The Bronze Horseman (41 page)

“No, Dimitri, we
are
going to be stopping Hitler,” said Alexander. “
Before
the Germans get into the city.”

“So Leningrad is now scorched earth, too?” asked Tatiana. “What about all of us?”

No one replied.

Shaking his head, Alexander finally said, “Dimitri and I are headed for Dubrovka tomorrow. We will stop them if we can.”

“But why is it that it’s me and you who have to stand between the Germans and this city?” Dimitri exclaimed. “Why can’t we just give Leningrad up? Minsk gave up. Kiev gave up. Tallinn gave up, having burned to the ground first. The entire Crimea gave up. All of the Ukraine
happily
gave up!” He was getting himself into a terrible agitation. “What the hell are we doing killing all of our men to stop Hitler from coming here? Let him come.”

“But, Dimochka,” said Mama, “your Tania is here. And Alexander’s Dasha.”

“Oh, and let’s not forget me,” said Marina. “Even though I belong to nobody, I’m here, too.”

“That’s right, Dima,” said Alexander. “Do you want to step out of Hitler’s way so he can get to your girl?”

“Yes, Dima,” exclaimed Dasha. “Haven’t you heard what the Germans are doing to all the Ukrainian women?”

“I haven’t heard; what are they doing?” asked Tatiana.

“Nothing, Tania,” Alexander said gently. “Can I please have some more tea?”

Tatiana stood up.

Dimitri looked down into his empty cup. “I’ll get you some tea, too, Dima,” said Tatiana.

Marina said, looking down into her empty cup, “My poor Papa couldn’t stop them. They seem unstoppable, don’t you think?”

Alexander said nothing.

“They
are
unstoppable!” Dimitri exclaimed. “We have three pathetic army divisions. That’s not going to be enough, even if every last man dies and if every last tank is destroyed!”

Alexander stood from the table and saluted everyone. “On that note,” he said, “we must be going. Forget my tea, Tania.” Turning to Dimitri, he said, “Soldier on, Private, and let’s go. Your life stands between the Metanovs and Hitler.” He did not glance at Tatiana.

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” mumbled Dimitri.

As they were leaving, Dasha cried, clinging to Alexander. “Will you promise to come back alive?”

“I will do my best.” And then he glanced at Tatiana.

Tatiana did not cry, nor did she extract the same promise from Dimitri. After they left, she had a piece of sweet biscuit, nursing it like a wound.

Marina said, “I really like your Dima, Tania. He is more honest than anyone I know. I like that in a soldier.”

Puzzled, Tatiana looked at her cousin. “What kind of a soldier doesn’t want to go and fight? You can have him, Marina.”

The next morning, as they were getting dressed, the Metanovs heard on the radio that an incendiary bomb had fallen on the roof of a building on Sadovaya Ulitsa and the roof patrol wasn’t able to put it out in time. It exploded, killing everyone there, nine people, all of them under the age of twenty.

My brother was under the age of twenty, Tatiana thought, putting on her shoes. Her shin was throbbing.

“You see? What did I tell you?” said Mama. “It’s dangerous to be on the roof.”

“We are in the middle of a city under siege, Mama,” Tatiana said. “It’s dangerous to be everywhere.”

The bombing started at precisely eight in the morning. Tatiana hadn’t even gone to get her rations yet. The family all piled downstairs to the bomb shelter. Restlessly Tatiana bit her nails to the quick and drummed and drummed a tune on her knees, but nothing helped. They sat for an hour.

Afterward Papa gave Tatiana his ration book and asked her to get his rations for him. Mama said, “Tanechka, can you get mine, too? I’ve got all this sewing to do before work. I’m sewing extra uniforms for the army.” She smiled. “One uniform for our Alexander, ten rubles for me.”

Tatiana asked Marina to come with her to the store. Marina declined, saying she was going to help Babushka get dressed. Dasha was in the kitchen washing clothes in the cast-iron sink.

Tatiana went by herself. She found a large store on the Fontanka Canal near the Theatre of Drama and Comedy. The theatre was showing Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night
at seven that evening. The line at the store spilled down the embankment.

She forgot all about
Twelfth Night
when she got to the counter and learned that after yesterday’s burning of the Badayev warehouses the ration had been further reduced.

Papa got half a kilo of bread on his worker’s ration card, but everyone else got only 350 grams each, and Marina and Babushka only 250 grams. Altogether they had about two kilos of bread for the day. Besides bread, Tatiana managed to buy some carrots, soybeans, and three apples. She also bought 100 grams of butter and half a liter of milk.

