The Bronze Horseman (56 page)

“What, Marinka?”

“I don’t want to die,” she whispered, and if she could have cried, she would have. She was barely able to emit a low wail. “I don’t want to die, Tania! If I hadn’t stayed here with Mama, I would be in Molotov right now with Babushka, and I wouldn’t die.”

“You’re not going to die,” said Tatiana, putting her hand on Marina’s head.

“I don’t want to die,” whispered Marina, “and not feel just once what you feel.” She struggled for her breath. “Just
once
in my life, Tania!”

As if from a distance, Dasha’s voice came at them. “What does Tania feel?”

Marina didn’t reply. “Tanechka…” she whispered. “What does it
feel
like?”

“What does
what
feel like?” asked Dasha. “Indifference? Cold? Wasting away?”

Tatiana continued to gently caress Marina’s forehead. “It feels,” she whispered, “as if you’re not alone. Now, come on, where is your strength? Do you remember us with Pasha, me rowing and you and Pasha swimming alongside trying to keep up? Where is that strength, Marinka?”

The next morning Marina lay dead beside Tatiana.

Dasha said, “We have her rations until the end of the month,” barely blinking at the sight of her dead cousin.

Tatiana shook her head. “As you know, she has already eaten them. It’s the middle of the month. She’s got nothing left until the end of December.”

Tatiana wrapped her cousin in a white sheet, Mama sewed up the top and bottom, and they slid Marina down the stairs and onto the street. They tried to put her in the sled, but they couldn’t lift her. After Tatiana made the sign of the cross on Marina, they left her on the snowy pavement.

One more day, another shot of vitamin C. Another two hundred grams of blackened bread. Tatiana pretended to go to work so she could continue to receive a worker’s ration, but there was nothing for her to do at work, except sit by the dying.

A week after Marina died, Tatiana, Dasha, and Mama were sitting on the sofa in the quiet night in front of a nearly extinguished
bourzhuika
. All the books were gone, except for what Tatiana hid under her bed. The embers did not light up the room. Mama was sewing in the dark.

“What are you sewing, Mama?” Tatiana asked.

“Nothing,” Mama said. “Nothing important. Where are my girls?”

“Here, Mama.”

“Dasha, remember Luga?”

Dasha remembered.

“Dashenka, remember when Tania got a fish bone stuck in her throat, and we couldn’t get it out for anything?”

Dasha remembered. “She was five.”

“Who got it out, Mama?”

“Pasha. He had such small hands. He just stuck his hand in your throat and pulled it out.”

“Mama,” Dasha said, “remember when our Tania fell out of the boat in Lake Ilmen, and we all jumped after her, because we thought she couldn’t swim, and she was already dog-paddling away from the boat?”

Mama remembered. “Tania was two.”

“Mama,” Tatiana said, “remember how I dug that big hole in our yard to trap Pasha and then forgot to fill it up, and you fell in?”

“Don’t remind me,” said Mama. “I’m still angry about that.”

They tried to laugh.

“Tania,” said Mama, her hands moving on her sewing work, “when you and Pasha were born, we were in Luga, and while the whole family was clucking around our new boy Pasha, saying what a great boy he was and what a fine boy, Dasha over here, all seven years of her, picked you up and said, ‘Well, you can all have the black one. I’m taking the white one. This baby is mine.’ And we all teased her and said, ‘Fine then. Dasha, you want her? You can name her.’ ” Mama’s voice cracked once, twice. “And our Dasha said, ‘I want to name my baby Tatiana… ’ ”

One more day, one more shot of vitamin C for Tatiana, whose fingers trickled blood onto the two hundred grams of bread she cut up for her mother and sister.

One more day, a bomb fell in the corner of the Fifth Soviet roof. No Anton to put it out, no Mariska, no Kirill, no Kostia, and no Tatiana. It caught fire and burned through the fourth floor, which faced the church on Grechesky Prospekt. No one came to put it out. It smoldered for a day and then gradually burned itself out.

Was it Tatiana’s imagination, or was the city quieter? Either she was going deaf or there was less bombing. There was still some every day, but shorter in duration, milder in intensity, almost as if the Germans were bored with the whole thing. And why not? Who was left to bomb?

Well, Tatiana.

And Dasha.

And Mama.

No, not Mama.

