The Bronze Horseman (36 page)

“Yes, sir,” the three soldiers said in unison. The corporal took his post by the doorway.

Alexander was trying not to smile. “It’s quite a hike up,” he said, his hand on her back, prodding her to the staircase. “Come on.” When they were around a column and not seen by anyone’s eyes, Alexander smiled broadly. “Tania…” he said, “I’m
so
happy you came to see me.”

Sighing, melting, warming, Tatiana said softly, “Me, too.”

“Did they scare you? They’re harmless,” he said, stroking her hair.

“If they’re so harmless, why did you come down?”

“I heard your voice and theirs. They’re harmless, but you sounded scared.” He was looking at her so…

“What?” Tatiana said shyly.

“Nothing.” Alexander crouched in front of her. “Go on. Grab my neck. Remember how to do this?”

“You’re going to carry me up two hundred stairs?”

“It’s the least I can do after you came all this way. Can you hold my weapon?”

Holding on to the rails, he propelled himself up with her hands around his neck. Hoping he wouldn’t notice, Tatiana silently kissed the back of his military tunic.

Alexander brought her into a glassed-in circular arcade with five columns that partially obstructed the view of the horizon and the sky. Setting her down, he took his rifle from her and propped it against the wall of the gold dome. “We have to go out on the balcony for a clearer view. Will you be all right?” He smiled. “We’re very high up. You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”

“I’m not afraid of heights, no,” Tatiana said, looking up at him.

They walked out onto a narrow outdoor balcony deck circling the arcade above the rotunda. A short iron railing ran around the deck. The view from up here would have been quite striking, Tatiana thought, if only Leningrad weren’t prepared for war. All the lights were extinguished, and in the black of night she could not make out even the white airships floating silently in the dark sky. The air was cool and smelled of fresh water.

“What do you think? Nice up here?” Alexander said, coming up to her. Tatiana couldn’t move if she wanted to. She was between him and the railing.

“Mmm,” she said, peering into the night, afraid to look at him, afraid to let him see her heart. “What do you do here all by yourself, night in and night out?”

“Nothing. Sit on the floor. Smoke. Think.”

Alexander threaded his arms around her waist and closed his hands on her stomach, pressing her into him. She felt his lips at her neck whisper, “Oh, Tatia…”

How instant it was, desire. It was like a bomb exploding, fragmenting and igniting all her nerve endings.

Not desire.

Burning desire for Alexander.

Tatiana tried to move aside, but he held her too tightly. All she wanted was to sink to the ground. Why was that? Why, every time he touched her, did she want to lie down? “Shura, wait,” she said, not recognizing her own voice, which, thick with longing, said,
Come here, come, come.
Tatiana closed her eyes, muttering, “I don’t see any planes.”

“Me neither.”

“Are they coming?” She moaned softly.

“Yes. The placards are finally right. The enemy
is
at the gates.” He continued to kiss her under the wisps of her hair.

“Do you think there is any chance we could get out?”

“Not a chance. You’re trapped in the city.” His hot breath and his moist lips on her neck were making her shiver.

“How will it be?”

He didn’t answer.

“You said you wanted to talk to me…” Tatiana said hoarsely.

“Talk?” Alexander said, holding her stomach tight against him.

“Yes, talk… to me… about…” She couldn’t remember what. “Di-mitri?”

He pulled her blouse away and kissed her shoulder blade. “I like your blouse,” he whispered, his mouth on her skin.

“Stop it, Shura,
please
.”

“No,” he said, rubbing against her back. “I can’t stop.” He breathed into her hair. “Any more than I can stop breathing.”

Alexander’s hands moved to rest below her breasts. Her healing ribs hurt slightly and exquisitely from his touch, and Tatiana couldn’t help herself, she moaned. Squeezing her tighter, he turned her around to him, his mouth on her throat and whispered, “No, you can’t make a sound. Everything carries downstairs. You can’t let them hear you.”

“Then take your hands off me,” Tatiana whispered back. “Or cover my mouth.”

“I’ll cover your mouth, all right,” he said, kissing her fervidly.

After three seconds Tatiana was ready to pass out. “Shura,” she moaned, grasping on to him. “God, you need to stop. How do we stop?” The pulling in her stomach was fierce.

“We don’t.”

