Tatiana, her hair short, her eyes sunken, her frame withered away, her arms full of her family’s dishes, said, “Nothing happened.”
“Why don’t you tell me, Tatiana?” said Alexander, glaring at her.
She tutted and stared at Marina with disapproval. “Kostia is too small to be on the roof by himself. I went up to help him. A very small incendiary exploded, and he couldn’t put the fire out by himself. I helped him, that’s all.”
“You went out onto the roof?” Alexander said quietly.
“Just for an hour,” she said, trying to be jovial, shrugging a little, managing a smile. “It was really nothing. There was a small fire. I used the sand, and in five minutes put it out. Kostia is a hysteric.” She glared at Marina. “And he’s not the only one.”
“Really, Tania?” Dasha exclaimed. “Don’t keep giving Marina the evil eye. A hysteric? Why don’t you take off your gloves and show Alexander your hands.”
Alexander was mute.
Tatiana moved toward the door with her load. “Like he wants to see my hands.”
“You know what?” Alexander said, standing up. “I don’t want to see anything. I’m leaving. I’m late.”
He grabbed his rifle, his coat, his rucksack and was out the door without even brushing past Tatiana.
After he left, Dasha looked at Tatiana, at Marina, at Mama, at Babushka. “What was wrong with him?” she asked wearily.
No one spoke for a moment.
From the couch Babushka said, “Much, much fear.”
“Marinka,” said Tatiana, “why? You know he worries about all of us endlessly. Why worry him further with nonsense? I’m fine on that roof, and my hands will be fine, too.”
“Tania is right! And what did you mean by ‘your’ Tanechka anyway?” Dasha demanded, whirling round to Marina.
“Yes, Marina, what did you mean?” asked Tatiana, looking angrily at her cousin, who replied that it was just a figure of speech.
“Yes, a stupid figure of speech,” said Dasha.
3
That night Tatiana dreamed that she did not sleep, that the night lasted all year, and that in the dark his fingers found her.
In the early morning there was a knock on the door as she was getting up. It was Alexander. He had brought them two kilos of black bread and a cupful of buckwheat kernels. Everyone besides Tatiana was still in bed. He waited for her in the kitchen with his arms crossed and his eyes cold while she brushed her teeth over the kitchen sink. He mentioned that the toilet smelled worse than ever. Tatiana was beyond noticing.
She was already dressed. She slept dressed.
“Shura,” Tatiana said, “don’t go out now. It’s so cold. I can carry a kilo of bread. I think I can still do that. Give me your ration card, I’ll get yours, too.”
“Oh, Tatiana,” Alexander said, “the day has not come when you’ll be getting my rations.”
“Really?” she snapped, moving toward him so quickly that he actually backed away a step. “If you can go to the front, Alexander—”
“Like I have any choice—”
“Like I have any choice. I can get your rations for you. Now, give me your card.”
“No,” he said. “Let me get your coat. How are your hands?”
“They’re fine,” she said, showing them. She wanted him to take hold of them, to touch them, but he didn’t. He just stared at her with the same cold eyes.
They went out into the bitterness together. It was minus ten degrees. At seven o’clock the skies were still dark, and there was a shrieking wind that got underneath Tatiana’s coat and into her ears, whistling its Arctic lament for ten blocks to the store. Inside the store was better, and there were only thirty people ahead of them. It might take only forty minutes this time, Tatiana thought.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Alexander said, his voice tinged with barely suppressed anger. “That here it is November, and you’re still doing this by yourself.”
Tatiana didn’t reply. She was too sleepy to reply. She shrugged, pulling her scarf tighter around her head.
Alexander said, “Why do you do this? Dasha is perfectly capable of going. At the very least she can come with you. Marina, too. Why do you continue to go alone?”
Tatiana didn’t know what to say. First she was too cold, and her teeth were chattering. After a few minutes she warmed up, but her teeth were still chattering, and she thought, why do I go on my own, during air raids, and cold, and dark? Why don’t we ever switch? “Because if Marina goes, she eats the rations on the way home. Because Mama sews every morning. Because Dasha does laundry. Who am I going to send? Babushka?”
