Tatiana knew what Deda would do. He would never step on his sister’s heart.
The tram moved past Insurrection Square. Alexander asked her to get off a few stops before Fifth Soviet, near the redbrick Grechesky Hospital on Second Soviet and Grechesky. “I was born in this hospital,” Tatiana offered, pointing.
“So, Tania, tell me, do you like Dimitri?”
It was a good minute before Tatiana could answer him.
What answer was he looking for? Was he asking as a spy for Dimitri or for himself? And what should she say? If it was for Dimitri and Tatiana said no, she did not like him, then she would hurt Dimitri’s feelings, and she didn’t want to do that.
If it was for Alexander and she said yes, she liked Dimitri, then she would hurt Alexander’s feelings, and she didn’t want to do that either. What were girls supposed to say? Weren’t they supposed to play some kind of game? Lure, pull, pretend.
Alexander was Dasha’s. Did Dasha’s younger sister owe him an honest answer?
Did he want one?
He wanted one.
“No,” she finally said. Tatiana didn’t want to hurt Alexander’s feelings most of all.
She saw by his face that she had given him the right answer.
“Dasha says I should give him a chance though. What do you think?”
“No,” he replied at once.
They were stopped at the corner of Second Soviet and Grechesky Prospekt. The dome of the church across from her building glistened a few hundred meters in the distance. Tatiana couldn’t take the thought of him leaving. Now that he had come, asked the impossible, and been refused, she was afraid she would not see him like this again. Alone like this again.
She couldn’t let him leave just yet. Not just yet. “Alexander,” she asked quietly, looking into his face, “are your . . . mother and father still in Krasnodar?”
“No,” he said. “They’re not in Krasnodar.”
She didn’t look away. His eyes poured into her. “Tania, so many things I can’t explain but want to.”
“So explain,” Tatiana said softly, holding her breath.
“Just remember, what’s happening right now in the Red Army—the confusion, the unpreparedness, the disorganization—none of it can be understood except through the events of the last four years. Do you see?”
Tatiana stood still. “I don’t see. What does it have to do with your parents?”
Alexander stepped a shade closer, shielding her from the setting sun. “My parents are dead. My mother in 1936, my father in 1937.” He lowered his voice even more. “Shot,” he whispered. “By the NKVD—the not-so-secret police. Now I have to go, all right?”
Tatiana’s shocked face must have slowed him, because he patted her on the arm and said, smiling grimly, “Don’t worry. Sometimes things don’t work out the way we hope, do they? No matter how much we plan, or how much we wish. True?”
“No, they don’t,” replied Tatiana, lowering her gaze. For some reason she didn’t think he was talking just about his parents. “Alexander, do you want to—”
“I have to go,” he cut in. “I’ll see you.”
All she wanted to ask was, when? but all she said was, “All right.”
Tatiana didn’t want to go back to her apartment, inside the kitchen, inside. She wanted to be on the tram again, or at the bus stop, even at the store,on the street—anywhere, as long as it wasn’t in the apartment without him.
When Tatiana got to her building, she stood dumbly on the landing, mindlessly drawing the outline of the figure eight with her fingers, readying herself for the climb up and beyond.
With a heavy heart she ambled upstairs.
2
The family was discussing the war. There was no birthday dinner, but there was plenty of drink. And plenty of loud argument. What was going to happen to Leningrad? As Tatiana arrived, her father and grandfather were disagreeing on Hitler’s intentions—as if they both knew him personally. All Mama wanted to know was why Comrade Stalin had not spoken to the people. Dasha wanted to know if she should continue working.
“As opposed to what?” snapped an irritated Papa. “Look at Tania. She is barely seventeen, and she doesn’t ask if she should continue working.”
Everybody looked at Tatiana, including Dasha—unhappily.
Tatiana put down her bag. “Seventeen today, Papa.”
“Ah, yes!” Papa exclaimed. “Of course. The day has been so crazy. Let’s drink a toast to Pasha’s health.” He paused. “And to Tania’s.”
The room was somehow smaller because Pasha wasn’t with them.
Tatiana leaned against the wall, wondering when would be a good time to bring up her brother and Tolmachevo. Hardly anyone even noticed she was holding up the wall, except Dasha, who glanced at her from the couch and said, “Why don’t you have some chicken soup? It’s outside on the stove,” and Tatiana thought that was a good idea. In the kitchen, she poured herself two ladlefuls of carrots and a bit of chicken and then sat on the window ledge and looked out into the yard as the soup got cold next to her. She couldn’t eat anything hot. She was burning up inside.
When Tatiana walked back into their rooms, she heard her mother say consolingly to her father, “This war will not continue into winter. By then it will all be over.”
Papa was quiet, rubbing the folds of his shirt. He said, “You know, Napoleon, too, came to the Soviet Union with his armies in June.”
“Napoleon!” Mama screeched. “What does Napoleon have to do with this, Georgi Vasilievich? Please. I beg of you.”
Tatiana opened her mouth to speak, to say something about Tolmachevo, but not only was she not sure of the message she was supposed to relay to her mature, all-knowing, insufferable family, it suddenly occurred to her that she might have to explain how she came by this information on the Germans’ future advance into Russia.
