The Bronze Horseman (95 page)

Tatiana did not respond. Her mind was playing tricks on her. For some reason she couldn’t get past the death certificate. It wasn’t a Red Army certificate. It was a Red Cross death certificate.

“Tatiana,” said Sayers, “can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she said indistinctly.

“You will come with me.”

“I can’t think right now,” she managed to utter. “I need to think for a few minutes.”

“Will you…” Sayers let out. “Will you please come back to my office? You’re not—Come, sit in my chair. You’ll—”

Backing away from Sayers, Tatiana watched him with an intensity she knew was excruciating to him. She turned and walked as fast as she could to the main building. She had to find Colonel Stepanov. The colonel was busy and refused to see her at first.

She waited outside the front door until he came out.

“I’m headed for the mess tent. Walk with me?” Stepanov said to her, not catching her eye and hurrying forward.

“Sir,” Tatiana said into his back, not taking a step, “what happened to your officer—” She couldn’t say his name out loud.

Stepanov slowed down, stopped, and faced her. “I’m sorry about your husband,” he said gently.

Tatiana didn’t speak. Coming close to him, she took Colonel Stepanov’s hand. “Sir, you are a good man, and you were his commanding officer.” Wind was whipping her face. “Please tell me what happened to him.”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

Tatiana stood small before the uniformed colonel.

The colonel sighed. “All I know is that one of our armored trucks carrying your husband, Lieutenant Ouspensky, one corporal, and two drivers exploded this morning under what appeared to be enemy fire and eventually sank. I have no other information.”

“Armored? He told me he was going to Volkhov to get promoted this morning,” she said in a faint whisper.

“Nurse Metanova,” said Colonel Stepanov, pausing and blinking. “The truck sank. Everything else is moot.”

Tatiana never looked away from him for a moment.

Stepanov nodded. “I’m sorry. Your husband was—”

“I know what he was, sir,” Tatiana broke in, holding the cap and the certificate to her chest.

With a small shiver of his voice, staring at her with hurting blue eyes, Colonel Stepanov said, “Yes. We both do.”

Mutely they stood in front of each other.

“Tatiana!” said Colonel Stepanov emotionally. “Go back with Dr. Sayers. As soon as you can. It’ll be easier and safer for you in Leningrad. Maybe Molotov? Go with him.”

Tatiana saw him button the top of his uniform. She didn’t take her eyes off him. “He brought your son back,” she whispered.

Stepanov lowered his eyes. “Yes.”

“But who is going to bring
him
back?”

The bitter wind whistled through her words.

How to move, how to move now, can I get on my hands and knees and crawl, no, I will walk, I will look at the ground, and I will walk away, and I won’t stumble.

I will stumble.

She fell on the snow, and the colonel came over and picked her up, patting her back, and she closed her coat around her and, without looking again at Stepanov, staggered down the road to the hospital, holding on to the walls of buildings.

To hide him her whole life, to hide him every step of the way, to hide him from Dasha, from Dimitri, to hide him from death, and now to hide him even from herself. Her weakness felt insuperable.

Finding Dr. Sayers in his small office, Tatiana said, “Doctor, look at me, look me in the eye and swear to me that he is dead.”

Sinking to her knees, she looked at him, her hands in a plea.

Dr. Sayers crouched down and took Tatiana’s hands. “I swear,” he said, “he is dead.” He did not look at her.

“I can’t,” she said in a guttural voice. “I can’t take it. I can’t take the thought of him dying in that lake without me. Do you understand? I can’t take it,” she whispered wrenchingly. “Tell me he’s been taken by the
NKVD
. Tell me he’s been arrested and he’ll be storming bridges next week, tell me he’s been sent to the Ukraine, to Sinyavino, to Siberia—tell me anything. But please tell me he did not die on the ice without me. I’ll bear anything but that. Tell me, and I will go with you anywhere, I promise, I will do exactly as you say, but I beg you, tell me the truth.”

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Sayers said, “I couldn’t save him. With my whole heart I’m sorry I couldn’t save him for you.”

Tatiana crawled away to the wall and put her face into her hands.

“I am not going anywhere,” she said. “There is no point.”

“Tania,” Sayers said, coming after her and putting his hand on her head, “please don’t say that. Honey… please… let me save you
for him
.”

“There is no point.”

“No point? What about his baby?” exclaimed the doctor.

