“And tomorrow you won’t be able to walk, your back will be so bad,” she replied. She tickled his neck. They sat. “Well? Are we just going to sit here, or do you plan to do your husbandly duty?”
“We’re just going to sit here.”
Her fingers caressed his neck, her lips kissed his throat, her hips nested into his lap. “What’s the matter?” she asked, nuzzling him. “Come on. Let me make you happy.”
“I am happy.”
“Happier. Lie down,” she whispered.
When they roughhoused, Tatiana was as assertive as a cougar, but during lovemaking, Alexander couldn’t get her to be anything but intemperately tender with him. “Harder,” he would tell her. “Touch me harder, Tatia. Don’t be so gentle with me.”
“Shura…” The fire flickered its harvest moonlight around the cabin. She stroked his face with her gentle fingers, her tongue ran in smooth circles around his lips, her fingers sloped down to his neck and throat and caressed his chest, lightly circled his upper arms where she rested before continuing. “I love your arms,” she whispered. “I keep imagining you holding me with them.”
“You don’t have to imagine,” Alexander whispered back. “I’ll hold you with them right now.”
“You lie still.” She continued to caress his chest and his stomach; her fingers were silky and fragile, like small nightingales with webbed feet.
“Tatia,” he whispered. “I’m dying.”
“No,” she said, moving lower. “Not yet.”
“Yes, yet,” he replied. “Come on, don’t make a grown man beg.”
Adoring and worshipful, groaning from pleasure, she was bent over him, breathing over him, murmuring. “God, Shura, you are—I love you, I can’t take it.”
She couldn’t take it? His eyes shut, he clasped her head between his hands.
A few days. A few nights. Later, later. Tomorrow. The next day, the next evening, another breakfast, a waning quarter-moon night.
She sat on the blanket every night before the fire he built outside in the clearing, and called him to her. And he would come, like a lamb to the slaughter, and lie down and put his head into the lion’s lap and she would sit over him and stroke his face, and murmur. Every night she murmured to him, soothing him with her lilting stories or her questions, or her jokes, and sometimes she sang to him. Lately all she sang to him was “Moscow Nights”:
“The river flows and flows
All made from moonsilver
A song is faintly heard and then subsides
During these quiet nights.”
“Shura, are you hungry?”
“No.” They were sitting side by side. He wasn’t looking at her.
“You sure? We haven’t eaten since six, and it’s—”
“I said no.”
Silence. “Are you thirsty? Want another cup of tea?”
“No, thank you,” he said a little gentler.
“What about a little vodka?” She nudged him. “I’ll drink with you.”
“No, Tania. I don’t want anything.”
“Can I get you a cigarette?”
“Tania!” he exclaimed. “I’m fine. Believe me, if there is something I want, I’ll let you know, all right?”
He felt her body tense. She took her hands away. He put them back. “I want you to continue to touch me, I don’t want to move, or have you move. I’m fine, right here.” He didn’t look at her.
“Come here, darling,” she said. “Come. Put your head on me.”
The lion spoke. The lamb obeyed.
His head was in her lap and she was lightly tickling his neck and murmuring.
“Tania, can you just stop?” he whispered. “Can you just quit for a second? Please. I can’t take you.”
She cradled him, bending over him, kissing his hair. He felt her breasts soft against his head. “Shura…Shura…” she purred in her sing-song voice. “Husband man, lovely man, big man, soldier man, beautiful man, Tania’s man…Shura, beloved man, adored man, worshipped man, alive man, Shura…”
Alexander couldn’t speak.
“Shura, listen. Look at me, and listen. Are you listening?”
“Yes,” he said, opening his eyes and looking up.
Her eyes were twinkling. She cleared her throat. “In the year 2000, three crocodiles lie on a river bank. One says, ‘We were green once.’ The other one says, ‘Yes, and we could swim.’ The third one says indignantly, ‘Enough of this. Stop wasting your time. Let’s fly around and gather some honey!’”
