“It hurts very much?”
“Like it’s about to be cut off,” muttered Tatiana. “Do you have anything for the pain?”
“Just vodka.”
“I’m not much for vodka.”
As he was drying her stomach with a towel, Tatiana, her eyes still closed, her hands still covering herself, whispered, “Please . . . don’t look at me.” Her voice broke.
His own voice breaking, Alexander said, “It’s all right, Tatiasha.” He bent down and kissed the top of her soft breast above her hand. “It’s all right.” He left his lips on her skin for a moment and then straightened up. “I have to turn you over, I have to clean the rest of you.”
“I can’t turn over by myself,” she said.
“I will turn you over.” And he did, cleaning her back with the same careful, tender meticulousness he had washed the rest of her. “Your back is all right. Many glass cuts. It’s the ribs that are burning you.”
Her face in the sheet, Tatiana muttered, “What am I going to wear? This was all I had.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll find you something tomorrow.” Turning her around, Alexander sat her up and patted her dry. He bandaged her from behind so his face wouldn’t be just centimeters from her breasts, which she continued to keep covered. He wrapped the bandage around her ribs, tying it carefully under her arms, wanting to kiss the top of her shoulder. He didn’t.
After laying Tatiana down, he covered her upper body with a blanket and then tightly bandaged her leg, using a wood splint for extra support. “How is that?” he asked, managing a smile. “Told you, good as new. Now, come here, hold on to me.” She could barely lift her arms to his neck.
Alexander moved her to his trench-coat bed on the ground, and when he set her down, Tatiana held on to him for a moment before she let go. He covered her with a woolen blanket.
Pulling the blanket to her neck, she said, “Why am I so cold? I’m not going to die, am I?”
“No,” Alexander said as he cleaned up the sheets and the towels. “You’re going to be fine.” He smiled. “We just have to get you back to the city.”
“I can’t walk. How are we going to do that?”
Patting her good leg lightly, Alexander said, “Tania, when you’re with me, don’t worry. I will take care of everything.”
“I’m not worried,” Tatiana replied, staring at him intensely in the dim light.
“Maybe the railroad will be repaired tomorrow. That’s only three kilometers from here. I wish I still had my truck, but the army took it. They need it more.” He paused. “We need to leave early tomorrow morning.” He moved a little closer to her. “Where were you before you decided to go under the German fire?”
“Downriver. Under the German fire.” Tatiana swallowed. “They’re on the other side.”
“I know. Tomorrow or the next day they’ll be on this side. We will need to leave at dawn. Now, stay here, and don’t go anywhere.” He smiled. “My Primus stove is right outside. I’m going to go and get some clean water from the stream, wash, and then I’ll make you some tea.” Out of his rucksack he took a bottle of vodka and brought it to her lips, lifting her head slightly.
“I don’t—”
“Please drink it. You’re going to be extremely sore. This will make it a bit better. Have you ever had anything broken before?”
“My arm, years ago,” Tatiana replied, and drank with a shudder.
“Why did you cut your hair?” Alexander asked, holding her head, looking down at her. He needed to shut his eyes for a moment not to continue to look at her so close to him.
“I didn’t want it to be in the way,” she said. “You hate it?” She looked up at him with her sweet, defenseless eyes.
“I don’t hate it,” Alexander said hoarsely. It took all his strength not to lean down and kiss her. He laid her on his coat and left the tent, needing to gather himself emotionally. Her helplessness and vulnerability had made his barely hidden feelings for her float to the surface, where they bobbed now, tantalizingly in reach, achingly out. He went to the stream and then made her some tea and went back inside. She was half awake and half conscious. He wished he had some morphine.
“I have some chocolate for you. Do you want a piece?”
Tatiana moved onto her good side and sucked on a small piece of chocolate as Alexander sat by her on the grass, his knees drawn up.
“Do you want the rest?”
He shook his head. “Why did you do this crazy thing, Tania?”
“To find my brother.” She glanced at him and looked away.
