pass. Tatiana said, “Want to hear a joke?” She continued before anyone had a chance to speak. “ ‘Honey, when we get married, I’ll be there to share all your troubles and sorrows,’ says the man. ‘But I don’t have any, my love,’ says the woman. ‘I said, when we get married,’ says the man.”
“Oh, nice, Tania,” said Dasha from behind.
Tatiana laughed mirthlessly, and when she laughed, her hair bobbed back just long enough to reveal a black swollen bruise over her eyebrow. Dimitri gasped. Tatiana lowered her head, brushing her hair back into her face. Alexander said, “What’s the matter, Dima?”
Dimitri didn’t reply, but Alexander walked around and stood in front of Tatiana. She looked down at the pavement. “It’s nothing,” she muttered.
“Can you look up, please?” Alexander demanded.
Tatiana wanted to look up and scream. But Dasha was standing on one side of her and Dimitri on the other, and she could not look up into the face she loved. Simply could not. The best she could do was repeat quietly that it was nothing.
“Ah, Tania,” said Alexander, paling under the effort of keeping himself in check. “Ah, Tania.”
“It’s totally her fault,” said Dasha, taking Alexander’s arm. “She perfectly well knew that Papa was drunk. Yet she couldn’t help talking back to him. He yelled at her a little bit for feeding a waif—”
“He yelled at me for Mariska, but he hit me for not washing his sheets,” Tatiana said. “Which was your job.”
“How did he open your brow like that?” Dimitri asked with concern.
“That was my fault,” Tatiana said. “I lost my balance and fell. The kitchen drawer was open. It’s not a big thing.”
“Ah, Tania,” Alexander repeated again.
“What?” said Tatiana, raising her livid, broken eyes at him.
He lowered his gaze.
“Hey, listen,” Dasha said, defending herself, “I didn’t care what Papa said. He was drunk. I wasn’t going to get into a fight with him over nothing.”
“You mean over me?” Tatiana said. “You mean you weren’t going to come forward and say, ‘Papa, I should’ve washed your sheets, and I’m sorry I didn’t’?”
“What for? He was drunk!”
“He’s always drunk!” yelled Tatiana. “Always, and it’s war, Dasha! Have we not got enough trouble, you think?” She panted. “Believe me, we’ve got enough trouble.” She stared at her sister. “Forget it. Let’s cross.”
As they crossed the street, Tatiana could hear Alexander’s seething breaths. “Dasha, let’s go,” he said suddenly, pulling her quickly by the arm down the street, away from Tatiana. He started running with Dasha beside him.
Dimitri and Tatiana were left on Suvorovsky, and Tatiana said, trying to smile, “So, Dima, how are you? I hear the Germans are completely entrenched. Has the fighting stopped?”
“Tania, you don’t want to be talking about the fighting,” said Dimitri.
“No, I do, I do. Tell me, is it true that Hitler has issued a directive to his men that Leningrad is to be wiped off the face of the earth?”
Shrugging, Dimitri said, “You’ll have to ask Alexander about that.”
“I heard—” but then Tatiana stopped and realized something. “You know what, Dima? I think we better head back home.”
“You know what?” he said. “I think I’m going to head back to the barracks. You don’t mind, do you? I’ve got” — he paused — “things to do. All right?”
“Of course, Dima,” said Tatiana, staring at him standing next to her in his helpless, distant, pointless proximity. Could other people have interested him less? Tatiana didn’t think so.
“I don’t know when I’m going to come by again,” Dimitri said. “I hear my platoon is being sent over the river. I’ll come by when I’m back. If I’m back. I’ll write if I can.”
“Of course.” Tatiana said good-bye to Dimitri on the street corner, watching him as he walked away from her. She didn’t think she would be seeing him again soon.
She went home by herself, and when she was near her apartment building, she saw Alexander run out the front doors. She was maybe ten meters away from him. He stood for a moment trying to get his breath, and then saw her stopped dead on the pavement. Tatiana’s control over herself was so fragile that she knew she could not face him. She turned around and started walking quickly in the opposite direction. “Tania!” she heard him calling from behind, and in a moment he stood in front of her. Tatiana backed away and put her arms up. “Leave me alone,” she said in a faint voice. “Just leave me alone.”
“Where have you been?” Alexander asked quietly. “I’ve been coming to the store on Fontanka and Nekrasova for three mornings in a row trying to catch you.”
“Well, you caught me, all right,” said Tatiana.
“Tania, look at you, how could you let him do that to you?”
“I ask myself that question over and over,” Tatiana said. “And not just about him.”
Alexander blinked. “Tania—”
“I don’t want to talk to you right now!” Tatiana screamed. And then, taking another step back, her lip shaking and her eyes filled with tears, she said, much more quietly, “I don’t want to talk to you ever.”
“Tania, can I just explain—”
“No.”
“Will you for a second—”
“No!”
“Tania . . .”
“NO!” She came up to him, her teeth gritted, and she couldn’t believe herself: she wanted to hit him. She clenched her fists. She wanted to hit Alexander.
He stared at her fists and at her and said with upset incredulity, “You promised me you would forgive me—”
“Forgive you,” Tatiana hissed through her teeth, tears streaming down her face, “for your brave and indifferent face, Alexander!” She groaned in pain. “Not your brave and indifferent heart.”
Before he had a chance to respond or to stop her, Tatiana ran from him, through the doors, flying up three flights of stairs to her apartment.
