“I made them.”
“You made them?”
She shrugged. “Mama taught me how to sew. It wasn’t hard. What was hard was trying to remember how big you were.”
“I think you remembered quite well,” Alexander said slowly. “Tania, you . . . made clothes for me?”
“I didn’t know for sure you were coming, but if you were, I wanted you to have something comfortable to wear.”
“Linen is expensive,” he said, very pleased.
“There was a lot of money in your Pushkin book.” She paused. “I bought a few things for everybody.”
Ah. Less pleased. “Including Vova?”
Tatiana guiltily glanced away.
“I see,” Alexander said, dropping the clothes into the trunk. “You bought Vova things with my money?”
“Just some vodka, and cig—”
“Tatiana!” Alexander took a deep breath. “Not here. Let me change,” he said, turning away from her. “I’ll be right out.”
She went outside while he changed into the trousers and the white cotton shirt that was slightly tight around his chest but otherwise fit fine.
When Alexander stepped down from the house, the old women clucked at how nice he looked. Tatiana was gathering clothes into a basket. “I should have made it a little bigger. You do look nice.” She swallowed and lowered her eyes. “I haven’t seen you often in civilian clothes.”
Alexander looked around. Here it was, his second day with her, and they were still clucking around four old women, and he was still unable to get to whatever was bothering her, to all the things that were bothering him, much less to her ample blondeness. That was it. “You’ve seen me in civilian clothes once,” he said. “In Peterhof. Perhaps you’ve forgotten Peterhof.” He extended his hand. “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”
Tatiana stepped up to him but did not take his hand. He had to reach down and take hold of her hand himself. Being so close to her made him a little light-headed. “I want you to show me where the river is.”
“You know where the river is,” she replied. “You went there yesterday.” She took her hand out from his. “Shura, I really can’t. I’ve got to hang yesterday’s laundry and then wash today’s.”
He pulled her with him. “No. Let’s go.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Shura, no, please!”
Alexander stopped. What the hell was that in her voice? What did that sound like? That wasn’t anger. Was that . . . fear? He peered into her face. “What’s wrong with you?” he said. She was flustered, and her hands were shaky. She couldn’t look at him. Letting go of her hand, he took hold of her face, lifting it to him. “What—”
“Shura, please,” Tatiana whispered, trying to look away from his eyes, and then Alexander saw, and he knew.
Letting go of her, he backed away and smiled. “Tania,” he said, in a soothing voice, “I want you to show me your grandparents’ house. I want you to show me the river. A field, a fucking rock, I don’t give a shit. I want you to take me to two square meters of space where there is no one around us, so we can talk. Do you understand? That’s all. We need to talk, and I’m not talking—I’m not doing anything—in front of your new friends.” He paused, keeping the smile away. “All right?”
Deeply flushed, she did not raise her eyes.
“Good.” He pulled her by the hand.
Naira said, “Tanechka, where are you going?”
“We’re going to pick some blueberries for tonight’s pie,” Tatiana yelled back.
“But, Tanechka, what about the clothes?”
Raisa yelled, “Will you be back at noon to give me my medicine?”
“When will we be back, Alexander?”
“When you’re fixed, Tatiana,” he said. “Tell her that. When Alexander fixes me, then I’ll be back.”
“I don’t think even you can fix me, Alexander,” said Tatiana, and her voice was cold.
He was walking with all deliberate speed away from the house.
“Wait, I have to—”
“No.”
“Just one more . . .” She tried to pull her hand away. He wasn’t having any of it. She tried again.
Alexander wasn’t letting go. “Tania, you can’t win this,” he said, staring at her and squeezing her hand harder. “You can win a lot of things, but you can’t win a physical struggle with me. Thank God. Because then I’d really be in trouble.”
Naira yelled after them, “Tania, but Vova is coming for you soon! When shall I tell him you’ll be back?”
