The Bronze Horseman

by Paullina Simons

  “Stop it, Shura, please.”

  “No,” he said, rubbing against her back. “I can’t stop.” He breathed into her hair. “Any more than I can stop breathing.”

  Alexander’s hands moved to rest below her breasts. Her healing ribs hurt slightly and exquisitely from his touch, and Tatiana couldn’t help herself, she moaned. Squeezing her tighter, he turned her around to him, his mouth on her throat and whispered, “No, you can’t make a sound. Everything carries downstairs. You can’t let them hear you.”

  “Then take your hands off me,” Tatiana whispered back. “Or cover my mouth.”

  “I’ll cover your mouth, all right,” he said, kissing her fervidly.

  After three seconds Tatiana was ready to pass out. “Shura,” she moaned, grasping on to him. “God, you need to stop. How do we stop?” The pulling in her stomach was fierce.

  “We don’t.”

  “We do.”

  “We don’t,” he repeated, his lips on her.

  “I don’t mean . . . I mean, this? How do we ever get relief from this? I can’t go through my days like this, thinking of you. How do we get relief?”

  Alexander pulled back from her lips. “The only thing I want in my whole life,” he whispered hotly, “is to show you how we get relief, Tania.” His hands held her to him in a vise.

  Tatiana remembered Marina’s words. You are just a conquest to a soldier. And despite herself, despite the unflappable certainty in the things she believed to be true, despite the shining moment with Alexander at the top of the sacred cathedral up in the Leningrad sky, Tatiana’s worst got the better of her. Not trusting her own instincts, scared and doubting, she pushed Alexander away.

  “What’s the matter?” he said. “What?”

  Tatiana fought for her courage, struggled for the right words, afraid of asking, afraid of hearing his answer, afraid of making him angry or upset. He didn’t deserve it, and in the end she trusted and believed in him so much that it made her like herself less to think that she would give the cynical Marina any credit for her ill-chosen words. Yet the words sat in her chest and churned in her anxious, aching stomach.

  Tatiana didn’t want to burden Alexander. She knew he was already carrying plenty. At the same time she could not continue to let him touch her. His hands were tenderly caressing her from her hips up to her hair and back down again. “What’s the matter?” Alexander whispered. “Tania, tell me, what?”

  “Wait,” she said. “Shura, can you—” She limped sideways from him. “Wait, just stop, all right?”

  He didn’t come after her, and she was a couple of meters away in the arcade when she sank to the floor and gathered her knees to her chest.

  “Talk to me about Dimitri,” she said, feeling slightly deflated.

  “No,” Alexander said, continuing to stand. He folded his arms. “Not until you tell me what’s bothering you.”

  Tatiana shook her head. She just couldn’t have this conversation with him. “I’m fine. Really.” She smiled. Did she manage a good smile? Not according to his long face.

  “Just—It’s nothing.”

  “All the more reason to tell me.”

  Looking down at her long brown skirt, at her toes peeking out from the cast, Tatiana took a few deep breaths. “Shura, this is very, very difficult for me.”

  “I know,” he said, crouching where he stood, his arms coming to rest on his knees.

  “I don’t know how to say this to you,” she said without lifting her head.

  “Open your mouth and speak to me,” said Alexander. “Like always.”

  Tatiana couldn’t find her nerve. “Alexander, there are too many more important things for us to resolve, to discuss—” Tatiana managed a quick glance at him. He was studying her with curiosity and concern. “I can’t believe I’m wasting our minutes like this—” She stopped. “But . . .” He said nothing. “Am I . . . ?” It was so stupid. What did she know of these things? She sighed. “Listen, you know who helped me get out to see you tonight? My cousin Marina.”

  Alexander nodded, unsmiling. “Good. What does she have to do with us? Am I ever going to meet this girl?”

  “You might not want to after I tell you what she told me . . .” Tatiana paused. “About soldiers.” She lifted her eyes. Alexander’s suddenly comprehending and upset face was filled with annoyance, and guilt.

  That was not what she wanted to see. “She told me some interesting things.”

  “I bet she did.”