“We do.”

“We
don’t,
” he repeated, his lips on her.

“I don’t mean… I mean,
this
? How do we ever get relief from
this
? I can’t go through my days like this, thinking of you. How do we get relief?”

Alexander pulled back from her lips. “The only thing I want in my
whole
life,” he whispered hotly, “is to show you how we get relief, Tania.” His hands held her to him in a vise.

Tatiana remembered Marina’s words.
You are just a conquest to a soldier
. And despite herself, despite the unflappable certainty in the things she believed to be true, despite the shining moment with Alexander at the top of the sacred cathedral up in the Leningrad sky, Tatiana’s worst got the better of her. Not trusting her own instincts, scared and doubting, she pushed Alexander away.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “What?”

Tatiana fought for her courage, struggled for the right words, afraid of asking, afraid of hearing his answer, afraid of making him angry or upset. He didn’t deserve it, and in the end she trusted and believed in him so much that it made her like herself less to think that she would give the cynical Marina any credit for her ill-chosen words. Yet the words sat in her chest and churned in her anxious, aching stomach.

Tatiana didn’t want to burden Alexander. She knew he was already carrying plenty. At the same time she could not continue to let him touch her. His hands were tenderly caressing her from her hips up to her hair and back down again. “What’s the matter?” Alexander whispered. “Tania, tell me, what?”

“Wait,” she said. “Shura, can you—” She limped sideways from him. “Wait, just stop, all right?”

He didn’t come after her, and she was a couple of meters away in the arcade when she sank to the floor and gathered her knees to her chest.

“Talk to me about Dimitri,” she said, feeling slightly deflated.

“No,” Alexander said, continuing to stand. He folded his arms. “Not until you tell me what’s bothering you.”

Tatiana shook her head. She just couldn’t have this conversation with him. “I’m fine. Really.” She smiled. Did she manage a good smile? Not according to his long face.

“Just—It’s nothing.”

“All the more reason to tell me.”

Looking down at her long brown skirt, at her toes peeking out from the cast, Tatiana took a few deep breaths. “Shura, this is very, very difficult for me.”

“I know,” he said, crouching where he stood, his arms coming to rest on his knees.

“I don’t know how to say this to you,” she said without lifting her head.

“Open your mouth and speak to me,” said Alexander. “Like always.”

Tatiana couldn’t find her nerve. “Alexander, there are too many more important things for us to resolve, to discuss—” Tatiana managed a quick glance at him. He was studying her with curiosity and concern. “I can’t believe I’m wasting our minutes like this—” She stopped. “But…” He said nothing. “Am I… ?” It was so stupid. What did she know of these things? She sighed. “Listen, you know who helped me get out to see you tonight? My cousin Marina.”

Alexander nodded, unsmiling. “Good. What does she have to do with us? Am I ever going to meet this girl?”

“You might not want to after I tell you what she told me…” Tatiana paused. “About soldiers.” She lifted her eyes. Alexander’s suddenly comprehending and upset face was filled with annoyance, and guilt.

That was not what she wanted to see. “She told me some interesting things.”

“I bet she did.”

“She wasn’t talking about you—”

“That’s a relief.”

“She was trying to warn me about Dimitri, but she said that to soldiers all girls were just a big conquest party and notches in their belt.” Tatiana stopped talking. She thought it was very brave of her to get out even this much.

Slowly Alexander moved over to Tatiana. He didn’t touch her; he just sat by her quietly and finally said, “Do you have a question for me?”

“Do you want a question?”

“No.”

“I won’t ask you then.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t answer it. I said I didn’t want it.”

Tatiana wished she could look into Alexander’s face. She just didn’t want to see the guilt there again. And she thought, what if, after our summer, after Kirov, after Luga, after all the unfathomable, breath-dissolving things that I have felt—what if after all that, I will right now find out that Marina was right about Alexander, too? Tatiana could not ask. Yet to have so much of what she felt be built on a lie… How could she not?

“What’s your question?” Alexander repeated, so softly, so patiently, so
everything
of what he had been to her, that Tatiana, strengthened by him, as always, opened her mouth and in her smallest voice said, “Shura, is that what
I
am… just another conquest to you? Just more difficult? Am I, too, just another young, difficult notch in
your
belt?” She lifted her uncertain, vulnerable eyes to him.

