The pavement expanded, and now she could walk next to Alexander. Dimitri flanked her on the left. “Tania, do you think we’ll get some vodka for our trouble?”
“I think my father might find some vodka for you, yes.”
“So, Tania, tell us,” Dimitri asked, “do you go out much?”
Go out? What a strange question. “Not much,” she said shyly.
“Ever go to a place named Sadko?”
“No,” she said. “But my sister often does. She says it’s nice.”
Dimitri leaned over a little. “Next weekend, do you want to come to Sadko with us?”
“Umm, no, thank you,” she said, lowering her eyes.
“Come on,” Dimitri said. “It’ll be fun. Right, Alexander?”
Alexander did not respond.
They walked three in a row along the wide pavement. Tatiana was in the middle. When other pedestrians headed toward them, it was Dimitri who stepped behind Tatiana to let them pass.
Tatiana noticed that Dimitri moved behind her with a reluctant sigh, as if it were a last resort, a battle, as if he were ceding territory to the enemy. At first Tatiana thought the passersby were the enemy, but soon she realized that, no, she and Alexander were the enemy because they never moved over, continuing to walk side by side, shoulder to shoulder.
Quietly Alexander asked, “Are you tired?”
Tatiana nodded.
“You want to rest a minute?” He put down his crates.
Dimitri did, too, eyeing Tatiana. “So, Tania, where do you go for fun?”
“Fun?” she said. “I don’t know. I go to the park. We go to our dacha in Luga.” Turning to Alexander, she asked, “So will you tell me where you’re from, or am I going to have to guess?”
“I think you’re going to have to guess, Tania.”
“Somewhere around salt water, Alexander.”
“You mean he didn’t tell you yet?” said Dimitri, standing very close to them.
“I can’t get a straight answer out of him.”
“Now, that’s surprising.”
“Very good, Tania,” Alexander said. “I’m from Krasnodar, by the Black Sea.”
“Yes, Krasnodar,” said Dimitri. “Have you ever been there?”
“No,” she replied. “I’ve never been anywhere.”
Dimitri glanced at Alexander, who picked up his crates and said curtly, “Let’s go.”
They passed a church and crossed Grechesky Prospekt. Tatiana was so lost in thinking of a way to see Alexander again that she walked right past her apartment building. She was a few hundred meters down the block, almost near the corner of Suvorovsky, when she stopped.
“You want another rest?” Alexander asked.
“No,” she said, trying to hide the feelings from her voice. “We missed my apartment building.”
“Missed it?” exclaimed Dimitri. “How can that be?”
“We just did, that’s all,” said Tatiana. “It’s at the other corner.”
Smiling, Alexander lowered his head. Slowly they walked back.
After entering the front door, Tatiana said, “I’m on the third floor. Will you two be all right?”
“Do we have a choice?” Dimitri asked. “Is there an elevator? Of course not,” he added. “This isn’t America. Is it, Alexander?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Alexander replied.
They climbed the stairs in front of Tatiana. “Thank you,” she whispered behind Alexander, mostly to herself; in fact, she was just thinking out loud. The thoughts were too loud, that was all.
“You’re welcome,” he said, without turning around.
Stumbling, she continued upward.
When she opened the door to her communal apartment, Tatiana hoped that crazy Slavin would not be lying on the floor in the middle of the corridor. This time her hopes went unanswered. He was there, his torso in the corridor, his legs inside his room, a snake of a man, thin, unkempt, malodorous, his ragged mop of greasy gray hair covering most of his face.
“Slavin has been pulling his hair out again,” she whispered to Alexander, who was right behind her.
“I think that’s the least of his problems,” Alexander whispered back.
With a growl, Slavin let Tatiana walk by but grabbed hold of Alexander’s leg and laughed hysterically.
“Comrade,” said Dimitri, coming up behind Alexander and sticking his boot on top of Slavin’s wrist, “let go of the lieutenant.”
“It’s all right, Dimitri,” said Alexander, moving Dimitri away with his elbow. “I can handle him.”
