Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(55)

Of course the more Alexander remained aloof, the more Larissa pushed forward, becoming as brazen as a fifteen-year-old girl could get living in a small farmhouse with her parents and four brothers.

It was late August in scorching Krasnodar by the Black Sea. And one afternoon when he was in the barn tying up the hay into neat stacks, he saw the light stream on the ground and when he turned around, the light stream was gone, blacked out by Larissa who stood in front of him.

In his hands he held a pitchfork, a ball of twine, and a knife. She asked him in a low voice what he was doing. Making hay bales, he was going to reply, but realized she knew and he didn't have to say a word. Under different circumstances, he would have not stopped himself. He could barely stop himself now. But the girl was trouble; he felt it.

"Larissa, this is going to end in no good," he said.

"I don't know what you mean," she said, sauntering closer. She was barefoot and was wearing what was barely a dress. "It's godlessly hot out there. I came in for a little shade in the middle of the day. You don't mind, do you?"

He turned his back to her, bending to the hay. "Your brothers will kill me." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Why would they do that? You're working so hard. They'll applaud you." She came closer. He could smell the summer sweat on her body. She inhaled. She could smell his.

"Stop."

She took another step toward him and stopped. His back was still to her but with his peripheral vision he saw her jump on top of a wooden stable gate. "I'll just sit here and watch you," he heard her say.

He watchedher for a moment, and then went back to his work. His body was nearly giving out. In one moment, he thought, in one moment, I could have such sweet relief, and it would take but a moment. No harm done. She was close enough to him that he could smell her farm fresh body, her washed hair, her breath. He closed his eyes momentarily.

"Alexander," she said huskily. "Look. I want to show you something."

Aching, reluctant, desperate, he looked. She slowly pulled up her skirt and slightly opened her legs. Her hips were just below Alexander's eye level. His gaze stopped between her bare thighs. A groan escaped him.

"Come here, Alexander."

He came. Pushing her hands away, he stood between her legs, and pulled down her dress to expose her body. Panting, perspiring, ravenous, he raised his head to her lips and then feverishly bent to her breasts, while his fingers caressed her, the softness, the warmth...she was moaning as she clutched the bar--and then laughter sounded right outside the barn, and Larissa tried to push Alexander away. He wasn't moving from her.

Larissa shoved him hard, jumping down from the beam, and the light was on the grass, and Grisha, her oldest brother, came in and said, "Larisska, there you are, I've been looking all over for you. Get out of here. Stop trying to corrupt our Alexander. Can't you see he's got real work to do? Go to Mama. She wants to know why you haven't gotten the cows from the pasture yet. Thekolkhoznik will be here for the milk soon."

"I'm going," said Larissa, walking past Alexander. Grisha left first, and before Larissa disappeared she turned around and with a delicious smile on her face whispered, "Alexander, next time we won't be interrupted and my mouth will beall over you, I promise. And afterward I will call you Shura, instead of Sasha like my brother. Just you wait."

Alexander could think about nothing else for the rest of the day, or the evening, or certainly the night alone in his barn. But the next day something happened that stopped him from self-immolation. It was Larissa's pale face in the morning. When he approached her, she put her hands up and without looking at him said, "I'm not feeling well."

"I don't mind," he said. "I'll make you feel better."

She pushed him weakly away and, without glancing at him, said, "Stay away, Alexander. Do yourself a favor. Stay away from me."

Perplexed he went to do his work. He didn't see her for the rest of the day, but in the evening during dinner, Larissa's now extremely pale face was accompanied by fever. The fever was higher the following evening and was miserably followed by a red raised rash on her face a day later. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Oh no, the grown-ups said in a panic. She issick .

And then came Alexander's fever and his rash, but by the time he was sick, no one saidoh no in a panic. Because the horseman of the apocalypse sat atop a pale horse that they all knew was typhus, the incurable, contagious, deadly pestilence. The headache that preceded the onset of the disease was so severe, so throbbing, so eye-poppingly wretched that by the time the 105?F fever and the scabby, scratchy, inflamed rash came, Alexander welcomed the distracting delirium that accompanied it. The brothers were feverish and Larissa was hemorrhaging, and then the parents were delirious, and Larissa was dead. One minute pressed against Alexander's burning hands, the next dead and unburied as they were all too weak to dig a hole for her, and so she lay in theizba , and they all panted feebly and waited for the horseman to come for them. And it did.

In the end, only Larissa's father, Yefim, and Alexander remained. They had not been outside in many days, weeks maybe? They held on to each other and drank water, and prayed, and Alexander started praying in English, mixing it with Russian, pleading for peace, for his mother and father, pleading for their lives, praying for America, for health, for his life, for his mother, for Teddy, Belinda, Boston, Barrington, for the woods, for death finally because he couldn't take it anymore, and then he saw Yefim's tormented eyes watching him, felt Yefim's hand on him, heard Yefim's bleeding mouth whispering to him, "Son, don't die, don't die here like this. Go back to your father and mother. Find your way back home. Where is your home, son?"