Alexander enveloped her in his arms whole, all gathered together like a tiny bandaged package. Kissing her head, he whispered, “I don’t know what I am going to do with you.” Pulling away slightly, he cupped her face. His eyes sparkled. “Tatiasha,” he said beseechingly, “what are you
talking
about? Have you forgotten the hospital? Conquest? Have you forgotten that if I wanted to, that night, or the following night, or any night that followed, I could have taken it from you standing?” He stared at her and said, even more quietly, “And you would have given it to me standing. Have you forgotten that it was I who put a stop to our senseless desperation?”

Tatiana shut her eyes.

Alexander held her face firmly in his hands. “Come on, open your eyes and look at me. Look at me, Tania.”

She opened her mortified and emotional eyes to find Alexander gazing at her with unremitting tenderness. “Tania, please. You’re not my conquest, you’re not a notch in my belt. I know how difficult it is, what you are feeling. I wish you wouldn’t worry yourself for a second with things you
know
to be plainly not true.” He kissed her passionately. “Do you feel my lips?” Alexander whispered. “When I kiss you”—he kissed her tenderly—”don’t you feel my lips? What are they telling you? What are my hands telling you?”

Tatiana closed her eyes and moaned. Why did she feel so helpless near him, why? It occurred to her that not only was he right, not only would she have given it to him
then,
but she would give it to him
now,
on the cold hard floor of the gilded rotunda. When she opened her eyes, Alexander was looking at her and smiling lightly. “Perhaps,” he said softly, “what you should be asking me is not,
are
you another notch in my belt, but why
aren’t
you another notch in my belt?”

Tatiana’s hands were trembling as she held his sleeves. “All right,” she whispered. “Why?”

Alexander laughed.

Tatiana cleared her throat. “Do you know what else Marina told me?”

“Oh, that Marina,” said Alexander, sighing and moving away. “What else did Marina tell you?”

Tatiana curled back into her knees. “Marina told me,” she said, “that
all
soldiers have it off with garrison hacks nonstop and never say no.”

“My, my,” said Alexander, shaking his head. “That Marina is trouble. It’s a good thing you
didn’t
get off the bus to go and see her that Sunday in June.”

“I agree,” said Tatiana, her face melting at the memory of them on that bus.

And his face melted back.

What was she even thinking? What was she even doing? Tatiana shook her head, upset at herself.

“Now, listen to me. I didn’t want to tell you any of this, but…” Alexander drew a deep breath. “When I first got into the army, I saw that genuine relationships with women were going to be very difficult because of the nature of our confinement”—he shrugged—”and the realities of Soviet life. No rooms, no apartments, no hotels for the Soviet man and the Soviet woman to go to. You want the truth from me? Here it is. I don’t want you to be afraid of it or afraid of me because of it. On our weekend furlough, it is true, we would go out for some beers and often find ourselves in the presence of all kinds of young women, who were quite willing to… knock around with soldiers without any strings attached.” Alexander stopped.

“And did you”—Tatiana held her breath—”knock around?”

“Once or twice,” Alexander replied. He didn’t look at her. “Don’t be upset by this, please.”

“I’m not upset,” Tatiana mouthed. Stunned, yes. Torn with self-doubt, yes. Entranced by you, yes again.

“We were all just having a bit of youthful fun. I kept myself extremely unattached and detached. I hated entanglements—”

“What about Dasha?”

“What about her?” Alexander said tiredly.

“Was Dasha… ?” Tatiana couldn’t get the words out.

“Tatia, please,” said Alexander, shaking his head. “Don’t think about these things. Ask Dasha what kind of a girl she was. I’m not the one to tell you.”

“Alexander, but Dasha is an entanglement!” Tatiana exclaimed. “Dasha does have strings attached to her. Dasha has her heart.”

“No,” he said. “She has
you
.”

Tatiana sighed heavily. This was too hard for her—talking about Alexander and her sister. Hearing about Alexander and meaningless girls was easier than hearing about one Dasha. Tatiana sat with her hands around her knees. She wanted to ask him about the present time but couldn’t get the words out. She didn’t want to ask him about anything. She wanted to go back to how it was before the night in the hospital, before the wretched confusion of her body blinded her to the truth she felt about him.