13

On the Monday after Peterhof, when a smiling Alexander met an unsmiling Tatiana at Kirov, she said to him before even a hello, “Alexander, you can’t come anymore.”

He stopped smiling and stood silently in front of her, at last prodding her with his hand. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s walk.”

They walked the long block to Govorova.

“What’s the matter?” He was looking at the ground.

“Alexander, I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t.”

He stayed quiet.

“I can’t make it,” said Tatiana, strengthened by the concrete pavement under her feet. She was glad they were walking and she didn’t have to look at his face. “It’s too hard for me.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Why?” Flummoxed by that question, she fell silent. Not one of her answers could she speak aloud.

“We’re just friends, Tania, right?” Alexander said quietly. “Good friends. I come because I know you’re tired. You’ve had a long day, you have a long way home, and a long evening ahead of you still. I come because sometimes you smile when you’re with me, and I think you are happy. Am I wrong? That’s why I come. It’s not a big thing.”

“Alexander!” she exclaimed. “Yes, we have the pretense of not really being up to much. But please.” She took a breath. “Why don’t we tell Dasha then that you take me home from Kirov? Why do we get off every single day three blocks before my building?”

Slowly he said, “Dasha wouldn’t understand. It would hurt her feelings.”

“Of course it would. It should!”

“But, Tania, this has nothing to do with Dasha.”

Tatiana’s efforts to remain calm were costing her white fingers blood. “Alexander, this has everything to do with Dasha. I can’t lie in bed with her night after night, afraid. Please,” she said.

They came to the tram stop. Alexander stood in front of her. “Tania, look at me.”

She turned her head away. “No.”

“Look at me,” he said, taking both her hands in his.

She raised her eyes to Alexander. His big hands felt so comforting.

“Tatia, look at me and say, Alexander, I don’t want you to come anymore.”

“Alexander,” she said in a whisper, “I don’t want you to come anymore.”

He did not let go of her hands, nor did she pull away.

“After yesterday you don’t want me to come anymore?” he asked, his voice faltering.

Tatiana could not look at him when she spoke. “After yesterday most of all.”

“Tania!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Let’s tell her!”

“What?” She thought she had misheard.

“Yes! Let’s tell her.”

“Tell her what?” Tatiana said, her tongue suddenly full of frozen fear. She shivered in her sleeveless top. “There is nothing to tell her.”

“Tatiana, please!” Alexander’s eyes flashed at her. “Let’s tell the truth and live with the consequences. Let’s do the honest thing. She deserves that. I’m going to end it with her and then—”

“No!” She tried to pull her hands away. “Please, no. Please. She’ll be devastated.” She paused. “We have to think about other people.”

“What about us?” He squeezed her hands. “Tania . . .” he whispered, “what about you and me?”

“Alexander!” Her nerves were raw. “Please . . .”

“You please!” he said loudly. “I’m sick to death of this — all because you don’t want to do the honorable thing.”

“When is it honorable to hurt other people?”

“Dasha will get over it.”

“Will Dimitri?”

When Alexander did not reply, Tatiana repeated, “Will Dimitri?”

“Let me worry about Dimitri, all right?”

“And you’re wrong. Dasha will not get over you. She thinks you’re the love of her life.”

“She thinks wrong. She doesn’t even know me.”

Tatiana couldn’t listen anymore. She yanked her hands away. “No, no. Stop talking.”

Alexander stood in front of her on the pavement. “I’m a soldier in the Red Army. I’m not a doctor in America. I’m not a scientist in Britain. I’m a soldier in the Soviet Union. I could die any minute a thousand different ways to Sunday. This might be the last minute we will have together. Don’t you want to spend that minute with me?”

Mesmerized by him, Tatiana muttered, “Right now, I just want to crawl into bed—”

“Yes,” he exclaimed fervently, “crawl into bed with me!”

Weakening, Tatiana shook her head. “We have nowhere to go . . .” she whispered.

Alexander came up close and cupped her face as he said in a trembling, encouraged voice, “We’ll work it out, Tatiasha, I promise, somehow we’ll—”

“No!” she cried.

His hands lowered.

“You . . . misunderstood,” she stammered. “I meant that there is nothing for us to do.”

And then his eyes lowered.

And hers, too. “She is my sister,” Tatiana said. “Why can’t you just understand? I will not break my sister’s heart.”

Alexander took a step back and said coldly, “Oh, that’s right, you already told me. There will be other boys. But never another sister.” Without another word he turned around and began walking away.

Tatiana ran after him. “Alexander, wait!”

He kept walking.

Tatiana could not keep up. “Please, wait!” she called into Ulitsa Govorova. She held on to the wall of a yellow stucco building, whispering, “please come back.”