Tatiana looked at Alexander, who stared back coldly, shrugged indifferently, and said, “It’s me or the laundry. You’re going to have to decide. I know the choice is tough. Or it’s me or Vova.” He let her hand drop. “Is that choice tough, too?” He’d just about had enough. They had stopped walking and were standing facing each other, a meter apart. Alexander folded his arms across his chest. “What’s it going to be, Tania? The choice is yours.”
Tatiana yelled back to Naira, “I’ll be back in a while! Tell him I’ll see him later!” Sighing, she motioned for Alexander to come.
He was walking too quickly, and she couldn’t keep up.
“Why so fast?”
Temper was flaring up in Alexander, like the sizzle of an antipersonnel grenade before it exploded. He breathed in and out deeply to calm himself, to shove the pin back up the hole. “I’m going to tell you something right now,” he said. “If you don’t want trouble, you will have to tell Vova to leave you alone.”
When she didn’t reply, Alexander stopped walking and pulled her to him. “Do you hear me?” he said, raising his voice. “Or perhaps you’d like to tell me to leave you alone? Because you can do that right now, Tatiana.”
Not raising her eyes and not trying to get away from him, Tatiana said quietly, “I’m sorry about Vova. Don’t be upset. You know perfectly well I just don’t want to hurt his feelings.”
“Yes,” Alexander said pointedly, “nobody’s but mine.”
“No, Alexander,” Tatiana said, and this time she looked up at him with sullen reproach. “I don’t want to hurt yours most of all.”
He was not letting go of her. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He squeezed her arm. “One way or another, he will have to leave you alone—permanently—” Alexander said, “if we’re to fix what’s wrong between us.”
Weakly prying his fingers off her, Tatiana said, “I don’t know why you worry about him . . .”
“Tania, if I’ve got nothing to worry about, then show me. But I’m not playing these games anymore. Not here. Not in Lazarevo. I will not do it here for strangers, do you understand? I will not be guarding Vova’s feelings the way I guarded Dasha’s. Either you tell him, which would be best, or I tell him, which would be worst.”
When Tatiana, biting her lip shut, didn’t say anything, Alexander continued. “I don’t want to grapple with him. And I don’t want to have to pretend to Zoe as she brushes her tits against me. I won’t do it just to keep peace in this house.”
That made Tatiana look up. “Zoe does what?” Shaking her head, she muttered, “Vova doesn’t go around brushing anything against me.”
Standing very close against her, Alexander said, “No?” He paused. His breath quickened. Tatiana’s breath quickened. And very lightly Alexander brushed against Tatiana. “You will tell him to leave you alone, do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” she said faintly. He let go of her, and they resumed walking.
“But frankly,” she continued, even more faintly, “I think Vova is the least of our problems.”
Alexander walked faster down the village road. “Where are we going?”
“I thought you wanted to see my grandparents’ house.”
Alexander let out his breath and laughed without much humor.
“What’s funny?” Tatiana did not sound amused herself.
Neither was Alexander. “I didn’t think it was possible,” he said, sh
aking his head. “I didn’t, after what I had seen at Fifth Soviet, but somehow you managed to do it.”
“Do what?” Tatiana said, no longer faintly.
“Explain to me how,” he snapped. “How did you manage to find and surround yourself with people even more needy than your family?”
“Don’t talk about my family that way, all right!”
“Why does everyone flock around you, why? Can you explain it?”
“Not to you.”
“Why do you submerge yourself in their life this way?”
“I’m not discussing this with you. You’re just being mean.”
“Do you even have a moment to yourself in that fucking house?” Alexander exclaimed. “A moment!”
“Not a moment!” Tatiana retorted. “Thank God.”
They walked in resentful silence the rest of the way, through the village, past the banya and the village Soviet, past the tiny hut that said “Library” and a small building with a gold cross on top of a white kupola.
They walked into the woods and down the path leading to the Kama. Finally they came to a wide, slightly sloping clearing surrounded by tall pines and clusters of leaning white birches. Willows and poplars framed the sparkling, streaming river.
