The Bronze Horseman

by Paullina Simons

  Tatiana asked Petr Petrov down the hall for help with carrying Papa to the drunk ward at Suvorovsky Hospital. There were no beds available at Grechesky, where Tatiana worked.

  The girls and Petr carried Papa to the hospital—on the north side of an east-west street—where he was admitted and put into a large room with four other drunk men. Tatiana asked for a sponge and some water and washed her father’s face, and then sat with him for a few minutes, holding his flaccid hand. “I’m really sorry, Papa,” she said.

  She sat with him, holding his hand, every once in a while squeezing it and saying, “Papa, can you hear me?”

  Finally he groaned in a way that told her maybe he could. He opened his unfocused eyes.

  “Right here, Papa,” she kept saying. “I’m right here. Look at me.”

  His head bobbed on the pillow. She continued to hold his hand. “You’re in the hospital for just a few days. Until you get sober. Then you’ll come home. Everything will be all right then.” Tatiana felt him squeeze her hand. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to bring Pasha back for you. But you know, the rest of us are all still here.”

  She saw tears in his eyes. His mouth opened as he squeezed her hand again, whispering hoarsely, “It’s all my fault . . .”

  Tatiana kissed him on the head and said, “No, darling Papa. It’s not. It’s just war. But you do need to get sober.” He closed his eyes, and Tatiana went home.

  At home Dasha was upset at Tatiana and shouted at her while Marina mediated. Tatiana sat on the sofa in the room and remained silent, imagining herself sitting peacefully between Deda and Babushka. At one point Dasha got herself so worked up that she leaned forward to hit Tatiana and was pulled away by Marina, who said, “Dasha, this is ridiculous. Stop it!”

  Dasha ripped herself from Marina’s grasp, but Marina exclaimed, “Stop yourself. She is hurt enough! Can’t you see she’s hurt enough?”

  Tatiana watched Marina with soft eyes and Dasha with harder ones, and then she got up wearily and went to walk past them to the other room. She needed to lie down and never have another day like this one. Or like the last one. Or the one before. Dasha grabbed her. Tatiana twisted away, raised her face to her sister, and said, “Dasha, in one minute I’m going to lose my patience. Stop and leave me alone. Can you do that?”

  Her eyes remained unblinking on her sister, who let go of her and left Tatiana alone.

  Later that night in bed Marina stroked Tatiana’s back, whispering, “It’s all right, Tania. It’ll be all right.”

  “And you know this how?” Tatiana whispered. “We’re bombed every day, we’re blockaded, soon there will be no food, Papa can’t stop drinking—”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” whispered Marina.

  “Then I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tatiana whispered back, “but before you tell me, stop talking.”

  Dasha was not in bed.

  Tatiana slept with her face to the wall, her hand on Alexander’s The Bronze Horseman book, her brow throbbing. But in the morning it felt a little better. She dabbed some diluted iodine on the cut and went to work, her face discolored by the sienna antiseptic.

  During her lunch hour she left the hospital and slowly walked to the Field of Mars. It had been made unrecognizable by the trenches dug around it and the concrete emplacements for artillery weapons erected around the perimeter. The field itself was mined; she could not walk there. All the benches had been removed. The only thing Tatiana could do was stand several hundred meters from the archway that led to Pavlov Barracks and watch smoking, laughing soldiers loudly filtering out.

  She stood for half an hour. Then she went back to the hospital, thinking, not bombs nor my broken heart can take away from me walking barefoot with you in jasmine June through the Field of Mars.

  7

  That evening during the post-dinner bombing show the Suvorovsky Hospital where Papa lay was hit.

  Three bombs fell on the hospital, which caught fire and burned into the night, despite the efforts of the firefighters. The hospital was not made of brick, which resisted fire, but of wattle and daub, the early-eighteenth-century material out of which most of Leningrad was built. The whole building collapsed onto itself, then went up in flames. The few people who were able to move jumped from the windows, screaming as they fell.

  Papa, at forty-three years old, having been born in the previous century, wasted on remorse, unable to sober up, never rose from his bed.

  Dasha and Tatiana and Marina and Mama ran down Suvorovsky and watched with unsteady, horrified impotence as the inferno conquered the firemen, the water hoses, the building, the night.

