Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(195)

When she opened them, she found Alexander sitting mutely and staring at her with an expression of profound emotion. She crawled on her hands and knees to him and buried herself inside his fierce arms, and somewhere near her head, she heard his whisper,Shh, shh .

They could not speak. To be in Alexander's arms, to smell him, to hear his breathing, his voice again...

Shh, shh,he was still whispering and holding her, pulling off her hat, her hairnet, her hairpins, letting her black hair fall down.

His hands were in it. His eyes were closed. Perhaps he was imagining her hair was not black but blonde Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

again.

The way Alexander was touching her now, she could tell that he was blind and had not yet learned to see--he was holding her in that impossible choke that had to do not quite with love or passion, but somehow with both and with neither. The embrace wasn't an alloy, it was a conflagration of anguish and bitter relief and fear.

Tatiana could tell Alexander would like to have spoken more, but he couldn't, and so he sat on the hay with his legs open, while she kneeled in front of him, folded into his arms, and every once in a while from his shuddering body would come aShh, shh ...

Not for her. Not for Tatiana. For himself.

Continuing to hold her, Alexander lowered her onto the straw. His trembling limbs surrounded her. Tatiana was barely breathing, her own body convulsing. To rage, to quell--

They didn't know what to do--to undress? To stay clothed? She couldn't move, nor want to. His lips were on her neck, her clavicles, he was clawing at her, ripping open her tunic, baring her breasts to his desperate gasping mouth. She wanted to whisper his name, to moan maybe. Tears kept trickling down her temples.

He removed from himself and her only what was necessary. He didn't so much enter her as break her open. Her mouth remained in a mute screaming O, her hands clutched him, not close enough, and through the whisper of grief, through the cry of desire, Tatiana felt that Alexander, in his complete abandon, was making love to her as if he were being pulled from the cross to which he was still attached by nails.

His gripping her, his ferocious, unremitting movement was so intense that Tatiana felt consciousness yield to--

Oh my God, Shura, please...she mouthed inaudibly.

But it could not be any other way.

Violent release came for Alexander at the expense of Tatiana's momentary lapse of reason, as she cried out, her pleas carrying through the barn, to the basin, to the river, to the sky.

He remained on top of her without moving, without pulling away. His body was shaking. He couldn't be any closer. She held him closer still...And then...

Shh, shh.

That wasn't Alexander.

That was Tatiana.

They both fell asleep.

Still they hadn't spoken. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

She woke up to find him inside her again.

And night, though lengthened by gods, wasn't long enough.

She spread the trench coat on the hay. He took the clothes off her. In the unmuted darkness, Tatiana cried and cried out, stretched out on the rack of his famine.

Time and again she was imprisoned and released--barely, just for breath; time and again she burned for Alexander, in thehands of Alexander, and cried out again,Oh, Shura ...endlessly, endlessly.

During brief respite, he continued to lie with his limbs over her, and again she was crying.

He whispered, "Tatia, what's a man to think when every time he makes love to his wife, she cries?"

"That he is his wife's only family," said Tatiana, crying. "That he is her whole life."

"As she is his," he said. "You don't see him crying." Tatiana could not see his face--it was buried in her breasts.

There was no night.

There was only twilight; the sky turned blue then lavender, then pink again within minutes that weren't long enough.

The night was not long enough.

Not long enough for the floor in Mathew Sayers's office, for Lisiy Nos, for the swamps of Finland, not long enough for Stockholm.

Not long enough for the punishment cell in Morozovo, for the ten grains of morphine in Slonko, for the drive across Europe with Nikolai Ouspensky.

Not long enough for the river Vistula.

And nothing was long enough for the forests and mountains of Holy Cross.

"Don't tell me another word." Tatiana's voice was defeated. "I don't have the strength to hear it."

"I don't have the strength to tell it."

After Tatiana heard about Pasha, she could not talk or look at Alexander, as she lay supine, her legs drawn up to her chest, while he lay behind her whispering, "I'm sorry, Tania. I'm sorry."

Just a gasp from a bereft Tatiana.

"I was dying in 1944 before I found him," said Alexander. "You can't imagine what stormed inside me as I pushed my penal battalion across every f*cking river in Poland." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Alexander, what I would have given for a penal battalion."

He kissed the soft flesh between her shoulder blades.

She rolled into a tighter coil, seeking to return to the place she had once shared with her brother.

Alexander didn't even bother uncoiling her to return to the place he shared with her.