On the left side of the clearing under the pines stood a boarded-up izba, a wooden cabin. It had a small covering on the side that served as a woodshed, but there was no wood.
“This is it?” Alexander said, walking around the cabin in thirty long strides. “It’s not very big.”
“There were only two of them,” said Tatiana, walking around with him in fifty short ones.
“But they were waiting for three grandchildren. Where would you all have fit?”
“We would have fit,” said Tatiana. “How do we fit in Naira’s house?”
“Extremely tightly,” declared Alexander, reaching into his rucksack. He pulled out his trench tool and started to break off the boards on the windows.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to see what’s inside.”
Alexander watched her walk to the sandy riverbank, sit down, and take off her sandals. He lit a cigarette and continued to break off the boards.
“Did you bring a key for the padlock?” he called to her.
He didn’t hear her response. Fed up, he strode over and said loudly, “Tatiana, I’m speaking to you. Did you bring the key for the padlock, I asked?”
“And I replied to you,” she snapped without glancing up. “I said no.”
“Fine,” he said, getting out his semiautomatic from his belt and pulling back the breechblock. “If you didn’t bring the key, I will shoot the fucking padlock off.”
“Wait, wait,” she said, tutting and taking a rope from her neck on which the key hung. “Here. Don’t snatch!” She turned away. “You’re not at war, you know. You don’t have to bring that gun everywhere.”
“Oh, yes, I do.” He started to walk away and glanced back—at her blonde hair, at her back exposed at the waist, at her shoulders. Alexander dropped the padlock key into his trouser pocket and, holding his pistol in one hand and his trench tool in the other, strode into the water, still in his boots, stood in front of her with his feet apart, and said in a determined voice, “All right, let’s have it.”
“Have what?” Still sitting down, she backed away from him slightly on her haunches.
“Have what?” he exclaimed. “Why are you upset? What did I do, or not do? What did I do too much of, or not enough of? Tell me. Tell me now.”
“Why are you talking to me like that?” Tatiana said, jumping to her feet. “You have no right in the world to be upset with me.”
“You have no right in the world to be upset with me!” he said loudly. “Tania, we are wasting our precious breath. And you’re wrong—I have plenty of right to be upset with you. But unlike you, I’m too grateful you’re alive and too happy to see you to be too upset with you.”
“I have more reason to be upset with you.” Tatiana paused. “And I am grateful you are alive.” She couldn’t look at him when she spoke. “I am happy to see you.”
“It’s hard for me to tell, your wall against me is so thick.” When she didn’t reply, Alexander said, “Do you understand that I came all the way to Lazarevo without hearing from you once in six months?” He raised his voice. “Not once in six months! I should have just thought you both were dead, no?”
“I don’t know what you thought, Alexander,” said Tatiana, looking past him at the river.
“I’m going to tell you what I thought, Tatiana. In case it’s not clear. For six months I didn’t know if you were alive or dead, because you couldn’t be bothered to pick up a fucking pen!”
“I didn’t know you wanted me to write to you,” Tatiana said, grabbing a couple of pebbles and tossing them past him into the water.
“You didn’t know?” he repeated. Was she mocking him? “What are you talking about? Hello, Tatiana. I’m Alexander. Have we met before? You didn’t know I would have wanted to hear that you were all right, or perhaps that Dasha had died?”
He saw her recoil from his words, and from him.
“I am not talking about Dasha with you!” She walked away.
He followed her. “If not with me, then with who? With Vova, perhaps?”
“Better with him than with you.”
“Oh, that’s charming.” Alexander was still trying to be rational, but if she kept saying things like that, all reason was going to leave him.
Tatiana said, “Look, I didn’t write to you because I thought Dimitri would tell you. He said he definitely would. So I thought for sure you knew.” Something unspoken remained in her after that, but Alexander’s temper didn’t let him get to it.
