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 killin
g 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.”
“The Finns are coming closer to Leningrad.”
“The Finns are at Lisiy Nos, only twenty kilometers from the city limits.”
Then followed a few sentences about the German advance. The newsreader read slowly, stretching out the no-news bulletin to impart meaning that wasn’t there. After he listed the cities south of Leningrad that were under German control, Tatiana had to go and open a map.
When she found out that Tsarskoye Selo was in German hands, she was shocked and even forgot about Alexander for the moment it took her to get her bearings. Tsarskoye Selo, like Peterhof, was a summer palace of the old tsars, it was the summer writing place of Alexander Pushkin, but the worst thing was that Tsarskoye Selo was just ten kilometers southeast of the Kirov factory, which was located on the city limits of Leningrad.
Were the Germans ten kilometers from Leningrad?
“Yes,” Alexander said that night. “The Germans are very close.”
The city had changed in the month Tatiana spent in Luga and in the hospital. The golden spires of the Admiralty and Peter and Paul’s Cathedral had been spray-painted gray. Soldiers were on every street, and the NKVD militia in their dark blue uniforms were even more conspicuous than the soldiers. Every window in the city was taped against explosion; the people on the streets walked quickly and with a purpose. Tatiana sometimes sat on a bench near the church across the street and watched them. In the sky floated the ubiquitous airships, some round, some oval. The rations became slightly more restrictive, but Tatiana was still able to get enough flour to make potato pies, mushroom pies, and cabbage pies. Alexander often brought some of his rations with him when he came for dinner. There was chicken enough to make chicken soup with well-cooked carrots. Bay leaf was gone.
Dimitri got Tatiana out onto the roof while Dasha and Alexander were downstairs alone in Tatiana’s room. Putting his arm around her, Dimitri said, “Tania, please. I’m feeling so sad. How long am I going to wait? Just a little more tonight?”
Placing her hand on his arm, Tatiana asked, “What’s the matter?”
“I just need a little comfort from you,” he said, hugging her, kissing her cheeks, trying to bring his mouth to hers. There was something that felt almost unnatural in Dimitri’s touching her. She couldn’t put her finger on it. “Dima, please,” she whispered, moving slightly away from him and motioning for Anton, who skipped over and chatted with them until Dimitri got fed up and left.
“Thanks, Anton,” said Tatiana.
“Anytime,” he replied. “Why don’t you just tell him to leave you alone?”
“Anton, you wouldn’t believe it, but the more I do, the more he comes around,” said Tatiana.
“Older men are all like that, Tania,” said Anton with authority, as if he knew about such things. “Don’t you understand anything? You have to give in. Then he’ll leave you alone!” He laughed.
Tatiana laughed, too. “I think you may be right, Anton. I think that’s how older men work.”
She continued to busy Dimitri with cards or books, with jokes or vodka. Vodka, in particular, was good. Dimitri tended to have a little too much and then fall asleep on the small sofa in the hallway, and Tatiana would take her grandmother’s cardigan and go up onto the roof without him and sit with Anton and think of Pasha, and think of Alexander.
She passed the time with Anton, told jokes, read Zoshchenko and War and Peace, and looked at the Leningrad sky, wondering how much longer for the Germans to get to Leningrad.
Wondering how much longer for everything.
And after the other kids left to go to sleep, Tatiana continued to sit by the kerosene lamp on the roof and mouth little English words to herself from the dictionary and the phrase book. She learned to say “Pen.” “Table.” “Love.” “The United States of America.” “Potato pancakes.” She wished she had two minutes alone with Alexander to tell him some of the amusing phrases she was learning.
One night at the very end of August, with Anton asleep next to her, Tatiana tried to think of a way to make her life right again.
Once it had been right. As right as it could be. Suddenly after June 22 there was such havoc, constant, cheerless, and unending. But not all of it cheerless.
Tatiana missed the evening hour with Alexander at Kirov more than she could admit even to herself. The evening hour when they had sat apart and together and ambled through the empty streets; when they talked and were silent, and the silence flowed into their words as Lake Ladoga flowed into the Neva that flowed into the Gulf of Finland that flowed into the Baltic Sea. The evening hour when they smiled and the white of his teeth blinded her eyes, when he laughed and his laughter flew into her lungs, when she never took her eyes off him and no one saw but him, and he was all right with it.
The evening hour at Kirov when they were alone.
What to do? How to fix this? Somehow she had to make herself right again inside. For her own sake, for her sister’s, and for Alexander’s.
It was two in the morning. Tatiana was cold, wearing only an old sundress with a cardigan over it. She was thinking that she would rather spend the rest of her life on the roof than downstairs with Mama and Papa’s forlorn hope for Pasha, or with Dasha’s supplicating whisper . . . Tania, go away so I can be alone with him.
Tatiana thought about the war. Maybe if the German planes came whizzing by and dropped a bomb on our building, I could save everyone else but die in the process. Would they mourn me? Would they cry? Would Alexander wish things were different?
Different how?
Different when?
She knew that Alexander already wished things were different. He wished they had been different from the start.
But even at the start, on the bus still, together, untouched by anything but each other, was there a place where Tania and Shura could have gone when they wanted to be alone for two minutes to speak English phrases to one another? Other than the walk home from Kirov?
Tatiana didn’t know of such a place.
Did
Alexander?
This was a pointless exercise, designed only to pummel herself further. As if she needed it.
All I want is some relief, Tatiana thought. Why is that too much to ask?
Nothing brought her relief. Not Alexander’s aloofness, not his occasional short temper with Dasha, not his moodiness, not his winning at cards all the time—nothing eased either Tatiana’s feeling for him or her need for him. He didn’t have many nights off. He usually had to be back for taps, while other nights he had sky duty at St. Isaac’s. He had only one or two evenings off each week, but it was one or two evenings too many.
And tonight was one of those evenings. Please, Tania, please go away so I can be alone with him.
She heard a distant rumble. Overhead the airships floated by.
The hours at night and at morning and at day before night break, again the hours. Something had to be done. But what?
Tatiana came downstairs. She made herself a cup of tea to warm her cold hands and was sitting exhausted on the kitchen windowsill, looking out onto the dark courtyard, when out of the corner of her eye she saw Alexander walk past the door. She heard his footsteps slow down and then trail back. He stood in the doorway. For a moment they did not speak.
“What are you doing?” he asked quietly.
She said coolly and bravely, “Waiting for you to leave, so I can go to bed.”
Alexander walked tentatively into the kitchen.
She glared at him.
He came closer. The thought of being able to smell him made Tatiana’s heart weak. He stopped short of that.
“I hardly ever stay late,” he said.
“Good for you.”
Now that no one was watching her, Tatiana stared unblinking at him.
Looking at her with remorse and understanding, Alexander said, “Tatiasha, it’s been very hard for you, I know. I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I blame myself. What did I tell you? I never should have come into your hospital room that night.”
“Oh, because before it was bearable.”
“It was better than this.”