Alexander didn’t reply, but the anger didn’t leave his face.
Tatiana touched his coat. He moved away. “Why are you upset with me?” she asked. “Because I went out onto the roof?”
“Because you don’t—” He broke off. “Because you don’t listen to me.” He sighed. “I’m not upset with you, Tatia. I’m angry at them.”
“Don’t be,” she said. “It all just happened this way. I’d rather be out here than washing laundry.”
“Oh, because Dasha is washing laundry so often? You could be sleeping late six days a week like she is.”
“Listen, she is having a hard time with all this. I started going—”
“You started going because they told you to, and you said all right. They said, oh, and can you cook for us, too, and you said all right, broken leg and all.”
“Alexander, what are you upset about? That I do what they tell me to? I also do what you tell me to.”
Gritting his teeth, he said, “You do what I tell you to? Are you off the fucking roof? Are you in the shelter? Have you stopped giving your food to Nina? Yes, you do what I tell you.”
“You think I listen to them more?” Tatiana said incredulously. It wasn’t their turn yet. A dozen people still ahead of them in line. A dozen people listening to them. “I thought you said you weren’t upset with me?”
“I’m not upset about that. You want to know what I’m upset about?”
“Yes,” she said tiredly. She didn’t really.
“Everything they ask of you, you do.”
“So?”
“Everything,” he said. “They say, go, you say, all right. They say, give me, you say, how much? They say, go away, you say, fine. They hit you, you defend them. They say, I want your bread, I want your milk, I want your tea, I want your—”
Suddenly seeing where he was going, Tatiana tried to stop him. “No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “No, don’t.”
Through clamped teeth, trying to keep his voice quiet, Alexander continued. “They say, he’s mine, and you say, all right, all right, he’s yours, of course, take him. Nothing matters to me at all. Not me, not my food, not my bread, not my life, and not him either, nothing matters to me.” He brought his face very close to hers and whispered angrily, “I, Tatiana, fight for nothing.”
“Oh, Alexander,” Tatiana said, looking at him with intense reproach.
They fell silent until they got their rations. Alexander received potatoes, carrots, bread, soya milk and butter. And sour cream.
On the street he carried the bag with the food, and she walked mutely beside him. He was walking too fast; she couldn’t keep up. First Tatiana slowed down, and when she saw that he did not shorten his stride, she stopped.
Turning around, Alexander barked, “What?”
“You go ahead,” Tatiana said. “Go ahead home. I can’t walk that fast. I’ll be along.”
He came back and gave her his arm. “Let’s go,” he said. “To celebrate our Russian Revolution, the Germans are going to start bombing in a few minutes, and mark my words, they will not end until late tonight.”
Tatiana took his arm. She wanted to cry, and she wanted to keep up, and she wanted not to be cold. Snow seeped inside her ripped boots that were tied together with twine. Sorrow seeped inside her ripped heart that was tied together with twine.
They trod through the snow looking at th
eir feet.
“I didn’t give you away, Shura,” Tatiana said finally.
“No?” There was so much bitterness in his voice.
“How can you do that? How can you turn the right thing I did for my sister into a tragic flaw on my part? You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“I am ashamed of myself,” he said.
She held on tighter to his arm. “You’re supposed to be the strong one. I don’t see you fighting for me.”
“I fight for you every day,” said Alexander, walking faster again.
Pulling on him to slow down, Tatiana laughed soundlessly, the spirit taken away from her by the weakness of her body. “Oh, asking Dasha to marry you is fighting for me, is it?”
