The Bronze Horseman (77 page)

“That’s nothing!” another exclaimed. “Did you hear how many men Meretskov lost in August-September in Volkhov? How many dead, wounded, missing in action? One hundred and thirty thousand!”

“Is that a lot?” said another. “In Moscow—”

“Out of one hundred and fifty thousand men!”

Tatiana had had quite enough of listening to other people’s discussions. But she needed just a little bit more information. After striking up a conversation with the truck drivers, she found out that food barges departed on Lake Ladoga just south of a small town called Syastroy, about ten kilometers north of the Volkhov front. Syastroy was about a hundred kilometers south from where Tatiana was at the moment.

Tatiana was going to ask the men for a ride but didn’t like the sound of them. They were staying in Lodeinoye Pole overnight, and the way one of them looked at her, even with her brown plaid kerchief…

She wiped her mouth, thanked them, and left. She felt better knowing she was carrying Alexander’s loaded P-38.

It took Tatiana three days to walk the hundred kilometers to Syastroy. It was early October and cold, but the first snow had not fallen yet, and the road was paved. Many other people walked along with her—villagers, evacuees, itinerant farmers, occasionally soldiers returning to the front. She walked for half a day next to one who was returning from furlough. He looked as forlorn as Alexander must have felt. Then he caught a ride from an army truck, and Tatiana kept walking.

The bursting roar of heavy bombs exploding in the near distance never stopped shaking the earth underneath her feet as she walked, her pack on her back, her eyes to the ground. No matter how bad this seemed, it was better than running through the potato field in Luga. It was better than sitting in the train station in Luga, realizing that the Germans weren’t leaving until Tatiana was dead. It was better than that, but not much. She kept walking, her eyes to the ground.

She walked even at night—it was calmer at night, and after eleven there were no bombings. She would walk for another few hours and then find a barn to sleep in. One night she stayed with a family who offered her dinner
and
their oldest son. She ate the dinner, passed on the son, offering money instead. They took it.

Ten kilometers west of Syastroy, right on the Volkhov River, Tatiana found a small barge about to take off across the lake around the horn of Novaya Ladoga. The longshoreman was untying the rope. She waited as the plank was just about to go up and then ran up to the man and told him she had food for the war effort, for the blockade, taking out five cans of ham and a bottle of vodka. The longshoreman stared longingly at the vodka. Tatiana asked him to keep the vodka for himself and let her go to see her dying mother in Leningrad. Tatiana knew this was a dire time for local people. Most of their relatives who had lived in Leningrad were either dead or dying. The dockhand gratefully kept the vodka and waved her on. “Warning you, though—it’s a bad passage. Too long in the water, and the Germans bomb the barges all day long.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m ready.” She crossed without incident.

The barge came to Osinovets, north of Kokkorevo, where Tatiana offered the rest of her
tushonka
—four cans—and another bottle of vodka to the truck driver who was taking food to Leningrad. He let her sit in the front with him and even shared some bread with her as they drove.

Tatiana stared out the window. Was she really going to be able to go back to her Fifth Soviet apartment? As if she had much choice.

But to go back to
Leningrad
?

She shivered. She didn’t want to think about it. The driver dropped her off at Finland Station in the north of the city. She took a tram back to Nevsky Prospekt and walked home from Insurrection Square.

Leningrad was sad and empty. It was nighttime, and the streets were poorly lit, but at least there was electricity. Tatiana must have come at a good time, because it was quiet; there was no shelling. But as she walked, she saw three smoldering fires and many broken shambling gaps where windows and doors had once been.

She hoped her building on Fifth Soviet was still standing.

It was. Still green, still drab, still filthy.

Tatiana stood for a few minutes at the double front doors. She was searching for the thing Alexander called courage.

The courage to go back up the stairs that led to the two empty rooms where six other hearts had once lived. Rooms filled with jokes and vodka and dinners and small dreams and small desires and life.

She looked up and down the street. Across Grechesky the church still stood, untouched and unbombed. Turning her head to Suvorovsky, she saw a few people going into their buildings, coming home from work. Just a few people, maybe three. The pavement was clear and dry. The cold air was hurting her nose.

It was for him.