Alexander came back. “Let’s go,” he said flatly. “I have to get back to the barracks.”

Tatiana persisted. “Listen to me. If we stop now, at least there will be nothing to tell the people who are close to us, who love us, who depend on us not to betray them. Dasha—”

“Tatiana!” Alexander came at her so suddenly that she staggered back, letting go of the wall and nearly falling to the pavement. He grabbed her by the arms. “What are you talking about?” he said. “The betrayal — it’s an objective thing. What, you think just because we haven’t told them yet it’s not betrayal?”

“Stop.”

He didn’t. “You think when you can’t look at me because you’re afraid that everybody will see what I see, it’s not betrayal? When your face lights up a block away as you fly out of your stupid job? When you leave your hair down, when those lips of yours quiver? Are they not betraying you?” He was breathing hard.

“Stop it,” she said, red, upset, trying unsuccessfully to wrest herself away from him.

“Tatiana, every single minute that you have spent with me, you have lied to your sister, lied to Dimitri, to your parents, to God, and to yourself. When will you stop?”

“Alexander,” Tatiana said in a whisper, “you stop.”

He let go.

She was panting. “You’re right,” Tatiana said, unable to get a breath out. “But I haven’t lied to myself. That’s why I can’t do this anymore.” She paused. “Please . . . I don’t want to fight with you. And I don’t have the strength to hurt Dasha. I don’t have the strength for any of this.”

“The strength or the desire, Tania?”

Opening her hands pleadingly, she said, “The strength. I’ve never lied like this in my life.” Realizing what she was admitting, Tatiana flushed with embarrassment, but what could she do? She had to bravely continue. “You have no idea what it costs me every day, every minute, every night to hide from Dasha. My blank stare, my gritted teeth, my casual disregard — do you have any idea what it costs me?”

“Oh, I do,” he said, the grimmest of soldiers. “I’m the one who knows the truth. That’s why I want to end this charade.”

“End it and then what?” Tatiana exclaimed, flaring up. “Have you thought this all the way through?” She raised her voice. “End it and then what? I’ve still got to live with Dasha!” She laughed with exasperation. “What do you think, you think you can call on me after you are through with her? You think after you tell him, after I tell her, you’ll be able to come over, have dinner? Chat with my family? And, Alexander, what about me? Where am I supposed to go? To the barracks with you? Don’t you understand that I sleep in the same bed with her? And that I have nowhere else to go!” Tatiana yelled. “Understand,” she said, “you can do what you like, you can end it with Dasha, but if you do, you will never be able to see me again.”

“Don’t threaten me, Tatiana,” Alexander said loudly, his eyes blazing. “And I thought that was the whole point of this.”

Tatiana groaned, ready to cry.

Lowering his voice, he said, “All right, don’t be upset.” He rubbed her arm.

“Then stop upsetting me!”

He took his hand away.

“Go on with your life,” Tatiana said. “You’re a man.” She lowered her eyes. “Go on with Dasha. She is right for you. She is a woman and I’m—”

“Blind!” Alexander exclaimed.

Tatiana stood on Ulitsa Govorova, desolately failing in the battle of her heart. “Oh, Alexander,” she said, “what do you want from me . . .”

“Everything!” he whispered fiercely.

Tatiana shook her head, clenching her fists to her chest.

Running his hand down the length of her hair, Alexander said, “Tatia, I’m asking you for the last time.”

“And I’m telling you for the last time,” she said, barely able to get the words out.

Standing tall, Alexander stopped touching her.

She took a step forward, putting her gentle hand on him. “Shura . . . I don’t own Dasha’s life,” Tatiana said. “I cannot sacrifice my sister’s life. I can’t give it away to please you and me—”

“That’s fine,” he interrupted, pulling his arm away. “You’ve made it very clear. I can see I was wrong about you. You can stop now. But I’m telling you, I’m going to do it my way, not your way. I will end it with Dasha, and you will not see me again.”

“No, please . . .”

“Will you just go?” Alexander said, pointing down the street. “Walk away from me to the canal. Go home. Go to your Dasha.”

“Shura . . .” she said with anguish.

“Don’t call me that.” His voice was cold. He folded his arms. “Go, I said! Walk away.”

Tatiana blinked. Every night when they parted, an aching breath left her lungs where Alexander had been. She felt physically emptier in his absence. And up in her room she surrounded herself with other people to feel him less, to want him less. But invariably every night Tatiana had to climb into bed with her sister, and every night Tatiana would turn to the wall begging for strength.

I can do this, she thought. I’ve spent seventeen years with Dasha and only three weeks with Alexander. I can do this. Feel one way. Behave one way, too.

Tatiana turned and walked away.