Laughing, Alexander put his hands to his face. The crocodiles might not have known what they were, but he knew very well what he was.
“Shura, stop, come on now. Don’t laugh yet. My mission is to make you laugh until you cry.” Tatiana peeled his hands away from his face and said, “A husband says to his wife—”
“Please, no more.”
“A husband says to his wife, ‘Dear, did you hear the rumor that the postman has had all the women in the village except one?’ And his wife exclaims, ‘Oh, I bet it’s that stuck-up Mira in hut number thirty!’”
Alexander laughed. “Okay, here is mine: ‘A pest is a man you’d rather make love to than explain why you’d rather not.’”
Tatiana hugged him and said, “And here’s mine: ‘Honey, what do you prefer—my beautiful body or my beautiful face?’”
“Your sense of humor,” returned Alexander, holding her to him until she couldn’t breathe. Nine days left, he wanted to say, but didn’t. Couldn’t.
She was struggling with a large basket of wet clothes near the water while he sat on the bench smoking. He had been hacking away at the forest all morning, swinging the axe at the branches as if it were some kind of absolution from his sins. He spent three hours making kindling bundles for her, because he knew it would get cold at night after he had left. But he was upset with her—again. She had been gone all morning, helping the old women clean their house, or plant, or fuck knows what else.
Alexander watched her resentfully as she struggled with their wet sheets. Tatiana couldn’t lift the heavy basket to bring it to the line. He watched her and smoked. Finally she turned around, saw him sitting on the bench and looked surprised and then disheartened.
“Shura,” she called to him reproachfully, motioning him to her. “What are you doing? Come and help me.”
He didn’t move.
“Shura!”
Alexander got up and walked over. Without looking at her, he swung the basket up with one hand and carried it to the line, where he dropped it on the ground and went back to the bench. As he turned to sit down, Tatiana was standing in front of him.
“What?” she said. “What now?”
“Don’t give me the ‘what now,’ all right?”
“What?” she said. “What did I do too much of, or not enough of?”
He opened his mouth, but her hand went over it as she brought her face to his and said quietly, “Stop it. Stop yourself before you say something you will have to apologize for in ten seconds.” She held her hand over his mouth and then kissed his forehead. Patting him lightly on the cheek, she went to hang the laundry, leaving him dumbfounded and stung by conscience.
Alexander went inside and made her tea. Walking over, he handed her the cup and said guiltily, “Here, you drink, let me do this.”
She sat down on a tree stump while he fiddled with the clothes pins. When he was done, he went to her, watched her for a moment, and then slowly descended to his knees. Tatiana parted her legs to let him closer.
“Tania…” he said in a stilted voice.
She stopped him. “Shh. You don’t have to apologize for anything. Be whatever you want, Shura, just be.”
“Why do you do that?” he asked. “Why can’t you just tell me to stop being an idiot? Why can’t you raise your voice, tell me to shut the hell up?”
“Is that what you want, Alexander?” she said. “You want me to fight with you? We have a handful of days left and you want me to fight with you?”
He hugged her. “Not a handful. Eight. Now tell me what can I do for you? What do you want me to do? You want me to carry something for you? Can I chop wood? Make another fire? Chase you through the woods? Can I carry you?”
He heard her say something in a broken, muted whisper that didn’t sound like happiness or even love. It sounded like a gasp torn from a lifetime of grief.
Alexander couldn’t respond, couldn’t look at her. He pretended he hadn’t heard, patted her back, kissed her neck.
Her voice a little happier and thickening, Tatiana answered. “You can do anything you want to me. As you know—I like it all.”
Alexander knew Tatiana loved to be carried by him. She loved to be lifted in his arms, or slung over his back, or carried like a backpack. He knew she was remembering Luga every time he picked her up…Luga, when all of Lazarevo was still ahead of them.
