“Who’s worried?” Dasha said, ruffling Tatiana’s hair. “Give Dima a chance. I think he actually liked you.” Dasha said that almost as if she were surprised. “Must be your dress.”
“Must be. Listen, I’m tired. It’s been a long day.”
Dasha put her arm on Tatiana’s back. “I really like Alexander, Tania,” she said. “I like him so much, I can’t even explain.”
Tatiana felt a chill. Having met Alexander, having walked with Alexander, having smiled at Alexander, Tatiana grimly understood that Dasha’s relationship with him was not some transient fling soon to be ended on the steps of Peterhof or in the gardens of the Admiralty. Tatiana had no doubt her sister meant it this time. “Don’t explain anything, Dasha,” said Tatiana.
“Tania, someday you’ll understand.”
Squinting sideways, Tatiana looked up at her sister sitting on the edge of the bed. She opened her mouth. A moment passed.
She wanted to say, but, Dasha, Alexander crossed the street for me.
He got on the bus for me, and went to the outskirts of town for me.
But Tatiana couldn’t say any of that to her older sister.
What she wanted to say to Dasha was, you’ve had plenty. You can get yourself a new one any time you want. You’re charming and bright and beautiful, and everybody likes you. But him I want for myself.
What she wanted to say was, but what if he likes me best?
Tatiana said nothing. She wasn’t sure any of it was true. Especially the last part. How could he like Tatiana best? Look at Dasha with her hair and her flesh. And maybe Alexander crossed the street for Dasha, too. Maybe he went across town, across the river for Dasha at three o’clock in the bright morning when the Neva bridges were up. Tatiana had nothing to say. She closed her mouth. What a waste, what a joke it all had been.
Dasha studied her. “Tania, Dimitri is a soldier. . . . I don’t know if you’re quite ready for a soldier.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing, nothing. But we might need to spruce you up a bit.”
“Spruce me up, Dasha?” said Tatiana, her heart backing into her lungs.
“Yes, you know, maybe a little lipstick, maybe have a little talk . . .” Dasha pulled Tatiana’s hair.
“Maybe we’ll do that. Another day, though, all right?”
In her white dress with red roses, Tatiana curled up, facing the wall.
3
Alexander was walking fast down Ligovsky.
They were silent for a few minutes, and then Dimitri, still not catching his breath, said, “Nice family.”
“Very nice,” said Alexander calmly. He was not out of breath. And he did not want to talk to Dimitri about the Metanovs.
“I remember Dasha,” Dimitri said, barely keeping up with Alexander. “I’ve seen her with you a few times at Sadko, haven’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Her sister is something, though, don’t you think?”
Alexander didn’t reply.
Dimitri continued. “Georgi Vasilievich said Tania was nearly seventeen.” His head shuddered. “Seventeen! Remember us at seventeen, Alexander?”
Alexander kept on walking. “Too well.” He wished he could remember himself at seventeen less. Dimitri was talking to him. “I didn’t hear. What?”
“I said,” Dimitri said patiently, “do you think she is a young seventeen or an old seventeen?”
“Too young for you, Dimitri, regardless,” Alexander said coolly.
Dimitri was silent. “She is very pretty,” he finally said.
“Yes. Still too young for you.”
“What do you care? You’re close to the older sister, I’m going to get to know the younger.” Dimitri chuckled. “Why not? We could make a . . . foursome, don’t you think? Two best friends, two sisters . . . there’s a symmetry—”
“Dima,” said Alexander, “what about Elena last night? She told me she liked you. I can introduce you next week.”
Waving him off, Dimitri said, “You actually talked to Elena?” He laughed. “No. I can get dozens like Elena. Besides, why not Elena, too? No. Tatiana is not like the others.” He rubbed his hands together and smiled.
Not a muscle moved on Alexander’s face. Not a tic in his eye, not a tightening of his lips, not a furrowing of his brow. Nothing moved, except his legs, faster and faster down the street.
Dimitri broke into a trot. “Alexander, wait. About Tania . . . I just want to make sure . . . you don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course, not, Dima,” Alexander said evenly. “Why would I?”
