Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(83)

If only he could have found a way out of Russia that cold dark September night in Finland, he would not be so heavy-hearted now. Empty-hearted, yes, but not fear-hearted, leaden-hearted like now.

Stalin gave up Leningrad to Hitler, fighting for his life in Moscow. Hitler in turn said he wouldn't waste a bullet on Leningrad preferring instead to starve it out, and in a matter of months the city became lined with unburied corpses. The bodies lying in the white streets covered in white sheets were pristine. The barely living called them "dolls."

The less Tatiana and her family had--as their supplies of flour and oatmeal evaporated--the more their faces crowded around Alexander, longingly asking him if he had more for them, more food, more rations, more, more, the more Tatiana withdrew and stood near the door, away from him, the more feeling he began to have for her. In the middle of war, in the middle of raging fighting, of unburied dead, of being Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

cold and wet, in famine, Alexander's feelings for Tatiana grew as if they were a well-watered, well-nourished plant.

What Leningrad gave them, 250 grams of cardboard bread, what Alexander stole for them, soy beans and linseed oil, was not enough, but the sawdust and cottonseed black cake he was eating was enough for his heart.

She had to be evacuated. One way or another she simply had to be.

November died into December. The white and bombed out streets of Leningrad remained littered with corpses no one could either move or bury. All the movers and buriers were dead. The electricity wasn't working. Neither was water. There was no kerosene to fire up the kilns to bake the bread, which was just as well because there was no flour.

"Alexander, tell me, how long have you loved my sister?" asked the dying Dasha.

"Tell me, how long have you loved my sister?"

"How long--have you--loved my sister?"

Alexander should have replied, Dasha, if you had seen me standing mute, hearing the day fly, the May fly, an ephemera on a Sunday street singing, "Someday We'll Meet in Lvov, My Love and I," you would have your answer.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Lazarevo, 1942

LAZAREVO--EVEN THE NAMEitself was reminiscent of myth, of legend, of revelation. Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, raised from four days dead by Jesus. A miracle given by God to reaffirm man's faith that so angered His enemies they started plotting to kill both the mortal and the divine.

Lazarevo--a small fishing village on the needle banks of the mighty Kama, the river that for ten million years flowed a thousand miles south into the world's largest sea.

Alexander went to Lazarevo on faith.

He had heard nothing from her. Nothing for six months. All he had to say was, I do not believe she could have survived because I have seen with my own eyes thousands stronger than her, healthier than her that had not survived. They got sick, and she was sick. They had no food, they were starved and she was starved. They had no defences and she had none. They were alone, and she was also. She was small and she was weak and she didn't make it.

That would have required nothing of Alexander. He could have said, it must be so. All he had to do was nothing. How easy!

But Alexander learned by now: there was no easy step in his life, no easy day, no easy choice, no easy way. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

He had his one life. In June 1942 he went to Lazarevo holding it in his hands.

By the shores of the Kama, he found her gorgeous and restored, and not just restored to her original shining brilliance but enlarged and clarified. Light reflected off her, no matter which way she turned.

They ran down to the almighty river. She never even looked back.

She would never know what it meant to him, an unremitting sinner, after all the unsacred things he had seen and done, to have her innocence. He held her to him. He had dreamed of it too long, touching her. Dreamed of seeing her naked too long, beautiful, bare, ready for him. He was afraid to hurt her. He had never been with an untouched girl before; he wasn't sure if he was supposed to do something first.

In the end, he did nothing first, but she baptized him with her body. There was no Alexander anymore; the man he knew had died and was reborn inside a perfect heart, given to him straight from God, to him and for him.

He had lived the last five years of his life being with women whose names he could not remember, whose faces he could not recall, women to whom he meant nothing but a well spent moment on a Saturday night. The connections he had made with those women were transient links, gone as soon as the moment was gone. Nothing lasted in the Red Army. Nothing lasted in the Soviet Union. Nothing lasted inside Alexander.

He had lived the last five years of his life amid young men who could die instantly as he was covering them, as he was saving them, as he was carrying them back to base. His connections to them were real but impermanent. He knew better than anyone the fragility of life during Soviet war.

Yet Tatiana had lived through the hunger, made her blind way through the snow on the Volga, made her way inside his tent to show Alexander that in his life there was one permanence. In Alexander's life there was one thread that could not be broken by death, by distance, by time, by war. Could not be broken. As long as I am in the world, she said with her breath and her body, as long asI am, you are permanent, soldier.

And he believed.

And before God they were married.

Alexander was sitting on a blanket, his back against the tree, and she was on top of him, straddling him, kissing him so deeply he couldn't get his breath. "Tania..." he whispered. "...Hang on..."