After running home, Tatiana told her family of the reduced rations. They weren’t concerned. “Two kilos of bread?” Mama said, putting away her sewing. “That’s more than enough. That’s plenty. No need to stuff ourselves like pigs in times of war. We can tighten our belts a little bit. Plus we have all that extra food just in case. We’ll be fine.”

Tatiana divided the bread into two piles—one for breakfast, one for dinner—and then divided each of the piles into six portions. She gave Papa the most bread. She gave herself the least.

At the hospital gone was the pretense of training with Vera. Tatiana was reduced to cleaning the toilets and baths for the patients and then washing their soiled bedding. She served lunch and was herself able to eat. Sometimes soldiers came in to eat. While serving them, she always asked if they were stationed in Pavlov Barracks.

Intermittent bombing continued during the day.

That night Tatiana had enough time to make dinner and clean up before the air-raid siren sounded at nine. Back to the bomb shelter. Tatiana sat and sat and sat. It’s been only two days, she thought. How many more days of this? Next time I see Alexander, I’m going to get him to tell me the truth about how long this is going to continue.

The shelter was long and narrow, painted gray, with two kerosene lamps for the sixty or so people, who sat on benches or stood leaning against the walls. “Papa,” Tatiana asked her father, “how much longer do you think?”

“It will be over in a few hours,” he said wearily. Tatiana smelled vodka heavy on his breath.

“Papa,” Tatiana said in a tired voice, “I _meant _… the fighting, the war. How much longer?”

“How should I know?” he said, trying to stand up. “Until we’re all dead?”

“Mama, what’s the matter with Papa?” Tatiana asked.

“Oh, Tanechka, you can’t be that blind. Pasha is the matter with Papa.”

“I’m not blind,” muttered Tatiana, moving away. “But his family needs him.”

Edging closer to Dasha and Marina, Tatiana asked, “Dash, Marinka here told me that Misha in Luga had a crush on me. I told her she was crazy. What do you think?”

“She is crazy.”

“Thank you.”

Marina looked at Tatiana and Dasha. “You are both crazy,” she said. “And
you
, Dasha, are one day going to eat your words.”

“There you go, Tania,” said Dasha, without even looking at her sister. “Maybe it’s Misha you need and not Dimitri.” She sighed.

The next day was the same. This time Tatiana brought a copy of Dostoyevsky’s
Notes from the Underground
with her.

The next day she said to herself, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t sit and drum out my life on my knees. So as her family was heading downstairs, Tatiana fell a little behind and then ran back through the apartment and up the rear stairs to the roof, where Anton, Mariska, and Kirill and a few other people she didn’t know were watching the sky. Tatiana thought that with a bit of luck her family might not even notice her absence.

The bursting and whistling noise from the shelling was fearful on the roof. Tatiana stayed for two hours. No bombs landed near them, much to everyone’s disappointment.

Tatiana had been right. No one realized she hadn’t gone to the shelter. “Where did you sit, Tanechka?” asked her mother. “On the other side next to the lamp?”

“Yes, Mama.”

There was no word from Alexander or Dimitri. The girls were beside themselves. They could barely be civil to each other, much less to anyone else. Only Babushka Maya, unshakable to the last, kept quiet and continued to paint.

“Babushka, where do you get your peace of mind from?” asked Tatiana one evening, brushing Babushka’s long hair that was just starting to go gray.

“I’m too old to care, sunshine,” replied Babushka. “I’m not young like you.” She smiled. “I don’t want to live quite so much.” She looked over her shoulder and touched Tatiana’s face.

“Babushka, don’t say that.” She came around to the front and hugged her grandmother. “What if Fedor comes back?”

Stroking Tatiana’s head, Babushka Maya said, “I didn’t say I didn’t want to live at all. I said not quite so
much
.”

Tatiana was a little worried about Marina. She was gone from the apartment from early morning until night, going to Leningrad University and then faithfully visiting her mother at the hospital.

At night Mama sewed. At night Papa drank. And screamed, and slept. At night Dasha and Tatiana listened to the radio for news. At night, there was bombing, and Tatiana sneaked out to the roof.

And during the day she heard the sound of war. It was never quiet in Leningrad. Shell fire came in two sounds, distant and nearby, stopping briefly for lunch in the afternoon and a sleep in the evening.