She took her hands away from her face and stared dully at Sayers. “He told you we are having a baby?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Flustered, the doctor said, “I don’t know.” His hand was still on Tatiana’s head. “You don’t feel good. You’re all cold. You’re—”

She did not reply. She was convulsing.

“Are you going to be all right?”

She covered her face.

“Will you stay here? Just stay in my office and wait. Don’t get up, all right. Sleep maybe?”

Tatiana made a rasping noise that sounded like an animal pressing its gaping wound into the ground, hoping to die before it bled to death.

“Your patients were asking for you,” Sayers said softly. “Do you think—”

“No.” Through her hands. “Please leave me. I need to be alone.”

Until night fell, she sat on the floor in Dr. Sayers’s office. She put her head into her knees, and sat against the wall. Until she couldn’t sit up anymore, and then she lay down, curled into a ball.

Dimly she heard the doctor return. She heard his gasp and tried to get up but couldn’t. Helping her up, Sayers sucked in his breath when he saw her face. “God, Tania.
Please
. I need you—”

“Doctor!” Tatiana exclaimed. “All the things you need me to be, I can’t be right now. I’ll be what I can. Is it time?”

“It’s time, Tania. Let’s go.” He lowered his voice. “Look, I went to your bed and got your backpack. It’s yours, right?”

“Yes,” she said, taking it.

“Do you have anything else you need to bring?”

“No,” Tatiana whispered. “The backpack is all I have. Is it just you and me going?”

Dr. Sayers paused before he answered her. “Chernenko came to me earlier today and asked if our plans had changed now that—”

“And you said…” Her weak legs weren’t holding her. She sank into the chair and looked up. “I can’t go with him,” she said. “I just can’t.”

“I don’t want to take him either, but what can I do? He told me, not in so many words, that without him we wouldn’t be able to get you through the first checkpoint. I want to get you out, Tania. What else can I do?”

“Nothing,” said Tatiana.

She helped Sayers collect his few things and carried his doctor’s bag and her nurse’s bag outside. The Red Cross vehicle was a big jeep without the enclosed solid steel body customary for ambulances. This one had glass covering the passenger cab but only canvas covering the back, not the safest for the wounded or medical personnel. But it had been the only truck available at the time in Helsinki, and Sayers could not wait for a proper ambulance. The square Red Cross badges were sewn into the tarpaulin.

Dimitri was waiting by the side of the truck. Tatiana did not look or acknowledge him as she opened the tarpaulin and climbed in to load the first aid kit and the box of plasma.

“Tania?” Dimitri said.

Dr. Sayers came up from behind, and said to Dimitri, “All right, let’s hurry along. You get in the back. Once we leave here, you can change into the Finnish pilot’s clothes. I don’t know how you’re going to get your arm through… Tania, where are those clothes?” Then to Dimitri, “Do you need morphine? How is your face doing?”

“Terrible. I can barely see. Is my arm going to get infected?”

Tatiana glanced at Dimitri from inside the truck. His right arm was in a cast and sling. His face was swollen black and blue. She wanted to ask what had happened to him, but she didn’t care.

“Tania?” Dimitri called to her. “I heard about this morning. I’m sorry.”

Tatiana retrieved the Finnish pilot’s clothes from their hiding place and threw them on the truck floor in front of Dimitri.

“Tatiana, come,” Dr. Sayers told her. “Let me help you down, we have to get going.”

Taking Sayers’s hand, Tatiana jumped down past Dimitri.

“Tania?” Dimitri repeated.

She lifted her eyes to him filled with such unwavering condemnation that Dimitri could not help but look away. “Just put on the clothes,” Tatiana said through her teeth. “Then get down on the floor and lie very still.”

“Look, I’m sorry. I know how you—”

Clenching her fists, Tatiana lunged furiously at Dimitri, and she would have punched him in his broken nose had Dr. Sayers not restrained her from behind, saying, “Tania, God. Please. No. No.”

Backing away, Dimitri opened his mouth and stammered, “I said I was very s—”

“I don’t want to
hear
your fucking lies!” she yelled, her arms still being held by Dr. Sayers. “I don’t want you to speak to me ever again. Do you understand?”

Dimitri, mumbling nervously that he didn’t understand why she should be upset with
him
, got into the back of the truck.

Dr. Sayers got behind the wheel and stared wide-eyed at Tatiana.

