3
There were no more letters from Alexander.
August passed quietly into September, and still no letters. Tatiana did the best she could, drowning herself with the old women, with her village, with her books, with her English, with John Stuart Mill, whom she read out loud to herself in the woods, almost understanding everything.
Still nothing from him, and her soul wasn’t quiet anymore, and it wasn’t comforted.
One Friday at the knitting circle, Tatiana, her head buried in the sweater she was making for Alexander, heard Irina Persikova ask if she had received any letters from him.
“Not for a month now,” said Naira quietly. “Shh. We don’t talk about it. The Molotov Soviet has no news. She goes every week to check. Shh.”
Dusia said, “Either way, God is with him.”
Axinya jovially said, “Don’t worry, Tanechka. The post is terrible. You know that. Letters take a long time to come.”
“I know, Axinya,” said Tatiana, looking at her knitting needles. “I’m not worried.”
“I’ll tell you a story that’ll make you feel better. A woman named Olga lived in the village here a few months before you came, and her husband was at the front, too. She waited and waited for letters from him. Nothing. Like you she fretted and waited, and then she got ten letters all at once!”
Tatiana smiled. “Wouldn’t that be great?” she said. “To get ten letters from Alexander all at once.”
“Absolutely, darling.” Axinya smiled. “So don’t worry.”
Dusia said, “Oh, that’s right. Olga put the letters in chronological order and started reading them. She read nine of them, and the tenth letter was from the commandant, saying her husband had been killed at the front.”
Tatiana paled. “Oh” was all she could get out.
“Dusia!” Axinya exclaimed. “For God’s sake, have you no sense? Next you’re going to tell her how Olga drowned herself in the Kama.”
Tatiana put down her knitting needles. “You ladies finish up here without me, all right? I’m going to go and start on our dinner. I’m making cabbage pie.”
She stumbled home and immediately got the Pushkin book out of the trunk. Alexander had told her he put the money back. Looking at the cover, looking and looking, Tatiana took a deep breath and carefully cut off the paper with a razor blade. The money was there. Breathing out a small sigh, she took it into her hands.
Then she counted it.
Five thousand dollars.
Without alarm she counted the crisp new bills again, taking care to separate each one. Ten one-hundred-dollar bills. Four one-thousand-dollar bills.
Five thousand dollars.
She counted it again.
Five thousand dollars.
Tatiana started doubting herself; for a moment she thought maybe it had always been five thousand dollars, that she had just mistaken the amount.
If only Alexander’s voice in the kerosene-lamp-filled night didn’t carry from her brain to her heart: This was the last thing my mother left me, a few weeks before she was arrested. . . . We hid the money together. Ten thousand American dollars . . . four thousand rubles.
Tatiana climbed on top of her bed and lay on her back, facing the beamed ceiling.
He had told her he was leaving her all the money.
No, he didn’t say that. He said, I’m leaving you the money. She had watched him glue the cover back together.
Why would he take only five thousand dollars?
To mollify her? To have her not worry, not make another scandalous scene? Not return to Leningrad with him?
She held the money to her chest and tried to fathom Alexander’s heart.
He was the man who, a few meters away from freedom, from America, had chosen to turn his back on his lifelong dream. Feel one way. Behave one way, too. Alexander may have hoped for America, but he believed more in himself. And he loved Tatiana most of all. Alexander knew who he was.
He was a man who kept his word.
And he had given it to Dimitri.
* * *