Tatiana worked, got bread, healed her leg, and acted as if her life had not stopped dead like the tram near the white-night Obvodnoy Canal.

Babushka Maya had a room all to herself. Mama slept alone on the sofa, and Papa slept alone on Pasha’s cot. Tatiana, Marina, and Dasha slept in the same bed. Tatiana was almost grateful for the buffer between her and Dasha, the buffer that allowed her to face the crisis of bombings by averting her eyes from the crisis of her sister, who had the
right
during war to love Alexander.

Not enough of a buffer. Dasha one night climbed over Marina and put her arms around Tatiana. “Tania, darling, are you asleep?”

“No. What’s the matter?”

“Do you think about them dying?” Dasha asked in the dark.

“Girls, I have school tomorrow,” said Marina. “Go to sleep.”

“Of course.” Tatiana heard Dasha’s quiet whimpers.

“Do you think they’re dead now?” asked Dasha, holding on to Tatiana.

Taking an aching breath, Tatiana inhaled for Alexander. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so.” She did not want to be talking to Dasha about Alexander. Not now. Not ever. “Dasha, worry about yourself. Look at the conditions we’re living in. Do you even see? In the hospital they asked me if I would mind leaving the kitchen and going upstairs to help with the bomb victims. I agreed, but then I saw what was left of them.” Tatiana paused. “Did you see that today across Ligovsky a whole building collapsed?”

“I didn’t see.”

“A girl, seventeen…”

“Like you.” Dasha squeezed her.

“Yes—was buried under the rubble. Her father was trying to help the firemen dig her out. All day they were digging. At six when I left the hospital, they had just succeeded. And she was already dead. Hole in her forehead.”

Dasha didn’t say anything.

Marina said, “Tania, did you just say you left the hospital at
six
? But there was bombing at six. You didn’t go to the shelter?”

“Marinka,” said Dasha. “Don’t even talk about that with her.” She whispered into Tatiana’s hair, “If you don’t start going to the shelter, I’m going to tell on you.”

That night the sirens woke them up at three in the morning. The Germans obviously wanted to have a little fun. Tatiana turned to the wall and would have continued to sleep had her family not dragged her out of bed. They crowded on the landing behind the stairs, and Tatiana thought, it can’t get much worse than this.

Alexander and Dimitri returned during the night of September 12, the first night and day there was no bombing at all. They had come back from Dubrovka for just one evening—to pick up more men from the garrison and more artillery weapons.

Alexander turned up, much to the tearful relief of Dasha, who would not let go of him for a second, refusing to help with dinner. Dimitri hung on to Tatiana in much the same way Dasha hung on to Alexander, but while Alexander was able to hug Dasha back, Tatiana stood like a skinned goose and looked helplessly around the room. “All right, now, all right,” she said, trying very hard not to look at Alexander’s black hair and large body, and failing. To see his shape in front of her eyes would have to be comforting enough. She would have to do without his arms around her.

When Dimitri went to wash and Dasha ran to make tea, Marina said, “You know, Tania, you could show a little more interest in the man who is fighting for you at the front.”

I’m showing plenty of interest, thought Tatiana, barely able to glance away from Alexander.

“Your cousin is right, Tania,” said Alexander, grinning at her. “You can show at least as much interest as Zhanna Sarkova, who, as we walked by her slightly ajar door, was lying on her bed with a glass to your wall.”

“She was?”

Raising his voice, Alexander took his rifle, banged once very hard on the wall and said loudly, “Have you heard this joke? A man showed a friend his apartment. The guest asked, ‘What’s the big brass basin for?’ And the man replied, ‘Oh, that’s the talking clock,’ and gave a shattering pound with a hammer.” Alexander banged the wall hard again. “Suddenly a voice on the other side of the wall screamed, ‘It’s 2 a.m., you
bastard
!’ ”

Tatiana laughed so loudly that Alexander put down his rifle and patted her gently on the back. “Thank you, Tania,” he said, smiling. “I’m starved. What’s for dinner?”

As Tatiana turned to go to the kitchen, she had to walk past Marina’s eyes.

Tatiana fried two cans of ham with a bit of rice that Alexander had brought, and some clear broth, which once had chicken in it. While she was cooking, Alexander came out into the kitchen to wash. Tatiana held her breath. He came up to the stove and checked under all the lids. “Hmm, ham,” he said. “Rice. What’s this, water? Don’t give me any of that.”