Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(209)

Grim but determined, Tatiana said quietly, "You survived. I will, too."

"Thatwas you surviving!" Alexander yelled. "You didn't die in that scenario, did you? You want death? That's different." He let go of her and stepped away. "Death, all right. You will die from the cold, from the hunger. Leningrad didn't kill you; Kolyma will for sure. Ninety per cent of all themen who are sent there die. You will die after performing an abortion on yourself, from infection, from peritonitis, from pellagra, from TB, which will kill you for certain, or you'll be beaten to death after your streetcar gang rape." He paused. "Or before."

She put her hands over her ears. "God, Shura, stop," she whispered. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

He shuddered. She shuddered, too.

Alexander drew her to him, into his chest, into his arms. Though every breath out of him sounded as though exhaled from a throat lined with glass spikes, she felt better pressed against him.

"Tania, I survived because God made me a strong man. No one was going to get near me. I could shoot, I could fight, and I was not afraid of killing anybody who approached me. What about you? What would you have done?" His hand went on top of her head, and then he lifted her face to him. Pulling her arms away, he pushed Tatiana backward, and she fell on the bed. Sitting next to her, he said, "You can't protect yourself againstme --and I love you as much as it is possible for a man to love a woman." He shook his head. "Tatiasha, that world was not meant for a woman like you--which is why God didn't send you into it."

She placed her hand on his face. "But why would He sendyou into it?" she asked with quiet bitterness. "You--the king among men."

He didn't want to speak anymore.

She wanted to and couldn't.

He went to have a shower, and she curled into a ball in the chair by the window near the bed.

When he came out, just a towel around his waist, he said, "Will you come and look at my gash? I think it's getting infected."

He was right. He knew about such things. He sat very still while she gave him a shot of penicillin and cleaned the rip on his chest and shoulder with carbolic acid. "I'm going to stitch it," she said, taking out her surgical thread, suddenly remembering that she had used surgical thread to sew the Red Cross emblem onto a Finnish truck that took her out of the Soviet Union. She swayed from her weakness. She couldn't save Matthew Sayers.

"Don't stitch it, it's been too long already," Alexander said.

"No, it needs it. It will prevent infection, it'll heal better." How did she continue to speak?

She took out a syringe to anesthetize the area and he took her hand and said, "What's this?" He shook his head. "Stitch away, Tania. Just give me a cigarette first."

He needed eight stitches. After she was done, she placed her lips on the wound. "Sore?" she whispered.

"Didn't feel a thing," he said, taking another drag of the cigarette.

She bandaged his shoulder, his arm down to his elbow, bandaged his hand that was raw from gunpowder burns. She didn't want him to see her face so close, but she cried as she took care of him and she could tell by his breathing how hard it was for him to listen to her, to be so close to her without touching her. She knew he could not bring himself to touch her the closer they were to the very end.

"Would you like some morphine?"

"No," he said. "Then I'm unconscious all night." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

She stumbled away a step.

"Shower was good," he said. "White towels. Hot water. So good, so unexpected."

"Yes," she said. "There are many comforts in America."

They turned away from each other. He left the bathroom, she went into the shower. When she came out wrapped in towels, he was already asleep, on his back, naked over the quilt. She covered him and then sat in the chair by the bed and watched him, her hand inside her nurse's bag, touching the morphine syrettes.

Tatiana could not, would not allow him to be taken back to Russia. God would have him before the Soviet Union ever had him again.

Taking her nurse's bag with her, she climbed under the covers, to his naked body, and spooned him from behind. She held him in her arms and cried into his shorn head. The Soviet Union had left only skin and bones on him.

And then he spoke. "Anthony," he said, "is he a nice boy?"

"Yes," she replied. "The nicest."

"And he looks like you?"

"No, husband, he looks like you."

"That's too bad," said Alexander, and turned to Tatiana.

They lay naked face to face.

Their regrets, their breath, their two souls twisted between them, bleeding and shouting grief into the unquiet night.

"With or without me, you have lived and will always live by only one standard," he said.

"I tried harder for you. Wanted to do even better for you. I imagined whatyou might have wanted for the both of us, and I tried to live it."

"No.I tried harder for you," said Alexander. "I wanted to do better for you. I held you before my eyes, hoping whatever I did, however I managed, you would be pleased. That you would nod at me and say, you did all right, Alexander. You did all right."