The Bronze Horseman (31 page)

I’ve
done this, she thought. This is all because of me. Shuddering at herself, she laughed out loud. Anton twitched. I’ve done this to myself, and I have no one else to blame.

Had she not decided to single-handedly bring Pasha back, had she not joined the volunteers and walked off God knows where and got blown up and had her leg broken, she and Dasha would have left with Deda and Babushka for Molotov. And the unthinkable would not be happening in her room right now.

She sat on the roof until Dasha came upstairs sometime later and motioned for her to come to bed.

The following evening Mama told Tatiana that now that she was home by herself all day with a broken leg and nothing to do, she would have to start cooking dinner for the family.

All Tatiana’s life Babushka Anna, who did not work, had cooked. On the weekends Tatiana’s mother cooked. Sometimes Dasha cooked. During holidays like New Year everybody cooked; everybody, that is, except Tatiana, who cleared up.

“I’d be glad to, Mama,” said Tatiana. “If I only knew how.”

Dismissively Dasha said, “There is nothing to it.”

“Yes, Tania,” said Alexander, smiling. “There’s nothing to it. Make something delicious. A cabbage pie or something.”

Why not? Tatiana thought; while her leg was healing, she needed to busy her idle hands. She would try. She could not continue sitting in the room and reading all day, even if the reading was a Russian-English phrase book. Even if it was rereading Tolstoy’s
War and Peace
. She could not continue sitting in her room, thinking about Alexander.

The crutches had been killing her ribs, so Tatiana stopped using them. She hobbled to the store on her cast leg. The first thing she would cook in her life would be a cabbage pie. She would have also liked to make a mushroom pie but couldn’t find any mushrooms in the store.

The yeast dough took Tatiana three attempts and five hours in all. She made some chicken soup to go with the pie.

Alexander came for dinner, along with Dimitri. Extremely nervous about Alexander trying her food, Tatiana suggested that perhaps the two soldiers wanted to go back and eat at the barracks. “What, and miss your first pie?” Alexander said teasingly. Dimitri smiled.

They ate and drank and talked about the day and about war, and about evacuation, and about hopes for finding Pasha, and then Papa said, “Tania, this is a little salty.”

Mama said, “No, she just didn’t let the dough rise enough. And there are too many onions. Why didn’t you try to get something else besides cabbage?”

Dasha said, “Tania, next time cook the carrots a little longer in the soup. And put a bay leaf in. You forgot the bay leaf.”

Smiling, Dimitri said, “It’s not too bad for your first effort, Tania.”

Alexander passed Tatiana his plate, and said, “It’s great. Can I please have some more pie? And here’s my bowl for the soup.”

After dinner Dasha took Tatiana away and whispered in her pleading voice, “Can you and Dimitri go on the roof for a little while? It’s not going to be too late tonight. He’s got to get back. Please?”

Kids from the apartment building were constantly on the roof. Dimitri and Tatiana were not alone.

But Dasha and Alexander were alone.

What Tatiana needed was not to see her sister and him. Him for a lifetime. Her for two weeks. In two weeks, when the summer would end, Dasha’s infatuation would surely end, too. Nothing could survive the Leningrad winter.

But how could Tatiana not see Alexander?
Maybe she could lie to everyone else, but she could not lie to herself. She held her breath the whole day until the evening hour when she would finally hear him walking down the corridor. The last two nights he stopped at her door, smiled, and said, “Hello, Tania.”

“Hello, Alexander,” she replied, blushing and looking down at his boots. She couldn’t meet his eyes without trembling somewhere on her body.

Then she fed him.

Then Dasha took Tatiana aside and whispered.

Tatiana had been ready, gritted teeth and all, to put Alexander away. She had known all along what the right thing was, and she was prepared to do it.

But why did her face have to be rubbed in the right thing night after night?

As the days went on, Tatiana realized she was too young to hide well what was in her heart but old enough to know that her heart was in her eyes.

She was afraid she would glance at Alexander and something in her look would catch Dimitri’s attention, something would make him think, wait a minute, why is she looking at
him
? Or worse, what is
that
in her eyes? Or worse still, why is she looking
away
? Why can’t she look at him like everyone else? Like I look at Dasha, like Dasha looks at me?