His heart was still beating, and it called to her.

He was going to be her courage.

She nodded to herself and turned the handle. The dark green hallway smelled of urine. Holding on to the railing, Tatiana slowly walked up three flights of stairs to her communal apartment.

Her key worked in the glossy brown door.

The apartment was quiet. There was no one in the front kitchen, and the doors to the other rooms were closed. All closed, except for Slavin’s, whose door was slightly ajar. Tatiana knocked, looked in.

Slavin was on his floor, listening to the radio.

“Who are
you
?” he said in a shrill voice.

“Tania Metanova, remember? How
are
you?” She smiled. Some things never changed.

“Were you here during the War of 1905? Oh, did we give those Japs hell.” He pointed his finger to the radio. “Listen, listen carefully.”

Just the sound of the metronome, beat beat beat.

Quietly she backed away. The Russians lost that war. Slavin looked up from the floor at her and said, “You should have come last month, Tanechka—only seven bombs fell on Leningrad last month. You would have been safer.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “If you need anything, I’m right down the hall.”

There was no one in her kitchen either. To her surprise, the door to her hallway and her two rooms was unlocked. In the hallway on her sofa she found two strangers, a man and a woman drinking tea.

Tatiana stood for a moment staring at them. “Who
are
you?” she asked at last.

They said they were Inga and Stanislav Krakov. They were both in their forties; he was paunchy and spottily balding, she was small and wizened.

“But who
are
you?” she asked again.

“Who are
you
?” demanded Stanislav, not even looking at her.

Tatiana put down her backpack. “These are my rooms,” she said. “You’re sitting on my sofa.”

Inga quickly explained that they had lived on Seventh Soviet and Suvorovsky. “We had a nice apartment, our own apartment,” she said. “Our own bathroom, and kitchen, and a bedroom.” Apparently their building was bombed to the ground in August. With the shortage of housing in Leningrad because of so many demolished buildings, the Soviet council placed Inga and Stanislav in the Metanov rooms, which were unoccupied. “Don’t worry,” said Inga. “They’ll find us our own apartment soon; they said, maybe even a two-bedroom. Right, Stan?”

“Well, I’m back now,” said Tatiana. “The rooms are no longer unoccupied.” She looked around the hallway. Alexander had cleaned the place so well, she thought with sadness.

“Yes? And where are we supposed to go?” asked Stan. “We are registered with the council to stay here.”

“What about the other rooms in the communal apartment?” she asked. The other rooms—where
other
people had died.

“They’re all taken,” said Stan. “Listen, why are we still talking about this? There’s enough space here. You can have a whole room to yourself. What’s to complain about?”

“Both rooms are mine, though,” she said.

“Actually, no,” said Stan, continuing to drink his tea. “Both rooms belong to the state. And the state is at war.” He laughed joylessly. “You are not being a good proletarian, comrade.”

Inga said, “Stan and I are Party members in the Leningrad corps of engineers.”

“That’s great,” said Tatiana, suddenly feeling very tired. “Which room can I take?”

Inga and Stan had taken her old room, where she had slept with Dasha, with Mama, with Papa, with Pasha. It was also the only room with heat. Deda and Babushka’s old room had a broken stove in it.

Even if the stove weren’t broken, Tatiana had no wood to heat it.

“Could I at least have my
bourzhuika
back?” she asked.

“And what will we use?” said Stan.

“What’s your name anyway?” asked Inga.

“Tania.”

Sheepishly Inga said, “Tania, why don’t you move the little cot to the wall near where the stove is on our side? The wall is warm. Do you want Stan to help you?”

“Inga, stop, you know my back is bad,” snapped Stan. “She can move it herself.”

“Yes,” said Tatiana. She moved Deda’s sofa just far enough to sandwich Pasha’s little cot in between the back of the sofa and the wall.

The wall
was
warm.

Tatiana slept for seventeen hours covered by her coat and three blankets.

After waking, she went to the Soviet council housing committee to register herself once again as a resident of Leningrad. “What did you come back for?” the woman behind the desk asked her rudely, filling out documents for a new ration card. “We’re still under blockade, you know.”

