The Bronze Horseman (46 page)

“She eats at work,” he said. “She has soup. She has oatmeal.”

“What about Kirill?”

“What about him, Tania?” Anton snapped impatiently. “Did you bring it for Kirill or for me?”

Tatiana didn’t like the way Mariska was looking. Her curly hair started to fall out. Every day Tatiana secretly made Mariska oatmeal. But she knew she couldn’t continue to feed Mariska; Tatiana’s family was already unhappy with her. The oatmeal had a bit of salt and sugar, but it had no butter or milk. It wasn’t oatmeal, it was gruel. Mariska would eat it as if it were her last meal. Finally Tatiana took her to the children’s ward in Grechesky Hospital, carrying her for the last block.

When Tatiana was younger, she would sometimes forget to eat for half a day. And then suddenly remembering, she would say, “Oh, no, I’m STAR-ving.” An empty rumbling stomach, a salivating mouth. She would devour soup or pie or mashed potatoes, gorge herself, fall away from the table, and then she wouldn’t be STAR-ving anymore.

This feeling that Tatiana experienced, faintly at the end of September, more distinctly at the beginning of October, was similar in that she had the empty rumbling stomach, she had the salivating mouth. She would devour the clear soup, the black thick mud bread, the oats, and when she was done, she would fall away from the table and realize she was still STAR-ving. She would have some of the crackers she had toasted. But the cracker bag was diminishing in size by the hour. The nights were just too long after work. Dasha and Mama began to take some crackers with them in their coat pockets on the way to work. First a couple, then more and more. Babushka nibbled on crackers all day while she painted or read. Marina took some crackers to university and some for her dying mother.

After they bought the
bourzhuika
, Mama gave Tatiana the rest of her money—500 rubles—one cold morning and told her to go to the commercial store and buy anything she could get her hands on. The commercial store near St. Nicholas’s Cathedral was far, and when Tatiana got there, she found a double irony. Not only was the store bombed out and abandoned, but there was a sign on the crushed window dated September 18—no food left.

Slowly she went home. September 18, four weeks ago, Papa still alive, Dasha planning to marry.

Marry
Alexander
.

At home Mama didn’t believe Tatiana about the store and went to hit her in frustration and stopped herself, which Tatiana found so miraculous that she went to her mother, hugged her and said, “Mamochka, don’t worry about anything. I will take care of you.” Tatiana gave Mama back her money, put the ration bread on the table, taking just a small piece for herself, and swallowed it ravenously while she walked slowly to the hospital, thinking about nothing but lunchtime, when she would get her soup and maybe some oatmeal, too. Tatiana thought about little else but food. The acute hunger she experienced from morning until night defeated most other feelings in her body. While walking to Fontanka she thought about her bread, and while she worked she thought about lunch, and in the afternoon she thought about dinner, and after dinner she thought about the piece of cracker she could have before she went to bed.

And in bed Tatiana thought about Alexander.

Once Marina offered to get the rations instead of Tatiana.

Puzzled, Tatiana gave her the ration cards. “Want my company?”

“No,” Marina said. “I’ll be glad to do it.”

Marina came back to her waiting family and put the bread on the table. There was maybe half a kilo.

“Marina,” said Tatiana, “where is the rest of the bread?”

“I’m sorry,” Marina said. “I ate it.”

“You ate a
kilo
of our bread?” Tatiana did not believe it.

“I’m sorry, I was very hungry.”

Tatiana looked at Marina in sharp surprise. For six weeks Tatiana had been going to get her family rations, and it had never even entered her head to eat the bread five people were waiting for.

And through it all Tatiana was STAR-ving.

And through it all she missed Alexander.

One morning in the middle of October, as Tatiana neared the Fontanka embankment, feeling in her coat pocket for the ration cards, she saw an officer up ahead, and through her bleary, early-morning haze she wanted him to look like Alexander. She came closer. It couldn’t be him, this man, looking much older, grimy, his trench coat and rifle covered in mud. Carefully she moved forward. It
was
Alexander.

When she came up to him and looked into his face, she saw sadness mixed with bleak affection. Tatiana came a little closer. Her gloved hand touched his chest. “Shura, whatever happened to you?”

“Oh, Tania,” he said. “Forget about me. Look how thin you are. Your face, it’s…”

“I’ve always been thin. Are you all right?”