Looking at Alexander condemned Tatiana, but not looking at him equally betrayed her, maybe even more so.

And Dimitri seemed to catch it all. Every glance away, every glance toward, Dimitri’s quietly studying eyes were on Alexander, on Tatiana.

Alexander was older. He could hide better.

Most of the time he treated her as if he had never met her before last night or tonight, before an hour ago, maybe a witching hour, maybe a drunken hour, certainly a smoking hour, but he managed somehow to behave toward her as if she were nothing to him. As if he were nothing to her.

But how?

How did he hide their Kirov walks and their arms against each other, how did he hide his life that he poured into her, how did he hide his unstoppable hands on her breasts, and his lips on her, and all the things he had said to her? How did he hide Luga from them all? Luga, when he washed her bloodied body? When she lay naked against him as he kissed her hair and held her with his tender arms, while his heart beat wildly in his chest. How did he hide his eyes? When they were alone, Alexander looked at Tatiana as if there were no one else in the world but her.

Was
that
the lie?

Was
this
the lie?

Maybe that’s what grown-ups did. They kissed your breasts and then pretended it meant nothing. And if they could pretend really well, it meant they were really grown-up.

Or maybe they kissed your breasts and it really
was
nothing.

How was that possible? To touch another human being that way and have it mean nothing?

But maybe if you could do that, it meant you were really grown-up.

Tatiana didn’t know, but she was baffled and humiliated by it—imagining herself in Alexander’s hands when he could barely be bothered to call her by name.

Tatiana would lower her head and wish for them all to disappear. But every once in a while when Alexander would be sitting down at the table, and she was in the room, and everyone was talking while she was moving or picking up teacups, she would see him glance at her, and for a flicker she would see his true eyes.

All Tatiana had with Alexander were meaningless gestures. He would open the door for her, and as she walked by him, a bit of her brushed a bit of him, and that kept her going for a day. Or when she made him tea and handed him the cup, the very tips of his fingers would—accidentally?—touch the very tips of hers, and that kept her going for another day. Until the next time she saw him. Until the next time a part of him would brush against a part of her. Until the next time he said, “Hello, Tania.” But one time, when Dimitri had already walked inside and Dasha was elsewhere, with a big smile on his face Alexander said, “Hello, Tania! I’m home.” And it made her laugh, though she didn’t want to. And when she looked up at him, he was soundlessly laughing, too.

One night when Alexander tasted her cheese
blinchiki,
he said, “Tania, I think that’s the best yet.” And that lifted her spirits, until Dasha kissed him and said, “Tanechka, you really have been a godsend for us all.”

Tatiana didn’t smile, and then she saw Dimitri watching her not smiling, and then she smiled but knew it was not enough. Later, when Dasha and Alexander were sitting together on the couch, Dimitri said, “Dasha, I must say that I have never seen Alexander as happy with anyone as he is with you,” and everybody smiled, including Alexander, who did not look at an unsmiling Tatiana. Yes, and we have me to thank for it, she thought grimly, catching Dimitri’s eyes.

She continued to learn to cook new things, how to make sweet pies because she saw that Alexander liked them, finishing them off in one sitting, followed by his tea and cigarettes.

“Do you know what else I like?” he said once.

Tatiana’s heart stopped for a moment.

“Potato pancakes.”

“I don’t know how to make those.”

Where was everyone else? Mama and Papa were in the other room. Dasha had gone to the bathroom. Dimitri was not there. Alexander smiled into her face, and his smile was contagious, and it was for her. “Potatoes, flour, some onions. Salt.”

“Is that from—”

Dasha came back.

The next day Tatiana made potato pancakes ladled with sour cream, and the whole family devoured them, saying they had never tasted anything so delicious. “Where did you learn to make
that
?” asked Dasha.

The only small pleasure Tatiana had during her long days was feeding Alexander. The pleasure was most intense and most untinged by hurt in the hours before the family returned home, when she was making the food and looking forward to seeing his face. During dinner emotions were already gathering clouds, and soon after dinner two things happened: either Alexander left to go back to barracks, which was bad enough, or Dasha asked to be left alone with him, which was worse.

