The Bronze Horseman

“Oh, for God’s sake! You would rather be an old maid in a cold room without plumbing than make yourself a better life?”

“Yes,” she said. “There is no other life for me, so you can just forget it.”

Alexander whispered, “Tania, please…” He couldn’t continue. “And what about when Mekhlis comes for you? What are you going to do then?”

“I’ll go where they send me. I’ll go to Kolyma,” she said. “I’ll go to Taymir Peninsula. Eventually Communism will fall—”

“You sure about this?”

“Yes. Eventually there won’t be any more people left to reconstruct. And then they’ll let me out.”

“Dear sweet Jesus,” Alexander whispered. “It’s not just you anymore. You have to think about our baby!”

“What are you even talking about? Dr. Sayers is not going to take me without you. I have no right to—no claim on—America,” Tatiana said. “Alexander, I will go anywhere in the world with you. You want to go to America? I say yes. You want to go to Australia? Yes, I say. Mongolia? The Gobi Desert? Dagestan? Lake Baikal? Germany? The cold side of hell? I say, when are we leaving? Anywhere you go—I will go with you. But if you are staying, then I’m staying, too. I’m not leaving my baby’s father in the Soviet Union.”

Leaning over an overwhelmed Alexander, Tatiana pressed her breasts into his face, kissing his head. Then she sat back and kissed his shaking fingers. “What did you say to me in Leningrad? ‘What kind of a life can I build,’ you said, ‘knowing I have left you to die—or to rot—in the Soviet Union?’ I’m quoting you back to you. Those were your words.” She smiled. “And on this one point I will have to agree with you.” She nodded and said softly, “If I left you, no matter which road I would take, with ponderous clatter indeed, the Bronze Horseman would pursue me all through that long night into my own maddening dust.”

Alexander said with emotion, “Tatiana—it’s war. All around us is war.” He couldn’t look at her. “Men die in war.”

A tear escaped Tatiana’s eye, no matter how strong she tried to be. “Please don’t die,” she whispered. “I don’t think I can bury you. I already buried everyone else.”

“How can I die,” Alexander said, his voice breaking, “when you have poured your immortal blood into me?”

And then Dimitri came one cold morning, holding Alexander’s rucksack in his hands. He was limping badly on his right leg. The errand boy for the generals, the worthless lackey, constantly shuffling cigarettes and vodka and books between camps and tents in the rear, the ru

“Wouldn’t you know it? Some stupidity at the embankment. Some guys… I don’t know, they were pissed off. Look at my face.”

Alexander saw the bruises.

“I was charging too much for smokes, they said. Take it, I said, take it all. They did. Beat the shit out of me anyway.” Dimitri smirked. “Well, they won’t be laughing for long.” He came and sat in the chair under the window. “Tatiana did a marvelous job on me. Fixed me right up.” Something in Di-mitri’s voice twisted Alexander’s stomach. “She’s marvelous, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Alexander. “She is a good nurse.”

“Good nurse, good woman, good—” Dimitri broke off.

“That’s great,” said Alexander. “Thanks for my ruck.”

“Oh, sure.” Dimitri got up to go and then, almost as an afterthought, sat back down and said, “I wanted to make sure you had all you needed in your ruck: your books, your pen and paper. As it turned out, you didn’t have any pen or paper, so it was a good thing I checked, because I put some in for you. In case you wanted to write letters.” He smiled pleasantly. “I also added some cigarettes and a new lighter.”

Holding his rucksack, Alexander, with darkening eyes, said, “You looked through my things?” The twisting in his stomach intensified.

“Oh, just to be helpful.” Dimitri again made as if to go. “But you know…” He turned back. “I found something very interesting in it.”

Alexander turned his face away. Tatiana’s letters he had reluctantly burned. But there was one thing he could not burn. One beacon of hope for light that he continued to carry with him. “Dimitri,” Alexander said, throwing the rucksack by the side of his bed and crossing his arms in silent defiance, “what do you want?”

Picking up the rucksack, Dimitri, in a friendly, polite ma

“Look what I found at the very bottom.”

Alexander said, “So?” His voice was calm.

“So? Well, you’re so right. Why shouldn’t you be carrying around a dress owned by your dead fiancée’s sister?”

“What’s the surprise to you, Dimitri? That you found the dress? Can’t be that much of a surprise, can it?” Alexander said acidly. “You were going through my personal belongings looking for it.”

“Well, yes and no,” Dimitri said jovially. “I was a little surprised, I admit. A little taken aback.”

“Taken aback? By what?”

“Well, I thought, this is so interesting. A whole dress, and there is Tatiana here at the front, working side by side with a Red Cross doctor, and there is Alexander in the same hospital. I suspected it was not a coincidence. I always thought you had feelings for each other.” He glanced at Alexander. “Always, you know. From the begi

With a grinding of his teeth to lessen the throbbing in his temples, Alexander said slowly, “What did he tell you?”

“That you were sending the rest of your money to a Tatiana Metanova on Fifth Soviet!”

“I am, yes.”

“Absolutely, why not? So I went back to Colonel Stepanov and said, ‘Colonel, isn’t it fantastic that our wanton Alexander has finally found himself a nice girl, like our Nurse Metanova,’ and the colonel said he had been surprised himself that you got married in Molotov on your summer furlough and told no one.”

Alexander said nothing.

“Yes!” exclaimed Dimitri in a frank and cheerful ma

Alexander looked away from Dimitri, sitting in the chair, and looked at the other soldiers lying on the beds. He wondered if he could get up. Could he get up? Walk around? What could he do?

Dimitri got up. “Listen, it’s great! I just wanted to say congratulations. I’m going to go find Tania now and congratulate her.”

Tatiana came to Alexander later that afternoon. After she fed him, she went to get a pail of warm water and some soap. “Tania, don’t carry that,” he said. “It’s too heavy for you.”

“Stop it,” she said, smiling. “I’m carrying your baby. You think a backet is too heavy for me?”

They didn’t speak much. Tatiana washed Alexander and shaved him with a razor and then dried his face. He kept his eyes closed so she wouldn’t see through him. Every once in a while Alexander smelled her warm breath on him, and every once in a while her lips touched his eyebrows or his fingers. He felt her stroking his face and heard her sigh.

“Shura,” she said heavily, “I saw Dimitri today.”

“Yes.” It was not a question.