  The girls helped to throw useless buckets of water on the ground-floor windows. They got sand from the rooftops of the surrounding buildings, but it was all just meaningless movement sustained by inertia. Tatiana wrapped charred bodies in wet sheets provided by Grechesky Hospital. She stayed until morning. Dasha and Marina went back home with Mama.

  Only a handful of people had made it out alive. The firemen could not even find Papa’s body and made no apologies as they put out the last of the flames. They were not taking bodies out of that hospital. “Look at the building, girlie,” said one fireman. “Does it look like we can get anything out? It’s all cinder. Once it cools down, you’ll be able to touch it and watch it turn to black ash.” He patted her absentmindedly on the shoulder. “Time to let go. Your father, is it? Fucking Germans. Comrade Stalin is right. Don’t know how, but we’re going to bring it all home to them.”

  As Tatiana walked slowly home at dawn, she thought of herself being buried beneath Luga station, feeling life ooze out of the three people she had crawled under. She hoped Papa had never woken up, never suffered.

  At home she silently got the family’s ration cards—all except Papa’s—and went out to get bread.

  If life in the two communal rooms was difficult for Tatiana before, it became nearly impossible after the death of her father.

  Mama was inconsolable and not talking to Tatiana.

  Dasha was angry and not talking to Tatiana.

  Tatiana wasn’t sure if Dasha was angry because of Papa or if Dasha was angry because of Alexander. Dasha was certainly not saying. She wasn’t talking to Tatiana at all.

  Marina visited her mother daily in Vyborg and continued to level her understanding eyes on Tatiana.

  And Babushka painted. She painted an apple pie that Tatiana said looked good enough to eat.

  A few days after Papa’s death Dasha asked Tatiana to come with her to the barracks to tell Alexander about what had happened. Tatiana dragged Marina along for strength. She wanted to see him, and yet . . . there was so little to say. Or was there too much to say? Tatiana wasn’t sure, couldn’t figure it out without Alexander’s help, and was afraid to face him.

  Alexander was not at the barracks, and neither was Dimitri. Anatoly Marazov came into the passageway and introduced himself.

  Tatiana knew of him well from Alexander. “Isn’t Dimitri under your command?” she asked.

  “No, he is under Sergeant Kashnikov, who has one of the platoons under my command, but they’ve all been sent by powers higher than me to Tikhvin.”

  “Tikhvin? On the other side of the river?” said Tatiana.

  “Yes, in a barge across Ladoga. Not enough men up in Tikhvin.”

  “And Alexander, too?” Tatiana said, short of breath.

  “No, he’s up at Karelia,” Marazov replied, looking Tatiana over appreciatively. “So are you the girl?” Marazov smiled. “The girl he’s forsaken all others for?”

  “Not her,” Dasha said rudely, coming up to Tatiana. “Me. I’m Dasha. Don’t you remember? We met in Sadko back in early June.”

  “Dasha,” mumbled Marazov. Tatiana paled, leaning harder against the wall. Marina stared at her.

  Marazov turned to Tatiana. “And what’s your name?”

  “Tatiana,” she said.

  Marazov’s eyes flared and then dimmed. Dasha asked, �
�Do you know each other?”

  “No. We’ve never met,” he said.

  “Oh,” said Dasha. “Just for a moment you looked as if you recognized my sister.”

  Marazov left his gaze on Tatiana. “Not at all,” he said slowly, but his eyes flickered a confused familiarity at her. He shrugged. “I’ll tell Alexander you stopped by. I’m going to join him in Karelia in a few days.”

  “Yes, please tell him that our father has died,” Dasha said. Tatiana turned and walked out of the passageway, pulling Marina with her.

  The family was split apart like faulted earth. Mama could not move from her bed. Babushka took care of her. Mama didn’t want to have anything to do with Tatiana, or her apologies, or her pleas for forgiveness. Finally Tatiana stopped pleading.

  The emptiness Tatiana felt overpowered her; the sense of guilt, the anchor of responsibility weighed her down. It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault, she kept repeating to herself in the mornings as she cut the bread, put some on her plate, and ate it silently. It would take her maybe thirty seconds to eat her share, and she would pick up all the little crumbs with her forefinger, and then she would turn the plate over and shake it onto the table. All that—thirty seconds. And thirty seconds of, it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault.

