The Bronze Horseman

  “Mmm.”

  Her lips were on his face, on his throat, on the top of his chest. She whispered, “You know what your skin feels like to me? The ice cream that I love. Creamy, smooth. Your whole body is the color of caramel, like my crème brûlée, but you’re not cold like ice cream, you’re warm.” She rubbed her lips back and forth against his chest.

  “So—better than ice cream?”

  “Yes.” She smiled, moving up to his lips. “I love you better than ice cream.” After kissing him deeply, she gently, gently sucked his tongue. “Do you like that?” she whispered.

  He groaned his assent.

  “Shura, darling . . .” she asked very shyly, “is there . . . anywhere else you might like me to do that?”

  Pulling away, he gaped at her. Silent and tantalized, Tatiana watched his incredulous face.

  “I think,” Alexander said slowly, “there is a place where I might like you to do that, yes.”

  She smiled back, trying to hide her excitement. “You’ll just—you’ll just have to tell me what to do, all right?”

  “All right.”

  Tatiana kissed Alexander’s chest, listened to his heart, moved lower, lay her head on his rippled stomach. Moving lower still, she brushed her blonde hair against him and then rubbed her breasts against him, feeling him already swollen underneath her. She kissed the arrow line of his black hair leading down from his navel and then grazed her lips against him.

  Kneeling between Alexander’s legs, Tatiana took hold of him with both hands. He was extraordinary. “And now . . .”

  “Now put me in your mouth,” he said, watching her.

  Her breath leaving her body, she whispered, “Whole?” and took what she could of him into her mouth.

  “Move up and down on me.”

  “Like this?”

  There was a thickening pause. “Yes.”

  “Or . . .”

  “Yes, that’s good, too.”

  Tatiana felt him hard against her fervent lips and rubbing fingers. When Alexander gripped her hair, she, stopping for a moment, looked into his face. “Oh, yes,” she whispered, hungrily putting him deeper inside her mouth and moaning.

  “You’re doing so well, Tatia,” he whispered. “Keep going, and don’t stop.”

  She stopped. He opened his eyes. Smiling, Tatiana said, “I want to hear you groan for me not to stop.”

  Alexander sat up and kissed her wet mouth. “Please don’t stop.” Then he gently pushed her face down on him, falling back on the blanket.

  Right before the end he pulled her head away and said, “Tania, I’m going to come.”

  “So come,” Tatiana whispered. “Come in my mouth.”

  Afterward, as she lay cradled in his chest, Alexander said, gazing at her in stark amazement, “I’ve decided that I like it.”

  “Me, too,” she said softly.

  * * *

  For a long time she lay next to him, feeling his tender fingers feather her.

  “Why did we spend two days fighting when we could have been doing this?”

  Alexander ruffled her hair. “That wasn’t fighting, Tatiasha. That was foreplay.”

  They kissed each other. “I’m sorry again,” Tatiana whispered.

  “Me, too, again,” he whispered back.

  Then Tatiana fell quiet.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “What are you thinking?”

  How does he know me so well? she thought. All I have to do is blink, and he knows I’m thinking, or fretting, or anxious. She took a breath. “Shura . . . have you loved many girls before?” she asked in a small voice.

  “No, my angel face,” Alexander said passionately, caressing her. “I have not loved many girls before.”

  Tears forming at the base of her throat, she asked, “Did you love Dasha?”

  He was silent for a moment. “Tania, don’t do this.”

  She was silent herself.

  “I don’t know what answer you want me to give you,” Alexander said. “I’ll give you whatever answer you want.”

  “Give me only the truth.”

  “No, I did not love Dasha,” Alexander said. “I cared for her. We had some good times.”

  “How good?”

  “All right,” he said.

  “The truth.”

  “Just all right,” he repeated. He tweaked her nipple. “Haven’t you figured out yet,” Alexander said, “that Dasha was not my type?”

  “What will you say about me to your next girl?”