Slavin squealed with delight and squeezed Alexander’s boot harder. “Our Tanechka is bringing home a handsome soldier,” Slavin shrieked. “Excuse me . . . two handsome soldiers! What’s your father going to say, Tanechka? Is he going to approve? I don’t think so! I don’t think so at all. He doesn’t like you to bring home boys. He’ll say two is too much for you. Give one to your sister, give her one, my sweet.” With glee, Slavin laughed wildly. Alexander yanked his leg away.
Slavin reached out to grab hold of Dimitri, then looked up into Dimitri’s face and let his hand drop without touching him.
Calling after all three of them, Slavin screeched, “Yes, Tanechka, bring them home. Bring more! Bring them all—because they’ll all be dead in three days. Dead! Shot by Comrade Hitler, such a good friend of Comrade Stalin!”
“He was in a war,” Tatiana said by way of explanation, relieved to be past him. “He ignores me when I’m alone.”
“Why do I doubt that?” said Alexander.
Flushing, Tatiana said, “He really does. He is bored with us because we ignore him.”
Leaning into her, Alexander said, “Isn’t communal living grand?”
That surprised her. “What else is there?”
“Nothing,” he replied. “This is what it’s going to take to reconstruct our selfish, bourgeois souls.”
“That’s what Comrade Stalin says!” Tatiana exclaimed.
“I know,” said Alexander, keeping a serious face. “I’m quoting him.”
Trying not to laugh, Tatiana led him to her front door. Before opening it, she glanced back at Alexander and Dimitri and said with an excited sigh, “All right. Home.” Opening the door, she said, smiling, “Come in, Alexander.”
“Can I come in, too?” Dimitri asked.
“Come in, Dimitri.”
Tatiana’s family were in Babushka and Deda’s room around the big dining table. Tatiana stuck her head in from the hallway. “I’m home!”
No one even looked up. Mama said blankly, “Where’ve you been?” She could have been saying, more bread?
“Mama, Papa! Look at the food I’ve bought.”
Papa looked up briefly from his glass of vodka. “Good, daughter,” he said. She could have returned empty-handed. With a small sigh, she glanced at Alexander standing in the hallway. What was that on his face? Sympathy? No, not quite. Warmer. She whispered to him, “Put the crates down and come in with me.”
“Mama, Papa, Babushka, Deda,” said Tatiana, walking into the room and trying to keep the thrill out of her voice for the imminent introduction, “I want you to meet Alexander—”
“And Dimitri,” said Dimitri quickly, as if Tatiana had forgotten him.
“And Dimitri,” Tatiana finished.
Everyone shook hands and stared incredulously at Alexander and then at Tatiana. Mama and Papa remained seated at the table with a bottle of vodka between them and two shot glasses. Deda and Babushka went to sit on the couch to give the soldiers more room at the table. Tatiana thought her parents looked sad. Were they drinking to Pasha and chasing him down with pickles?
Papa stood up. “You did very well, Tania. I’m proud of you.” He motioned to Alexander and Dimitri. “Come. Have some vodka.”
Alexander politely shook his head. “No, thank you. I have duty later.”
“Shake your head for yourself,” said Dimitri, stepping forward.
Papa poured, frowning at Alexa
nder. What kind of man refused a drink of vodka? Alexander may have had his reasons for refusing her father’s hospitality, but Tatiana knew that because of that, her father was going to like Di-mitri better. Such a small act, yet the feelings that would follow would be so permanent. And yet because he refused, Tatiana liked Alexander better.
“Tania, I don’t suppose you bought any milk?” Mama asked her.
“Papa told me dry goods only.”
“Where are you from?” Tatiana’s father asked Alexander.
“Krasnodar region,” he said.
Papa shook his head. “I lived in Krasnodar in my youth. You don’t sound like you’re from there.”
“Well, I am,” said Alexander mildly.
To change the subject, Tatiana asked, “Alexander, would you prefer some tea instead? I can make you some tea.”
He moved closer to her, and she had to summon her breath. “No, thank you,” he said warmly. “I can’t stay long, Tania. I’ve got to get back.”
