Tatiana turned to him and smiled. "Shura," she said in halting English, "show me your marriage bait."

Alexander laughed. "Tania, come here. Please. Forget the blueberries."

"What did I say now?" she said, coming back, kneeling in front of him and smiling.

"It's not marriage bait, it's the wedding tackle. And here it is." He smiled. "But stop using your English as a source of comedy on our marriage rack. Touch me."

Fondling him and grinning, she said in English, "All right, you well drawn soldier."

"Tania...oh, no." His stomach was beginning to hurt. "Stop, I said. You're killing me."

"Come, give me a slice of tail."

"Tania!"

"What?" she said, her eyes twinkling.

"I don't give you a slice of tail!"

"Well, all right then." She lay down next to him.

"You're playing with me? Stop. I'll be no good to you in a minute."

"Then who has the sugarstick?"

He grabbed her, pulling her to him. "That would be me."

"Well, give me some."

"All right, then." She was teasing him.

"Come, come, come." She smiled. "How is my English tongue?"

"Perfect," Alexander said. "And it's the English language. But you've reduced a formerly whole man to his frazzled parts."

"What will make you whole again?" asked Tania. "A little trip to the cathouse?"

"A little trip to your cathouse, maybe," said Alexander, his lips devouring her laughing face.

Stop, stop, stop.

He was teaching her how to fire a pistol. She was a reluctant-"and poor"-student. "Attention! You are completely not paying attention."

"I am."

He nudged her with his hand. "You would make a terrible soldier. You don't listen, you don't obey. They'd throw you out of boot camp. Let's try it again. Where's the safety?"

She showed him.

"Where's the magazine catch?"

She showed him.

"Where's the hammer? Where do the bullets go? Do you remember how to put a new magazine in?"

She popped the magazine catch, pulled the old clip out, snapped the new clip in place, cocked the hammer and with both hands aimed the pistol at a tree. From behind her he reached over and took the gun away. "If you fire it, we'll lose dinner for a week. All the fish will leave."

"I see." She jumped up and down. "So how did I do?"

"You get good marks for memory but you completely fail on attitude."

Saluting him, she stood to attention. "Yes, sir. What's the punishment for poor attitude?" She grinned and then burst out laughing and ran away.

Tania is across from him on the wood floor in front of the fire in their cabin. It has rained all morning and afternoon, it is nearing dinner time, which she is supposed to be preparing, but Alexander isn't letting her go-until he wins one, just one idiotic game of dominoes. She asks him, "You have one-ones," almost like it's not a question. And he says yes! because one-ones start the game and give you an advantage. But he has said that before. They've been playing since one. They must have played 40 times. Maybe 50. He's had one-ones and two-twos, he's had, in a seeming impossibility, all seven double tiles at once. He's had every combination of tiles imaginable. He has not won. Alexander cannot believe it. "Wouldn't the law of averages swing my way just once?" he demands of Tatiana who smiles sweetly across the floor.

"Husband, I think your luck is changing."

"You think?"

"I'm almost positive."

She is wearing a knee-length skirt and a blue cardigan over a yellow shirt. Her hair is swept up on top of her head, falling into her face. She looks warm and small. Alexander feels the aching in the pit of his stomach. Not even bothering to study her tiles, she is merrily humming, sitting with her legs drawn up. If he weren't so intent on winning, he would ask her to pull up her skirt a little to let him peek.

"But I just want to say, Shura," says Tatiana philosophically, "that you can't win everything."

"Watch me."

"Do I complain when you always beat me across the river?" she asks. "When you catch the perch with your bare hands and I can't? When you unfairly beat me at arm wrestling just because you're bigger? And what about poker? Do I complain when you always beat me at strip poker?" She grins, and Alexander wants to fall on top of her that instant.

"Actually, yes, you do complain," he says, his voice deepening an octave. "And I don't want to win everything. I want to win one lousy game out of fifty, is that too much to ask?"

Her eyes twinkling, she gets all demure. "Would you like me to let you win, darling?"

"That's it," he exclaims. She laughs. "I'm winning this game, Tania, I don't care what kind of black magic you weave over my tiles."

Alexander comes close. Very close. He has one tile left when she lays down her last and claps joyously, falling back on the floor. Her hitched-up skirt lifts, exposing the flushed backs of her bare thighs, her sheer underwear. He watches her a moment and then falls on top of her.

"Shura, dinner!" She is laughing, feral, trying to get away, and does, and bolts out the door into the clearing and he chases her down to the river in the gloomy dusk, in the miserable rain. He catches her as she is about to dive in, clothes on, into the Kama.

"Oh, no, you don't," he says, lifting her into his arms. "Not this time."

Squealing, she struggles against him, cheerfully and symbolically. He carries her wet inside the house, kicks the door shut behind him and, setting her down, pulls all the blankets and pillows down on the floor in front of the fire.

"Shura, dinner!" she repeats mock-plaintively.

"No, Tania, me."

It is very warm in the cabin.

Undressing her, he lays her naked on the blanket and, undressing himself, lies down next to her.

"One of two things is going to happen after I'm done with you," he says in his most soothing erotic voice. Tatiana can't take it; she moans.

"That's right, one of two," he says, caressing her trembling body. "I am going to make love to you until you either beg me to stop, or promise me that you will never and I mean, never, play dominoes with me again."

She closes her eyes as her hands reach for him, grasp for him. "I'll tell you right now," she whispers. "I will not be begging you to stop."