  He grinned. “I’ll say that you had perfect breasts.”

  “Stop it.”

  “That you had young, perky, incredible breasts with the biggest, most sensitive cherry nipples . . .” he said, climbing on top of her and holding up her legs high against his arms. “And lips for the gods, and eyes for kings. I will say,” Alexander whispered hotly, pushing himself inside her and groaning, “that you felt like nothing else on this earth.”

  “What time is it, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied sleepily. “Toward evening.”

  “I don’t want to go back to them.”

  “Who’s going back?” said Alexander. “We’re not moving from here.” He paused. “Ever.”

  “We’re not?”

  “Try to leave.”

  * * *

  Before night set, they crept out of the tent, and Tatiana sat on a blanket with Alexander’s uniform tunic around her shoulders while he built a fire with the twigs and dry branches she had found earlier. The fire was a raging blaze in five minutes.

  “You build a good fire, Shura,” Tatiana said quietly.

  “Thank you.” He pulled out two cans of tushonka, some dry bread and water.

  “Look what else I’ve got.” In a piece of aluminum foil he had a few squares of chocolate.

  “Wow,” Tatiana mouthed, staring at him in wonder, not even looking at the chocolate.

  DESOLATE WAVES

  TATIANA went back to their house, lay down on their bed, and did not get up.

  During her semiconscious sleep Tatiana kept hearing the four old women in the room. They were talking quietly while fixing her blankets, adjusting the pillows under her head, stroking her hair.

  Dusia said, “She needs to trust in the Lord. He will get her out of this.”

  Naira said, “I told her it wasn’t a good idea to fall in love with a soldier. All they do is break your heart.”

  Raisa tremulously said, “I think the problem isn’t that he’s a soldier. The problem is she loves him too much.”

  Axinya whispered, patting Tatiana’s back, “Lucky girl.”

  “What’s lucky?” Naira said indignantly. “If only she had listened to us and stayed at our house, none of this would have happened.”

  “If only she came to church with me more often,” said Dusia. “The Lord’s rod and His staff, they would comfort her.”

  “What do you think, Tanechka?” Axinya said, standing close to Tatiana. “You think the Lord’s rod and staff would comfort you right now?”

  Naira said, “This is no good. We are not helping her.”

  Dusia: “I never liked him.”

  Naira: “Me neither. Never understood what Tania saw in him.”

  Raisa: “She is too good for him.”

  Naira: “She is too good for anybody.”

  Dusia: “She can be even better, closer to the Lord.”

  Naira: “My Vova is such a kind, gentle boy. He cared for her.”

  Raisa: “I bet you Alexander’s not going to come back for her. He’s left her here for good.”

  Naira: “I’m sure you’re right. He married her—”

  Dusia: “Soiled her—”

  Raisa: “And discarded her.”

  Dusia: “I always suspected he was godless.”

  Axinya whispered to Tatiana, “The only thing that will keep him away is death.”

  Thank you, Axinya, thought Tatiana, opening her heavy eyes and lifting her body out of bed. But
that’s exactly what I’m afraid of.

  The old girls convinced Tatiana without much effort to come back and live with them. Vova helped her to carry the trunk and sewing machine back to Naira’s house.

  At first Tatiana could not get through her day without physically holding herself together. There was no comfort inside her, and she knew it. There was nowhere she could turn to inside herself to leave the darkness. No memory she could fondly think of, no gentle joke, no musical refrain. There was no part of her body she could touch without shuddering. Nowhere she could look without seeing Alexander.

  This time she didn’t have the hunger to dull her sorrow. She didn’t have infected lungs. There was nothing for her healthy body to do but grit its teeth and lift the buckets that went on her shoulders every morning, and milk the goat and pour the warm milk for Raisa, who could not pour it herself, and hang the clothes on the line and have the women say at night how wonderful the clothes smelled, having been hung by Tania in the sunshine.