  “She wasn’t talking about you—”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “She was trying to warn me about Dimitri, but she said that to soldiers all girls were just a big conquest party and notches in their belt.” Tatiana stopped talking. She thought it was very brave of her to get out even this much.

  Slowly Alexander moved over to Tatiana. He didn’t touch her; he just sat by her quietly and finally said, “Do you have a question for me?”

  “Do you want a question?”

  “No.”

  “I won’t ask you then.”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t answer it. I said I didn’t want it.”

  Tatiana wished she could look into Alexander’s face. She just didn’t want to see the guilt there again. And she thought, what if, after our summer, after Kirov, after Luga, after all the unfathomable, breath-dissolving things that I have felt—what if after all that, I will right now find out that Marina was right about Alexander, too? Tatiana could not ask. Yet to have so much of what she felt be built on a lie . . . How could she not?

  “What’s your question?” Alexander repeated, so softly, so patiently, so everything of what he had been to her, that Tatiana, strengthened by him, as always, opened her mouth and in her smallest voice said, “Shura, is that what I am . . . just another conquest to you? Just more difficult? Am I, too, just another young, difficult notch in your belt?” She lifted her uncertain, vulnerable eyes to him.

  Alexander enveloped her in his arms whole, all gathered together like a tiny bandaged package. Kissing her head, he whispered, “I don’t know what I am going to do with you.” Pulling away slightly, he cupped her face. His eyes sparkled. “Tatiasha,” he said beseechingly, “what are you talking about? Have you forgotten the hospital? Conquest? Have you forgotten that if I wanted to, that night, or the following night, or any night that followed, I could have taken it from you standing?” He stared at her and said, even more quietly, “And you would have given it to me standing. Have you forgotten that it was I who put a stop to our senseless desperation?”

  Tatiana shut her eyes.

  Alexander held her face firmly in his hands. “Come on, open your eyes and look at me. Look at me, Tania.”

  She opened her mortified and emotional eyes to find Alexander gazing at her with unremitting tenderness. “Tania, please. You’re not my conquest, you’re not a notch in my belt. I know how difficult it is, what you are feeling. I wish you wouldn’t worry yourself for a second with things you know to be plainly not true.” He kissed her passionately. “Do you feel my lips?” Alexander whispered. “When I kiss you”—he kissed her tenderly—”don’t you feel my lips? What are they telling you? What are my hands telling you?”

  Tatiana closed her eyes and moaned. Why did she feel so helpless near him, why? It occurred to her that not only was he right, not only would she have given it to him then, but she would give it to him now, on the cold hard floor of the gilded rotunda. When she opened her eyes, Alexander was looking at her and smiling lightly. “Perhaps,” he said softly, “what you should be asking me is not, are you another notch in my belt, but why aren’t you another notch in my belt?”

  Tatiana’s hands were trembling as she held his sleeves. “All right,” she whispered. “Why?”

  Alexander laughed.

  Tatiana cleared her throat. “Do you know what else Marina told me?”

  “Oh, that Marina,” said Alexander, sighing and moving away. “What else did Marina tell you?”

  Tat
iana curled back into her knees. “Marina told me,” she said, “that all soldiers have it off with garrison hacks nonstop and never say no.”

  “My, my,” said Alexander, shaking his head. “That Marina is trouble. It’s a good thing you didn’t get off the bus to go and see her that Sunday in June.”

  “I agree,” said Tatiana, her face melting at the memory of them on that bus.

  And his face melted back.

  What was she even thinking? What was she even doing? Tatiana shook her head, upset at herself.

  “Now, listen to me. I didn’t want to tell you any of this, but . . .” Alexander drew a deep breath. “When I first got into the army, I saw that genuine relationships with women were going to be very difficult because of the nature of our confinement”—he shrugged—”and the realities of Soviet life. No rooms, no apartments, no hotels for the Soviet man and the Soviet woman to go to. You want the truth from me? Here it is. I don’t want you to be afraid of it or afraid of me because of it. On our weekend furlough, it is true, we would go out for some beers and often find ourselves in the presence of all kinds of young women, who were quite willing to . . . knock around with soldiers without any strings attached.” Alexander stopped.

