The Bronze Horseman

  “No,” he said huskily. “You are not for the weak, Tatiasha.”

  “Nor you,” she whispered. “And afterward, you fell asleep right on top of me. I was awake a long time holding your sleeping body. I didn’t even move you, I fell asleep, too, and in the morning you were still on top of me. Do you remember?”

  “Yes,” he said, closing his eyes. “I remember.” I remember everything. Every word, every breath, every smile you took, every kiss you laid upon my body, every game we played, every Bronze Horseman cabbage pie you cooked for me. I remember it all.

  “You tell me a memory,” she whispered. “But quietly. That blind man across the ward is going to have a heart attack.”

  Alexander pulled the hair away from her face and smiled. “I remember Axinya standing by the door of the banya while we were alone and inside and so hot and soapy, and I kept saying to you, shh.”

  “Shh,” Tatiana whispered breathlessly, glancing over at the sleeping man across the ward.

  Alexander felt her trying to pull herself away. “Wait,” he said, holding her to him and looking around the dark ward. “I need something.”

  She smiled into his face. “Yes? Like what?” Alexander knew she knew the look in his eyes. “You must be healing, soldier.”

  “Faster than you can imagine.”

  Bringing her face flush to his, she whispered, “Oh, I can imagine.”

  Alexander began to unbutton the top of her nurse’s uniform.

  Tatiana backed away. “No, don’t,” she said softly.

  “What do you mean, don’t? Tatia, open your uniform. I need to touch your breasts.”

  “No, Shura,” she said. “Someone will wake up, see us. Then we’ll all get in trouble. Somebody will definitely see. Maybe as a nurse I can get away with holding your hand, but I think this would be frowned upon. I think maybe even Dr. Sayers wouldn’t understand.”

  Not letting go of her hand, Alexander said, “I need my mouth on you. I want to feel your breasts against my face, just for a second. Come on, Tatiasha, open the top of your uniform, lean over as if you’re adjusting my pillow, and let me feel your breasts on my face.”

  Sighing and obviously uncomfortable, she undid her uniform. Alexander wanted to feel her so much that he didn’t care about propriety. Everyone is sleeping, he thought, watching her hungrily as she opened the uniform to her waist, stood very close to him, and lifted her undershirt.

  Alexander gasped so loudly when he saw her breasts that she reeled back and quickly pulled her shirt down. Her breasts had grown to twice their previous size; they were swollen and milky white. “Tatiana,” he groaned, and before she could back away farther, he grabbed her arm and brought her close to him.

  “Shura, stop, let go,” she said.

  “Tatiana,” Alexander repeated. “Oh, no, Tania . . .”

  She wasn’t fighting his hand anymore. Bending over, she kissed him. “Come on, let go,” she murmured.

  Alexander did not let go. “Oh my God, you’re . . .”

  “Yes, Alexander. I’m pregnant.”

  Speechlessly he stared at her shining face.

  “What the hell are we going to do?” he asked finally.

  “We,” she said, kissing him, “are going to have a baby! In America. So hurry up and get well, so we can get out of here.”

  At a loss for better words, Alexander found a way to ask, “How long have you known?”

  “Since December.”

  He was clammy. “You’ve known since before you came to the front?”

  “Yes.”

  “You went out on the ice, knowing you were pregnant?”

  “Yes.”

  “You gave me your blood, knowing you were pregnant?”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “Yes.”

  Alexander turned his head to the isolation tent, away from the wall, from the chair she was next to, and away from her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Shura,” she said. “This is why I didn’t tell you. I know you—you’d be worried frantic about me, especially because you’re still not well yourself. You feel like you can’t protect me. But I’m fine,” she said, smiling. “I’m better than fine. And it’s still early. The baby is not due till August.”

  Alexander put his arm over his eyes. He couldn’t look at her. He heard her whisper, “You want to see my breasts again?”

  Shaking his head, he said, “I’ll sleep now. Come and see me tomorrow.” He felt her kiss his forearm. After she left, Alexander was awake until morning.

