5
On the way to Kirov on Wednesday morning, Tatiana saw firemen building new water storage basins and installing what looked like fire hydrants. Was Leningrad expecting that many more fires? she wondered. Were the German bombs going to incinerate the city? She could not imagine it. It was as unimaginable as America.
In the distance the great Smolny Cathedral and Monastery was beginning to take on an unrecognizable shape and form. Camouflage nets were being draped over it by workers, who were dousing the nets in green, brown, and gray paint. What were the workers to do with the harder-to-cover — though also harder to spot from the air — spires of Peter and Paul’s Cathedral and the Admiralty? For the time being they remained in full luminescent view.
Before she left work, Tatiana scrubbed her hands and face until they glistened, then stood in front of the mirror next to her locker and thoroughly brushed out her hair, leaving it long and down. This morning she had put on a wraparound floral print skirt and a blue blouse with short sleeves and white buttons. As she checked herself in the mirror, she couldn’t decide — did she look twelve or thirteen? Whose kid sister was she? Oh, yes, Dasha’s. Please be waiting for me, she thought before rushing out.
She hurried to the bus stop, and there was Alexander, his cap in his hands, waiting for her.
“I like your hair, Tania,” he said, smiling.
“Thank you,” she muttered. “I wish I didn’t smell like I worked with petroleum all day. Petroleum and grease.”
“Oh, no,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You weren’t making bombs again?”
She laughed.
They looked at the sulky, overworked crowd waiting for the bus and then at each other and together said, “Tram?” and nodded, crossing the street.
“At least we’re still working,” Tatiana said lightly. “Pravda says things are not so good with work in your America these days. Full employment here in the Soviet Union, Alexander.”
“Yes,” Alexander said, leaning into her as they walked. “There is no unemployment in the Soviet Union or in the Dartmoor jail — and for the same reason.”
Smiling, Tatiana wanted to call him a subversive but didn’t.
While they waited for the tram, Alexander said, “I brought you something.” He handed her a package wrapped in brown paper. “I know Monday was your birthday. But I didn’t have a chance before today . . .”
“What is it?” Sincerely surprised, she took the package from him. A small lump came up in her throat.
Lowering his voice, he said, “In America we have a custom. When you’re given presents for your birthday, you’re supposed to open them and say thank you.”
Tatiana nervously looked down at the present. “Thank you.” Gifts were not something she was used to. Wrapped gifts? Unheard of, even when they came wrapped only in plain brown paper.
“No. Open first. Then say thank you.”
She smiled. “What do I do? Do I take the paper off?”
“Yes. You tear it off.”
“And then what?”
“And then you throw it away.”
“The whole present or just the paper?”
Slowly he said, “Just the paper.”
“But you wrapped it so nicely. Why would I throw it away?”
“It’s just paper.”
“If it’s just paper, why did you wrap it?”
“Will you please open my present?” said Alexander.
Eagerly Tatiana tore open the paper. Inside were three books — one hefty hardcover collection by Aleksandr Pushkin called The Bronze Horseman and Other Poems, and two smaller books, one by a man she’d never heard of, named John Stuart Mill; the book was called On Liberty. It was in English. The last one was an English-Russian dictionary.
“English-Russian?” Tatiana said, smiling. “It’s less helpful than you might think. I speak no English. Was this yours from when you came here?”
“Yes,” he said. “And without it you won’t be able to read Mill.”
“Thank you so much for all of them,” she said.
“The Bronze Horseman book was my mother’s,” said Alexander. “She gave it to me a few weeks before they came for her.”
Tatiana didn’t know what to say. “I love Pushkin.” Very quietly.
“I thought you might. All Russians do.”
“Do you know what the poet Maikov wrote about Pushkin?”
“No,” Alexander said.
Flustered by his eyes, Tatiana tried to remember the lines. “He said . . . let’s see . . . His sounds do not seem made in this world’s fashion . . . as if pervaded with his deathless leaven . . . All earthly stuff — emotions, anguish, passion — had been transmuted to the stuff of heaven.”
“All earthly stuff — emotions, anguish, passion — had been transmuted to the stuff of heaven,” Alexander repeated.
Tatiana turned red and looked down the street. Where was that tram? “Have you ever read Pushkin yourself?” she asked in a tiny voice.
“Yes, I have read Pushkin myself,” Alexander replied, taking the wrapping paper out of her hands and throwing it away. “ ‘The Bronze Horseman’ is my favorite poem.”
“Mine, too!” echoed Tatiana, looking up at him wondrously. “There was a time, our memories keep its horrors fresh and near us, of this a tale now suffer me, to tell before you gentle readers, a grievous story it will be.”