“You thought Dimitri would tell me?” Alexander repeated in disbelief.
“Yes!” she said challengingly.
“Why didn’t you just write me yourself?” he yelled, coming close and looming over her. “Four thousand rubles, Tatiana, you’d think I’d deserve a fucking letter from you, no? You’d think my four thousand rubles would buy you a pen to write me and not just vodka and cigarettes for your village lover!”
“Put your weapons down!” she yelled back. “Don’t you dare come near me with those things in your hands!”
Hurling away his gun and his trench tool, he came for her, making her back away, and came for her again, without touching her, making her back away once more. “What’s the matter, Tania?” he said. “Am I crowding you? Getting too close?” He paused, leaning into her face. “Scaring you?” he added bitingly.
“Yes and yes,” she said. “And yes.”
Alexander picked up a handful of pebbles and threw them hard into the water.
For a minute, maybe two, maybe three, neither of them spoke, getting their breath. He waited for her to say something, and when she didn’t, Alexander tried again to lure her back into what they felt when it was just the two of them, at Kirov, at Luga, at St. Isaac’s. “Tania, when you first saw me here . . .” He trailed off. “You were so happy.”
“What gave my happiness away?” she asked. “Was it my sobbing?”
“Yes,” he said. “I thought you were crying from happiness.”
“Have you seen much of that, Alexander?” Tatiana asked, and for a second, just for a moment, he wondered if there was a double meaning behind her words, but he was too confounded to think carefully.
“What did I say?” he asked.
“I don’t know. What did you say?”
“Do we have to play these guessing games?” he said in exasperation. “Can’t you just tell me?” When she didn’t say anything, Alexander sighed. “All I asked was where Dasha was.”
Tatiana almost curled into herself.
“Tania, if you’re unhappy because I’m making you remember things you want to forget then we will deal with that—”
“If only—”
“Wait!” he said loudly, raising his hand. “I said if that’s what it is. But
if it’s something else—” He stopped. Her face looked so upset. Lowering his voice back to calm, opening his hands to her, looking at her with everything he felt for her, Alexander said, “Listen. How about this? I will forgive you for not writing me, if you will forgive me for one thing that’s bothering you.” He smiled. “Is there only one?”
“Alexander, there are so many things that are bothering me, I don’t even know where to begin.”
He saw that she really didn’t. And through it all, the hurt remained in her eyes.
It was Tatiana’s eyes that Alexander reacted to now: they were the same eyes he had seen on the Fifth Soviet pavement when she yelled to him that she could forgive him for his indifferent face but not for his indifferent heart. Weren’t they past that? He wore his heart for her as a medal on his chest; weren’t they beyond all the lies?
How much was there beyond that Fifth Soviet pavement?
Alexander realized, only death was beyond that. They had never fixed that fight. And all the things that preceded it. And all the things that surpassed it.
And through all those things ran Dasha, whom Tatiana had tried to save and could not. Whom Alexander had tried to save and could not.
“Tania, is all this because Dasha and I were planning to get married?”
She didn’t reply.
Aha.
“Is all this because of the letter that I wrote to Dasha?”
She didn’t reply.
Aha.
“Is there more?”
“Alexander,” Tatiana said, shaking her head, “how petty you manage to make it all sound. How trivial. All my feelings have now been reduced to your contemptuous ‘all this.’ ”
“I’m not contemptuous,” he said, with surprise. “It’s not trivial. It’s not petty, but it’s all in the past—”
“No!” she cried. “It’s all right here, right now, all around me and inside, too! I live here now. And here,” she said raising her voice even more, “they have been waiting for you to come to marry my sister! And I don’t mean just the old women. I mean everybody in the village. Since I came to live here, it’s all I’ve heard, and not just every day but every dinner, every lunch, every sewing circle. Dasha and Alexander. Dasha and Alexander. Poor Dasha, poor Alexander.” She shuddered. “Does that seem like the past to you?”