  How could Tania not understand the terrors that haunted him, the fear that clutched his heart when he imagined trying to get through NKVD border troops and hostile Finland with a pregnant wife? Where was her sense, her good judgment?

  What am I even thinking? This is the girl who blithely walked 150 kilometers through Manstein’s Group Army Nord to bring me money so I could run and leave her. She has no sense at all.

  I am not getting my wife and baby out of Russia on foot, Alexander said to himself. His thoughts turned to the Fifth Soviet communal apartment, to the filth, to the stench, to the air-raid sirens every morning and night, to the cold. He remembered seeing a young mother last year, sitting in the snow, frozen, holding her frozen infant on her lap, and he trembled. What was worse to him as a man, remaining in the Soviet Union or risking Tatiana’s life to get her home?

  A soldier, a decorated officer in the largest army in the world, Alexander felt unmanned by his impossible choices.

  The next morning when Tatiana came to feed him breakfast, Alexander said quietly, “I hope you know, I hope you understand that I’m not going anywhere with you pregnant.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course you are.”

  “Forget it.”

  “God, Shura, that’s why I didn’t want to tell you. I know how you get.”

  “How do I get, Tatiana?” he said hotly. “Tell me, how do I get? I can’t get out of bed. How am I supposed to get? Lying here powerless, while my wife—”

  “You’re not powerless!” she exclaimed. “Everything you are, you still remain, even wounded. So don’t give me that. This is all temporary. You are permanent. So courage, soldier. Look what I found for you—eggs. I have an assurance from Dr. Sayers these are real eggs and not dehydrated. You tell me.”

  Alexander shuddered as he thought of going from Helsinki to Stockholm in trucks on ice for 500 kilometers under German fire. He wouldn’t even look at the eggs she was holding out for him.

  He heard her sigh. “Why is this the nature of your beast?” she asked. “Why do you always get like this?”

  “How do I get?”

  “Like this,” she said, giving him the fork for the eggs. “Eat, please—”

  Alexander threw the fork on the metal tray. “Tania, have an abortion,” he said adamantly. “Have Dr. Sayers take care of it. We’ll have other babies. We’ll have many, many babies, I promise. All we’ll do is have babies, we’ll be like Catholics, all right, but we can’t do what we’re planning with you pregnant, we just can’t. I can’t,” he added. He took hold of her hand, but she yanked it away and stood up.

  “Are you joking?” she said.

  “Of course I’m not. Girls have them all the time.” He paused. “Dasha had three.” Alexander saw by Tatiana’s face that she was horrified.

  “With you?” she asked weakly.

  “No, Tatia,” he said tiredly, rubbing his eyes. “Not with me.”

  With a breath of relief but still white, Tatiana whispered, “But I thought abortion has been illegal since 1938?”

  “Oh, God!” Alexander exclaimed. “Why are you so naïve?”

  Her hands shook as she fought for control, and through her closed teeth she said, “That’s right. Yes. Well, perhaps, I could have had three illegal abortions myself before I met you. Perhaps that would have made me more attractive and less naïve in your eyes.”

  Alexander’s heart squeezed. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean that.” He paused. She was too fa
r away and too upset for him to take her hand. “I thought Dasha might have told you.”

  “No, she didn’t tell me,” Tatiana said in a low, agonized voice. “She never talked to me about those things. And yes, my family protected me as best they could. Still, we lived in close quarters in a communal apartment. I knew that my mother had half a dozen abortions in the mid-thirties, I knew that Nina Iglenko had eight, but that’s not even what I’m talking about—”

  “So? What’s the problem? What are you talking about?”

  “Knowing how I feel about you—do you think it’s something I could ever do?”

  Tightening his lips, Alexander said, “No, of course not. Why would you?” He raised his voice. “Why would you ever do anything that would give me peace of mind!”

  Leaning over him, Tatiana whispered angrily, “You’re right. Your peace of mind or your baby. The choice is tough.” She threw the plate of eggs down on the metal tray and walked away without another word.