Where had they gone before they had a room of their own to go to? Tatiana could not conceive of the things Alexander had said to her in the hospital about alleys and benches. Dasha, always the protective older sister, certainly never talked to Tatiana about those things. Didn’t talk to Tatiana about anything.

No one talked to Tatiana about anything.

Tatiana never saw Alexander alone.

He hid everything.

But one evening after dinner, when they all went out onto the roof, Anton asked Tatiana if she wanted to play their dizzy geography game. Tatiana said she was going to have trouble twirling on one leg.

“Come on, try,” said Anton. “I’ll hold you up.”

“All right,” Tatiana said, wanting a bit of giddiness. She hopped around and around on her one good leg, while keeping her eyes closed. Anton’s friendly hands were on her arms, and he laughed hysterically as she got all the countries in the world completely out of whack, and when she opened her eyes, she saw Alexander looking at her with such a black expression that it hurt her even to breathe, as if her ribs were rebroken. She straightened herself out and went to sit next to Dimitri, thinking that perhaps even grown-ups couldn’t hide
everything
.

“That’s a fun game, Tania,” said Dimitri, putting his arm around her.

“Yes, Tania,” said Dasha, “when are you ever going to grow up?”

Alexander said nothing.

Of all the small mercies Tatiana was grateful for, the one she was most grateful for was her broken leg’s preventing her from going on solitary walks with Dimitri. She was also grateful for the constant buzz of people in the apartment that stopped her from being alone with Dimitri. But that night when they got back downstairs from the roof, Tatiana discovered to her panic that her parents had themselves gone for a walk in the balmy August night, leaving the two couples alone together.

Tatiana saw Dimitri’s insinuating smile and felt his insinuating closeness. Dasha smiled at Alexander and said, “Are you tired?”

Tatiana could barely continue to stand on one leg.

It was Alexander who came to her rescue. “No, Dasha,” he said, “I have to be going tonight. Come on, Dimitri.”

Dimitri said he didn’t have to be going, not taking his eyes off Tatiana.

Alexander said, “Yes, you do, Dima. Lieutenant Marazov needs to see you tonight before taps. Let’s go.”

Tatiana was grateful for Alexander. Though it was a bit like the Germans cutting off your legs and then wanting you to be grateful to them for not killing you.

When Mama and Papa came back from their walk, Tatiana quietly asked them never to leave the apartment in the evening again, not even for a cold glass of beer on a warm August night.

During the days Tatiana went out for slow walks around the block to check the local stores for any food. She had begun to notice an absence of beef and pork. She could not find even the 250 grams of meat a week per person that was allotted them. Only occasionally did she find chicken.

Tatiana still found the ever-present cabbage, apples, potatoes, onions, carrots. But butter was more scarce. She had to put less in her yeast dough. The pies started tasting worse, though Alexander still ate them cheerfully. She found flour, eggs, milk. She couldn’t buy a lot; she couldn’t carry a lot. She would buy enough to make one pie for dinner, and then in the afternoons she would take a nap and study her English words before turning on the radio.

Tatiana listened to the radio every afternoon, because the second thing her father said when he came home was, “Any news from the front?” The first thing he said was, “Any news?” leaving out the unspoken.
Any news about Pasha?

So Tatiana felt obliged to listen to the radio to find out the minimum about the Red Army’s position, or about von Leeb’s army’s advance. She didn’t want to hear it. On occasion, yes—listening to bleak reports from the front lifted her spirits. Even defeat at the hands of Hitler’s men was better than what she had to endure inside herself every day. She turned on the radio in the hope that hopeless news elsewhere would cheer her up.

She knew if the announcer started listing open radio frequencies, then nothing extraordinary had happened that day. Usually there was some news. But even before the announcer came on, there was a series of dismal little rings and pauses, like a rat-ta-tat-tat of a typewriter. The radio information bulletin itself lasted a few seconds. Maybe three short sentences about the Finnish-Russian front.

“The Finnish armies are quickly regaining all the territory they lost in the war of 1940.”