Might? she thought. She closed her mouth.
Papa sat by Mama’s side, looking into his empty glass. “Let’s have another shot,” he said. “And drink to Pasha.”
“Let’s go to Luga!” exclaimed Mama. “Let’s go to our dacha, get away from the city.”
How could Tatiana not say something now? “Maybe,” she coughed up, with the confidence of a lamb, spluttering at her own audacity, “maybe we could bring Pasha back from camp in the meantime.”
Papa, Mama, Dasha, Deda, and Babushka all stared at Tatiana with confusion and remorse, as if, one, they had been surprised she could speak and, two, they were sorry for saying grown-up things in the presence of a child.
Mama started to cry. “We should bring him back. Today is his birthday, and he is all by himself.”
It’s my birthday, too, Tatiana thought. She got up, deciding to go and have a bath.
“Where are you going?” Papa called to her.
“To wash.”
“To wash what?” snapped Mama. “Take some plates into the kitchen, will you?”
“To wash myself,” replied Tatiana, gathering the dirty plates from the table.
Dasha went out, Tatiana didn’t ask where. She suspected it was to see Alexander. She was not one to feel sorry for herself, and she wasn’t going to start now. If there was anything to feel sorry for, it was the turn of events that allowed feeling into her heart, only to have that feeling squashed by the ludicrous hands of fate. She wasn’t going to allow pointless self-pity inside—that angry fiend.
Tatiana forced herself to reread some of Chekhov’s stories, which never failed to ease her with their inertness. Reading seven of his short stories put her right to sleep, the last one about a girl sitting on a bench with an older man.
She kept hearing Deda and Papa argue about the war. Deda said that many people did not view it as sheer tragedy. The idea of war was terrible, but might not war bring freedom to them? Might not this new horror bring in its wake some good? Might it not lift from Russia’s back the savage burden of the Bolsheviks and give the nation a chance for a new, normal, and humane life?
Tatiana heard Papa’s voice, laden with vodka. “Nothing will lift from Russia the savage burden of the Bolsheviks. Nothing will bring us a normal life.”
Tatiana thought Papa was a pessimist. Vodka tended to make him even more morose.
Something had to bring them all a chance for a new life. But what? As if she had any answers. She slept.
She was awakened at one forty-five in the morning by a sound she had never heard before coming from outside. It was a screeching siren piercing the dusky night. She cried out, and her father came over and told her not to worry, it was just an air-raid siren. She wanted to know if she had to get up; were the Germans bombing them already?
“Go to sleep, Tanechka, dear,” said Papa, but how could she, with the siren shrieking and Dasha not home? The siren stopped after a few minutes, but Dasha was still not home.
3
At the morning meeting at Kirov the next day, Tatiana was told that the workday, in honor of the war effort, was extended until seven in the evening, until further notice. Until further notice, Tatiana guessed, was until the war ended. Krasenko informed the workers that he and the Party secretary from Moscow decided to step up production of the KV-1, heavy tank for the defense of Leningrad. Krasenko said that Leningrad would be defended with what tanks, ammunition, artillery they could make at Kirov. Stalin would not redeploy arms from the southern front to the Leningrad front to protect the city.
Whatever Leningrad could produce to defend itself—arms and food—would have to be sufficient.
After that meeting so many workers volunteered for the front that Tatiana thought the factory would be closed down. But no such luck. She and another worker—a worn, middle-aged woman named Zina—returned to their projectile assembly line.
Late in the day the nail gun broke, and Tatiana had to nail the crates shut with a hammer. By seven her back and her arm ached.
Tatiana and Zina walked along the Kirov wall, and before she got to the bus stop, Tatiana saw Alexander’s black-haired head rising above the tide of others.
“I have to go,” Tatiana said, losing a breath and speeding up. “See you tomorrow.”
Zina mumbled something in return.
“Hello,” she greeted him, her heart racing, her voice steady. “What are you doing here?” She was too tired to feign disinterest. She smiled.
“I’m coming to take you home. Did you have a nice birthday? Did you talk to your parents?”
“No,” Tatiana replied.
“No to both?”
“I didn’t talk to them, Alexander,” Tatiana said, avoiding the birthday issue. “Maybe Dasha can talk to them? She is a lot braver than I am.”
“Is she?”
“Oh, much,” said Tatiana. “I’m a big chicken.”
“I tried to talk to her about Pasha. She is even less concerned than you.” He shrugged. “Look, it’s not my place. I’m just doing what I can.” He glanced at the line of people. “We’ll never get on this bus. Want to walk?”
“As long as it is up the tram steps,” she said. “I can’t move today. I’m so tired.” She paused, adjusting her ponytail. “Have you been waiting long?”
“Two hours,” he replied, and Tatiana suddenly felt less tired. She stared at Alexander with surprise.
“You’ve been waiting two hours?” What she didn’t say was, you’ve been waiting two hours for me? “My day has been extended till seven. I’m sorry you waited so long,” she said softly to him.
They fell away from the crowd, crossed the street, and headed toward Ulitsa Govorova.