“Ready, Doctor. Let’s go.” Tatiana buttoned up her nurse’s white coat with the Red Cross badge on the sleeve, and she tied her little white hat over her hair. She had all of Alexander’s money, she had his Pushkin book, she had his letters and their photographs. She had his cap, and she had his ring.

They drove into the night.

Tatiana held Sayers’s open map but could not have helped him get to Lisiy Nos. Through the northern Russian woods Dr. Sayers drove his small truck, as they made their way on unpaved, muddy, snowy, liquid roads. Tatiana saw nothing at all, staring out the side window into the darkness, counting inside her head, trying to keep herself upright.

Sayers kept talking to her nonstop in English. “Tania, dear, it will be all right—”

“Will it, Doctor?” she asked, also in English. “And what are we going to do with
him
?”

“Who cares? He can do what he likes once we get to Helsinki. I’m not thinking about him at all. All I’m thinking about is
you
. We will get to Helsinki, drop off some supplies, and then you and I will take a Red Cross plane to Stockholm. Then from Stockholm we’ll ride the train to Göteborg on the North Sea, and we’ll take a protected vessel across the North Sea to England. Tania, can you hear me? Do you understand?”

“I can hear you,” she said faintly. “I understand.”

“In England I’ve got a couple of stops to make, but then we’ll either fly to the U.S. or take one of the passenger liners from Liverpool. And once you’re in New York—”

“Matthew, please,” whispered Tatiana.

“I’m just trying to make you feel better, Tania. It’s going to be all right.”

From the back Dimitri said, “Tania, I didn’t know you could speak En-glish.”

Tatiana did not reply at first. Then she picked up a metal pipe from under Dr. Sayers’s feet that she knew he kept in case of trouble. Swinging her arm, she smashed the pipe hard against the metal divider separating her from Dimitri, startling Dr. Sayers nearly off the side of the road. “Dimitri,” she said loudly, “you have to stay quiet and stop talking. You are a Finn. Not another Russian syllable out of you.”

Dropping the pipe onto the floor, she folded her arms around her stomach.

“Tania…”

“Don’t, Doctor.”

“You haven’t eaten, have you?” the doctor asked gently.

Tatiana shook her head. “I’m not thinking about food at all,” she replied.

In the middle of the night they stopped by the side of the road. Dimitri had already slipped on the Finnish uniform. “It’s very big,” Tatiana heard him say to Dr. Sayers. “I hope I don’t have to stand up in it. Anyone will see it doesn’t fit me. Do you have any more morphine? I’m—”

Dr. Sayers came back a few minutes later. “If I give him any more morphine, he’ll be dead. That arm is going to give him trouble.”

“What happened to him?” Tatiana asked in English.

Dr. Sayers was quiet. “He was nearly killed,” he said at last. “He has a very nasty open fracture.” He paused. “He may lose that arm. I don’t know how he is conscious, upright. I thought he’d be in a coma after yesterday, yet today he is walking.” Sayers shook his head.

Tatiana didn’t speak. How
could
he still be standing? she thought. How could the rest of us—strong, resolute, spirited, young—be falling on our knees, be demolished by our life, while
he
remains standing?

“Someday, Tania,” Sayers said in English, “you will have to explain to me the—” He broke off, pointing to the back of the truck. “Because I swear to Christ, I don’t understand at all.”

“I do not think I could explain,” whispered Tatiana.

On the way to Lisiy Nos they were stopped half a dozen times at checkpoints for papers. Sayers presented papers on himself and papers on his nurse, Jane Barrington. Dimitri, who was a Finn named Tove Hanssen, had no papers, just a metal dogtag with the dead man’s name on it. He was a wounded pilot being taken back to Helsinki for a prisoner exchange. All six times the guards opened the tarpaulin, shined a flashlight in Dimitri’s battered face, and then waved Sayers on.

“It’s nice to be protected by the Red Cross flag,” said Sayers.

Tatiana nodded.

The doctor pulled over by the side of the road, turning the engine off. “Are you cold?” he asked.

“I’m not cold.”
Not cold enough
. “Do you want me to drive?”

“You know how to drive?”

In Luga, when she was sixteen, the summer before she met Alexander, Tatiana had befriended an army corporal stationed with the local village
Soviet
. The corporal let Tatiana and Pasha drive around in his truck for the whole summer. Pasha was annoying because he always wanted to be behind the wheel, but the corporal was kind and let her behind the wheel, too. She drove the truck well, better than Pasha, she thought, and the corporal told her she was a quick learner.