  After Papa died, his half-kilo-a-day bread ration stopped. Mama finally thrust 200 rubles into Tatiana’s hand and told her to go and buy some more food. She came back home, having spent the money on seven potatoes, three onions, half a kilo of flour, and a kilo of white bread, which was as rare as meat.

  Tatiana continued to get the rations, and once or twice as she stood in line for their food, she thought with shame that if only they hadn’t told the authorities immediately that Papa had died, they could still be getting his ration until the end of September.

  She thought it with shame, but she did not stop thinking it.

  Because when September turned into October, and the rawness of her sorrow dulled yet the emptiness remained, Tatiana realized that the emptiness was not sorrow but hunger.

  NIGHT SANK DOWN

  EVEN during the warm months of the summer, the air in Leningrad carried a vague chill, as if the Arctic constantly reminded the northern city that winter and darkness were only a few hundred kilometers away. The wind carried ice in it, even in the pale nights of July. But now that October was here, now that the flat and forlorn city was shelled every day and stood barren and silent at night, the air wasn’t just cold, and the wind carried on its breath more than the Arctic. It carried a distinct sense of desperation, a harried hopelessness. Tatiana bundled herself into a gray coat and put Pasha’s old gray hat with earmuffs on her head and wrapped a ripped brown scarf around her neck and mouth, but she couldn’t protect her nose from breathing in the icy daggers.

  The bread ration had been reduced again, to 300 grams each for Tatiana, Mama, and Dasha and 200 grams each for Babushka and Marina. Less than a kilo and a half for all of them.

  Besides bread, the stores weren’t giving out or selling anything else. There were no eggs, no butter, no white bread, no cheese, no meat of any kind, no sugar, no oatmeal, no barley, no fruit, no vegetables. Once in early October, Tatiana bought three onions and made onion soup. It was fairly good. It would have been better with more salt, but Tatiana was very careful with her salt.

  The family hung on to their supplies of food, but every night they had to open a can of ham, saying a short word of thanks to Deda. They had to stop cooking it outside in the kitchen because the smell from the ham would permeate the communal apartment, and frequently Sarkova and Slavin and the Petrovs would come to the kitchen, stand near the stove, and say to Tatiana, “You think maybe there’s a little for us?”

  Slavin would emit cackling noises as Dasha sent them all back to their rooms, cackling noises simmering with unrepressed glee. “That’s right, eat the ham, girlie-burlie. Eat that ham. Because I just got the latest report, straight from the Führer himself. Herr Hitler plans to coincide his troop withdrawal from Leningrad with your last can of ham.” He laughed hysterically. “Or haven’t you heard?”

  The Metanovs bought a small freestanding cast-iron stove called a bourzhuika, which had an exhaust flue that Tatiana stretched to a small framed opening in the windowpane. The flat iron surface of the bourzhuika served as the cooktop. Only a little wood was needed to fire up the stove; the problem was that it only warmed up a small section of the room.

  Alexander was still away in Karelia. Dimitri was in Tikhvin. No one had heard from either of them.

  In the second week of October, Anton finally got his wish. A fragmentation bomb split over Grechesky, and a piece of metal flew from the sky, hitting Anton and slicing his leg. Tatiana wasn’t on the roof. After Tatiana found out, she secretly brought a can of ham to Anton, and he ate the whole thing by himself in ravenous gulps. “Anton,” Tatiana said, “what about your Mama?”

  “She eats at work,” he said. “She has soup. She has oatmeal.”

  “What about Kirill?”

  “What about him, Tania?” Anton snapped impatiently. “Did you bring it for Kirill or for me?”

  Tatiana didn’t like the way Mariska was looking. Her curly hair started to fall out. Every day Tatiana secretly made Mariska oatmeal. But she knew she couldn’t continue to feed Mariska; Tatiana’s family was already unhappy with her. The oatmeal had a bit of salt and sugar, but it had no butter or milk. It wasn’t oatmeal, it was gruel. Mariska would eat it as if it were her last meal. Finally Tatiana took her to the children’s ward in Grechesky Hospital, carrying her for the last block.