“Why didn’t you just come back to the barracks and ask me?”
“I had already gone once. I thought if you knew something, you’d come and see me.” She looked at him. “Did you—”
“I’m sorry,” said Alexander. He watched her round face pale. She was trying to be so brave. “Tania, I’m really sorry,” he said, “but Pasha was sent to Novgorod.”
With a choking whimper, Tatiana said, “Oh . . . no. Please, don’t say any more. Please.” She started to shiver and couldn’t stop. “I’m so cold,” she said, her hand coming up to rest on his boot. “Can you give me my tea before I fall asleep?”
He held her head up and the cup to her mouth as she drank.
“I’m tired,” she whispered, leaning back. Her eyes never left his face. Just like at Kirov.
Alexander started to move away before her voice sounded. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. Right here,” he replied. “I’ll sleep here, and early tomorrow we’ll set out for home.”
“You’ll be cold on the grass,” she whispered. “Come here.”
Alexander shook his head.
“Please, Shura,” said Tatiana in her dulcet voice, her hand stretching out to him. “Please come near me.”
He couldn’t say no even if he wanted to. Turning off the lamp, he removed his boots and his bloodied and soiled uniform, fumbled around his rucksack for a clean undershirt, and lay down on his trench coat next to Tatiana, covering them both with the woolen blanket.
It was pitch black in the tent. He lay on his back, and she lay on her left side, in the crook of his arm. Alexander heard the noise of the crickets. He heard her soft breath. He felt her warm breath on his shoulder and chest. He felt her naked body under his arm, pressing against his side. He couldn’t breathe.
“Tania?”
“Yes?” Her expectant voice quivering.
“Are you tired? Too tired to talk?”
“Not too tired to talk.” Less expectantly.
“Start at the beginning, and don’t stop until you get to Luga Station. What happened to you?”
After she told him everything, he waited a moment and then asked incredulously, “Did you cover yourself by crawling under a pile of bodies before the station collapsed?”
“Yes,” she replied.
Alexander was silent for a few moments. “Nice military maneuver, Tatia.”
“Thank you.”
They were quiet, and then he heard her crying. He held her closer. “I’m sorry about your brother.”
“Shura,” Tatiana said, speaking so softly he had to strain to hear, “remember I told you about how Pasha and I used to go to Lake Ilmen in Novgorod?”
“I remember, Tania.” He stroked her hair.
“My Aunt Rita and Uncle Boris and my cousin Marina—”
“The cousin Marina?”
“What do you mean?”
“The cousin Marina you were going to visit on the bus?” He smiled in the dark and felt her hand lightly pinch his stomach.
“Yes. They had a dacha and a rowboat on that lake, and Pasha and I used to take turns rowing. I’d row halfway across the lake and he’d row halfway. Well, one day we got into a stupid argument about where halfway actually was. He just didn’t want to let me row, so he kept arguing and arguing, and then yelling, and then screaming, and finally he said, ‘You want this oar? Well, here, you can have it,’ and he swung it at me and knocked
me right out of the boat into the lake.” Tatiana shivered. Alexander heard her laugh a little. “I went into the water, and I was fine, but I didn’t want him to think I was fine, so I held my breath and went under the boat, and I heard him from above yelling for me, more and more panicked, more and more frantic, and suddenly he jumped into the water to rescue me, and I swam to the other side of the boat, climbed in, picked up one of the oars and whistled for him. As soon as he turned around, I whacked him on the head.” Tatiana wiped her face with the hand that had just been touching Alexander. “Well, with my luck, he of course lost consciousness. He had put on a life jacket—”
“Unlike you?”
“Unlike me. I saw him floating in the water facedown, and I thought he was just playing a trick on me, too. I wanted to see how long he could hold his breath. I was convinced he couldn’t hold it as long as me. So I let him float for a minute, then another minute. Finally I jumped in and pulled him to the boat. Don’t know how I got him in. And rowed all the way back to shore by myself while he lay there and moaned that I had hit him too hard. Oh, did I get it from my parents when they saw the bruise on Pasha’s head. And after I’d been thoroughly punished, then he told everybody that he was just faking and was conscious the whole time.” She started to cry again. “Do you know how I feel now? Like I’m waiting any minute for Pasha to come out of the water and tell me this was all just a big joke.”