“But your lovely round face,” he said, his voice cracking.

“That was a different life, Alexander,” Tatiana said. “How was—”

“Brutal,” he said, shrugging. “Look. Look at what I brought you.” He opened his black rucksack, from which he pulled out a hunk of white bread and, wrapped in white paper, cheese! Cheese and a piece of cold pork
meat
. Tatiana stared at the food, breathing shallowly. “Oh, my,” she said. “Wait till they see. They’ll be so happy.”

“Well, yes,” Alexander said, giving her the white bread and the cheese. “But before they see, I want you to eat it.”

“I can’t.”

“You can and you will. What? Don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying,” said Tatiana, trying very hard not to cry. “I’m just very… moved.” She took the bread and the cheese and the pork and gulped down the food while he watched her with his molten copper eyes, warm, full of Alexander. “Shura,” she said, “I can’t tell you how hungry I’ve been. I don’t even know how to explain it.”

“Tania, I know.”

“Are they feeding you better in the army?”

“Yes. They feed the front-line troops adequately. They feed the officers a little better. What they don’t give me, I buy. We get the food before it gets to you.”

“That’s the way it should be,” said Tatiana, her mouth so full, so happy.

“Shh,” he said, smiling. “Slow down. You’re going to give yourself a terrible stomachache.”

She slowed down—a little. Smiling back—a little.

“For the family I brought some butter and a bag of white flour,” Alexander said. “And twenty eggs. When was the last time you had eggs?”

Tatiana remembered. “September fifteenth. Let me have a little piece of butter now,” she said. “Can you wait with me? Or do you have to go?”

“I came to see you,” he said.

They stood looking at each other without touching.

They stood looking at each other without talking.

At last Alexander whispered, “Too much to say.”

“Not enough time to say any of it,” said Tatiana, looking at the long line of people in the store. She had stopped eating. “I’ve been thinking about you,” she said, keeping her voice calm.

“Don’t think about me again,” said Alexander with resigned finality.

Tatiana backed away. “Don’t worry. You’ve made it very clear that that’s certainly what you want.”

“What are you talking about?” He looked at her in confusion. “You have no idea what it’s like out there.”

“I only know what it’s like in here,” she said.

“We’re all dying. Even the ranking officers.” Alexander paused. “Grinkov died.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.” He sighed. “Let’s get in line.”

Alexander was the only man getting rations. They stood together for forty-five minutes. It was quiet in the crowded store; no one else spoke. And they couldn’t stop. They talked about public things: the cold weather, the waiting Germans, the food. But they couldn’t stop.

“Alexander, we have to get more food from somewhere. I don’t mean me, I mean Leningrad. Where is it going to come from? Can’t they fly some in?”

“They are already. Fifty tons a day of food, fuel, munitions.”

“Fifty tons…” Tatiana thought. “That sounds like a lot.”

When he didn’t answer, she asked, “Is it?”

She could tell that Alexander was trying not to answer. “It’s not enough,” he replied at last.

“Not enough by how much?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said shortly.

“Tell me.”

“I don’t
know,
Tania.”

“Well,” she said with mock cheeriness, “I think that it must be good enough. Fifty tons. Sounds tremendous. I’m glad you told me, because Nina has nothing for her family—”

“Stop!” Alexander exclaimed. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Tatiana said sweetly. “Nina doesn’t have—”

“Fifty tons sounds like a lot to you, does it?” he said. “Pavlov, our city food chief, is feeding three million people on a thousand tons of flour a day. How’s that?”

“What he is giving us
now
amounts to a thousand tons?” Tatiana said, startled.

“Yes,” Alexander replied, shaking his head and looking at her with uneasy dismay.

“And they’re bringing only fifty tons by plane?”

“Yes again. Fifty tons of not just flour.”

“How is the remaining nine hundred fifty tons getting here?”

“Lake Ladoga. Thirty kilometers north of the blockade line. Barges.”

“Shura,” said Tatiana, “but these thousand tons, if we didn’t have our own supplies, we wouldn’t be able to make it. We couldn’t live on what they give us.”

Alexander didn’t say anything.

Tatiana stared at him and then turned her head away. She wanted to go home instantly and count how many cans of ham they had left.

“Why can’t they fly more planes in?” she asked.