Her hands still held the white camouflage uniform she was sewing, and underneath her wool hat she wore her kerchief. In front of the frail fire from the small
bourzhuika
, Mama said, “I can’t anymore. I just can’t.” Her hands stopped moving, and her head, too. Her eyes remained open. Tatiana could see short spasms of breath leaving her mouth, short, brief, then gone.

Tatiana and Dasha kneeled by their mother. “I wish we knew a prayer, Dasha.”

“I think I know part of something called the Lord’s Prayer,” said Dasha.

Tatiana’s back was to the fire, and her back was warm, but her front was cold. “Which part do you know?”

“Only the part with
Give us this day our daily bread.
”

Tatiana placed her hand on her mother’s lap. “We’ll bury Mama with her sewing.”

“We’ll have to bury her
in
her sewing,” Dasha said, and her voice was weak. “Look, she was sewing herself a sack.”

“Dear Lord,” said Tatiana, holding her mother’s cold leg.
“Give us this day our daily bread…
” She paused. “What else, Dasha?”

“That’s all I know. What about
Amen
?”

“Amen,” said Tatiana.

For dinner they cut the bread into three pieces. Tatiana ate hers. Dasha ate hers. They left their mother’s on her plate.

That night Tatiana and Dasha held each other in their bed. “Don’t leave me, Tania. I can’t make it without you.”

“I’m not going to leave you, Dasha. We are not going to leave each other. We can’t be left alone. You know that we all need one other person. One other person to remind us we are still human beings and not beasts.”

“We’re the only two left, Tania,” said Dasha. “Just you and me.”

Tatiana held her sister closer. You. Me. And Alexander.

Alexander returned a few days later. The dark circles around his eyes and his thick black beard gave him a robber baron look, but otherwise he seemed to be holding up. That made Tatiana warmer on the inside. Seeing him, in fact… well, what could she say? Dasha stood in the hallway, and his arms were around Dasha, while Tatiana stood back and watched them. And he watched her.

“How are you?” she said faintly.

“I’m fine,” he said. ‘How are my girls?’

“Not so good, Alexander,” said Dasha. “Not so good. Come, look at our mother. She’s been dead for five days. The council doesn’t come anymore. We can’t move her.”

Behind Dasha, Alexander walked past Tatiana and glided his gloved hand across her face.

He placed their mother in the white camouflage uniform cape and carried her—taking care not to slip on the ice—down the stairs, put her on Tatiana’s red and blue shiny sled, and pulled her to the cemetery on Starorusskaya as the girls walked beside him. He moved the frozen bodies at the entrance gate to make way for the sled and pulled Mama all the way inside, where he gent-ly laid her in the snow. He broke off two small branches and held them in front of Tatiana, who with a piece of twine tied them together in a cross, which they laid on top of Mama.

“Do you know a prayer, Alexander?” asked Tatiana. “For our mother?”

Alexander stared at Tatiana, then shook his head. She watched him cross himself and mutter a few words under his cold breath.

As they were walking out, Tatiana asked, “You don’t know a prayer?”

“Not in Russian,” he whispered back.

Back in the apartment he was almost cheerful. “Girls,” he said, “you won’t believe what goodies I have for you.” He paused. “Just for you.”

He had brought them a sack of potatoes, seven oranges he had found God knows where, half a kilo of sugar, a quarter kilo of barley, linseed oil, and, smiling with all his teeth at Tatiana, three liters of motor oil.

If she could have, Tatiana would have smiled back.

Alexander showed her how to make light with the motor oil. After pouring a few teaspoons of the oil between two saucers, he placed a moistened wick inside, leaving the end out, and lit the wick. The oil illuminated an area big enough to sew or read by. Then he went out and returned half an hour later with some wood. He said he had found the broken beams in the basement. He fetched them water.

Tatiana wanted to touch him. But Dasha was taking care of that. Dasha was not leaving his side. Tatiana couldn’t even meet his eyes. She got a pot and made some tea and put sugar in it; what a revelation. She cooked three potatoes and some barley. She broke their bread. They
ate.
Afterward she warmed up the water on the
bourzhuika
, asked Alexander for some soap, and washed her face and neck and hands.

“Thank you, Alexander,” said Tatiana. “Have you heard from Dimitri?”

“You’re welcome,” he replied. “And no, I haven’t. You?”

Tatiana shook her head.

“Alexander, my hair has started to fall out,” said Dasha. “Look.” She pulled out a black clump.