Tatiana took off her sandals. “Excuse me,” she said. “My feet are . . .” She smiled. She had tried hard to pretend they did not bother her, but the blisters on her big toe and little toe were bleeding.
Alexander glanced at her feet, shaking his head. Then he looked into her face. That expression seeped into his almond eyes again. “Barefoot is better,” he said very quietly.
Dasha came into the room. She stopped and stared at the two soldiers.
She looked healthy, radiant with the day, and Tatiana suddenly thought her sister looked too healthy and too radiant, but before she could utter a sound, Dasha exclaimed, her voice thick with pleasure, “Alexander! What are you doing here?” Dasha didn’t even glance at Tatiana, who, perplexed, looked at Alexander and said, “You know Dasha . . . ?” but then broke off in the middle of the question, seeing realization and conscience and unhappiness strike his mute, comprehending face.
Tatiana looked at Dasha, then back to Alexander. She felt herself paling from the inside out. Oh, no, she wanted to say. Oh, no, how can this be?
Alexander’s face became impassive. He smiled easily at Dasha and said, not looking at Tatiana, “Yes. Dasha and I have met.”
“You can say that again!” Dasha said with a laugh and a pinch of his arm. “Alexander, what are you doing here?”
Tatiana glanced around the room to see if anyone else had noticed what she had noticed. Dimitri was eating a pickle. Deda was reading the newspaper, his glasses on. Papa was having another drink. Mama was opening up some cookies, and Babushka had her eyes closed. No one else saw.
Mama said, “The soldiers just came back with Tatiana. Brought food.”
“Really?” Dasha said, her face turning up to Alexander, full of mild curiosity. “How do you know my sister?”
“I don’t,” said Alexander. “I ran into her on the bus.”
“You ran into my little sister?” said Dasha. “Incredible! It’s like destiny!” She tweaked him lightly on the arm again.
“Let’s go sit down,” said Alexander. “I think I will have that drink after all.” He moved to the table in the middle of the room by the wall, while Dasha and Tatiana remained by the door. Dasha leaned over and whispered, “He is the one I told you about!” Dasha must have thought she was whispering.
“One what?”
“This morning,” hissed Dasha.
“This morning?”
“Why are you being so dumb? He’s the one!”
Tatiana got it. She hadn’t been dumb. There was no morning. There was only waiting for the bus and meeting Alexander. “Oh,” she said, refusing to allow herself to feel anything. She was too stunned.
Dasha went to sit in the chair next to him. Glancing sadly at Alexander’s uniformed back, Tatiana went to put the food away.
“Tanechka,” Mama called after her, “put it away in the right place, not like usual.”
Tatiana heard Alexander say, “Don’t bother with shots. Pour mine straight into a glass.”
“Good man,” said Papa, pouring him a glass. “A toast. To new friends.”
“To new friends,” everyone chimed in.
Dimitri said, “Tania, come and have a toast with us,” and Tatiana came in, but Papa said, no, Tania was too young to drink, and Dimitri apologized, and Dasha said she would drink for herself and her sister, and Papa said like she didn’t already, and everyone laughed except Babushka, who was trying to nap, and Tatiana, who wanted the day to be instantly over.
From the hallway, as she picked up the crates and carried them one after the other into the kitchen, she heard tidbits of conversation.
“Work on the fortifications must be speeded up.”
“Troops must be moved to the frontiers.”
“Airports must be put in working order. Guns must be installed in forward positions. All of this must go ahead at fever pace.”
A little later she heard Papa say, “Oh, our Tania works at Kirov. She’s just graduated from school—a year early! She plans to go to Leningrad University next year when she turns eighteen. You’d never know it by looking at her—but she graduated a year early. Did I already say that?”
Tatiana smiled at her father.
“I don’t know why she wanted to work at Kirov,” said Mama. “It’s so far, it’s practically outside Leningrad. She can’t take care of herself,” she added.
“Why should she, when you’ve been doing everything for her all her life,” Papa snapped.
“Tania!” yelled Mama. “Wash our dishes from dinner while you’re out there, won’t you?”
