12

In the groggy early morning Tatiana sat on the blanket in front of a blue crystal river, cradling Alexander’s head in her hands. “Honey,” she whispered, “want to go swimming?”

“I would,” replied Alexander, his head in her lap, “if only I could move my body.”

After they slept for a few hours and swam for a few hours, they got dressed and went to Naira’s house. The women were inside on the porch, drinking tea and clucking.

“They’re talking about us,” Tatiana said to him, taking one step away as they walked.

“Wait till we give them something to really gossip about,” Alexander said, nudging her forward and grabbing her bottom.

The women were upset with Tatiana. Dusia cried and prayed. Raisa shook even more than usual. Naira stared at Alexander reprovingly. Axinya twitched with excitement, as if unable to wait until she could tell her friends later in the afternoon.

“Where have you been? We didn’t know what happened to you. We thought you had been killed,” said Naira.

“Tania, tell them. Have you been killed?” Alexander said, trying not to smile.

The women — including Tatiana — all glared at Alexander, who saluted them and went outside to shave. Tatiana thought he must have looked like a pirate with his black stubble. What to do? To pretend? To own up? The explanations, though. Was it something she could stand? Could she explain to these well-meaning women the workings of her life? They believed their world with her to be one thing, and now she was about to tell them it was something else. Just a few days ago they were aflutter over Alexander’s traveling 1,600 kilometers to marry his fiancée, supposedly heartbroken, and suddenly this. It didn’t look very good for her, nor for him.

“Tatiana, will you tell us please where you were?”

“Nowhere, Naira Mikhailovna. We went to Molotov. We bought a few things, some food, some . . . We . . .”

What was she going to say?

“Where did you sleep? You’ve been gone for three days! We honestly didn’t know what happened to you.”

Alexander walked up the stairs, onto the porch, and said without ceremony, “Did you tell them we got married?”

Most of the oxygen on the porch was sucked into the lungs of the four old women who collectively went, “Aahhhhhh!”

Tatiana rubbed her eyes, shaking her head. Leave it to him. She sat down on a chair by the sofa and sighed.

“I’m starved,” he said, walking into the parlor room. “Tatia, is there anything to eat?” He came out chewing a hunk of bread. He sat down next to Dusia on the sofa, put his arm around her, and said, “Ladies, you love newlyweds in small villages, don’t you? Maybe we could have a little party.” He grinned.

Losing her composure, Naira said tersely, “Alexander, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we are upset. Saddened and upset.”

“Married!” exclaimed Axinya.

“What do you mean, married?” cried Dusia, crossing herself. “Not my Tanechka. My Tanechka is pure—”

Coughing loudly, Alexander got up. “Tania? Please, let’s go eat.”

“Shura, wait.”

He sat back down.

Dusia said, “Tatiana Georgievna, tell me it isn’t true. Tell me he is just kidding. Just playing jokes on us, trying to get four old women older before their time.”

Naira Mikhailovna said, “I don’t think he is kidding, Dusia.”

Tatiana, shaking her head at Alexander, said, “Dusia, please don’t be upset—”

“Wait,” Alexander interrupted, turning to Dusia sitting next to him. “Why should you be upset? We’re married, Dusia. It’s a good thing.”

“Good?” she cried. “Tania, what about God?”

“What about your sister?” asked Naira sternly.

“What about decorum, propriety?” asked Axinya in a thrilled voice, as if decorum and propriety were the two last things she wanted here in Lazarevo.

Raisa shook. “Tania, your sister’s memory is not yet cold.”

Naira said sharply, “Alexander, we thought you had come to marry Dasha, God rest her soul.”

One glance at Alexander told Tatiana that he was losing his patience. Hurriedly she said, “Look, look, let me explain—”

But it was too late. Alexander got up and said, “No. Let me explain. I came to Lazarevo for Tatiana. I came to marry her. We’re done here. Tania, let’s go. I’ll take your trunk. We’ll come back for the sewing machine.”

“Take her trunk? No, she is not leaving here!” cried Naira.

“Yes,” said Alexander. “She is.”

“She doesn’t have to go!”

“Ladies,” Alexander said, his arm around Tatiana’s neck, “we’re newlyweds.” He raised his eyebrows. “Do you really want us in your house?”