“Tania, you quote from Pushkin like a true Russian.”
“I am a true Russian.”
Their tram arrived.
At the Russian Museum, Alexander asked, “Would you like to walk a bit?”
Tatiana couldn’t say no even if she wanted to.
Even if she wanted to.
They walked toward the Field of Mars.
“Do you ever work?” she asked him. “Dimitri is off on missions in Karelia — don’t you need to do something?”
“Yes, I stay behind,” Alexander said with a grin, “and teach the rest of the soldiers how to play poker.”
“Poker?”
“It’s an American card game. Someday maybe I’ll teach you how to play. Also, I’ve been deputized as the officer in charge of all recruitment and training of the People’s Volunteer Army. I’m on duty from seven until six. I do sentry duty every other evening from ten to midnight.” He paused.
Tatiana knew. That must be when Dasha went to see him.
Alexander quickly continued. “For all this I get my weekends off. I don’t know how long that’s going to last. I suspect not long. I’m here with the Leningrad garrison to protect the city. That’s my post. When we run out of men at the front, that’s when we’ll send me.”
But then we would run out of you, she thought. “Where are we going?”
“To Letniy Sad — the Summer Garden. But wait.” Alexander stopped not far from his barracks. Across the street, lining the Field of Mars, were some benches. “Why don’t you sit, and I’ll go and get us some dinner.”
“Dinner?”
“Yes, for your birthday. We’ll have a birthday dinner.” He offered to bring her some bread and meat. “Maybe I can even find some caviar.” He smiled. “As a true Russian, Tania, you like caviar, don’t you?”
“Mmm,” she said. “What about matches?” she asked, trying not to sound too teasing, unsure how he would like it. “Aren’t I going to perhaps need some matches?” Remembering the Voentorg store.
“If you need to light something, we will light it on the eternal flame in the Field of Mars. We walked past it last Sunday, remember?”
She remembered. “Can’t touch that bold Bolshevik flame,” she said, stepping away. “That’s nearly sacrilegious.”
Alexander laughed. “Sometimes we cook shish kebabs on it on our nights off. Is that sacrilegious? Besides, I thought there was no God.”
Tatiana gazed up at him, but not for long. Was he teasing her? “That’s right. There is no God.”
“Of course not,” he said. “We are in Communist Russia. We’re all atheists.”
Tatiana remembered a joke. “Comrade One says to Comrade Two, ‘How is the potato crop this year?’ Comrade Two replies, ‘Very good, very good. With God’s help the crop will reach all the way to His feet.’ Comrade One says, ‘Comrade! What are you saying? You know the Party says there is no God.’ Comrade Two says, ‘There’s no potatoes either.’ ”
Alexander laughed. “You are so right about the potatoes. There aren’t any. Now, go on,” he said. “Wait on the bench for me. I’ll be right back.”
She walked across the street and sank down onto the bench. She smoothed out her hair, stuck her hand into her canvas bag, caressed the books he had given her, and was awash with—
What was she doing? She was so tired, she wasn’t thinking. Alexander should not be here with her.
He should be here with Dasha. I know that for a fact, Tatiana thought, because if Dasha asks me where I’ve been, I won’t be able to tell her. Standing up, Tatiana began to walk away when she heard Alexander calling her. “Tania!”
He came up, out of breath, carrying two paper bags. “Where are you going?”
She didn’t have to say anything. He saw her face.
“Tania,” Alexander said amiably, “I promise, I will just feed you and send you home. Let me feed you, all right?” Holding the bags in one hand, he placed the other hand on her hair. “It’s for your birthday. Come on.”
She couldn’t go, and she knew it. Did Alexander know it, too? That was even worse. Did he know what a bind she found herself in, what unspeakable flux of feeling and confusion?
They crossed the Field of Mars on their way to the Summer Garden. Down the street the river Neva glowed in the sunlight, though it was nearly nine o’clock in the evening.
The Summer Garden was the wrong place for them.
Alexander and Tatiana couldn’t find an empty bench amid the long paths, the Greek statues, the towering elms, and the intertwined lovers, like tangled rose branches all.
As they walked, her head was lowered.
They finally found a spot near the statue of Saturn. It was not the ideal place for them to sit, Tatiana thought, since Saturn’s mouth was wide open and he was stuffing a child into it with derelict zeal.