His voice cracking, Alexander said, “Tatiasha, the fucking Germans just hit him too hard with that oar.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I’m so sad he was alone without all of us.” She fell silent, and Alexander, too, as he lay and listened to her breath recover its rhythm. That he was alone without you, Tatiana, thought Alexander. He would have felt better had he been with you.
He listened to her paused breath, as if she were trying to ask him something. He continued to stroke her hair to give her strength. “What, Tatia?”
“Shura, are you asleep?”
“No.”
“I’ve missed you . . . coming to Kirov. Is that all right to say?”
“And I’ve missed you,” Alexander said, rubbing his lips against her gold-silk, down-feather hair. “And it’s all right to say.”
There was nothing else from her, except her hand, moving on his chest, gently, tenderly, up and down. He held her close. A groan of pain escaped her, and another, and another.
Minutes passed.
Minutes.
And then hours.
“Shura, are you asleep?”
“No.”
“I just wanted to say . . . thank you, soldier.”
Alexander’s eyes stared into the blackness, as he tried to envisage moments of his own life, of his childhood, of his mother and father, of Barrington. He saw nothing. Felt nothing but Tatiana lying on his fallen-asleep arm, caressing his chest. She stopped and placed her hand on his rapid heart. He felt her lips lightly press against his shirt, and then she slept. And finally he slept, too.
When Alexander first saw a tinge of blue-gray light from outside the tent, he said, “Tania?”
“I’m awake,” she said, her hand still on his chest.
He disentangled himself and went to wash by the stream in the woods, where it was still dark. There was no doing it on the banks of the Luga River. The Germans were only seventy-five meters across the water, their cannons and artillery pointed at the Soviet men who slept hugging their machine guns. Not Alexander—he had slept hugging Tatiana.
Coming back to the tent with clean water, he sat Tatiana up covered in the blanket, helped her wash, and then gave her some bread and some more tea.
“How are you feeling this morning?” he asked. “Spry?” He smiled.
“Yes,” she said weakly. “I think I can hop on my good leg.” He saw by her constricted face she was in terrible pain.
Alexander told her he would be right back and went to wake up the medic and ask for some clothes for her and some medication. Mark had no medication, but he found her a dress that belonged to one of the nurses who had died a few days ago. “Corporal, I need one lousy gram of morphine.”
“I don’t have it,” Mark snapped. “They shoot you for stealing morphine. I don’t have it for a broken leg. Bring her to me with intestinal damage and I won’t have it. You want her to have our precious morphine or a captain in the Red Army?”
Alexander did not answer that question.
After returning, he sat Tatiana up and slipped the dress over her head, taking care not to hurt her or to look at her bare and bandaged body.
“You’re a good man, Alexander,” she said, reaching up and laying her small palm onto his face.
“But a man first,” he said quietly, leaning into her hand. He paused briefly before continuing. “Your leg must hurt so much. Have some vodka again. It’ll dull the pain.”
“All right,” she said. “Anything you say.”
He let her have a few swigs. “Ready to go?”
“Leave me,” Tatiana said. “Go yourself, leave me. They’ll have room for me in the field tent eventually. People die, beds become free.”
“You think I came all the way to Luga to leave you waiting for a hospital bed?” He dismantled his tent and packed up his trench coat and blanket. She sat on the ground. “Let me help you up. Can you stand on one leg?”
“Yes,” she said, groaning. Tatiana stood in front of Alexander, barely coming up to the top of his chest. All he wanted to do was kiss her head. Please don’t look up at me, Alexander thought. She was very unsteady, holding on to his arms and swaying. “Put your rucksack on me,” she said. “It’ll be easier for you.”