  When she did not return all day, Alexander concluded that having Tatiana be angry with him was more than he could endure—for a minute, let alone for the sixteen hours it took her to come back. He asked Ina and Dr. Sayers to bring her to him, but apparently she was very busy and could not come. Very late that night she finally returned, bringing with her a piece of white bread with butter. “You’re upset with me,” Alexander said, taking the bread out of her hands.

  “Not upset,” she said. “Disappointed.”

  “That’s even worse.” Alexander shook his head in resignation. “Tania, look at me.” Tatiana raised her eyes to him, and there, around the edges of her ocean current irises, he saw her love for him flow out. “We will do exactly as you want,” Alexander said, sighing heavily. “Like always.”

  Smiling, Tatiana sat on the edge of his bed and took a cigarette from her pocket. “Look what I brought you. Want a quick smoke?”

  “No, Tania,” said Alexander, reaching for her, bringing her to him. “I want to feel your breasts on my face.” He kissed her, undoing her uniform.

  “You’re not going to recoil in terror, are you?”

  “Just come here. Bend over me.”

  It was dark in the ward, and everyone else was sleeping. Tatiana pulled up her shirt. Alexander lost his breath. She bent over and pressed herself into him. Keeping his eyes open, he cupped her full warm breasts, nesting his face in between them. He inhaled deeply and kissed the white skin in front of her heart. “Oh, Tatiasha . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, soldier.” She lightly rubbed her breasts back and forth across his mouth, his nose, his cheeks. “I’ll have to shave you,” she whispered. “You’re very stubbly.”

  “And you are very soft,” he muttered, his mouth closing around her enlarged nipple. Alexander could tell that Tatiana tried very hard not to moan. Once she moaned, she backed away, pulling her shirt down. “Shura, no, don’t excite me. Every one of those men will wake up, I guarantee it. They can smell desire.”

  “So can I,” Alexander said thickly.

  All buttoned up and more composed, Tatiana hugged him. “Shura,” she whispered, “don’t you see? Our baby is a sign from God.”

  “It is?”

  “Absolutely,” she said, her face sparkling.

  Suddenly Alexander understood. “That’s the radiance,” he exclaimed. “That’s why you’re like a flame walking through this hospital. It’s the baby!”

  “Yes,” she said. “This is what is meant for us. Think about Lazarevo—how many times did we make love in those twenty-nine days?”

  “I don’t know.” He smiled. “How many? How many zeros follow the twenty-nine?”

  She laughed quietly. “Two or three. We made love to wake the dead, and yet I didn’t get pregnant. You come to see me for one weekend, and here I am—how do you say, up the stick?”

  Alexander laughed loudly. “Thank you for that. But, Tania, I want to remind you, we did make love quite a bit that weekend, too.”

  “Yes.”

  They stared at each other for a silent, unsmiling moment. Alexander knew. They had both felt too close to death that gray weekend in Leningrad. And, yet, here it was—

  As if to confirm what he was thinking, Tatiana said, “This is God telling us to go. Can’t you feel that, too? He is saying, this is your destiny! I will not let anything happen to Tatiana, as long as she has Alexander’s baby inside her.”

  “Oh?” said Alexander, his hands tenderly stroking her stomach. “God is saying that, is He? Why don’t you tell that to the woman in the Ladoga truck with you and Dasha, holding her dead baby all the way from the barracks across to Kobona?”

  “I feel stronger now than ever,” Tatiana said, hugging him. “Where is your famous faith, big man?”

  “Tania, have you talked to Dr. Sayers?” Alexander was caressing her hands under his blanket, kneading her fingers, feeling her knuckles, her wrists, her palms.

  “Of course. All I do is talk to him, go over all the details. We’re waiting for you to walk. Everything is set. He’s already filled out my new Red Cross travel documents.” She purred, leaning closer to him. “That feels so nice, Shura. I’m going to fall asleep.”

  “Don’t fall asleep. Under what name?”

  “Jane Barrington.”

  “That’s nice. Jane Barrington and Tobe Hanssen.”

  “Tove.”

