The Bronze Horseman (47 page)

She had long ago stopped smiling. Carefully she said, “I wish you had succeeded with Dimitri. A promotion would have been good for him.”

“I agree.”

“And maybe if he had become a hero,” Tatiana went on evenly, “you wouldn’t have to marry my sister.”

His face falling, Alexander said, “Oh, Tatia—”

“But as it is,” she continued loudly, interrupting him, “you’re a captain, and he’s in Tikhvin. You’ll
have
to marry Dasha now, won’t you?” She stared at him unremittingly.

Alexander rubbed his eyes with his blackened hands. Tatiana had never seen him so unclean. She had forgotten all about him, so busy was she thinking all about herself. “Oh, Shura. What am I
doing
?” Tatiana said. “I’m so sorry. Come home. Look at you. Come. You’ll wash.” She said softly, “You can have a hot bath. I’ll boil the water for you. I’ll make you nice oatmeal. Come on.” She wanted to add
darling
but didn’t dare.
Marry Dasha,
Tatiana
almost
wanted to say.
Marry her if it helps you live.

Alexander didn’t move from the wall.

“Please come, Shura.”

“Wait.” He bit his lip. “Are you upset with me because of your father?”

He didn’t fight, he didn’t argue, he didn’t say it wasn’t his fault. He just accepted responsibility and went on, as if it now was just another burden to be carried on his shoulders. Well, his shoulders were wide enough for several burdens, including some of Tatiana’s, and, oddly, to see him square his chest made her own lighter. Relief came at Alexander’s expense, but it was welcome relief nonetheless. She wanted comfort? There it was.

“No, Shura,” Tatiana said. “No one is upset. They’ll be overjoyed you’re alive.”

Alexander raised his eyes to her. “I didn’t ask about them. Are
you
upset with me?”

Tatiana looked at him with compassion. Underneath his battle armor, the man who commanded an armored battalion needed
her
. If he was wounded, she could bandage him. If he was hungry, she could feed him. If he wanted to talk to her, there she was. But now her Alexander was sad. She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t for her father she was upset with him. But she couldn’t, because all she wanted was to give him comfort back. She didn’t want him to be sad for another moment.

Reaching out, Tatiana took hold of his hand. He had dirt under his nails and bloody scratches, but his hand was warm and strong, and it squeezed hers gratefully.

“No, Shura,” she said tenderly. “Of course, I’m not upset with you.”

“I just want you to be safe,” he said, his back to the wall. “That’s all. Safe from everything.”

Tatiana came into Alexander’s arms. “I know. I’m going to be just fine,” she said into his coat, feeling so happy to be hugging him that she was afraid of falling down. Brushing the hair away from her forehead, Alexander pressed his lips to her healing brow and whispered, “Don’t back away from me like before when I touch you.”

“All right,” Tatiana murmured, her eyes closed and her arms tight around him.

“Look who I found!” Tatiana exclaimed as Alexander walked in behind her. Dasha shrieked, running to him.

Tatiana went to put the water on to boil for his bath. She found soap for him, and fresh towels, and a razor, and Alexander went and had a hot bath.

“Is it warm enough?” she called to him from the kitchen, boiling more water, just in case.

His laughing voice carried from the bathroom. “No, not at all. Come, bring me another jug. Come in here, Tania.”

Blushing and smiling, Tatiana went and asked Dasha to bring Alexander another jug of boiling water.

He came inside the room all scrubbed and flushed and clean-shaven, so warm, his black hair so damp and shiny, his teeth so white, his mouth so moist that Tatiana didn’t know how she kept from flinging her arms around him. While he sat in his long johns and thermal shirt, Dasha went to wash his uniform. Marina, Babushka, and Tatiana clucked around him; everyone did except surly Mama.

Tatiana didn’t tell Mama she had eggs. She was going to, but when she saw that Mama was not prepared to forgive Alexander for yelling at her and Papa, Tatiana was not prepared to share eggs with her. Forgiveness had to come first.

Alexander had given them a kilo of butter. Tania hid it under the sack of flour on the windowsill. Mama had a weak cup of tea with some bread and butter, gruffly thanked Alexander, and went to work.

Babushka took some silverware, some silver candlesticks, some money, old blankets off the bed, and stuffed them all into a sack as she, too, got ready to leave.

Tatiana had to go and cook breakfast, but she remained in the room, sitting quietly in a chair, staring at Alexander.