  “And did you”—Tatiana held her breath—”knock around?”

  “Once or twice,” Alexander replied. He didn’t look at her. “Don’t be upset by this, please.”

  “I’m not upset,” Tatiana mouthed. Stunned, yes. Torn with self-doubt, yes. Entranced by you, yes again.

  “We were all just having a bit of youthful fun. I kept myself extremely unattached and detached. I hated entanglements—”

  “What about Dasha?”

  “What about her?” Alexander said tiredly.

  “Was Dasha . . . ?” Tatiana couldn’t get the words out.

  “Tatia, please,” said Alexander, shaking his head. “Don’t think about these things. Ask Dasha what kind of a girl she was. I’m not the one to tell you.”

  “Alexander, but Dasha is an entanglement!” Tatiana exclaimed. “Dasha does have strings attached to her. Dasha has her heart.”

  “No,” he said. “She has you.”

  Tatiana sighed heavily. This was too hard for her—talking about Alexander and her sister. Hearing about Alexander and meaningless girls was easier than hearing about one Dasha. Tatiana sat with her hands around her knees. She wanted to ask him about the present time but couldn’t get the words out. She didn’t want to ask him about anything. She wanted to go back to how it was before the night in the hospital, before the wretched confusion of her body blinded her to the truth she felt about him.

  Alexander rubbed her thighs. “I can feel you’re afraid.” Quietly, he added, “Tania, I beg you—don’t let stupidity come between us.”

  “All right,” she said with remorse.

  “Don’t let bullshit that has nothing to do with us keep you away from me. We already have so much keeping you away from me.” He paused. “Everything.”

  “All right, Alexander.”

  “Let it all fall away, Tatiana. What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m afraid of being wrong about you,” she whispered.

  “Tania, how could you of all people be wrong about me?” Alexander clenched his fists in frustration. “Can’t you see,” he said, “it’s exactly because of who I had been that I came to you? What’s the matter?” he asked. “You couldn’t see my loneliness?”

  “Barely,” Tatiana replied, clutching her hands to her chest, “through my own.” Falling back against the railing, Tatiana said, “Shura, I’m surrounded by half-truth and innuendo. You and I don’t have a moment to talk anymore, like we used to, a moment to be alone—”

  “A moment of privacy,” said Alexander, speaking the last word in English.

  “Of what?” She didn’t know that word. She would have to look it up when she got home. “What about now? Besides Dasha, are you still—”

  “Tatiana,” said Alexander, “all the things you’re worried about—they’re gone from my life. Do you know why? Because when I met you, I knew that if I continued and a good girl like you ever asked me about them, I wouldn’t be able to look you in the face and tell you the truth. I would have to look you in the face and lie.” He was looking into her face. The wordless truth was in his eyes.

  Tatiana smiled at him and breathed out, the tight, sick feeling in her stomach dissolving with her exhaled breath. She wanted him to come and hug her. “I’m sorry, Alexander,” she whispered. “I’m sorry for my doubt. I’m just too young.”

  “You’re too much of everything,” he said. “God!” he exclaimed. “How insane this is—never to have the time to explain, to talk anything out, never to have a minute—”

  We’ve had a minute, Tatiana thought. We had our minutes on the bus. And at Kirov. We had our minutes in Luga. And in the Summer Garden. Breathless minutes, we had. What we want, she thought, keeping herself from welling up, is eternity.

  “I’m sorry, Shura,” Tatiana said, grasping his hands. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “Tania, if only we could have a moment of privacy,” Alexander said, again speaking the last word in English, “you would never doubt me again.”

  “What is this privacy?” she repeated.

  Alexander smiled sadly. “Being secluded from the view or from the presence of other human beings. When we need to be alone together to have intimacy, that’s impossible in two rooms with six other people,” he explained in Russian. “We say, we want some privacy.”

  “Oh.” Tatiana blushed. So that was the word she had been searching for, ever since she met him! “There is no word for anything like that in Russian.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “And there is a word for this in America?”

  “Yes,” said Alexander. “Privacy.”

  Tatiana remained silent.

