The Bronze Horseman (60 page)

After he stood up, Dasha said, “Say good-bye to Tania. Or did you already say good-bye?”

“Good-bye, Tatiana,” he said.

“Good-bye,” she replied, staring at him.

“As soon as you get to Molotov, I want to hear from you. Promise?” Alexander said, hopping off the truck.

“Alexander!” Dasha called after him.

“Yes?” he leaned in.

“Tell me, how
long
have you loved my sister?”

Alexander glanced from Tatiana’s face to Dasha’s and back again. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it with a shudder of his head.

“How long? Tell me. Look at us all—what secrets can we possibly have left? Tell me, darling. Tell me.”

Setting his jaw, Alexander said forcefully, “Dasha, I
never
loved your sister.
Never
. I love
you
. You know what we have.”

“You told me that next summer maybe we would get married,” said Dasha weakly. “Did you mean it?”

Nodding, he replied, “Of course I meant it. Next summer I will come and we will get married. Now, go.”

He blew Dasha a kiss and disappeared, not even glancing at Tatiana. And she desperately wanted just one small
last
glance, almost in the dark, his soft eyes on her, so she could see a bit of truth. But he didn’t look at her. She didn’t see any truth. She saw Alexander not even breathe her way. She saw Alexander
deny
her.

The tarpaulin was closed, the truck was off, and they were in the dark again. Except that now there was no Alexander between the darkness and the light, and no moon, just gunfire and the sound of bursting in the distance that Tatiana could barely hear, so loud was the sound of bursting inside her chest. Finally she closed her eyes, so that Dasha, who was lying with her eyes open, couldn’t look up and see what must have been so plain on Tatiana’s face.

“Tania?”

She didn’t answer. Her nose was hurting from breathing the freezing air. She parted her lips and breathed through her mouth.

“Tanechka?”

“Yes, Dasha, dear?” she whispered at last. “Are you all right?”

“Open your eyes, sister.”

Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

“Open them.”

She opened them. “Dasha, I’m very tired. You’ve kept your eyes closed for hours. Now it’s my turn. I’ve pulled your sled and held your legs and helped you down the hill. Now you’re lying on me, and I just want to close my eyes for a second, for a minute. All right?”

Dasha didn’t say anything but looked at Tatiana with lucid clarity. Tatiana held her sister’s face and closed her eyes, listening to Dasha’s wet cough.

“How did it feel, Tania, hearing him say he
never
loved you?”

With the greatest effort Tatiana stopped herself from a groan of pain. “Fine,” she said hoarsely. “As it should be.”

“Then why did your body recoil as if he had hit you?”

“Don’t know what you mean,” Tatiana said faintly.

“Open your eyes.”

“No.”

Dasha spoke. “You love him unbearably, don’t you?
How
did you manage to hide it from me, Tania? You couldn’t love a man more.”

I couldn’t love a man more. “Dasha,” said Tatiana with finality and grace, “I love you more.” She never opened her eyes as she spoke.

“And you
didn’t
hide it from me,” said Dasha. “Not at all. You put your love for him on a shelf, not in a cupboard. Marina was right. I was just blind.” She closed her own eyes, but her voice carried across the truck, to the woman with her baby and husband, to Tatiana, to the truck driver. “You left it for me to see in a thousand places. I see every bitter one of them now.” She started to cry, breaking into a coughing fit. “But you were a child! How could a child love anyone?” Dasha fell quiet and then groaned.

I grew up, Dasha, thought Tatiana. Somewhere between Lake Ilmen and the start of war, the child had grown.

Outside there was a distant sound of cannons, of mortar fire. Inside the truck was silent.

Tatiana wondered about the baby that was held by the mother, a young woman with sallow skin and sores on her cheeks. Her husband was leaning on her shoulder; in fact, he was more than leaning, he was falling on his wife, and no matter how hard she pulled at him to sit upright, he would not sit up. The woman started to cry. The baby never made a sound.

Tatiana spoke to the woman. “Can I help you?”

“Listen, you’ve got your own problems,” said the woman brusquely. “My husband is very weak.”

Dasha said, “I’m not a problem. Pull me up, Tania, and lean me against the wall. My chest hurts too much to keep lying down. Go, help her.”

Tatiana crawled across the truck to the woman and her husband. The woman was clutching her baby with both arms and not letting go.

Tatiana shook the man a bit, pulled him up briefly, but he fell back down, and this time he fell to the floor of the truck. He was heavily wrapped in a scarf, and his coat was buttoned to his neck. It took Tatiana ten minutes to unbutton him. The woman kept talking to her nonstop.

