But there he is! With the cap in his hands, crossing the street for his white dress with red roses, there he is, every day coming to Kirov, stone upon stone, corpse upon corpse, there he is, in the Field of Mars under the lilacs with his rifle and she is barefoot next to him, and he is whirling her around on the steps of their wedding church, waltzing with her under the red moon of their wedding night, coming out of the Kama, coming at her broken and destroyed, bare, smiling, smoking, drowning Alexander. He is not gone yet. He is not vanished. Perhaps what remains of him can still be saved.
And there he is once again, standing on the river Vistula, looking out onto the rest of what’s left of his life. One path leads to death; the other to salvation. He doesn’t know which road to take, but in his eyes is the girl on the bench, and across the river is the Bridge to Holy Cross.
When Alexander was finished, the generals sat still, the ambassador sat still, the consul sat still.
“Whew, Captain Belov,” said Bishop, “that’s some life you got there. How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
Bishop whistled.
General Pearson of the United States Marines said, “You’re telling us that your wife, without knowing where you were, came to Germany bearing weapons, found the camp you were in, found your cell, found you, and orchestrated your escape out of the maximum security Special Camp Number 7?”
“Yes, sir.” Alexander paused. “Perhaps we can keep the reference to my wife out of this tribunal’s report?”
John Ravenstock was quiet. The generals were quiet. “And what would you call yourself, Captain, if your American citizenship were reinstated?”
“Anthony Alexander Barrington,” he said.
The men stared at Alexander. He stood up and saluted them.
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The door opened and the seven of them came out of the conference room. Alexander walked out last.
He saw Tatiana struggle up from her chair, but she couldn’t stand without holding on to it, and she looked so alone and forsaken, he was afraid that she would break down in front of half a dozen strangers. Yet he wanted to say something to her, something to comfort her, and so slightly nodding his head, he said, “We are going home.”
She inhaled, and her hand covered her mouth.
And then because she was Tatiana and because she couldn’t help herself, and because he wouldn’t have it any other way, she ran to him and was in his arms, generals or no generals. She flung her arms around him, she embraced him, her wet face was in his neck.
His head was bent to her, and her feet were off the ground.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are—
Unyielding.
Barrington, Leningrad, Luga, Ladoga, Lazarevo, Ellis Island, the mountains of Holy Cross, their lost families, their lost mothers and fathers, their brothers in arms and brothers are etched on their souls and their fine faces and like the mercurial moon, like Jupiter over Maui, like the Perseus galaxy with its blue, imploding stars they remain, as the stellar wind whispers over the rivers all run red, over the oceans and the seas, murmuring through the moonsilver skies…
Tatiana…
Alexander…
But the bronze horseman is still.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful and overdue thanks:
To Larry Brantley, the voice of the Army, for the hours spent detailing for me things I could never have known.
To Tracy Brantley, his wife and my true friend, who in a very amigo-like fashion, gave me early on what I needed most by weeping in all the right places and loving Tania and Shura for all the right reasons.
To Irene Simons, my first mother-in-law, for giving me the name under which I write my books.
To Elaine Ryan, my second mother-in-law, for giving me her perfect second son.
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To Radik Tikhomirov, my father’s friend for sixty years, for photocopying diaries of blockade survivors at the St. Petersburg library and sending me hundreds of pages in original Russian.
To Robert Gottlieb, a fellow Russophile, for performing miracles, and to Kim Whalen for a decade of hard work.
To Nick Sayers, my former publisher, my editor, my friend.
To Pavla Salacova who works so hard making my life easier she makes me believe she has twenty hands.
To my second and last husband Kevin—you are the bomb.
And to my father, who, a long time ago, hoped and believed and loved, and brought his family to the promised land for a free life.
About the Author
PAULLINA SIMONSis the bestselling author of the acclaimed novelsTully, Red Leaves, andEleven Hours. Born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia, she has lived in Rome, London, and Dallas, and currently lives near New York City with her husband and four children.
www.paullinasimons.com
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PraiseforTatiana and Alexander
“This has everything a romance glutton could wish for: a bold, talented, and dashing hero, a heart-stopping love affair! It also has—thank goodness—a welcome sense of humor and discernable characters rather than ciphers.”
—Daily Mail(London)
“A story of love and hope in the grand Russian tradition; a sort of Second World WarWar and Peace , vast, epic, sweeping.”
—Bookseller(London)
Praise forThe Bronze Horseman
“Lush in emotion and rich in detail…a complex, diverse, multi-faceted story.”
—Denver Post
“Readers will come to care about these characters and their plight and will take away a definite sense of
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what the siege of Leningrad actually meant on a personal level.”
—Booklist
“Emotionally compelling…a page-turner.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A love story both tender and fierce.”
—Publishers Weekly
“RecallsDr. Zhivago .”
—People
“A heart-stopping love story.”
—Library Journal
Praise forTully
“Reads fast, like a sudden surge of wind over the plains, and the book’s momentum builds to tornado force.”
—USA Today
“A big, ambitious book whose characters stick in the reader’s mind.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“What a lovely and resonant evocation of that first great bond between women—it’s deeply moving.”
—Anne Rivers Siddons
Also by Paullina Simons
ROAD TOPARADISE
THEGIRL INTIMESSQUARE
THESUMMERGARDEN
THEBRONZEHORSEMAN
ELEVENHOURS
REDLEAVES
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TULLY
Cookbook:
TATIANA’STABLE
Credits
Cover design by Feeza Mumtaz
Cover photograph © Allan Jenkins/Trevillion Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
TATIANA AND ALEXANDER. Copyright © 2003 by Paullina Simons. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse
engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRSTAVON PAPERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED2010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ePub Edition © May 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-202025-3
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
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Paullina Simons, The Bridge to Holy Cross
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