From above, Tatiana heard the thunderous burst of clapping followed by a high-pitched warble, becoming more insistent, but not nearly as insistent as the sirens of her heart. “Now that Dimitri is a wounded dystrophic and out of the picture, you’re getting brave!” Tatiana exclaimed. “Now that you think you don’t have to worry about him, you are allowing yourself all sorts of liberties in front of my family, and now you’re getting angry with me over what’s long passed. Well, I won’t have it. You’re feeling bad? Go and marry Dasha. That’ll make you feel better.”
Alexander stopped walking and pulled her into a doorway.
They got caught in the downpour. Bombs bombs bombs.
“I didn’t ask her to marry me!” he yelled. “I agreed to marry Dasha to get Dimitri off your back! Or have you forgotten?”
Tatiana yelled, “Oh, so that was your grand plan! You were going to marry Dasha for me! How thoughtful of you, Alexander, how humane!”
The words were coming out angry, hurled at him between her frozen breaths, and Tatiana grabbed his coat as she pulled her body against him and pressed her face into his chest. “How could you!” she yelled. “How could you . . .” she whispered. “You asked her to marry you, Alexander . . .” Did she yell that or whisper it? Tatiana shook him—it was weak and pathetic—and she pounded his chest with her small mittened fists, but it wasn’t pounding, it was tapping. Alexander grabbed her and hugged her to him so hard that the breath left her body.
“Oh, God,” he whispered. “What are we doing?” He didn’t let go. She closed her eyes, her fists remaining on his chest.
Waiting it out in the doorway, she said, looking up at him, “What’s the matter, Shura? Are you afraid for me? Do you feel I’m close to death?”
“No,” he said, not looking down at her.
“Do you have a clear picture of me dying?” she asked, pulling away and going to stand on the other side of the doorway.
When at last Alexander spoke, his choking voice revealed his emotion. “When you die, you’ll be wearing your white dress with red roses, and your hair will be long and falling around your shoulders. When they shoot you, up on your damn roof or walking alone on the street, your blood will look like another red rose on your dress, and no one will notice, not even you when you bleed out for Mother Russia.”
Trying to swallow the lump in her throat, Tatiana said, “I took the dress off, didn’t I?”
Alexander stared onto the street. “It doesn’t matter. Think about how little actually matters now. Look what’s happening. Why are we even standing here? Let’s walk home. Walk home, holding your 300 grams of bread. Let’s go.”
Tatiana didn’t move.
He didn’t move. “Tania, why are we still pretending?” he asked. “Why? For whose sake? We have minutes left. And not good minutes. All the layers of our life are being stripped away, and most of our pretenses, too, even mine, and yet we still continue with the lies. Why?”
“I’ll tell you why! I’ll tell you for whose sake!” Tatiana exclaimed. “For her sake. Because she loves you. Because you want to comfort her in the minutes she has left. That’s why.”
“What about you, Tania?” Alexander asked, his voice cracking. He didn’t say anything else for a moment, staring at her as if he wanted her to say something. She said nothing.
At last he spoke. “Don’t you want comfort in the minutes you have left?”
“No,” she said weakly. “This isn’t about me or you and me anymore.” She lowered her head. “I can take it. She can’t.”
“I can’t take it either,” said Alexander.
Tatiana raised her eyes and said intensely, “You can take it, Alexander Barrington. And more. Now, stop it.”
“Fine,” he said, “I’ll stop it.”
“I want you to promise me something.”
His weary eyes blinked at her.
“Promise me you won’t . . .”
“Won’t what?” Alexander asked from across the doorway. “Marry her or break her heart?”
A small tear ran down Tatiana’s face. Gulping and pulling her coat tighter around herself, she whispered, “Break her heart.”
He looked at her in disbelief. She couldn’t believe herself either. “Tania, don’t torture me,” Alexander said.
“Shura, promise me.”
“One of your promises or one of mine?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m not hearing a promise.”
“Fine. I promise, if you will promise me . . .”
“What?”
“That you will never wear your white dress again, never give away your bread, never go out onto the roof. If you do, I will tell her everything instantly. Instantly, do you hear?”
“I hear,” Tatiana muttered, thinking that really wasn’t very fair.
