Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(168)

You will find a way to live without me. You will find a way to live for both of us, Alexander had said to her, once.

She knew now, knew for certain what she had long feared, long suspected: Alexander had handed her his life and said, this is for you. I cannot save myself, I can only save you, and you have to go and live your life the way you and only you were meant to live it. You have to be strong, and you have to be happy, and you have to love our child, and eventually, you have to love. Eventually, you have to learn to love again, and to smile again, and to put me away, you have to learn to hold another man's hand, and kiss another man's lips. You have to marry again. You have to have more children. You have to live your life--for me, for you. You have to live it as we would have lived it. All in one word: Orbeli. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Things were clearer in war: right, wrong, so easily defined, so easily defiled. Peril, absolution, privation. Emotion, anguish, passion .

I seehim clearly, even in peace.

Oh--but how much life I have to mask him.

How many traditions, celebrations. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Labor, Columbus, Independence, and birthdays birthdays birthdays, every one, even mine, the cursed mine, the twisted mine, the suffering mine, the gold mine. Celebrations, food, sunshine, warmth. From dawn to dusk I fill my life with life.

With all the things he wanted for me.

My foundation is buried underneath the building, tall with windows and high with rafters; the foundation covered by trees and shrubs, pansies in the winter, tulips in the spring and my heart is covered too, healed, concealed. Sometimes I run my hand over my chest and in the running of the hand over my heart, the nerves send a small sharp shudder through my body to my brain, a shudder slightly longer than a breath, a long breath. In, out, hold. Breathe out:

Alexander.

Forgive me for leaving you to the dogs of war, for being so quickly willing to believe in your death. I was slow to love, but quick to abandon you.

Where is he? Where is the splendid horseman, my gold ring and my chain, my black bag and my brightest day?

And here Tatiana was, sitting by the bay, wanting her life to begin, to end, but she was not ended, and she was not begun.

The truth was, she was nowhere.

This stage, how long did it last? And would there ever come a time when she wasn't in a stage anymore? When she was just in life?

Before finding Alexander'sHero of the Soviet Union medal? No.

After finding Alexander'sHero of the Soviet Union medal? No.

After Paul Markey, no.

And never again after Orbeli.

The soul was at war.

She wanted one word from him? Here it was.

I am trying to send you to a place where you will be safe. Don't despair, he was saying, and have faith.

But what to do now? Something had to be done, must be done, but what? Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Whatever she did, wherever she went, it meant leaving behind her son. Was that not folly? Was it not lunacy? Was it not madness?

It was all those things.

To go and leave her son behind? What would Alexander say if he were to find out she had left his son to go traipsing through the world looking for him among its horror stores?

Tatiana sat motionless and smelled the air, smelled the water, smelled the sky, tried to find Perseus in the sky and couldn't, tried to find the full moon in the sky and couldn't. It was late and the moon was under cloud cover.

Her baby boy needed his mother.

Did he need his mother more than Alexander needed his wife?

And was that the choice?

Was the choice between the father and the son?

Was she abandoning one for the other?

She had to entertain the possibility she would not be back. Was that the life she was prepared to give her child?

All she had to do was stay where she was, go on as she was.

But there was no Tatiana here. Tatiana remained with Alexander. Her arms were around him in Lake Ladoga, where she lay down with him every night. Her arms were holding him bleeding out into the Lake Ladoga ice. She could have let go of him then, could have given him to God; God was certainly calling for him.

But she didn't.

And because she didn't, she was here in America, sitting on the ledge of the rest of her life. It certainly felt that way, that seminal moment where she knew that whatever her decision, her life would take either one course or it would take another.

One way the path was plain and vivid.

And the other was black and fraught with doubt.

To stay was to accept the good.

To go was to embrace the unknowable.

To stay was to make his sacrifice not be in vain.

To go was to go into death. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Could she accept life without him?

Could she imagine life without him? Maybe not now, but could she imagine herself in ten years' time, in twenty years' time, in fifty years' time? Could she imagine herself being seventy and without him, married to Edward, having Edward's children, sitting with Edward at the long table?

That Bronze Horseman would pursue her into her grave. She felt it. Into her eternity, clambering behind her in the night and in the day, in every hour of sorrow, in every minute of weakness, in darkness, in light, through all of America he would be rattling at her heels, the way he had been relentlessly rattling at her through the past eleven hundred days, through the past eleven hundred nights, right into her maddening dust. How much longer for Tatiana's life?