  Alexander slid closer, putting both his legs around her. “Tania, when will we next have a moment alone?” he asked, peering into her eyes.

  “We’re alone now,” she said.

  “When will I next be able to kiss you?”

  “Kiss me now,” she whispered.

  But Alexander didn’t. He said grimly, “Do you know that it might be never? The Germans are here. Do you know what that means? Life, as you knew it, is over.”

  “What about this summer?” she asked. “Nothing’s been quite the same since June 22.”

  “No, it hasn’t,” he agreed. “But before today we were simply arming ourselves. Now it’s war. Leningrad will be the battleground for your freedom. And at the end, how many of us will be left standing? How many of us will be free?”

  Oh, God. “Is that why you come every chance you get, even if it means dragging Dimitri with you?” Tatiana asked.

  With a small nod and a large sigh, Alexander said, “I’m always afraid it’ll be the last time I’m going to see your face.”

  Tatiana swallowed, curled into her knees. “Why . . . do you always drag him with you?” she asked. “Can’t you ask him to leave me alone? He doesn’t listen to me. What am I going to do with him?”

  Alexander made no reply, and Tatiana anxiously tried to catch his eye. “Tell me about Dimitri, Shura,” she said quietly. “What do you owe him?”

  Alexander looked at his cigarettes.

  Faintly Tatiana said, “Do you owe him . . . me?”

  “Tatiana,” Alexander said, “Dimitri knows who I am.”

  “Stop,” she uttered almost inaudibly.

  “If I tell you, you won’t believe it,” Alexander said. “Once I tell you, there will be no going back for us.”

  “There is no going back for us now,” Tatiana said, and wanted to mouth a prayer.

  “I don’t know what to do about him,” Alexander said.

  “I will help you,” said Tatiana, her heart scared and swelling. “Tell me.”

  Alexander moved away on the narrow balcony to sit diagonally across from her against the wall, stretching his leg
s out to her. Tatiana continued to sit against the railing. She sensed he didn’t want her too close. Taking off her one shoe, Tatiana stretched her bare feet out to his boots. Her foot was half the size of his.

  Shuddering as if trying to stave off a beast, Alexander began. “When my mother was arrested,” he said, not looking at Tatiana, “the NKVD came for me, too. I wasn’t even able to say good-bye to her.” Alexander looked away. “I don’t like to talk about my mother, as you can imagine. I was accused of distributing some capitalist propaganda when I had been fourteen, still in Moscow, and going to Communist Party meetings with my father. So at seventeen, in Leningrad, I was arrested and taken right to Kresty, the inner-city prison for nonpolitical criminals. They didn’t have room for me at Shpalerka, the Big House, the political detention center. I was convicted in camera in about three hours,” Alexander said with scorn. “They didn’t even bother with an interrogation. I think all their interrogators were tied up with more important prisoners. I got ten years in Vladivostok. Can you imagine?”

  “No,” said Tatiana.

  “You know how many of us finally got on that train headed for Vladivostok? A thousand. One man said to me, ‘Oh, I just got out, and now this again.’ He told me the prison camp we were going to had 80,000 people in it. Eighty thousand, Tania! One camp. I told him I didn’t believe it. I had just turned seventeen.” Alexander looked at her. “Like you are now.” He continued, “What could I do? I couldn’t spend ten years of my youth in prison, could I?”

  “No,” she said.

  “I had always believed, you see, that I was meant to live a good life. My mother and father believed in me. I believed in myself—” He broke off. “Prison never entered into it. I never stole, I never broke windows, I didn’t terrorize old ladies. I did nothing wrong. I wasn’t going. So,” he said, “we were crossing the river Volga, near Kazan, thirty meters up over a precipice. I knew it was either now or I was going to Vladivostok for what seemed to me like the rest of my life. I had too much hope for myself. So I jumped right into the river.” Alexander laughed. “They didn’t even stop the train. They thought for sure I had died in the fall.”

  “They didn’t know who they were dealing with,” said Tatiana, wanting to put her arms around him, but he was too far away. “When you jumped, was that when you found out you indeed could swim?” She smiled.