When Leningrad was still ahead of them. When Dasha was alive. When she had a family. Could Alexander love her enough for all of them who once sat around her, drinking their tea, smoking, teasing her, neglecting her, loving her? Could he give her enough?
Yes, he could. For the next few days.
And then what?
Alexander brought her inside and laid her on their bed. The stove was still warm from morning.
“I know what you like…” Alexander whispered. Lifting her dress, he exposed her hips and opened her legs. He loved looking at her as he alternately caressed her and put his mouth on her.
He heard her moaning for him. He stopped touching her for a moment and listened. “Shura…Shura…come up, please, come up.”
He knew what she wanted. And he wanted to give it to her. “What do you want, Tatia?”
“Come on, Shura,” she whispered. “Come on…”
Alexander went back to touching her. “Look at you,” he whispered, lowering his face to her.
He had to stop. He could tell she was moments away. “Not yet, Tania. Who is my good girl…” he whispered. “Who is my beautiful good girl…”
In frustration, she tried to move away. He held her in place, while his careful tender fingers stroked her.
Tatiana was nearly crying from tension. Alexander wanted to put his mouth on her again—but he waited.
She clutched at him, moaning for him to climb to her. He resisted.
Finally she breathed out the words he longed to hear.
Groaning from the excitement of hearing her say it, Alexander whispered, “All right, Tatiasha.” He barely had time to enter her, before he was flooded with her relief. Eight days left, Alexander’s body cried, his tingling throat cried.
Alexander was going sick out of his mind. He was on a suicide mission—he wanted Tatiana to stop loving him before he left. He wanted her to be glad he was leaving.
What he wanted was to make her glad he was leaving, not for her to be glad out of her own accord. He wanted to be the one to facilitate this change in her.
Her vulnerability ate at him so much he couldn’t look her in the face.
What was happening to him? It was so hateful.
“Come on, lift me up,” Tatiana said another night. “Lift me, take me standing like I know you love, take me however you want, but please don’t be upset with me, Shura.”
He turned from her.
“Honey,” she whispered. “Husband…Alexander…”
He couldn’t look at her.
Tatiana stood in front of him, topless, nipples erect, her loving face, her wet lips. They forgot the tea, forgot his cigarettes, forgot his anger, forgot it all, all they did, pleading, moaning through the crescent night, was forget it all.
As always. There was nothing else when they were in their cabin. Just Tania and Shura, and they adored each other, and their hearts were breaking, as they implored the God who made them, let us have this for another wordless moment, let us have us for a moment longer. Alexander took her against the wall and kneeling on the hard floor and on the high counter he had made, and on their bed, he took her gently and roughly and slowly and quickly, but in the end his heart was still breaking.
There was a desperation to their lovemaking—a brutal relinquishing of happiness that was as gradual and inevitable as the low tide. Whereas before Tania and Shura were starving for each other and made love to wake the gods to proclaim the eternal We to life, now they made love to stave off death, to stem the flood of destruction that awaited them upon his leaving—itself as inevitable as sunset.
Their feverish arrhythmic, broken, violent coupling was a cry to the gods, to any gods who would listen. Pleasure was mixed with a propellant ache; the greater the pleasure, the emptier the heart was after.
Five days left.
The following rainy night on the floor by the fire, he once again stopped himself from release. Alexander thought if he stopped himself, maybe he could stop time.
How long can he keep himself? How long can he watch her, how much longer can he hear her voice, smell her breath when she moaned and when she whispered, like now, what was she saying…I can’t even hear her, I want to finish, but no, I can’t…“What, Tania?”
“Alexander, please don’t leave me.”
“Babe, don’t worry,” he said. “There is life after grieving. Look at us. We felt again.” He kissed her. “You will want to love again, and you will.” Alexander wanted to add, thank God, but he didn’t mean it. My heart on a fucking stake, twisting in the fire.
“Wait, stop, honey, stop, Shura, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe—”
But Alexander wouldn’t stop. Until he was finally done. It took her long minutes to get her breath back, while he lay on the floor and smoked. The ash fell on the hardwood. It fell on his chest. He didn’t even brush it off. Tatiana brushed it off.