“Where is
she
going?” Alexander inquired.

“Oh, across the Aleksandr Nevsky Bridge to Malaya Ochta,” said Dasha, coming into the room. Tatiana quickly lowered her gaze. “She’s got friends there,” Dasha continued, “and she trades our things for potatoes or carrots. She was good to them when things were good, and now they’re good to her when things are not. Your clothes won’t dry for a while,” she said to Alexander, smiling.

“That’s all right,” he said, smiling back. “I don’t have to report to base for four days. Will they be dry by then?”

Tatiana’s heart skipped with joy. Four days of Alexander!

“Tania, are you going to go and make breakfast?” Dasha asked, leaving again. Marina was in the other room, getting ready to go to university.

Alexander turned to Tatiana. “Tatiasha,” he said, “can I have some tea?”

Instantly she got up from the table. What was she thinking, sitting around? He must be so tired, so hungry. “Of course.” He was sitting and smoking, with his long legs stretching across the floor all the way to the couch. There was no room for Tatiana to walk past, and Alexander wasn’t moving his legs. Tatiana stared at him. He was smiling.

“Excuse me, Alexander,” Tatiana said quietly, trying
very
hard to keep a straight face.

“Step over them,” he said, lowering his voice. “Just take care not to trip. Because then I’d have to catch you.”

Turning red, Tatiana raised her eyes and saw Marina watching her from the door. “Excuse me, Alexander,” Tatiana repeated, keeping her breathy voice even.

Reluctantly Alexander moved his legs. “Come here, Marina,” he said with a sigh. “Let me take a look at you. How have you been keeping?”

Tatiana brought Alexander a cup of tea, making it nice and strong and sweet for him, just the way he liked it. “Thank you,” he said, looking up at her.

“You’re welcome.” She gazed down at him.

“My legs still in your way?”

“Yes, you’re too large for this room,” Tatiana whispered.

Before he could reply, Dasha came back with some clean sheets. “Girls, how does your Babushka do across the Neva?” Alexander asked, taking his tea and looking away from Tatiana.

Folding sheets and putting them away, Dasha said, “Yesterday she brought five turnips and ten potatoes. But all of Mama’s wedding dishes are now gone. After these candlesticks, I don’t know what else she’ll have to sell.”

“How about those gold teeth you took from the dentist, Dasha?” Tatiana asked. “Would the farmers like some gold?” She sat down at the table next to the wall, her back to Dasha, her eyes to Alexander.

“What could they possibly do with gold?”

“What would they do with candlesticks?”

Alexander said, “Ah, have light. Have heat. Use them as weapons against the Germans.” He turned to Tatiana. “Tania…” He smiled. “Where
is
this promised oatmeal? Where are those promised eggs?”

There was a knock at the front door, and Tatiana went to answer it. It was Nina Iglenko wanting to know if they had any extra anything she could give Anton. Tatiana knew that Nina was having a hard time sustaining him on a dependent’s ration after he was wounded on the roof. Alexander came out to the hallway, enormous and imposing, standing next to her small, sweater-wrapped body. His arm pressing into Tatiana’s arm, Alexander said, “Comrade Iglenko, everyone collects the same dependent ration. I’m sorry, we have nothing.” And he shut the door, turning to Tatiana. “You didn’t tell me that Anton got wounded on the roof.” He was still very close to her. Not only could she smell him, breathe him, inhale him, but in one moment his chest would touch her face.

“He’s fine,” Tatiana said in a dismissive tone, trying not to breathe erratically. “It’s just a scratch on his leg.” She didn’t want Alexander to worry.

“Tania, did you know that everyone collects the same dependent ration?” Alexander said pointedly, edging forward and scaring Tatiana into the coat-rack.

“I heard that.”

“You don’t have any more than Nina does.”

“I know. Excuse me. I have to go and make you breakfast.” Tatiana couldn’t spend another second standing with him in the narrow hallway while he was wearing his long johns. She walked out and caught up with Nina in the corridor, handing her a hunk of the butter.

“God bless you, Tanechka,” said Nina. “God bless you as long as you live. You’ll see. He will protect you all your life for your kind heart.”

Tatiana returned to the kitchen and was making eggs and oatmeal, when Alexander came in and leaned against the stove, facing her.

“Careful, your back will get burned,” said Tatiana, not looking at him.

