"To you it's nothing."

"Are you out of your mind?" She rams her body against him. "Get out of my way."

"Make me."

"Shura!" she screams. She tries very hard not to cry. She is shaking. "Please, stop." From the effort not to cry, her lower lip begins to tremble. Above her, Alexander slams his head against the wall. And then he steps away.

"What do you think, Alexander, that I will care less you're leaving if you do this? Keep going. Do you think this will make me glad to see the back of you? That anything in the world is going to make it easier for me once you're gone?"

"You seem to think so," Alexander replies, backing farther away from her.

Tatiana watches him, her eyes clearing for a moment. "Wait a minute. This isn't about me. This isn't about me at all." She emits a stifled groan. "It's you-you think that if you imagine me taking up with every village idiot, your feeling for me will fade? You think, if only Tania betrays me, it will be so much easier for me to die, to leave her, to abandon her."

"Tania, shut up."

"No!" she shouts. "That's what you want, isn't it? Imagine the worst, and then suddenly I'm not your wife, I'm just some slag with no heart, how perfect, and my husband is free. I'm a slag who has found another knocker to replace yours in minutes." She is so upset that she clenches her fists.

"Tania, I told you, shut the hell up!"

"No!" she yells, jumping on the hearth so she can be a little taller, feel a little braver. "That's what you want, what you need, to imagine the impossible to rid yourself of me." Tears trickle down her face. "Well, I don't give a damn how much you need it," she says furiously. "I'm not giving it to you. I'm not giving that to you. You can have anything else, but I will not pretend to whore myself out just so you can feel better about leaving me."

"You're going to stop, do you hear?"

"Or what?" she says. "Make me, Alexander. Because I'm not keeping quiet about this."

"No, of course not!" he shouts, helplessly kicking their kettle across the room.

"That's right!" she shouts back. "You won't have this. You want a fight? I'll give you a fight for this."

He grits his teeth and comes for her. "You don't know what a fight is," he says, yanking her off the hearth, ripping her dress from her chest to her hips, pulling her down to the wood floor, holding her down, tearing off her underwear, prying her legs open, descending on her.

Tatiana closes her eyes.

He is rough with her. She doesn't want to hold him at first, but it is impossible not to hold his anguished body. "Soldier..." she manages through her groans. "You can't take me, you can't leave me-"

"I can take you," he whispers.

Suddenly uttering a helpless groan, he pulls away and goes outside, leaving Tatiana on the floor, where she lies curled into a ball, coughing, panting.

He is on the bench, smoking. His hands are shaking. Tatiana, wrapped in a white sheet, stands in front of him. Her voice is shaking. "Tomorrow," she says, barely able to get the words out, "is our last day here in Lazarevo." She can't look at him and he can't look at her. "Please, let's not do this."

"All right, let's not."

She lets the sheet fall to the ground and comes close to his knees. "Careful," Alexander says quietly, glancing at his lit cigarette.

"It's too late for careful," replies Tatiana. "Our destruction is close. What do I care about your cigarette?"

For a long time in bed in the dark Alexander holds her to his warm chest, without talking, without moving, nearly without breathing, without finishing what he had started earlier.

Finally he speaks. "I cannot take you with me," he says. "You'll be in too much danger. I cannot risk-"

"Shh." Tatiana kisses his chest. "I know. Shura, I'm yours. You may not like it today, you may not want it tonight, you may wish for it all to be different now, but it remains, and I remain, as always, only yours. Nothing can change that. Not your wrath, your fists, your body, or your death."

He emits a grinding rasp.

"Darling, honey." She starts to cry. "We are orphans, Alexander, you and I. All we have is each other. I know that you lost everyone you ever loved, but you're not going to lose me. I swear to you on my wedding band, and on my maiden ring that you broke, on my heart you're breaking, and on your life, I swear to you, I will forever be your faithful wife."

"Tania," he whispers, "promise you won't forget me when I die."

"You won't die, soldier," she says. "You won't die. Live! Live on, breathe on, claw onto life, and do not let go. Promise you will live for me, and I promise you, when you're done, I will be waiting for you." She is sobbing. "Whenever you're done, Alexander, I will be here, waiting for you."

Such brave words near their death in the moonless Lazarevo.