“Absolutely!” He slapped Alexander on the back. “You’re a good man. Quick question—do you want me to arrange entertainment for—”
“No!”
“But you’ll be on duty all night. Come on, we’ll have fun like always?”
“No. Not tonight.” He paused. “Not again, all right?”
“But—”
“I’m late,” said Alexander. “I’m going to run. I’ll see you at the barracks.”
UNCHARTED TIDES
THE next morning when Tatiana woke up, the first image in her mind was Alexander’s face. Tatiana did not speak to Dasha, tried in fact not to look at her sister, who, as she was leaving said, “Happy birthday.”
“Yes, Tanechka, happy birthday,” said Mama, hurrying out. “Don’t forget to lock up.”
Papa kissed her on the head and said, “Your brother is seventeen today, too, you know.”
“I know that, Papa.”
Papa worked as a pipe engineer at the Leningrad waterworks plant. Mama was a seamstress at a Nevsky hospital uniform facility. Dasha was an assistant to a dentist. She had worked for him since leaving university two years ago. They had had a romance, but once it was over, Dasha continued there because she liked the job. It paid well and demanded little from her.
Tatiana went to Kirov, where the whole morning she sat in on meetings and patriotic speeches. The manager of her department, Sergei Krasenko, asked if anyone wanted to join the People’s Volunteer Army to dig trenches down south to help defeat the hated Germans.
Today the German was hated. Yesterday he was beloved. What about tomorrow?
Yesterday Tatiana had met Alexander.
Krasenko continued to speak. The fortifications north of Leningrad, along the old frontier with Finland, were to be put into full defensive order. The Red Army suspected that the Finns were going to want Karelia back. Tatiana perked up. Karelia, Finland. Alexander spoke about that yesterday. Alexander . . . Tatiana perked down.
The women listened to Krasenko, but no one sprang up to volunteer for anything. No one, that is, except Tamara, the woman who followed Tatiana on the assembly line. “What have I got to lose?” she whispered with fervor as she scrambled to her feet. Tatiana had suspected that Tamara’s job was just too boring.
Today before lunch she received goggles, a protective mask for her hair, and a brown factory coat. After lunch she was no longer packaging spoons and forks. Now small cylindrical metal bullets came to her down the assembly line. They fell by the dozen into small cardboard containers, and Tatiana’s job was to put the containers into large wooden crates.
At five o’clock Tatiana took off her coat and her mask and goggles, splashed water on her face, retied her hair into a neat ponytail, and left the building. She walked on Prospekt Stachek, along the famous Kirov wall, a concrete structure seven meters tall that ran fifteen city blocks. She walked three of those blocks to her bus stop.
And waiting for her at the bus stop was Alexander.
When she saw him—Tatiana couldn’t help herself—her face lit up. Putting her hand on her chest, she stopped walking for a moment, but he smiled at her and she blushed and, gulping down whatever was in her throat, walked toward him. She noticed that his officer’s cap was in his hands. She wished she had scrubbed her face harder.
The presence of so many words inside her head made her incapable of small talk, just at the time when she needed sma
ll talk most. “What are you doing here?” she asked timidly.
“We’re at war with Germany,” Alexander said. “I have no time for pretenses.”
Tatiana wanted to say something, anything, not to let his words linger in the air. So she said, “Oh.”
“Happy birthday.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you doing something special tonight?”
“I don’t know. Today is Monday, so everyone will be tired. We’ll have dinner. A drink.” She sighed. In a different world, perhaps, she might have invited him over for dinner on her birthday. Not in this world.
They waited. Somber people stood all around them. Tatiana did not feel somber. She thought, but is this what I’m going to look like when I’m here by myself, waiting for the bus like them?
Is this what I am going to look like for the rest of my life?
And then she thought, we’re at war. What is the rest of my life even going to look like?
“How did you know I’d be here?”
“Your father told me yesterday you worked at Kirov. I took a chance you’d be waiting for the bus.”
“Why?” she asked lightly. “Have we had so much luck with public transportation?”
Alexander smiled. “You mean we in the sense of the Soviet people? Or do you mean you and I?”