Alexander had brought a little vodka and some bologna ham and some white bread. He had also brought a jar of black caviar and a bar of chocolate. Tatiana was quite hungry. Alexander told her to have all the caviar. She protested at first, but not vigorously. After she had eaten more than half, scooping the caviar out with the small spoon he had brought, she handed him the rest. “Please,” she said, “finish it. I insist.”
She had a gulp of vodka straight from the bottle and shuddered involuntarily; she hated vodka but didn’t want him to know what a baby she was. Alexander laughed at her shuddering, taking the bottle from her and having a swig. “Listen, you don’t have to drink it. I brought it to celebrate your birthday. Forgot the glasses, though.”
He was spread out all over the bench and sitting conspicuously close. If she breathed, a part of her would touch a part of him. Tatiana was too overwhelmed to speak, as her intense feelings dropped into the brightly lit well inside her.
“Tania?” Alexander asked gently. “Tania, is the food all right?”
“Yes, fine.” After a small throat clearing, she said, “I mean, it’s very nice, thank you.”
“Do you want some more vodka?”
“No.”
She avoided his smiling eye as best she could when he asked her, “Have you ever had too much vodka?”
“Hmm.” She nodded, still not looking up. “I was two. Gulped down half a liter or something. Had to be taken to the children’s ward of Grechesky Hospital.”
“Two? Not since?” His leg accidentally touched hers.
Tatiana blushed. “No, not since.” She moved her leg and changed the subject to the Germans. She heard him sigh, then talk a little about what was happening at the garrison. But when Alexander was the only one talking, Tatiana was able to gaze at him, her eyes roaming around his face. She noticed his dark stubble, and she wanted to ask him if he was ever clean-shaven but decided it was too forward and didn’t. The stubble was most pronounced around his mouth, where the black frame of the facial hair made his lips more vivid. She wanted to ask him about his slightly chipped side tooth but didn’t do that either. She wanted to ask him to put away that soft, smiling look in his ice cream eyes.
She wanted to smile back.
“So, Alexander . . . do you still speak English?”
“Yes, I speak English. I don’t get to practice. I haven’t spoken it since my mother and father—” He broke off.
With a shake of her head, Tatiana said, “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to — I only wanted to know if you knew any words you could teach me in English.”
Alexander’s eyes gleamed so brightly that Tatiana felt as if all the blood in her body had rushed to her cheeks. “Tania, what words,” he asked slowly, “would you like me to teach you in English?”
She couldn’t answer him, afraid she would stammer. “I don’t know,” she finally managed. “How about vodka?”
“Oh, well, that’s easy,” he said. “It’s vodka.” And laughed.
Alexander had a good laugh. A sincere, chortling, deep, male laugh, starting in his chest and infectiously ending in hers. Picking up the vodka bottle, he unscrewed the cap. “What should our toast be to?” he asked, raising the bottle. “It’s your birthday — we will drink to you. Here’s to next year’s birthday. Salut. I hope it’s a good one.”
“Thank you. I’ll drink a sip to that,” she said, taking the bottle from him. “I like to celebrate my birthday with Pasha by my side.”
Not responding to her comment, Alexander put the vodka away, looking at Saturn. “Another statue would have been better, don’t you agree?” he asked. “My food is getting stuck in my throat, watching Saturn devour one of his own children whole.”
“Where else would you have liked to sit?” asked Tatiana, sucking on a small piece of chocolate.
“I don’t know. Maybe near Mark Antony over there.” He looked around. “You think there is a statue of Aphro—”
“Can we go?” Tatiana said, suddenly rising. “I need to walk off all this food.” What was she doing here?
But as they strolled out of the park and to the river, Tatiana wanted to ask if he was ever called something other than Alexander. It was an inappropriate question, and she didn’t ask. A walk along the granite embankment on a vanishing evening would just have to be good enough. She could not also ask what endearing, affectionate name Alexander liked to be called by.
“Do you want to sit?” Alexander asked after a while.
“I’m fine,” Tatiana replied. “Unless you want to.”
“Yes, let’s sit.”
They sat on one of the benches overlooking the Neva. Across the river was the golden spire of Peter and Paul’s Cathedral. Alexander took up nearly half the seat, his long legs spread apart, his arms draped on the back of the bench. Tatiana gingerly perched down, careful not to let her leg touch his.
Alexander had a casual, unconcerned ease about himself. He moved, sat, rested, and draped as if he were completely unaware of the effect he was having on a timorous girl of barely seventeen. All his confident limbs projected a sanguine belief in his own place in the universe. This was all given to me, he seemed to say. My body, my face, my height, my strength. I did not ask for it, I did not make it, I did not build it. I did not fight for it. This is a gift, for which I say my daily thanks as I wash and comb my hair, a gift I do not abuse or think of again as I go through my day. I am not proud of it, nor am I humbled by it. It does not make me arrogant or vain, but neither does it make me falsely modest or meek.