At home Papa was lying on the floor in the hallway, still drunk, but also unconscious. Mama and Dasha were crying in the room. Oh, my God, thought Tatiana, wiping her own face. Will this never end?
Marina whispered to Tatiana, “Tania, what a mess! You cannot believe the things Alexander said when he stormed in here. Look what he did to the wall!” She pointed with a thrill to some broken plaster in the hallway. “Alexander said that with his drinking your Papa had turned his back on his family just when they needed him most. That he had failed in his responsibilities to the people he was supposed to protect, not harm. Alexander was like a growling tank!” Marina said, looking extremely impressed. “He said, ‘Where can she go if outside the Nazis are bombing her, and inside her own father is trying to kill her?’ Tania, he was unstoppable!” Marina exclaimed. “He told your mother to put your father in the hospital. He said, ‘You are a mother, for God’s sake — save your children!’ ” Tatiana lowered her eyes away from Marina. “Your father was very drunk and went to hit him, and Alexander grabbed him by both shoulders and shoved him against the wall and cursed and screamed and then stormed out. How he didn’t kill him, I swear I don’t know. Can you believe it?”
“I can believe it,” Tatiana whispered. Alexander carried his own father with him wherever he went. He carried his own father, his own mother, his own self. Tatiana was the only person in the world he trusted, and so she bore some of that cross with him. Not much of it, but just enough to remember him at this time. For a moment — but it was all that she needed — Tatiana stopped feeling for herself and felt for Alexander, and when she did, she became less angry with him.
“Has he just passed out?” Tatiana said, sitting down on the sofa and looking at her father.
“No, I think he fell from fear. Tania, did you hear me? Alexander looked ready to kill him!”
“I heard you,” said Tatiana.
“Oh, Tania,” said Marina, lowering her voice to a whisper in the hallway, two meters away from one room, three meters away from another. “Tania, whatever are you two going to do?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tatiana said. “I, for one, am going to try to help Papa.”
Papa remained unconscious, and the Metanovs became worried. Mama suggested that maybe they really should put Papa in the hospital for a few days to sober up. Tatiana thought it was a good idea. Papa had not been sober for many days.
Tatiana asked Petr Petrov down the hall for help with carrying Papa to the drunk ward at Suvorovsky Hospital. There were no beds available at Grechesky, where Tatiana worked.
The girls and Petr carried Papa to the hospital — on the north side of an east-west street — where he was admitted and put into a large room with four other drunk men. Tatiana asked for a sponge and some water and washed her father’s face, and then sat with him for a few minutes, holding his flaccid hand. “I’m really sorry, Papa,” she said.
She sat with him, holding his hand, every once in a while squeezing it and saying, “Papa, can you hear me?”
Finally he groaned in a way that told her maybe he could. He opened his unfocused eyes.
“Right here, Papa,” she kept saying. “I’m right here. Look at me.”
His head bobbed on the pillow. She continued to hold his hand. “You’re in the hospital for just a few days. Until you get sober. Then you’ll come home. Everything will be all right then.” Tatiana felt him squeeze her hand. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to bring Pasha back for you. But you know, the rest of us are all still here.”
She saw tears in his eyes. His mouth opened as he squeezed her hand again, whispering hoarsely, “It’s all my fault . . .”
Tatiana kissed him on the head and said, “No, darling Papa. It’s not. It’s just war. But you do need to get sober.” He closed his eyes, and Tatiana went home.
At home Dasha was upset at Tatiana and shouted at her while Marina mediated. Tatiana sat on the sofa in the room and remained silent, imagining herself sitting peacefully between Deda and Babushka. At one point Dasha got herself so worked up that she leaned forward to hit Tatiana and was pulled away by Marina, who said, “Dasha, this is ridiculous. Stop it!”
Dasha ripped herself from Marina’s grasp, but Marina exclaimed, “Stop yourself. She is hurt enough! Can’t you see she’s hurt enough?”
Tatiana watched Marina with soft eyes and Dasha with harder ones, and then she got up wearily and went to walk past them to the other room. She needed to lie down and never have another day like this one. Or like the last one. Or the one before. Dasha grabbed her. Tatiana twisted away, raised her face to her sister, and said, “Dasha, in one minute I’m going to lose my patience. Stop and leave me alone. Can you do that?”
Her eyes remained unblinking on her sister, who let go of her and left Tatiana alone.
Later that night in bed Marina stroked Tatiana’s back, whispering, “It’s all right, Tania. It’ll be all right.”
“And you know this how?” Tatiana whispered. “We’re bombed every day, we’re blockaded, soon there will be no food, Papa can’t stop drinking—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” whispered Marina.
“Then I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tatiana whispered back, “but before you tell me, stop talking.”
Dasha was not in bed.
Tatiana slept with her face to the wall, her hand on Alexander’s The Bronze Horseman book, her brow throbbing. But in the morning it felt a little better. She dabbed some diluted iodine on the cut and went to work, her face discolored by the sienna antiseptic.
During her lunch hour she left the hospital and slowly walked to the Field of Mars. It had been made unrecognizable by the trenches dug around it and the concrete emplacements for artillery weapons erected around the perimeter. The field itself was mined; she could not walk there. All the benches had been removed. The only thing Tatiana could do was stand several hundred meters from the archway that led to Pavlov Barracks and watch smoking, laughing soldiers loudly filtering out.
She stood for half an hour. Then she went back to the hospital, thinking, not bombs nor my broken heart can take away from me walking barefoot with you in jasmine June through the Field of Mars.