Naira gasped. Dusia crossed herself. Raisa shook, and Axinya clapped her hands once in glee.

Tatiana squeezed Alexander’s arm. “Shh,” she whispered. “Please. Go outside. Let me talk to them for a second. All right?”

“I want to go.”

“We will. Go outside.”

Naira said, “I don’t know why you have to go. You can have my bedroom. I will sleep on the stove.”

Before Tatiana could stop him, Alexander leaned forward and said, “Naira Mikhailovna, trust me, you don’t want us in your house — Ouch!”

“Alexander! Go outside. Please,” Tatiana said, rubbing his arm where she had pinched him.

Turning back to Naira, Tatiana sat down. “Look, it will be better for us in the cabin.” She wanted to say “more private” but she knew they wouldn’t understand. “If you need anything, let us know. Alexander wants to come over and fix your fence. If you want us to come for dinner, let us know, too.”

“Tanechka, we are so worried about you,” said Naira. “You, of all people, with a soldier!”

Dusia muttered Christ’s name.

Naira continued. “I just don’t know about him. We would have thought you’d want someone a little more like yourself. More your match.”

Smiling, Axinya said, “I’m beginning to suspect that’s exactly what she got.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Tatiana said. “I’m safe with him.”

“Of course we want you to come for dinner,” said Naira. “We love you.”

Dusia said, “God spare you from the horrors of the marriage bed.”

Keeping her face straight and glancing outside at Alexander, Tatiana said, “Thank you.”

Outside, Alexander was doubled over.

He was carrying her big heavy trunk, so he was fairly helpless, which was the way she liked it, because she was yelling at him. “Why can’t you let me handle things my own way, why?”

“Because your own way would entail milking a cow for hours and washing their clothes and then sewing them all new ones and God knows what else!”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “I would’ve thought after we got married you would calm down a bit, be less protective, less . . . you know. You. That American way that makes you stand out like a black peg among white nails.”

Alexander laughed. “You don’t understand anything,” he said, panting a bit. “Why would you think that?”

“Because we’re married.”

“To shatter your illusions, I’ll warn you right now that everything you’ve seen will increase a hundredfold now that you’re my wife. Everything.”

“Everything?”

“Yes. Protectiveness. Possessiveness. Jealousy. All of it. A hundredfold. That’s the nature of the beast. Didn’t want to tell you beforehand, thought it might scare you off.”

“Might?”

“There you are. You can’t get the marriage annulled.” Alexander glanced at her, his eyes burning. “Not after it’s been so . . . thoroughly consummated.”

They couldn’t even wait to get home. He carried the trunk into the pines and sat down on it. Tatiana climbed on top of him. “Don’t be too loud in the woods,” he told her, lifting her onto himself and kissing her.

Afterward Alexander said, “That’s like asking you to shed your freckles for a day, isn’t it?”

The four women came to see them at the house later in the afternoon. Alexander and Tatiana were playing soccer. Actually Tatiana had just gotten the ball away from him and, squealing, was trying to hold on to it, while he was behind her, trying to kick it from under her. He had lifted her off the ground and was pressing himself hard into her while she was shrieking. All he was wearing was his skivvies, and all she was wearing was his ribbed top and her underwear.

Flummoxed, Tatiana stood in front of Alexander, trying to shield his near-naked body from four pairs of wide eyes. He stood behind her, his arms on her shoulders, and Tatiana heard him say, “Tell them — No, forget it, I will,” and before she could utter a sound, he came forward, walked up to them, twice their size, bare and unrelentingly himself, and said, “Ladies, in the future you might want to wait for us to come and see you.”

“Shura,” Tatiana muttered, “go and get dressed.”

“Soccer is probably the least of what you’ll see,” Alexander said into the women’s stunned faces before going inside the house. When he came back out, suitably covered, he told Tatiana he was going to the village to get a couple of things they needed, like ice and an ax.

“What an odd combination,” she remarked. “Where are you going to get ice from?”

“The fish plant. They have to refrigerate their fish, don’t they?”

“Ax?”

“From that nice man Igor,” Alexander yelled, walking up the clearing, blowing her a kiss.

She gazed after him. “Hurry back,” she called.