"We'll just see about that," says Alexander.

Stop time, stop time, stop time.

One less day. In the late evening, Tatiana climbed into his lap. "No, no, don't stop reading," she purred, snuggling up to him. "I'm cold." She curled into his chest. Enfolding her in his arms, Alexander resumed reading, but only every tenth word was getting through because she was nestled against him, and her silky hair was rubbing against his neck, his throat, his jawbone. Alexander listened to her breath. It was rhythmic. He put the book down and peeked at her. Her eyes were closed.

An aching tenderness filled him. He sat, not moving, inhaling her sleeping soapy feminine smell. She fit into him like a cat under his chin, on his collarbone, her legs tucked in over him, she was warming him as he warmed her. He wanted to squeeze her closer to him but didn't want to do anything to wake her up. Unlike him, she was a light sleeper, and he knew when she got up, she would get off his lap.

Minutes, crystalline, wet, chilly, breathless minutes, and the time tick tock, tick tock, it moved, without a watch, without a clock, without the chime of the hour, the bell of the church, but with every sunrise, every sunset, with the waning cycle of the moon it steamrolled ahead without a backward glance.

How many days left? He didn't want to think about it. When they got married they had twenty-six days in front of them and they said, oh, we've been married three days, five days, ten days. But now Tatiana had stopped talking about it, and Alexander was thinking, how many days left?

Dear Tania. I am so happy, yet I've never been more miserable in my whole life. Can you possibly understand? You with your wings of joy, can you understand what you carry on your shoulders, and how heavy I am? No, you are made of gossamer, nothing can weigh you down, not even me. You float, while I founder-in my fear, in my folly, in my fierce weakness.

A short quake went through her, and she opened her eyes. "Oh," she murmured. "Did I fall asleep?"

"Shh," he said. "Don't get up."

"How long have I been on you?"

"Not long enough. Stay here," he said quietly. "Stay. I'll sit up and you bend your head and sleep on me. I'll hold you all night."

"And tomorrow you won't be able to walk, your back will be so bad," she replied. She tickled his neck. They sat. "Well? Are we just going to sit here, or do you plan to do your husbandly duty?"

"We're just going to sit here."

Her fingers caressed his neck, her lips kissed his throat, her hips nested into his lap. "What's the matter?" she asked, nuzzling him. "Come on. Let me make you happy."

"I am happy."

"Happier. Lie down," she whispered.

When they roughhoused, Tatiana was as assertive as a cougar, but during lovemaking, Alexander couldn't get her to be anything but intemperately tender with him. "Harder," he would tell her. "Touch me harder, Tatia. Don't be so gentle with me."

"Shura..." The fire flickered its harvest moonlight around the cabin. She stroked his face with her gentle fingers, her tongue ran in smooth circles around his lips, her fingers sloped down to his neck and throat and caressed his chest, lightly circled his upper arms where she rested before continuing. "I love your arms," she whispered. "I keep imagining you holding me with them."

"You don't have to imagine," Alexander whispered back. "I'll hold you with them right now."

"You lie still." She continued to caress his chest and his stomach; her fingers were silky and fragile, like small nightingales with webbed feet.

"Tatia," he whispered. "I'm dying."

"No," she said, moving lower. "Not yet."

"Yes, yet," he replied. "Come on, don't make a grown man beg."

Adoring and worshipful, groaning from pleasure, she was bent over him, breathing over him, murmuring. "God, Shura, you are-I love you, I can't take it."

She couldn't take it? His eyes shut, he clasped her head between his hands.

A few days. A few nights. Later, later. Tomorrow. The next day, the next evening, another breakfast, a waning quarter-moon night.

She sat on the blanket every night before the fire he built outside in the clearing, and called him to her. And he would come, like a lamb to the slaughter, and lie down and put his head into the lion's lap and she would sit over him and stroke his face, and murmur. Every night she murmured to him, soothing him with her lilting stories or her questions, or her jokes, and sometimes she sang to him. Lately all she sang to him was "Moscow Nights": "The river flows and flows All made from moonsilver A song is faintly heard and then subsides During these quiet nights."

"Shura, are you hungry?"

"No." They were sitting side by side. He wasn't looking at her.

"You sure? We haven't eaten since six, and it's-"

"I said no."

Silence. "Are you thirsty? Want another cup of tea?"

"No, thank you," he said a little gentler.

"What about a little vodka?" She nudged him. "I'll drink with you."

"No, Tania. I don't want anything."

"Can I get you a cigarette?"

"Tania!" he exclaimed. "I'm fine. Believe me, if there is something I want, I'll let you know, all right?"

He felt her body tense. She took her hands away. He put them back. "I want you to continue to touch me, I don't want to move, or have you move. I'm fine, right here." He didn't look at her.

"Come here, darling," she said. "Come. Put your head on me."

The lion spoke. The lamb obeyed.

His head was in her lap and she was lightly tickling his neck and murmuring.

"Tania, can you just stop?" he whispered. "Can you just quit for a second? Please. I can't take you."

She cradled him, bending over him, kissing his hair. He felt her breasts soft against his head. "Shura...Shura..." she purred in her sing-song voice. "Husband man, lovely man, big man, soldier man, beautiful man, Tania's man...Shura, beloved man, adored man, worshipped man, alive man, Shura..."

Alexander couldn't speak.

"Shura, listen. Look at me, and listen. Are you listening?"

"Yes," he said, opening his eyes and looking up.