He did. “Tania, I’m going to crouch in front of you, and you’re going to grab my neck. Just hold on tight, hear me?”
“I will. What about your rifle?”
“You on my back, rifle in my hands,” Alexander said. “Come on, we’ve got to go.”
She grabbed on to him, and he stood up with her on his back, taking hold of his weapon. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
Alexander heard her groaning. “It hurts?”
Her arms around his neck squeezed him. “It’s not bad.”
Alexander carried Tatiana on his back for three kilometers to Luga Station, which despite his hope was not repaired yet. “What now?” she asked anxiously when he stopped to rest.
He offered her a drink of water. “Now we walk through the woods to the next station.”
“How many kilometers is that?”
“Six,” he replied.
She shook her head. “Alexander, no. You can’t carry me for six more kilometers.”
“Do you have any other ideas?” he asked, crouching in front of her. “Let’s go.”
They were on a forest road making their way to the next train station north when they heard the planes just over the trees. Alexander himself would have continued walking, but he did not want to be walking with Tatiana on his back. If a bomb fell, she would be the first one to get hit.
He walked off the path, bringing her into the woods and setting her down by a fallen tree. “Lie down,” he told her, helping her lean back. He lay by her side, holding on to his rifle. “Turn onto your stomach,” he said. “And cover your head.” She didn’t move. “Don’t be afraid, Tania.”
“How can I be afraid now?” she said haltingly, lying on her back looking up at him. She wasn’t moving. She placed her hands on his chest.
“Go on,” he said, staring at her. “What? Do you need me to help? I should have taken your green helmet from the station.”
“Alexander—”
“Now that it’s morning, I’m suddenly Alexander again?”
Gazing up at him, Tatiana whispered, “Oh, Shura . . .” And Alexander could no longer bear it. He bent to her face and kissed her.
Her lips were as soft and young and full as he had imagined them to be. Tatiana’s whole body started to tremble as she kissed him back with such tenderness, such passion, such need that Alexander invo
luntarily emitted a small groan. He was bewildered by her hands pressing his head into hers and not letting go. “Oh, God . . .” he whispered into her parted mouth.
The crashing noise of the bombs overhead stopped them. Alexander felt that something had to stop him. The tip of the pine tree nearby caught fire, and bits of burning branches fell down into the damp forest very close to them. He turned her onto her stomach and lay next to her in the moss with his arm and half his body covering her. “Are you all right?” he whispered. “Bombs frighten you?”
“Bombs are the least of it,” she whispered back.
As soon as the shelling stopped, Alexander said, “Let’s go. We’ve got to get to the train. Let’s hurry.”
As she got up, she wouldn’t raise her eyes at him. Turning his back to her, he crouched, and she climbed on. He carried her, his arms under her knees, his hands holding his rifle.
“I’m heavy,” she said into his back.
“You’re no heavier than my ruck,” he said, panting. “Just hang on. We’ll be there soon.”
Every once in a while his rifle bumped her broken leg, and Alexander would feel her constrict in pain, but she didn’t moan, didn’t cry out. At one point he felt her put her head down on his back. He hoped she was all right.
Under a black smoky sky, amid burning woods, Alexander carried Tatiana on his back six kilometers to the next station. The nearby shelling had stopped, but the sound of explosions and artillery guns carried on all around.
At the station Alexander set her down on the ground and sank down next to her. She sidled closer to him and closer still.
“Tired?” she asked him gently.
He nodded.
They waited. The station was full of other people—women with little babies, with their elderly parents, with all their belongings. Grimy and shell-shocked, they waited for the train. Alexander took out a piece of his remaining bread and split it with Tatiana.
“No, you have it,” she said. “You need it more than I do.”
“Did you eat anything yesterday?” Alexander asked her. “No, of course you didn’t.”
“I had a raw potato, some blueberries in the forest. And the chocolate you gave me.” The length of her body and leg pressed against his side. She leaned her head on his arm and closed her eyes.