“Because all the planes in the army are being directed to the Battle of Moscow.”

“What about the Battle of Leningrad?” Tatiana said faintly, not expecting an answer and not getting one.

“Do you think the blockade will be lifted before the winter?” she said in a small voice. “The radio reports keep saying we’re trying to establish a foothold here, make a break there, pontoon bridges. What do you think?”

Alexander didn’t answer, and Tatiana didn’t look at him again until they left the store.

“Are you coming home with me?”

“Yes, Tania,” said Alexander. “I’m coming home with you.”

She nodded. “Come on then. With the butter you gave me, I’ll make nice hot oatmeal for breakfast. I’ll make you some eggs.”

“You still have oatmeal left?”

“Hmm. I will say that it’s getting harder and harder to keep them all away from the food between meals. I think Babushka and Marina are the biggest culprits. I think they eat the oatmeal uncooked right out of the bag.”

“Do
you,
Tatia?” Alexander asked. “Do you eat oatmeal right out of the bag?”

“Not yet,” replied Tatiana. She didn’t mention how badly she wanted to. How she put her face inside the oat bag and smelled its sickly, slightly moldy aroma, wishing for butter and for sugar and for milk, and for eggs.

“You should,” Alexander said.

They walked slowly along the misty Fontanka Canal. It reminded Tatiana a little of Obvodnoy Canal during their Kirov summer days. Her heart hurt. Three blocks away from home, they both slowed down, then stopped and leaned against the cold building. “I wish there were a bench,” Tatiana said quietly.

Just as quietly, Alexander said, “Marazov told me about your father.” When Tatiana didn’t answer, he continued. “I am really sorry.” Pause. “Will you forgive me?”

“There is nothing to forgive,” she replied.

“It’s my helplessness,” Alexander continued, his eyes filling with loud frustration. “There’s just nothing I can do to protect you. And I tried. I tried from the very beginning. Remember Kirov?”

Tatiana remembered.

“All I wanted then was for you to leave Leningrad. I failed there. Failed to protect you against your father.” He shook his head. “How is your brow feeling?” He reached out and touched the healing bruise with his fingertips.

“It’s all right,” Tatiana said, moving away from him. Alexander put his hands down, looking at her with rebuke.

“How is Dimitri?” she asked. “Have you heard from him?”

Shaking his head, Alexander said, “What can I tell you about Dimitri? When I first went to Shlisselburg in mid-September, I said, come with me, come with my command. He refused. He said we were too unprotected there. All right, I said. Then I volunteered myself and a battalion of soldiers to go to Karelia and push the Finns back a bit.” He paused. “To give our trucks breathing room as they brought food from Ladoga to Leningrad. The Finns were just too close. The skirmishes that flared up between them and the gun-happy
NKVD
border troops constantly resulted in the death of some poor hapless truck driver, who was just trying to get food into the city. I told Di-mitri to come with me. Yes, it’s dangerous, I said. Yes, it’s attacking enemy territory, but if we succeed—”

“You will be heroes,” Tatiana said. “Have you succeeded?”

Quietly Alexander said, “Yes.”

Shaking her head in wonder, Tatiana gazed up at him. She hoped it was not blatantly obvious what she was feeling at that moment. “You
volunteered
for this?”

“Yes.”

“Did they promote you at least?”

He saluted her lightly and said, “I’m now Captain Belov. And see my new medal?”

“No, stop it!” she exclaimed, her mouth melting into a smile.

“What?” Alexander asked, his eyes roaming all over her face. “What? Are you… proud?”

“Hmm,” Tatiana said, trying to stop smiling.

“Which was my whole point with Dima,” continued Alexander. “If it worked out, he could have become a corporal. The higher up you go, the farther from the front line you are.”

Nodding, Tatiana said, “He is so shortsighted.”

“And worse,” said Alexander. “Because now he has been sent along with Kashnikov to Tikhvin. Marazov followed me. Became first lieutenant. But Dima was transported in a barge across Ladoga, and he is now part of tens of thousands of men, one and all cannon fodder for Schmidt.”

Tatiana had heard about the town of Tikhvin. The Soviets took Tikhvin from the Germans in September and were now fiercely struggling to hold on to it, to allow themselves a continuous railroad passage to the Ladoga food barges. Without Lake Ladoga there would be no food getting into Leningrad at all.