“He is not doing well, my husband. And my daughter is not much better. I have no milk for her. You know, she was born in October, what luck! Huh, what bad luck for a baby to be born in October. And when I got pregnant last February, we were so happy. We thought it was a sign from God. We just got married the September before. We were so excited. Our first baby! Leonid was working at the city public transportation department; he couldn’t leave and his ration was quite good, but then the trams stopped, and there was nothing for him to do—why are you unbuttoning him?”

Without waiting for an answer, the woman continued. “I’m Nadezhda. My daughter was born, and I had no milk for her. What to give her? I’ve been giving her soy milk, but it gave her terrible diarrhea, so I had to stop. And my husband really needed the food. Thank God, we finally got on the truck. We’ve been waiting to get out for so long. Now it will all be all right. Kobona will have bread and cheese, someone said. What I would do to see a chicken, or something hot. I’ll eat horsemeat, I don’t care. Just something for Leonid.”

Tatiana took her two fingers off the man’s neck and very carefully buttoned him up again and wrapped the scarf around his neck. She moved him slightly so he was not lying on top of his wife’s legs and went back to sit by Dasha. The truck was deathly quiet. All Tatiana could hear was Dasha’s shallow breathing broken by bursts of coughing. That, and Alexander saying he never loved her.

Both sisters closed their eyes so as not to look at the woman and her dead baby and her dead husband. Tatiana put her hand on Dasha’s head. Dasha did not push it away.

They got to Kobona at daybreak—daybreak, a purple haze on the dark horizon. The features on Dasha’s face became dim instead of vague. Why was Tatiana noticing Dasha’s rasping breathing all of a sudden?

“Can you get up, Dasha?” Tatiana asked. “We’re here.”

“I can’t,” she said.

Nadezhda was shouting for someone to help her and her husband. No one came. Rather, a soldier came, lifted the tarpaulin off the back of the truck, and grunted, “Everybody off. We’ve got to load up and drive back.”

Tatiana pulled at Dasha. “Come on, Dasha, get up.”

“Go and get help, Tania,” Dasha said. “I can’t move anymore.”

Yanking at her sister, Tatiana pulled Dasha up on all fours. “You crawl to the edge, and I’ll help you down.”

“Can you help my husband down?” said Nadezhda plaintively. “Help him, please. You’re so strong. You see he is sick.”

Tatiana shook her head. “He’s too big for me.”

“Oh, come on, you’re moving. Help us, will you? Don’t be selfish.”

“Just wait,” said Tatiana. “I’m going to help my sister down, and then I will help you.”

“Leave her alone,” Dasha said to Nadezhda. “Your husband is dead. Leave my poor sister alone.”

Nadezhda shrieked.

Dasha crawled, pulling herself like a soldier across the truck floor. At the edge Tatiana swung Dasha around, lowering her off the truck, legs first. Dasha’s legs hit the ground, and the rest of her body followed and fell. She remained in the snow.

“Dasha, come on, please. I can’t pull you up by myself,” said Tatiana.

The driver of the truck came around and in one motion lifted Dasha to her feet. “Stand up, comrade. Stand up and walk to the field tent. They’re giving you food and hot tea. Now, go.”

From inside the truck Nadezhda shouted, “Don’t you forget me in here!”

Tatiana didn’t want to stay to hear Nadezhda discover the truth about her husband and baby. Turning to Dasha, she said, “Use me as a crutch. Put me under your arm and walk with me.” She pointed up a shallow slope. “Look, we’re at the river Kobona.”

“I can’t. I couldn’t walk with you
and
Alexander downhill on the other side, I can’t walk uphill with just you.”

“It’s not a hill. It’s a slope. Use that anger you feel at me. Use it, and walk up the damn slope, Dasha.”

“So easy for you, isn’t it?” said Dasha.

“Is that what it is?” Tatiana shook her head.

“So easy. You just want to live, and that’s all.”

I do want to live. But that’s not all. They stumbled through the snow, Dasha holding on to Tatiana.

“And you? Don’t you want to live?”

Dasha made no reply.

“Come on,” said Tatiana. “You’re doing so well. There is nobody to help us.” She squeezed her sister and whispered intensely, “It’s just you and me, Dasha! The soldiers are busy, the other people are all helping their own. Like I am. And you
do
so want to live. In the summer Alexander will come to Molotov, and you will get married.”