In the kitchen Tatiana put away all she had bought. As she carried the crates, she would glance into the room to see Alexander’s back. Karelia and the Finns and their borders, and the tanks, and weapons superiority and the treacherous marshy woods where it was so hard to gain ground and the war with Finland of 1940 and . . .
She was in the kitchen when Alexander and Dasha and Dimitri came out. Alexander did not look at her. It was as if he were a pipeline full of water, and Dasha had turned the faucet off.
“Tania, say good-bye,” Dasha said. “They’re going.”
Tatiana wished she were invisible. “Good-bye,” she said from a distance, wiping her floured hands on her white dress. “Thanks again for your help.”
Dasha said, holding on to Alexander’s arm, “I’ll walk you out.”
Dimitri came up to Tatiana and asked if he could call on her again. She may have said yes, she may have nodded. She barely heard him.
Leveling his eyes on her, Alexander said, “It was nice to meet you, Tatiana.”
Tatiana may have said, “You, too.” She didn’t think so.
The three of them went, and Tatiana was left standing in the kitchen. Mama came out and said, “The officer forgot his cap.”
Tatiana took it from Mama’s hands, but before she could take one step to the corridor, Alexander had returned—by himself. “Forgot my cap,” he said.
Tatiana gave it to him without speaking and without looking at him.
As he took the cap from her, his fingers rested against hers for a moment. That made her look up. Tatiana stared at him with sadness. What did grown-ups do? She wanted to cry. She could do nothing but gulp down the aching in her throat and act grown-up.
“I’m sorry,” Alexander said so quietly that Tatiana thought she might have misheard him. He turned and walked out.
Tatiana found her mother frowning at her. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Be grateful we got some food, Mama,” said Tatiana, and started to make herself something to eat. She buttered a piece of bread, ate part of it with absentminded abandon, then jumped up and threw the rest out.
There was nowhere for her to go. Not in the kitchen, not in the hallway, not in the bedroom. What she wanted was a little room of her own where she could go and jot down small things in her diary.
Tatiana had no little room of her own. As a result she had no diary. Diaries, as she understood them from books, were supposed to
be full of personal writings and filled with private words. Well, in Tatiana’s world there were no private words. All private thoughts you kept in your head as you lay down next to another person, even if that other person happened to be your sister. Leo Tolstoy, one of her favorite writers, wrote a diary of his life as a young boy, an adolescent, a young man. That diary was meant to be read by thousands of people. That wasn’t the kind of diary Tatiana wanted to keep. She wanted to keep one in which she could write down Alexander’s name and no one would read it. She wanted to have a room where she could say his name out loud and no one would hear it.
Alexander.
Instead, she went back into the bedroom, sat next to her mother, and had a sweet biscuit.
Her parents talked about the money Dasha was not able to get out of the bank, which had closed early, and a little about evacuation, but said nothing about Pasha—for how could they?—and Tatiana said nothing about Alexander—for how could she? Her father talked about Dimitri and what a fine young man he seemed to be. Tatiana sat quietly at the table, summoning her teenage strength. When Dasha returned, she motioned for Tatiana to come into their bedroom. Tatiana dutifully went. Whirling around, Dasha said, “So what did you think?”
“Of what?” said Tatiana in a tired voice.
“Tania, of him! What did you think of him?”
“He’s nice.”
“Nice? Oh, come on! What did I tell you? You’ve never met anyone so handsome.”
Tatiana managed a small smile.
“Wasn’t I right? Wasn’t I?” Dasha laughed.
“You were right, Dasha,” said Tatiana.
“Isn’t it incredible that you met him?”
“Isn’t it?” said Tatiana without feeling, standing up and wanting to get out of the room, but Dasha blocked the door with her twitching body, unwittingly challenging Tatiana, who was not up to a fight, not a big one, not a small one. Challengeless, she said and did nothing. That’s the way it had always been. Dasha was seven years older. She was stronger, smarter, funnier, more attractive. She always won. Tatiana sat back down on the bed.
Dasha sat next to Tatiana. “What about Dimitri? Did you like him?”
“I guess. Listen, don’t worry about me, Dash.”