I know what I am, Alexander said with every movement of his body.
Tatiana had forgotten to breathe. Taking a breath now, she turned to the Neva.
“I love looking at this river,” Alexander said quietly. “Especially during the white nights. We have nothing like this in America, you know.”
“Maybe in Alaska?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But this — the river gleaming, the city around its banks, the sun setting behind Leningrad University on the left, and rising in front of us on Peter and Paul’s . . .” Shaking his head, he stopped talking. They sat silently.
“How did Pushkin put it in ‘The Bronze Horseman’?” Alexander asked her. “And rather than let darkness smother . . . the lustrous heaven’s golden light . . .” He broke off. “I can’t remember the rest.”
Tatiana knew “The Bronze Horseman” practically by heart. She continued for him, “One twilight glow speeds on the other . . . to grant but half an hour to night.”
Alexander turned his head to look at Tatiana, who continued to look at the river.
“Tania . . . where did you get all those freckles?” he asked softly.
“I know, they’re so annoying. It’s the sun,” she replied, blushing and touching her face as if wanting to scrub off the freckles that covered the bridge of her nose and spread in sprinkles under her eyes. Please stop looking at me, she thought, afraid of his eyes and terrified of her own heart.
“What about your blonde hair?” he continued, just as softly. “Is that the sun, too?”
Tatiana became acutely aware of his arm behind her on the bench. If he wanted to, he could move his hand a few centimeters and touch the hair that fell down her back. He didn’t.
“White nights are something, don’t you think?” he said, not taking his gaze off her.
She muttered, “We make up for them with the Leningrad winter, though.”
“Yes, winter is not much fun around here.”
Tatiana said, “Sometimes in the winter, when the Neva freezes, we go sledding on the ice. Even in the dark. Under the fleeting northern lights.”
“You and who?”
“Pasha, me, our friends. Sometimes me and Dasha. But she’s much older. I don’t tag along with her too much.” Why did she say that about Dasha’s being much older? Was she trying to be mean? Shut up already, Tatiana said to herself.
“You must love her very much,” said Alexander.
What did he mean by that? She would rather not know.
“Are you as close to her as you are to Pasha?” he asked.
“Different. Pasha and I—” Tatiana broke off. She and Pasha ate out of the same bowl together. Dasha prepared and served them that bowl. “My sister and I share a bed. She tells me I can never get married because she doesn’t want my husband sleeping in bed with us.”
Their stares locked. Tatiana could not look away. She hoped he didn’t notice her crimson color in the golden sunlight.
“You’re too young to get married,” Alexander said quietly.
“I know,” Tatiana said, as always a little defensive about her age. “But I’m not too young.”
Too young for what? Tatiana wondered, and no sooner had she wondered than in a measured voice Alexander said, “Too young for what?”
The expression in his eyes was just too much for her. Too much on the Neva, too much in the Summer Garden, too much.
She didn’t know what to say. What would Dasha say? What would a grown-up say?
“Not too young to serve in the People’s Volunteers,” she finally said. “Maybe I can join? And you could train me?” She laughed and then lost herself in her embarrassment.
Unsmiling, Alexander flinched a little but said, “You are too young for even the People’s Volunteers. They won’t take you until—” He did not finish. And she felt his unfinished sentence but couldn’t grasp the meaning of the hesitation in his voice, nor of the palpitations of his lips. There was an indentation in the middle of his bottom lip, almost like a soft nesting crevice—
Suddenly Tatiana could not look at Alexander’s lips for a second longer while the two of them sat by the river in the sunlit night. She shot up from the bench. “I’d better be heading home. It’s getting late.”
“All right,” Alexander said, also standing, much more slowly. “It’s such a nice evening.”
“Yes,” she quietly agreed without looking at him. They started to walk along the river.
“Alexander, your America, do you miss it?”
“Yes.”
“Would you ever go back if you could?”
“I suppose,” he replied evenly.
“Could you?”
He looked at her. “How would I get there? Who would let me? What claim do I have on my American name?”
Tatiana had an urge to take his hand, to touch him, to ease him somehow. “Tell me something about America,” she asked. “Did you ever see an ocean?”
“Yes, the Atlantic, and it’s quite something.”
“Is it salty?”
“Yes, and cold and immense, and it’s got jellyfish and white sailboats.”
“I saw a jellyfish once. What color is the Atlantic?”
“Green.”