Dasha summoned enough strength to laugh softly. “Tania, you never stop, do you?”

“Never,” said Tatiana.

Dasha fell in the snow and would not get up.

Swirling around in despair, Tatiana spotted Nadezhda walking up the hill alone, no baby, no husband. She went up to her. “Nadezhda, please help me. Help me with Dasha. She’s fallen in the snow.”

Nadezhda ripped her arm away from Tatiana’s hold. “Get away from me. Can’t you see, I’ve got no one with me now.”

Tatiana saw. “Please help me.”

“You didn’t help
me
. And now they’re all dead. Leave me alone, will you?” Nadezhda walked away.

Suddenly Tatiana heard a familiar voice. “Tatiana? Tatiana Metanova?”

Turning in the direction of the voice, she saw Dimitri hobbling to her, supported by his rifle.

“Dimitri!” She walked up to him. He hugged her. “Help me, Dima, please. My sister! Look, she has fallen.”

Dimitri quickly got to Dasha. “Come on,” he said. “I’m still wounded. I can’t carry her myself. I’ll get you another soldier.” He turned to Tatiana and gave her another long hug. “I can’t believe we ran into each other like this.” Smiling. “It must be destiny,” he said.

Dimitri got someone else to lift Dasha and carry her to the hospital field tent as Tatiana trudged after them in the mauve light of the sky.

In the hospital tent near the Kobona River, a doctor came to see Dasha. He listened to her heart, to her lungs, felt her pulse, opened her mouth, shook his head, stood, and said, “Galloping consumption. Forget about her.”

Tatiana took a step toward the doctor. “
Forget
about her? What are you talking about? Give her something, some sulfa—”

The doctor laughed. “You’re all the same, all of you. You think I’m going to be giving away my precious sulfa on a terminal case? What are you, crazy? Look at her. She doesn’t have an hour to live. I wouldn’t waste a piece of bread on her. Have you seen how much mucus she’s bringing up? Have you listened to her breathing? I’m sure the TB bacteria has traveled to her liver. Go and get some soup and porridge for yourself in the next tent.
You
might actually make it, if you eat.”

Tatiana studied the doctor for a few moments. “Am
I
all right?” she asked. “Can you listen to
my
lungs? I don’t feel all right.”

The doctor opened Tatiana’s coat and pressed the stethoscope to her chest. Then he turned her around and listened through her back. “You need some sulfanilamide yourself, girl. You’ve got pneumonia. Let me have the nurse take care of you. Olga!” Before he left, he turned to Tatiana and said, “Don’t go near your sister anymore. TB is contagious.”

Tatiana lay on the ground, while Dasha lay in the clean bed. After a while she became too cold. Tatiana lay down on her side in the narrow cot very close to her sister. “Dasha,” she whispered, “all my life whenever I had nightmares, I would nestle like this with you, in our bed.”

“I know, Tania,” whispered Dasha. “You were the sweetest child.”

Outside wasn’t light so much as blue. Dark blue tints on Dasha’s trembling face. She heard Dasha’s hoarse voice. “I can’t breathe…”

Tatiana knelt on the ground in front of the bed, opened Dasha’s mouth, and blew into it, blew into it cold, brusque, stunted, pitiful breath, breath without soil, without roots, without food. She breathed from her own lungs into her sister’s. Tatiana tried to breathe deeply, but she couldn’t. For endless minutes Tatiana breathed into Dasha’s mouth, into Dasha’s lungs, the shallow whisper of life.

A nurse came up to them and pulled Tatiana away. “Stop it,” she said in a kind voice. “Didn’t the doctor tell you to leave her alone? Are you the sick one?”

“Yes,” whispered Tatiana, holding Dasha’s cold hand.

The nurse gave Tatiana three white pills, some water, and a hunk of black bread. “It’s dipped in sugar water,” she said.

“Thank you,” gasped Tatiana between pain-soaked breaths.

The nurse put her arm on Tatiana’s back. “Do you want to come with me? I’ll try to find you a place to lie down before breakfast.”

Tatiana shook her head.

“Don’t give her any of the bread. Eat it yourself.”

“She needs it more than I do,” said Tatiana.

“No, darling,” the nurse replied. “No, she doesn’t.”

As soon as the nurse left, Tatiana crushed the sulfa tablets against the bed frame, crumbling them into her hand and then into the water, and after taking a small gulp, lifted Dasha’s head slightly off the pillow and made her drink the dissolved medicine.