She blushed.
Bus Number 20 came with room for two dozen people. Three dozen piled on. Alexander and Tatiana waited.
“Come, let’s walk,” he said finally, leading her away.
“Walk where?”
“Walk back home. I want to talk to you about something.”
She looked at him doubtfully. “Home is eight kilometers from here.” She glanced at her feet.
“Are your shoes comfortable today?” He was smiling.
“Yes, thank you,” she said, cursing herself for her little-girl awkwardness.
“I’ll tell you what,” he suggested. “Why don’t we walk one long block over to Govorova Ulitsa, and take tram Number 1 from there? Can you walk one long block? Everybody here is waiting for the bus or the trolleybus. We’ll catch tram Number 1 instead.”
Tatiana thought about it. “I don’t think that tram drops me off at my apartment,” she said at last.
“No, it doesn’t, but you can change at the Warsaw railroad station for tram Number 16 that will take you to the corner of Grechesky and Fifth Soviet, or you can change with me for tram Number 2, which will drop me off close to my barracks and you at the Russian Museum.” He paused. “Or we can walk.”
“I’m not walking eight kilometers,” said Tatiana. “No matter how comfortable my shoes are. Let’s go to the tram.” She already knew she would not be getting off at some railroad station to catch another tram back home by herself.
When the tram didn’t come for twenty minutes, Tatiana agreed to walk a few kilometers to tram Number 16. Govorova turned into Ulitsa Skapina and then meandered diagonally northward until it ended in the embankment of the Obvodnoy Canal—the Circular Canal.
Tatiana didn’t want to get to her tram. She didn’t want him to get to his. She wanted to walk along the blue canal. How to tell him that? There were other things, too, to ask him. Always she tried to be less forward. Always she tried to find the right thing to say and didn’t trust the etiquette pendulum swinging in her head, so she simply said nothing, which was perceived either as painful shyness or haughtiness. Dasha never had that problem. She just said the first thing that came into her head.
Tatiana knew she needed to trust her inner voice more. It was certainly loud enough.
Tatiana wanted to ask Alexander about Dasha.
But he began with, “I don’t know how to tell you this. You might think I’m being presumptuous. But . . .” He trailed off.
“If I think you’re being presumptuous,” Tatiana remarked, “you probably are.”
He stayed silent.
“Tell me anyway.”
“You need to tell your father, Tatiana, that he has to get your brother back from Tolmachevo.”
As she heard those words, she saw the imperially ornate Warsaw train station across the street, and she was thinking fleetingly about what it would be like to see Warsaw and Lublin and Swietokryst, and suddenly there was Pasha and Tolmachevo, and . . .
Tatiana wasn’t expecting it. She had wanted something else. Instead, Alexander had mentioned Pasha, whom he did not know and had never met.
“Why?” Tatiana asked at last.
“Because there is some danger,” Alexander said after a pause, “that Tolmachevo will fall to the Germans.”
“What are you talking about?” She did not understand, and even if she did, she would not want to. She would choose not to understand. She didn’t want to get upset. She had been too happy that Alexander had come to see her unbidden, of his own free will. Yet there was something in his voice—Pasha, Tolmachevo, Germans, these three words were flowing together in one sentence, said by a near-stranger with warm eyes in a cool tone. Had he come all the way to Kirov to alarm her? What for?
“What can I do?” she asked.
“Talk to your father about getting Pasha out of Tolmachevo. Why did he send him there?” he exclaimed. “To be safe?” Alexander shuddered, and something passed over his face. Unblinking, she watched him intently for more, for less, for an explanation. But there was nothing else. Not even words.
Tatiana cleared her throat. “There are boys’ camps there. That’s why he sent him.”
He nodded. “I know. Many, many Leningraders sent their boys there yesterday.” His face was blank.
“Alexander, the Germans are down in Crimea,” said Tatiana. “Comrade Molotov said so himself. Didn’t you hear his speech?”
“Yes, they are in Crimea. But we have a border with Europe that’s two thousand kilometers long. Hitler’s army is on every meter of that border, Tania, south from Bulgaria north to Poland.” He paused. She didn’t say anything. “For right now, Leningrad is the safest place for Pasha. Really.”