“Dash, don’t do that,” he said, turning back to Tatiana. “Has your hair begun to fall out, too?” His eyes on her were so warm, almost like a
bourzhuika
.

“No,” she muttered softly. “My hair can’t afford to fall out. I’ll be bald tomorrow. I’m bleeding, though.” She glanced at him and wiped her mouth. “Maybe an orange will help.”

“Eat all seven of them, but slowly. And, girls, don’t go out in the street at night. It’s too dangerous.”

“We won’t.”

“And always lock your doors.”

“We always do.”

“Then how come I waltzed right in?”

“Tania did it. She left it open.”

“Stop blaming your sister. Just lock the damn doors.”

After dinner Alexander retrieved a saw from the kitchen and sawed the dining-room table and the chairs into small pieces to fit into the
bourzhuika
. As he was working, Tatiana stood by his side. Dasha sat on the couch, bundled in blankets. The room was cold. They never went into this room anymore. They slept and ate and sat in the next room, where the windows weren’t broken.

“Alexander, how many tons of flour are they feeding us on now?” asked Tatiana, taking the sawed pieces from him and stacking them in the corner.

“I don’t know.”

“Alexander.”

Great sigh. “Five hundred.”

“Five hundred tons?”

“Yes.”

Dasha said, “Five hundred sounds like a lot.”

“Alexander?”

“Oh, no.”

“How many tons of flour did they give us during the July rations?” Tatiana wanted to know.

“What am I, Leningrad food chief Pavlov?”

“Answer me. How many?”

Great sigh. “Seventy-two hundred.”

Tatiana said nothing, glancing at Dasha sitting on the couch. Dasha is withdrawing, Tatiana thought, her unblinking eyes focusing on Alexander. Putting on her most chipper voice, Tatiana said tremulously, “Look on the bright side—five hundred tons goes a lot further than it used to.”

The three of them sat huddled on the couch in semidarkness in front of the
bourzhuika
that had just a bit of light coming out from its little metal door. Alexander was between Tatiana and Dasha. Tatiana wore her quilted coat that Mama had sewn for her and quilted trousers. She pulled her hat over her ears and her eyes. Only her nose and mouth were exposed to the air in the room. A blanket lay across their legs. At one point Tatiana thought she was going to sleep and leaned her head to the right—on Alexander. His hand came to rest on her lap.

Alexander spoke. “The saying goes, ‘I’d like to be a German soldier with a Russian general, British armaments, and American rations.’ ”

“I would just like to have American rations,” said Tatiana. “Alexander, now that the Americans are in the war, will it be easier for us?”

“Yes.”

“You know this for a fact?”

“Absolutely. Now that the Americans are in the war, there is hope.”

Tatiana heard Dasha’s voice. “If we come out of this, Alexander, I swear we are leaving Leningrad and moving to the Ukraine, to the Black Sea, somewhere where it isn’t ever cold.”

“No place like that in Russia,” he replied. He wore his quilted khaki coat on top of his uniform, and his
shapka
covered his ears. Dasha insisted. Alexander said, “No. We’re too far north. Winters are cold in Russia.”

“Is there a place on earth where it doesn’t get below freezing in the winter?”

“Arizona.”

“Arizona. Is that somewhere in Africa?”

“No.” Mildly he sighed. “Tania, do you know where Arizona is?”

“America,” Tatiana replied. The only warmth was coming from the little window in the stove. And from Alexander. She pressed her head into his arm.

“Yes. It’s a state in America,” he said. “Near California. It’s desert land. Forty degrees in the summer. Twenty degrees in the winter. Every year. Never freezes. Never has snow.”

“Stop it,” said Dasha. “You’re telling us fairy tales. Tell it to Tatiana. I’m too old for fairy tales.”

“It’s the truth. Never.”

Her eyes closed, Tatiana listened to the resonant lilting of Alexander’s voice. She never wanted him to stop talking. You have a good voice, Alexander, she thought. I can imagine myself drifting off, hearing only your voice, calm, measured, courageous, deep, spurring me on to eternal rest. Go, Tatia, go.

“That’s impossible,” said Dasha. “What do they do in the winter?”

“They wear a long-sleeved shirt.”

“Oh, stop it,” said Dasha. “Now I know you’re making it up.”

Tatiana pulled up her hat and stared into the flickering copper light of the stove.

“Tatia?” Alexander said quietly. “
You
know I’m telling the truth. Would
you
like to live in Arizona, ‘
the land of the small spring
’?”