“Promise me,” Alexander said, taking her hand and pulling her to him, “that you will never do any less than your best to survive.”
“All right,” she said, looking up, her eyes pouring her heart into him. “I promise.”
“Is that one of your promises or one of mine?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He took her face in his hands. “If you stay alive, then I swear to you,” Alexander whispered, pressing her to him, “I won’t break your sister’s heart.”
4
The following morning Tatiana went without him to the store. She had just gotten the family their kilo of bread, light even in her weak arms, and was about to walk out when suddenly she felt a blow to the back of her head and another blow to her right ear. She buckled and watched helplessly as a young boy of maybe fifteen grabbed her bread and before she could utter a sound, shoved it into his hyena mouth, his eyes wild and desperate. The other customers beat him with their purses, but under their blows he continued to swallow her bread until it was all gone, every last bite. One of the store managers came out and hit him with a stick. Tatiana yelled, “No!” but he fell, and his eyes from the floor were still wild, a destroyed animal’s eyes. Blood dripping out of her ear where he had hit her, Tatiana bent down to help him up, but he shoved her away, got up, and ran out the door.
The salesclerk couldn’t give her more bread. “Please,” said Tatiana. “How can I go home with nothing?”
The clerk, her eyes sympathetic, said, “I can do nothing. The NKVD will shoot me for giving away bread. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“Please,” she begged. “For my family.”
“Tanechka, I would give you bread, but I can’t. The other day they shot three women for forging ration cards. Right on the street. And left them there. Go on, honey. Come back tomorrow.”
“Come back tomorrow,” muttered Tatiana as she left the store.
She could not go home. In fact, she did not go home, but sat in the bomb shelter and then appeared at the hospital to work. Vera was gone; Tatiana’s punch card was gone; no one cared. She went and slept in one of the cold rooms, and in the cafeteria she received some clear liquid and a few spoonfuls of gruel, but there was no extra for her to take home. She looked for Vera to no avail. She sat at the nurses’ station, then went into one of the rooms and sat with a dying soldier. As she held his hand, he asked if she was a nun. She said
no, not really, but you can tell me anything.
“I have nothing to tell you,” the man said. “Why are you bleeding?”
She began to explain, but really there was nothing to say, except “for the same reason you’re lying here in the hospital.”
Tatiana thought of Alexander, how he kept trying to protect her. From Leningrad, from Dimitri, from working at the hospital—the brutal, infectious, contagious place. From the bricks in Luga. From the German bombs, from the hunger. He didn’t want her to do duty on the roof. He didn’t want her to walk to Fontanka alone or without the absurd helmet he had given her, or to sleep without all her clothes. He wanted her to clean herself, even with cold water, and he wanted her to brush her teeth even though they had no food on them. He wanted just one thing.
He wanted her to live.
That brought a bit of relief.
A bit of comfort.
That would have to be good enough.
When she got home, around seven in the evening, she found her family frantic with worry. After she told them what had happened, they were upset that she hadn’t just come home. “We would have understood,” said Mama. “We don’t care about the bread.”
Dasha said she had sent Alexander out to look for her.
“You’ve got to stop doing that, Dasha,” said Tatiana wearily. “You’re bound to get him killed.”
Tatiana was surprised her family was not more upset with her. Then she found out why. Alexander had brought them some oil—and soybeans—and half an onion. Dasha had made a delicious stew, adding a tablespoon of flour and a bit of salt. “Where is this stew?” Tatiana asked.
“There wasn’t a lot, Tanechka,” said Dasha.
“We thought you’d eat wherever you were,” added Mama.
“You ate, right?” asked Babushka.
“We were so hungry,” said Marina.
“Yes,” Tatiana said, deeply discouraged. “Don’t worry about me.”
Alexander came back around eight. He had been out for three hours. The first thing he said was, “What happened to you?”
Tatiana told him.
“Where have you been all day?” he demanded, talking to her as if there were no one else in the room.