Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(90)

"Alexander, please don't leave me."

"Babe, don't worry," he said. "There is life after grieving. Look at us.We felt again." He kissed her. "You will want to love again, and you will." Alexander wanted to add,thank God , but he didn't mean it. My heart on a f*cking stake, twisting in the fire.

"Wait, stop, honey, stop, Shura, I can't breathe, I can't breathe--"

But Alexander wouldn't stop. Until he was finally done. It took her long minutes to get her breath back, while he lay on the floor and smoked. The ash fell on the hardwood. It fell on his chest. He didn't even brush it off. Tatiana brushed it off.

When she was calmer, Tatiana whispered, "Sometimes when you hold me like that, when you constrict me the way you do, when you suffocate me, when I feel your hands on my throat, over my face, when my lungs are crushed by you and your body is on me, I can't help thinking you almost wish Iwould stop breathing."

"That's crazy."

"Is it?"

"Absolutely."

"You hold me, Shura, as if you don't want me to live past this." Tatiana paused. "Past us." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Crazy."

Four days left.

"I don't want you to touch me anymore." These words were spoken by Tatiana as Alexander was holding her against the wall. "I'm serious," she said. "I don't want you to make love to me. I want you to stop. I don't want to need you anymore. I don't want to love you anymore."

"All right," he whispered, not letting her go, not moving away from the wall.

"What are we going to do? What amI going to do? You'll be dead, but what am I going to do the rest of my life in Lazarevo?"

"I'll be back, Tatia," Alexander said.

"You'll be dead. And I'll be alone in Soviet Russia."

"I won't be dead."

"There is no place for us here," she said.

He disagreed. "The Ural Mountains were three hundred million years in the making. We found a place among the round hills. This is our place."

"Please don't." Her body shook. "They were once larger, these mountains. They are nearly flattened out by erosion, by time. But they're still standing."

"Yes. And we with them," whispered Alexander, squeezing her to him. "But this is just the beginning of your life, Tatiana. You'll see. After three hundred million years you'll still be standing, too."

They weren't looking at each other.

"Yes," she whispered. "But not with you."

Alexander was leaving tomorrow. Today he couldn't look at her, couldn't touch her, couldn't talk to her. He didn't know how he was going to go on. He didn't know how she was going to go on.

He knew he would have to. He knew she would have to.

But how?

Where did they teach you how to live after you'd lost it all?

Who taught you how to go on after you had lost everything?

Tatiana. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Tatiana taught me how to go on after she had lost everything.

Alexander got up early, went for his swim, but afterward didn't come inside like always. Instead he sat on the bench outside and smoked, smoked with closed eyes, so he wouldn't see Lazarevo.

Just behind his closed eyes were the birches and the pines and the cones on the ground and the gray-green mountains beyond the rushing river. He smelled the remnants of the fire, he wanted tea, he wanted another cigarette. He wanted his life to be over.

He was gettingthat wish, wasn't he?

"Tania, I'm telling you, don't cry. That was our deal, do you hear me? I can't take it."

"Am I crying?" she said.

"I'm serious," Alexander said. "I can't do this. I need you--"

"You know what?" she said to him. "All the things you need me to be, I can't be right now. I'll be what I can." She was crying.

His throat burning, Alexander lay next to her. Side by side they steeled themselves in their bed, and she cradled his head to her breasts, and she whispered and whispered and whispered and by the time she was done, his hair was damp from her tears. But she wasn't done. She was never done. Her capacity to heal him, to harvest her love in him was endless.

"There was once a time," she said, "when you placed your hand on my chest, and I thought my whole life was in front of me. In front of the Hermitage. In front of that broken man and his crates of art. Do you remember?"

"How could I forget?" Alexander said. "I never forget that man."

Tatiana turned her face to him. They kissed. She cradled against him, tiny against him, she lay buried in his chest, and Alexander knew she was listening to his heart. She did that all that time; it was comforting and disquieting.

She was as resolute as ever, as fully loving, as completely giving, intensely tender, unbearably moving, as always affecting him utterly. But there was something else. She was holding him so desperately, crying over him, almost as if she were mourning him already, almost as if she were already grieving. She made love to him without letting go of his head, choking him against her and crying, as if she were not just saying goodbye, but saying goodbye to him for good.