When she was calmer, Tatiana whispered, “Sometimes when you hold me like that, when you constrict me the way you do, when you suffocate me, when I feel your hands on my throat, over my face, when my lungs are crushed by you and your body is on me, I can’t help thinking you almost wish I would stop breathing.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Is it?”
“Absolutely.”
“You hold me, Shura, as if you don’t want me to live past this.” Tatiana paused. “Past us.”
“Crazy.”
Four days left.
“I don’t want you to touch me anymore.” These words were spoken by Tatiana as Alexander was holding her against the wall. “I’m serious,” she said. “I don’t want you to make love to me. I want you to stop. I don’t want to need you anymore. I don’t want to love you anymore.”
“All right,” he whispered, not letting her go, not moving away from the wall.
“What are we going to do? What am I going to do? You’ll be dead, but what am I going to do the rest of my life in Lazarevo?”
“I’ll be back, Tatia,” Alexander said.
“You’ll be dead. And I’ll be alone in Soviet Russia.”
“I won’t be dead.”
“There is no place for us here,” she said.
He disagreed. “The Ural Mountains were three hundred million years in the making. We found a place among the round hills. This is our place.”
“Please don’t.” Her body shook. “They were once larger, these mountains. They are nearly flattened out by erosion, by time. But they’re still standing.”
“Yes. And we with them,” whispered Alexander, squeezing her to him. “But this is just the beginning of your life, Tatiana. You’ll see. After three hundred million years you’ll still be standing, too.”
They weren’t looking at each other.
“Yes,” she whispered. “But not with you.”
Alexander was leaving tomorrow. Today he couldn’t look at her, couldn’t touch her, couldn’t talk to her. He didn’t know how he was going to go on. He didn’t know how she was going to go on.
He knew he would have to. He knew she would have to.
But how?
Where did they teach y
ou how to live after you’d lost it all?
Who taught you how to go on after you had lost everything?
Tatiana.
Tatiana taught me how to go on after she had lost everything.
Alexander got up early, went for his swim, but afterward didn’t come inside like always. Instead he sat on the bench outside and smoked, smoked with closed eyes, so he wouldn’t see Lazarevo.
Just behind his closed eyes were the birches and the pines and the cones on the ground and the gray-green mountains beyond the rushing river. He smelled the remnants of the fire, he wanted tea, he wanted another cigarette. He wanted his life to be over.
He was getting that wish, wasn’t he?
“Tania, I’m telling you, don’t cry. That was our deal, do you hear me? I can’t take it.”
“Am I crying?” she said.
“I’m serious,” Alexander said. “I can’t do this. I need you—”
“You know what?” she said to him. “All the things you need me to be, I can’t be right now. I’ll be what I can.” She was crying.
His throat burning, Alexander lay next to her. Side by side they steeled themselves in their bed, and she cradled his head to her breasts, and she whispered and whispered and whispered and by the time she was done, his hair was damp from her tears. But she wasn’t done. She was never done. Her capacity to heal him, to harvest her love in him was endless.
“There was once a time,” she said, “when you placed your hand on my chest, and I thought my whole life was in front of me. In front of the Hermitage. In front of that broken man and his crates of art. Do you remember?”
“How could I forget?” Alexander said. “I never forget that man.”
Tatiana turned her face to him. They kissed. She cradled against him, tiny against him, she lay buried in his chest, and Alexander knew she was listening to his heart. She did that all that time; it was comforting and disquieting.
She was as resolute as ever, as fully loving, as completely giving, intensely tender, unbearably moving, as always affecting him utterly. But there was something else. She was holding him so desperately, crying over him, almost as if she were mourning him already, almost as if she were already grieving. She made love to him without letting go of his head, choking him against her and crying, as if she were not just saying goodbye, but saying goodbye to him for good.