  “My mother and a Finn. Some couple we make.”

  “Don’t we?” She half-closed her eyes. “That feels very nice, Shura,” she murmured. “Don’t stop.”

  “I won’t stop,” he whispered huskily, gazing at her. That made her open her eyes.

  A moment. They stared at each other. Remembering. Blink.

  Tatiana smiled. “In America can I please carry your name?” she whispered.

  “In America I will insist on it.” Alexander was thoughtful.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “We don’t have passports,” he said.

  “So? You’ll go to the U.S. consulate in Stockholm. We’ll be fine.”

  “I know. We still have to get from Helsinki to Stockholm. We can’t stay in Helsinki for a second. It’s too dangerous. Crossing the Baltic Sea. It’s not going to be easy.”

  Tatiana grinned. “What were you going to do with your limping demon? Same thing with me.” She paused. “Eugene calls to the wherryman—and he, with daring unconcern is willing, to take him for a quarter-shilling, across that formidable sea.” Smiling happily, she said, “Your mother, you, your ten thousand dollars will get us back to your America.” Both her tiny delicate hands were threaded through his.

  Alexander was suffocating under the weight of his love.

  “Shura,” Tatiana said, her voice tremulous, “remember the day you gave me your Pushkin book? When you fed me in the Summer Garden?”

  “Like it was yesterday.” Alexander smiled. “It was the night you fell in love with me.”

  Tatiana blushed and cleared her throat. “Were you . . . if I weren’t such a shy chicken . . . would you have—” She broke off, looking away momentarily.

  “What? What?” He squeezed her hand. “Would I have kissed you?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Tania, you were so terrified of me.” Alexander shook his head at the memory, his body aching. “I was completely gone for you. Kissed you? I would have ravished you right on the bench by the child-eating Saturn if you had given me half a sign.”

  7

  Alexander got stronger every day. He could get up and stand near his bed. It still hurt him to be upright, but he was off morphine completely, and now his back throbbed from morning until night, reminding him of his mortality. He was carving constantly. He had just carved a cradle out of another piece of wood. Soon, soon, he kept saying to himself. He wanted to be moved over into the convalescent ward, but Tatiana talked him out of it. She said his location and care were too good to give up his place in critical.

  “Reme
mber,” Tatiana said to him one afternoon as they were both standing by his bed, his arm around her. “You have to get better so that no one thinks you’re getting better. Or before you know it, they’ll send you back to the front with your stupid mortar.” She smiled up at him.

  Alexander removed his arm. He saw Dimitri walking toward them. “Courage, Tania,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “Tatiana! Alexander!” Dimitri exclaimed. “No, how incredible is this? The three of us together again. If only Dasha were here.”

  Alexander and Tatiana said nothing. They did not look at each other.

  “Tania, how are the terminal cases coming along? I just got you some more white sheets.”

  “Thanks, Dimitri.”

  “Oh, sure. Alexander, here are some cigarettes for you. Don’t worry about paying me. I know you probably don’t have any money on you. I can get your money and bring it to you—”

  “Don’t worry, Dimitri.”

  “It’s not a problem.” He stood at the foot of Alexander’s bed, his eyes darting from Alexander to Tatiana. “So, Tania, what are you doing here in critical care? I thought you were in the terminal ward.”

  “I am. But I see my crossover patients, too. Leo in bed number thirty used to be terminal. Now he is always asking for me.”

  Dimitri smiled. “Tania, not just Leo. Everybody is asking for you.” Tatiana didn’t say anything. Neither did Alexander, who sat down on his bed. Dimitri continued to study them. “Listen, it was good to see you both. Alexander, I’ll come by and visit you tomorrow, all right? Tania, you want to walk me out?”

  “No, I have to change Alexander’s dressing.”

  “Oh. It’s just that Dr. Sayers was looking for you. ‘Where is my Tania?’ Dr. Sayers said.” Dimitri smiled warmly. “Those were his exact words. You’re getting to be quite friendly with him, aren’t you?” He raised his eyebrows to her. “You know what they say about those Americans.”