  When Tatiana was younger, she would sometimes forget to eat for half a day. And then suddenly remembering, she would say, “Oh, no, I’m STAR-ving.” An empty rumbling stomach, a salivating mouth. She would devour soup or pie or mashed potatoes, gorge herself, fall away from the table, and then she wouldn’t be STAR-ving anymore.

  This feeling that Tatiana experienced, faintly at the end of September, more distinctly at the beginning of October, was similar in that she had the empty rumbling stomach, she had the salivating mouth. She would devour the clear soup, the black thick mud bread, the oats, and when she was done, she would fall away from the table and realize she was still STAR-ving. She would have some of the crackers she had toasted. But the cracker bag was diminishing in size by the hour. The nights were just too long after work. Dasha and Mama began to take some crackers with them in their coat pockets on the way to work. First a couple, then more and more. Babushka nibbled on crackers all day while she painted or read. Marina took some crackers to university and some for her dying mother.

  After they bought the bourzhuika, Mama gave Tatiana the rest of her money—500 rubles—one cold morning and told her to go to the commercial store and buy anything she could get her hands on. The commercial store near St. Nicholas’s Cathedral was far, and when Tatiana got there, she found a double irony. Not only was the store bombed out and abandoned, but there was a sign on the crushed window dated September 18—no food left.

  Slowly she went home. September 18, four weeks ago, Papa still alive, Dasha planning to marry.

  Marry Alexander.

  At home Mama didn’t believe Tatiana about the store and went to hit her in frustration and stopped herself, which Tatiana found so miraculous that she went to her mother, hugged her and said, “Mamochka, don’t worry about anything. I will take care of you.” Tatiana gave Mama back her money, put the ration bread on the table, taking just a small piece for herself, and swallowed it ravenously while she walked slowly to the hospital, thinking about nothing but lunchtime, when she would get her soup and maybe some oatmeal, too. Tatiana thought about little else but food. The acute hunger she experienced from morning until night defeated most other feelings in her body. While walking to Fontanka she thought about her bread, and while she worked she thought about lunch, and in the afternoon she thought about dinner, and after dinner she thought about the piece of cracker she could have before she went to bed.r />
  And in bed Tatiana thought about Alexander.

  Once Marina offered to get the rations instead of Tatiana.

  Puzzled, Tatiana gave her the ration cards. “Want my company?”

  “No,” Marina said. “I’ll be glad to do it.”

  Marina came back to her waiting family and put the bread on the table. There was maybe half a kilo.

  “Marina,” said Tatiana, “where is the rest of the bread?”

  “I’m sorry,” Marina said. “I ate it.”

  “You ate a kilo of our bread?” Tatiana did not believe it.

  “I’m sorry, I was very hungry.”

  Tatiana looked at Marina in sharp surprise. For six weeks Tatiana had been going to get her family rations, and it had never even entered her head to eat the bread five people were waiting for.

  And through it all Tatiana was STAR-ving.

  And through it all she missed Alexander.

  2

  One morning in the middle of October, as Tatiana neared the Fontanka embankment, feeling in her coat pocket for the ration cards, she saw an officer up ahead, and through her bleary, early-morning haze she wanted him to look like Alexander. She came closer. It couldn’t be him, this man, looking much older, grimy, his trench coat and rifle covered in mud. Carefully she moved forward. It was Alexander.

  When she came up to him and looked into his face, she saw sadness mixed with bleak affection. Tatiana came a little closer. Her gloved hand touched his chest. “Shura, whatever happened to you?”

  “Oh, Tania,” he said. “Forget about me. Look how thin you are. Your face, it’s . . .”

  “I’ve always been thin. Are you all right?”

  “But your lovely round face,” he said, his voice cracking.

  “That was a different life, Alexander,” Tatiana said. “How was—”

  “Brutal,” he said, shrugging. “Look. Look at what I brought you.” He opened his black rucksack, from which he pulled out a hunk of white bread and, wrapped in white paper, cheese! Cheese and a piece of cold pork meat. Tatiana stared at the food, breathing shallowly. “Oh, my,” she said. “Wait till they see. They’ll be so happy.”