He didn’t say anything at first, but then a fierce whisper came out of him. “Tania, better than anyone else, I know what you are. I know what you’re doing—”

“What?” she said. “I’m making oatmeal. And eggs.”

Alexander put his finger under her chin and turned her face up to him. “You cannot give your food away, do you understand? There isn’t enough for you and your family.”

Opening her mouth and pretending to bite his finger, Tatiana nodded. Alexander left his fingers on her for a moment.

Tatiana made the oatmeal with a couple of tablespoons of milk, some butter, and a few teaspoons of sugar. And water. She made enough for four small bowls and divided it into four uneven parts, the largest one for Alexander, the next for Dasha, then Marina, and the smallest for her. He had brought them twenty eggs. She scrambled five of them with butter and salt. It felt as if they were having a feast.

Alexander took one look at his bowl and said he would not eat it. Dasha had already finished her oatmeal by the time he had stopped speaking. Marina, too. And her eggs.

Only Tatiana gazed down into her bowl as Alexander gazed down at his. “What is the matter with you two?” Dasha said. “Alex, you need much more food than she does. You’re a man. She is the smallest. She needs the least out of all of us. Now, eat. Please.”

“Yes,” said Tatiana, still not looking up. “You’re a man. I am the smallest. I do need the least. Now, eat. Please.”

Alexander switched his bowl with Tatiana’s. “Now,
you
eat,” he said. “I can get food at the barracks. Eat.”

Gratefully Tatiana ate every last bite in seconds. Then she finished her eggs.

Dasha said, “Oh, Alexander, how different things are since the last time you were here. It’s a lot harder now. People are harder. Everyone is now only for themselves, it seems.” She sighed, glancing away.

Alexander and Tatiana silently stared at Dasha.

“We’re getting only three hundred grams of bread a day,” she continued. “How much worse can it get?”

“Much worse,” said Tatiana, sparing Alexander an answer. “Because our provisions will soon be gone.”

“How many cans of ham do you have left?” he asked.

“Twelve.”

“Yes,” said Tatiana, “but four days ago we had eighteen. We ate six cans in four days. We’ve been hungry at night.” She wanted to add that they were hungry every waking and sleeping minute of every day but didn’t.

The girls had to go to work. Tatiana watched Dasha come close to Alexander, who put his hands on her waist. “Oh, Alexander, I’ve gotten so thin,” Dasha said. “You’re not going to like me anymore, thin like this. Soon I’ll start looking like Tania.” She kissed him. “Are you going to be all right while we’re gone? What are you going to do?”

Alexander smiled. “I’m going to fall down in your bed and not wake up until you come home.”

Tatiana
ran
home at five o’clock, bombing or no bombing.

At home it was toasty warm. Alexander came out of the room grinning happily at her, and Tatiana, grinning happily back, said, “Hello, Alexander, I’m home!”

He laughed.

She wanted to kiss him.

He had gone and retrieved a dozen bundles of wood from the basement and brought them upstairs. Dasha came in from the kitchen. “Isn’t it cozy in here, Tania?” she said, hugging Alexander.

“Girls,” he said, “you will have to keep heating these rooms. It’s getting too cold.”

“We’re getting heat from the central heating system, Alex,” argued Dasha.

“Dash,” he said, “the Leningrad Council is heating residential buildings to a maximum of ten degrees Centigrade. You think that’s warm enough?”

“It hasn’t been so bad,” said Tatiana, taking off her coat.

Alexander patted Dasha’s arm. “I’m going to bring you more wood from the basement and leave it for you. Heat your rooms with the big stove, not the little
bourzhuika
that can’t warm up a penguin. All right, Tania?”

Suddenly shivering, Tatiana said nothing at first. “Alexander, these wood-burning stoves take a lot of wood,” she said, and hurried out to make him dinner.

Babushka brought seven potatoes from Malaya Ochta. They ate one more can of ham and all of the potatoes. After dinner Alexander suggested that from now on they eat only half a can of ham a day. Dasha got upset. She said they could barely make it on the whole can. He said nothing.

When the air-raid siren sounded, he motioned for the family to go down into the shelter—everyone, including Tatiana. When Dasha asked him to come with them, Alexander looked at her thoughtfully and said, “Dasha, go on now, and don’t worry about me.” When she insisted, he said, more firmly, “What kind of a soldier would I be if I ran for shelter every time there was a little bombing? Now, go. And, Tania, you, too. You haven’t been on the roof, have you?”