  Tatiana sewed for them and for herself, she read to them and to herself, she bathed them and herself, she tended their garden and looked after their chickens and took the apples off the trees, and little by little, bucket by bucket, book by book, shirt by shirt, their need enveloped her again, and Tatiana was comforted.

  Just like before.

  2

  After two weeks came the first letter from Alexander.

  Tatiasha,

  Can there be anything harder than this? Missing you is a physical aching that grips me early in the morning and does not leave me, not even as I draw my last waking breath.

  My solace in these waning empty summer days is the knowledge that you’re safe, and alive, and healthy, and that the worst that you have to go through is serfdom for four well-meaning old women.

  The wood piles I’ve left are the lightest in the front. The heaviest ones are for the winter. Use them last, and if you need help carrying them, God help me, ask Vova. Don’t hurt yourself. And don’t fill the water pails all the way to the top. They’re too heavy.

  Getting back was rough, and as soon as I came back, I was sent right out to the Neva, where for six days we planned our attack and then made a move in boats across the river and were completely crushed in two hours. We didn’t stand a chance. The Germans bombed the boats with the Vanyushas, their version of my rocket launcher, the boats all sank. We were left with a thousand fewer men and were no closer to crossing the river. We’re now looking at other places we can cross. I’m fine, except for the fact that it’s rained here for ten days straight and I’ve been hip deep in mud for all that time. There is nowhere to sleep, except in the mud. We put our trench coats down and hope it stops raining soon. All black and wet, I almost felt sorry for myself until I thought of you during the blockade.

  I’ve decided to do that from now on. Every time I think I have it so tough, I’m going to think of you burying your sister in Lake Ladoga.

  I wish you had been given a lighter cross than Leningrad to carry through your life.

  Things are going to be relatively quiet here for the next few weeks, until we regroup. Yesterday a bomb fell in the commandant’s bunker. The commandant wasn’t there at the time. Yet the anxiety doesn’t go away. When is it going to come again?

  I play cards and soccer. And I smoke. And I think of you.

  I sent you money. Go to Molotov at the end of August.

  Don’t forget to eat well, my warm bun, my midnight sun, and kiss your hand for me, right in the palm and then press it against your heart.

  Alexander

  Tatiana read Alexander’s letter a hundred times, memorizing every word. She slept with her face on the letter, which renewed her strength.

  My love, my dear, dear Shura,

  Don’t talk about my cross—first heave your own off your shoulders.

  How did I live last winter? I don’t know, but I think almost longingly of it now. Because I moved. There was movement inside me. I had energy to lie, to pretend to Dasha, to keep her alive. I walked, I was with Mama, I was too busy to die myself. Too busy hiding my love for you.

  But now I wake up and think, how am I going to go through the rest of my day until sleep?

  To ease myself back into life, I’ve surrounded myself with the villagers. You think it was bad before. I’m from morning till night helping Irina Persikova, who had to have her leg cut off in Molotov, infection or something. I think I like her because she carries my mother’s name.

  I think of Dasha. I grieve for my sister.

  But her face is not the last face I see before I sleep. Yours is.

  You are my hand grenade, my artillery fire. You have replaced my heart with yourself.

  Are you thinking of me with your rifle in your hands?

  What do we do? How do we keep you from dying? These thoughts consume my waking minutes. What can I do from here to keep you alive?

  Dead or wounded, those Soviets will leave you in the field.

  Who is going to heal you if you fall?

  Who is going to bury you if you die? Bury you like you deserve—with kings and heroes.

  Yours,

  Tatiana

  Tatia,

  You ask how I keep myself from dying. Poorly, I say. Though still better than Ivan Petrenko.

  My commander tells me—choose the best men you have, and I salute him, and do. And then they die. What does that make me?

  We came under the worst unprotected fire today. I can’t believe I’m alive to write you these words. We were supplying the men across the river at the Nevsky Patch. We row the boats with food and arms and munitions and new men to the other side. But the Germans are relentless from Sinyavino Heights, we can’t get past them or to them; they sit on their hills like vultures and hurl their metal at us. Usually I don’t go—there’s not enough of me to go on these suicide missions, and the commander knows it, but today we just didn’t have enough soldiers to man the boats.