Naira Mikhailovna apologized hastily. Dusia was mouthing a prayer. Raisa shook. Axinya beamed at Tatiana, who invited them all for a bit of kvas. “Come inside. See how nicely Alexander cleaned the house. And look, he repaired the door. Remember, the top hinge was broken?”

The four women looked around for a place to sit.

“Tanechka,” said Naira nervously, “there is no furniture in here.”

Axinya whooped.

Dusia crossed herself.

“I know, Naira Mikhailovna. We don’t need much.” She looked down on the floor. “We have some things, we have my trunk. Alexander said he will make us a bench. I’ll bring my desk with the sewing machine . . . we’ll be fine.”

“But how—”

“Oh, Naira,” said Axinya, “leave the girl alone, will you?”

Dusia glared at the rumpled bedsheets on top of the stove. A flustered Tatiana smiled. Alexander was right. It was better to go and visit them. She asked when would be a good time to come for dinner.

Naira said, “Come tonight, of course. We’ll celebrate. But you come every night. Look, you won’t be able to eat here at all. There’s nowhere even to sit or cook. You’ll starve. Come every night. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

“Yes, it’s too much to ask,” Alexander said when he returned with no ice (“Tomorrow”) but with an ax, a hammer and nails, a saw, a wood plane, and a kerosene-burning Primus stove. “I didn’t marry you so we could go over there every night.” He laughed. “You invited them inside? That’s very brave of you, my wife. Did you at least make the bed before they came in?” He laughed harder.

Tatiana was sitting down on the cool iron hearth, shaking her head. “You’re just impossible.”

“I’m impossible? I’m not going there for dinner, forget it. Why don’t you just invite them here afterward then, for the post-dinner vaudeville—”

“Vaudeville?”

“Never mind.” He dropped all of his goods on the floor in the corner of the cabin. “Invite them here for the entertainment hour. Go ahead. As I make love to you, they can walk around the hearth, clucking to their hearts’ content. Naira will say, ‘Tsk, tsk, tsk. I told her to go with my Vova. I know he could do it better.’ Raisa will want to say, ‘Oh, my, oh, my,’ but she’ll be shaking too much. Dusia will say, ‘Oh, dear Jesus, I prayed to You to spare her from the horrors of the marriage bed!’ And Axinya will say—”

“ ‘Wait till I tell the whole village about his horrors,’ ” said Tatiana.

Alexander laughed and then went to the water to swim.

Tatiana nested inside the cabin, arranging their things, neatening up, and making the bed. She got herself ready to go to Naira’s and was sitting by the iron hearth waiting for the water to boil on the little Primus stove so she could make some tea when Alexander came back inside. He took off his wet shorts and came close to her. She glanced up, her heart giving out at the sight of him. He nudged her with his leg. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said, quickly turning her gaze back to the kettle. But he nudged her again, and she wanted to look at him so much.

Wanted to taste him so much.

Overcoming her shyness, Tatiana knelt on the wide-plank wood floor in front of Alexander, taking him into her tender hands. “Are all men this beautiful,” she whispered fondly, “or just you?”

“Oh, just me,” replied a grinning Alexander. “All other men are repellent.” He lifted her off the floor. “Too hard on your knees on the wood.”

“In America do they have carpets?”

“Wall to wall.”

“Get me a pillow, Shura,” whispered Tatiana.

They went over to Naira’s for dinner. Tatiana cooked while Alexander fixed the broken fence. Vova and Zoe came, too, ostensibly confounded by the twisted hand of fate that had allowed their little, unassuming, innocent Tania to be married to a soldier in the Red Army.

Tatiana saw that everyone was watching her and Alexander’s every move and interaction. So when she served Alexander and stood close against him as he looked up at her, she could not look down at him, her body throbbing with remembrance. She was afraid that every person at the table would know instantly what she was remembering.

After dinner Alexander didn’t ask anyone to help her. He helped her himself, and when they were outside, bent over the dishpan, he turned her chin to him and said, “Tatia, don’t turn your face away from me again. Because now you’re mine, and every time I look at you, I need to see you’re mine in your eyes.”

Tatiana gazed at him, adoring him.

“There I am,” he whispered, kissing her, their hands entwined in the warm, soapy water.