Tatiana was skeptical. “Why are you so sure?” She became animated. “Why does the radio keep talking about the Red Army being the strongest army in the world? We have tanks, we have planes, we have artillery, we have guns. The radio is not saying what you’re saying, Alexander.” She spoke those words almost as a rebuke.
He shook his head. “Tania, Tania, Tania.”
“What, what, what?” she said, and saw that Alexander, despite his serious face, nearly laughed. That made her nearly laugh herself, despite her own serious face.
“Tania, Leningrad has lived for so many years with a hostile border with Finland only twenty kilometers to the north that we forgot to arm the south. And that’s where the danger is.”
“If that’s where the danger is, then how come you’re sending Dimitri up to Finland where, as you suggest, all is quiet?”
Alexander was silent. “Reconnaissance,” he said at last. Tatiana felt he left something unsaid. “My point is,” he went on, “all of our precautionary defenses are focused in the north. But south and southwest, Leningrad does not have a single division, a single regiment, not one military unit deployed. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“No,” she said, a little defiantly.
“Talk to your father about Pasha,” he repeated.
They fell silent as they walked side by side through the quiet streets. Subdued was the sunlight, still the leaves, and only Alexander and Tatiana moved languidly through the summer, slowing down at the end of every block, looking at the pavement, looking up to the street signs. Tatiana was thinking, please don’t let this end so soon. What was he thinking?
“Listen,” Alexander said, “about yesterday . . . I’m sorry about the mishap. What could I do? Your sister and I . . . I didn’t know she was your sister. We had met at Sadko—”
“I know. Of course. You don’t have to explain,” interjected Tatiana. He brought it up. That meant so much.
“Oh, but I do. I’m sorry if I’ve
”—he paused—”upset you.”
“No, not at all. Everything is fine. She had told me about you. She and you—” Tatiana stopped, wanting to add that she was all right with that, but got stuck on her words. “So what’s Dimitri like? Is he nice? When is he coming back from Karelia?” Did she say that for effect? Tatiana wasn’t sure. She just wanted to change the subject.
“I don’t know. When his entrenching assignment is finished. In a few days.”
“Listen, I’m getting tired. Can we catch a tram?”
“Sure,” Alexander said slowly. “Let’s wait for the Number 16.”
They were seated on the tram when he spoke again. “Tatiana, your sister and I weren’t serious. I will tell her—”
“No!” she exclaimed. The two stolid men in front of her turned around quizzically. “No,” she repeated, more quietly, but no less adamantly. “Alexander, it’s impossible.” She put her hands over her face and then took them away. “She is my older sister. Do you understand?”
I was my mother and father’s only child. His violin words echoed in her chest.
More gently, Tatiana said, “She is my only sister.” She paused. “And she is serious about you.” Did she need to say more? She didn’t think so, but judging by the displeased look on his face, yes, she did. “There will be other boys,” she finally added with a gallant shrug, “but I will never have another sister.”
All Alexander said was, “I’m not a boy.”
“Men, then,” Tatiana stammered. This was too difficult for her.
“What makes you think there will be other men?”
Dumbstruck, Tatiana nonetheless persisted. “Because you make up half the world. But I know for a fact I have only one sister.”
When Alexander didn’t comment, she ventured, “You do like Dasha, don’t you?”
Quietly he replied, “Of course. But—”
“Well, then,” Tatiana interrupted, “it’s settled. No reason to speak any more about it.” She sighed heavily.
“No,” Alexander said, sighing briefly. “Guess not.”
“All right, then.” She stared out the window.
Whenever Tatiana thought of what she might like to be in life, she always thought of her grandfather and the dignity with which he conducted his simple existence. Her grandfather could have been anything, but he chose to become a math teacher. Tatiana didn’t know if it was the teaching of irrefutable math that made Deda approach more intangible issues with the same black-and-white code or if it was the very essence of his character that drew him to math’s absolutes, but whatever it was, Tatiana had always marveled at it. Whenever people asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she invariably said, “I want to be like my grandfather.”