“I know,” said Tatiana. “But there’s a shortage of nurses. The war is still on.” She paused. “Someone has to take care of the soldiers, right?”

The older woman shrugged, not lifting her eyes. Is anyone in this city going to lift their eyes and look at me? thought Tatiana. Just one person. “Summer was better,” the woman said. “More food. Now you won’t be able to get potatoes.”

“That’s all right,” Tatiana said, twinging with pain,
remembering the potato counter Alexander had built in Lazarevo
.

With her ration card in hand, she went to the Elisey food store on Nevsky. She couldn’t bear to go back to the store on Fontanka and Nekrasova where she used to get the family rations a year ago. In Elisey it was too late for bread, but she did get some real milk, some beans, an onion, and four tablespoons of oil. For a hundred rubles she bought a can of
tushonka
. Since she wasn’t working yet, her bread ration was only 350 grams, but for workers it rose to 700. Tatiana planned to get a job.

Tatiana looked for a
bourzhuika
but had no luck. She even went to Gostiny Dvor shopping center, across from Elisey on Nevsky, but couldn’t find anything there. She had 3,000 rubles left of Alexander’s money, and she would have gladly spent half of it on a
bourzhuika
to keep her warm, but there was none to be found. With her bag of food Tatiana walked across Nevsky, past the European Hotel, down Mikhailovskaya Ulitsa, crossed the street into the Italian Gardens, and sat on the bench where Alexander had told her about
America
.

She didn’t move, not even when the bombing started, not even when she saw shelling down Mikhailovskaya and across Nevsky. She watched a bomb fall on the pavement and explode in a black flame. Alexander will be so angry when he finds out I’m here, Tatiana thought, finally getting up and heading home. But she wanted him alive; she didn’t care if he killed her. She had seen Alexander’s temper—he had lost his mind during their last days in Lazarevo. How Alexander got sane—if Alexander got sane—after he left her, Tatiana did not know.

She went back to work at Grechesky Hospital. She had been right. The hospital
was
in dire need of help. The administration officer saw her former Grechesky employment stamp, asked if she had been a nurse, and Tatiana replied that she had been a nurse’s aide and that it would take her no time at all to brush up on her skills. She asked to be placed in the critical care unit. She was given a white uniform and followed a nurse named Elizaveta for one nine-hour shift and then a nurse named Maria for another nine-hour shift. The nurses did not lift their eyes to Tatiana.

But the patients did.

After two weeks of working eighteen-hour days, Tatiana was finally given her own rounds and a Sunday afternoon off. She got up her courage to go to Pavlov barracks.

Tatiana needed just a word that Alexander was all right and where he was stationed.

The sentry at the gate was no one she knew; his name was Viktor Burenich. The young soldier was friendly and eager to help. She liked that. He checked the roster of all the soldiers currently at the barracks and told her that Alexander Belov was not there. She asked if he knew where the captain was. The guard replied with a smile that he did not. “But he’s all right as far as you know?” she asked.

The guard shrugged. “I think so, but they don’t tell me these things.”

Holding her breath, Tatiana asked if Dimitri Chernenko was still alive.

He was. Tatiana exhaled. Burenich said Chernenko wasn’t at the garrison at present, but that he constantly came and went with supplies.

Tatiana tried to think of who else she knew. “Is Anatoly Marazov here?” she asked.

He was, what luck.

In a few minutes Tatiana saw Marazov through the gate.

“Tatiana!” He seemed glad to see her. “What a surprise to see you here. Alexander had told me you evacuated with your sister.” He paused. “I’m sorry about your sister.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” she said, her eyes welling up involuntarily. She was extremely relieved. If Marazov mentioned Alexander so offhandedly, it meant that everything was all right.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Tania,” Marazov said.

“No, no, you haven’t upset me.” They stood in the passageway.

“You want to walk around the block?” Marazov asked her. “I have a few minutes.”

They strolled with their coats buttoned to Palace Square.

“Are you here to see Dimitri? He’s not in my unit anymore.”

“Oh, I know,” she said, and stammered. Could she keep all the lies in her head? How would she have known about Dimitri? “I know he was injured. I saw him at Kobona a few months back.” And if she wasn’t here to see Di-mitri, who was she here to see?