“Why are you carrying that?” Tatiana asked, pointing to Alexander’s rifle. “Are you on duty?”
“I’m off duty until ten,” he said. “But I’ve been ordered to carry my weapon with me at all times.”
“They’re not here yet, are they?” Tatiana said, trying to be jovial.
“Not yet,” came his short reply.
“Is the rifle heavy?”
“No.” He paused and smiled. “Would you like to carry it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s see. I’ve never held a rifle before.” Taking it from him, she was surprised by how heavy it was and how hard it was to hold it with both hands. She carried it for a while and then gave it back to Alexander. “I don’t know how you do it,” she said. “Carry your weapon and all your other things, too.”
“Not just carry it, Tania, but fire it. And run forward, and fall on the ground, and jump up with it in my hands, with all my other things on my back.”
“I don’t know how you do it.” She wished she could be physically strong like that. Pasha would never beat her at war again.
The tram came, and they got on. It was crowded. Tatiana gave up her seat to an elderly lady, while Alexander looked as if he never intended to sit down. He held on to the brown overhead strap with one hand and his rifle strap with the other. Tatiana held on to the partially rusted metal handle. Every once in a while the tram would lurch and she would bump into him, and every time she would apologize. His body felt as hard as the Kirov wall.
Tatiana wanted to sit down with him alone somewhere and ask him about his parents. Certainly she couldn’t ask him on the tram. And was knowing about his parents a good thing? Wouldn’t knowledge about his life just make her feel closer to him, when what she needed was to feel as far away from him as possible?
Tatiana remained silent as the tram took them to Vosnesensky Prospekt, where they caught tram Number 2 to the Russian Museum.
“Well, I’ll be going,” Tatiana said—extremely reluctantly—after they got off.
“Do you want to sit for a minute?” Alexander suddenly asked. “We can rest on one of the benches in the Italian Gardens. Want to?”
“All right,” Tatiana said, trying not to skip with joy as she walked in little steps next to him.
After they sat down, Tatiana could tell that something was weighing heavily on his mind, something he wanted to say and couldn’t. She hoped it wasn’t about Dasha. She thought, aren’t we past that? She wasn’t. But he was older. He should have been.
“Alexander, what’s that building over there?” she asked, pointing across the street.
“Oh, that’s the European Hotel,” Alexander replied. “That and the Astoria are the best hotels in Leningrad.”
“It looks like a palace. Who is allowed to stay there?”
“Foreigners.”
Tatiana said, “My father went to Poland on business once a few years ago, and when he came back, he told us that in his Warsaw hotel Polish people from Krakow were staying! Can you imagine? We didn’t believe him for a week. How could Polish people be staying in a hotel in Warsaw?” She chuckled. “That’s like me staying at the European over there.”
Alexander looked at her with an amused expression and said, “There are places where people can actually travel as they please in their own country.”
Tatiana waved him off. “I guess,” she said. “Like Poland.” She swallowed hard and cleared her throat. “Alexander . . . I’m so sorry about your mother and father.” She touched him gently on the shoulder. “Please tell me what happened.”
With a suspended breath of relief escaping his mouth, Alexander said, “Your father is right, you know.” He paused. “I’m not from Krasnodar.”
“Really? Where are you from?”
“Have you ever heard of a town called Barrington?”
“No. Where is that?”
“Massachusetts.”
She thought she had misheard. Her eyes became saucers. “Massachusetts?” she gasped. “As in, as in America?”
“Yes. As in America.”
“You’re from Massachusetts, America?” Tatiana said, astonished.
“Yes.”
For a full minute, maybe two, Tatiana could not speak. Her heart drummed deafeningly and electrifyingly in her ears. She willed her jaw to stay shut.
“You’re just teasing me,” she said at last. “I am not that gullible.”
Alexander shook his he
ad. “I’m not teasing.”
“You know why I don’t believe you?”
“Yes,” Alexander said. “You’re thinking, who would want to come here?”
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
“Communal living was a great disillusionment for us,” Alexander told Tatiana. “We came here—my father anyway—so full of hope, and suddenly there were no showers.”
“Showers?”
“Never mind. Where was the hot water? We couldn’t even take a bath in the residential hotel we were staying at. Do you have hot water?”
“Of course we don’t. We boil water on the stove and add it to the cold water in the bath. Every Saturday we go to the public bathhouse to wash. Like everybody in Leningrad.”
Alexander nodded. “In Leningrad, in Moscow, in Kiev, in all of the Soviet Union.”
“We’re lucky. In the big cities we actually have running water. In provincial towns they don’t even have that. Deda told me that about Molotov.”
“He is right.” Alexander nodded. “But even in Moscow the toilets flushed sporadically at best; the smell accumulated in the bathrooms. My parents and I, we adjusted somehow. We cooked on firewood and thought we were the Ingalls family.”
“The who?”
“The Ingalls family lived in the American West in the late eighteen hundreds. Yet here we were, and this was socialist utopia. I said to my father once, with some irony, that he was right, this was much better than Massachusetts. He replied that you didn’t build ‘socialism in one country’ without a struggle. For a while I think he really believed it.”