“Green like the trees?”
He looked around, at the Neva, at the trees, at her. “Green a little bit like the color of your eyes.”
“So kind of muddy, murky green?” Emotion was pressing hard on her chest, making it difficult for her to breathe. I don’t need to breathe now, she thought. I’ve breathed all my life.
Alexander suggested walking back through the Summer Garden.
Tatiana agreed but then remembered the sinuous lovers. “Maybe we shouldn’t. Is there a quicker way?”
“No.”
The tall elms cast long shadows as the sun fell behind them.
They walked through the gate and down the narrow path between the statues.
“The park looks different at night,” she remarked.
“You’ve never been here at night?”
“No,” she admitted, quickly adding, “but I’ve been out at night in other places. Once I—”
Alexander leaned in to her. “Tania, you want to know something?”
“What?” she said, leaning away.
“The less you’ve been out at night, the better I like it.”
Speechless, she staggered ahead, looking at her feet.
He walked alongside, narrowing his soldier’s stride to stay by her. It was a warm night; her bare arms twice touched the rough material of his army shirt.
“This is the best time, Tatiana,” Alexander said. “Do you want to know why?”
“Please don’t tell me.”
“There will never be a time like this again. Never this simple, this uncomplicated.”
“You call this uncomplicated?” Tatiana shook her head.
“Of course.” Alexander paused. “We’re just friends, walking through Leningrad in the lucent dusk.”
They stopped at the Fontanka Bridge. “I’ve got duty at ten,” he said. “Otherwise I’d walk you home—”
“No, no. I’m going to be fine. Don’t worry. Thank you for dinner.”
Looking into Alexander’s face was not possible. Her saving grace was her height. Tatiana stared at his uniform buttons. She was not afraid of them.
He cleared his throat. “So tell me,” he asked, “what do they call you when they want to call you something other than Tania or Tatiana?”
Her heart jumped. “Who’s they?”
Alexander said nothing for what seemed like minutes.
Tatiana backed away from him, and when she was five meters away, she looked at his face. All she wanted to do was look into his wonderful face. “Sometimes,” she said, “they call me Tatia.”
He smiled.
The silences tormented her. What to do during them?
“You are very beautiful, Tatia,” said Alexander.
“Stop,” she said — inaudibly — as sensation left her legs.
He called after her, “If you wanted to, you could call me Shura.”
Shura! That’s a marvelous endearment. I would love to call you Shura, she wanted to tell him. “Who calls you Shura?”
“Nobody,” Alexander replied with a salute.
Tatiana didn’t just walk home. She flew. She grew brilliant red wings, and on them she sailed through the azure Leningrad sky. Closer to home, her heavy-with-guilt heart brought her down and the wings disappeared. She tied up her hair and made sure his books were at the very bottom of her bag. But she couldn’t go upstairs for a number of minutes as she stood against the wall of the building, clenching both fists to her chest.
Dasha was sitting at the dining table with — surprisingly — Dimitri.
“We’ve been waiting for you for three hours,” said Dasha petulantly. “Where have you been?”
Tatiana wondered if they could smell Alexander walking next to her through Leningrad. Did she smell of fragrant summer jasmine, of the warm sun on her bare forearms, of the vodka, of the caviar, of the chocolate? Could they see the extra freckles on the bridge of her nose? I’ve been walking under the lights of the North Pole. I’ve been walking and warming my face with the northern sun. Could they see it all in her exquisitely anguished eyes?
“I’m sorry you’ve been waiting. I work too late these days.”
“Are you hungry?” Dasha asked. “Babushka made cutlets and mashed potatoes. You must be starved. Have some.”
“I’m not hungry. I’m tired. Dima, will you excuse me?” said Tatiana, going to wash.
Dimitri stayed for another two hours. The grandparents wanted their room back at eleven, so Dimitri and Dasha and Tatiana went out onto the roof and sat until dusk fell after midnight, talking in the waning light. Tatiana couldn’t talk much. Dimitri was friendly and light on the tongue. He showed the girls blisters on his hands from digging trenches for two straight days. Tatiana would feel him glancing at her, seeking eye contact and smiling when he got it.
Dasha, said, “So tell me, Dima, are you very close to Alexander?”
“Yes, Alexander and I go back a very long way,” replied Dimitri. “We are like brothers.”
Tatiana, through her haze, blinked twice as her brain tried to focus on Dimitri’s words.
Dear God, Tatiana prayed in bed that night, turning to the wall and pulling the white sheet and the thin brown blanket over herself. If You are there somewhere, please teach me how to hide what I never knew how to show.