  Petrenko died. We were in the boat coming back to our side, and a piece of artillery shell hit him. Took his arm off. I threw him on my back, and, you know, in my insanity I bent down to pick up his arm. I picked it up and he fell off my back, and as I looked at him lying in the boat I thought, what am I doing? Who is going to sew that arm back on?

  I didn’t want him and his arm reunited, I realized. I just wanted them to be buried together. There is no dignity in the man being ripped apart. The body has to be together so the soul can find it. I buried him and his arm by the woods, near a small birch. He had once said he liked birches. Had to take his rifle—we barely have enough weapons as it is—but I left him his helmet.

  I liked him. Where is the justice that a good man like Petrenko dies and yet Dimitri, infirm and hobbled, still lives?

  You want to know what I thought of in that boat?

  I thought, I have to stay alive. Tatiasha will never forgive me.

  But this war is unjust, as you’ve seen. A good man has as much chance of dying as a bad one. Maybe more so.

  I want you to know that should something happen to me, don’t worry about my body. My soul isn’t going to return to it, nor to God. It’s flying straight to you, where it knows it can find you, in Lazarevo. I want to be neither with kings nor heroes, but with the queen of Lake Ilmen.

  Alexander

  3

  There were no more letters from Alexander.

  August passed quietly into September, and still no letters. Tatiana did the best she could, drowning herself with the old women, with her village, with her books, with her English, with John Stuart Mill, whom she read out loud to herself in the woods, almost understanding everything.

  Still nothing from him, and her soul wasn’t quiet anymore, and it wasn’t comforted.

  One Friday at the knitting circle, Tatiana, her head buried in the sweater she was making for Alexander, heard Irina Persikova ask if she had received any letters from him.

  “Not for a month now,” said Naira quietly. “Shh. We don’t talk about it. The M
olotov Soviet has no news. She goes every week to check. Shh.”

  Dusia said, “Either way, God is with him.”

  Axinya jovially said, “Don’t worry, Tanechka. The post is terrible. You know that. Letters take a long time to come.”

  “I know, Axinya,” said Tatiana, looking at her knitting needles. “I’m not worried.”

  “I’ll tell you a story that’ll make you feel better. A woman named Olga lived in the village here a few months before you came, and her husband was at the front, too. She waited and waited for letters from him. Nothing. Like you she fretted and waited, and then she got ten letters all at once!”

  Tatiana smiled. “Wouldn’t that be great?” she said. “To get ten letters from Alexander all at once.”

  “Absolutely, darling.” Axinya smiled. “So don’t worry.”

  Dusia said, “Oh, that’s right. Olga put the letters in chronological order and started reading them. She read nine of them, and the tenth letter was from the commandant, saying her husband had been killed at the front.”

  Tatiana paled. “Oh” was all she could get out.

  “Dusia!” Axinya exclaimed. “For God’s sake, have you no sense? Next you’re going to tell her how Olga drowned herself in the Kama.”

  Tatiana put down her knitting needles. “You ladies finish up here without me, all right? I’m going to go and start on our dinner. I’m making cabbage pie.”

  She stumbled home and immediately got the Pushkin book out of the trunk. Alexander had told her he put the money back. Looking at the cover, looking and looking, Tatiana took a deep breath and carefully cut off the paper with a razor blade. The money was there. Breathing out a small sigh, she took it into her hands.

  Then she counted it.

  Five thousand dollars.

  Without alarm she counted the crisp new bills again, taking care to separate each one. Ten one-hundred-dollar bills. Four one-thousand-dollar bills.

  Five thousand dollars.

  She counted it again.

  Five thousand dollars.

  Tatiana started doubting herself; for a moment she thought maybe it had always been five thousand dollars, that she had just mistaken the amount.