Life showed itself in small things. In the dockhand sailor who stood near the gangplank of the ferry she boarded each morning, who smiled and said good morning, offered her a cup of coffee, a cigarette, and then sat with her on deck for the thirteen-minute ride. In Benjamin, the second baseman, who ran into her when he was trying to catch a foul ball, knocked her over, and then lay almost directly on top of her, not getting up for a few moments. Enough moments for Edward, the catcher, to come over and say, all right, break it up here, this is a softball game, not Ricardo's. In Vikki putting lipstick on Tatiana's face every morning before leaving for work, and kissing her on the cheek, and Tatiana wiping the lipstick off as she left the house.

In the one morning Tatiana not wiping the lipstick off.

And in the one Friday night not saying no to Ricardo's.

Life showed itself in the stockbroker in his suit in the coffee shop on Church and Wall Street sitting next to Tatiana and Vikki, laughing at their conversation.

In the father of a family Tatiana helped get into the country coming to see her at Ellis and asking her to marry his oldest son, who was a bricklayer and could support her well. The father brought the lad by so Tatiana could take a look for herself. He was a tall, strong, smiling boy of about eighteen, and he looked at Tatiana with the sweet expression of a long-term crush. Tatiana had coffee with him in the Ellis dining room, telling him she was flattered but couldn't marry him.

Life showed itself in the lunch she had with Edward twice a week.

In the construction workers and the Con Edison workers downtown and the smiling hot dog man who had sold her a Coke and a hot dog.

Tatiana spent all day on the ships, inspecting the new post-war refugees, shepherding them onto the ferry to Ellis, or else at Ellis examining them in the medical rooms. In the afternoons, she went to NYU hospital, walking through all the beds, looking at every male face. If he were going to come, he would come into one of those two places-Ellis or NYU. But the war had ended four months ago. So far only a million troops had been sent back home, a good 300,000 through New York. How many times could Tatiana ask the wounded, where did you fight? Where were you stationed? In Europe? Did you meet any Soviet officers in the POW camps? Did any Soviet soldiers speak English to you? Tatiana met every boat that came in through the Port of New York, looking into the countless faces of the escapees from Europe. How many times could she hear from American soldiers about the horrors they saw in Nazi Germany? How many stories of what happened to Soviet prisoners in German camps? How many accounts of the numbers dead? Of the hundreds of thousands dead, of the millions dead? No plasma, no penicillin could have saved the Soviet men as they were starved by the Germans. How long could she hear the same thing over and over?

And then at night, she collected Anthony from Isabella's and she and Vikki had dinner there and chatted about books and movies and the latest fashion trend. And then they went home and put Anthony to bed. And then they would sit on the couch and read, or talk. And the next day it would begin again.

And then another week would begin.

And another.

And another.

Every month she went with Anthony to visit Esther and Rosa. They had no news.

Every month she called Sam Gulotta. He had no news.

New York's new construction was happening at a rate seven times the rest of the country's. The refugees to Ellis stopped being refugees and became immigrants once more. The veterans left NYU except for the long-term ward. Every week, she checked her post office box. But no one wrote to her. She waited for him against all reason, and danced on Saturday night, and went to the movies on Friday night, and cooked dinner and played softball in Central Park, and read books in English, and went out with Vikki and loved her boy, and through it all, she looked at every man's face that came her way, at every man's back, hoping for his face, for his back. If he could have come to her, he would have. He didn't.

If he could have found a way to escape, he would have. He didn't. If he were alive, she would have heard from him.

She hadn't.

"This is just the beginning of your life, Tatiana," he says to her. "After three hundred million years, you'll still be standing, too."

"Yes," she whispers. "But not with you."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE.

The Motherland, 1945 THE TRAIN WAS STOPPED, once, twice, fifteen times along the way, the way to where? Alexander told Ouspensky they would know when it was their turn. But they didn't. They changed trains always in the middle of the night. Alexander felt as though he were hallucinating when he rattled his chains across the tracks, up the metal steps. He couldn't wait to lie down on the wooden shelf and close his eyes.

Alexander's train pushed east on the tracks. The train car shook the bodies of the chained men headed from war back to the Motherland, while Alexander and Nikolai ate thin gruel out of one bowl that spilled each time the train lurched.

Over the plains and the forests and over the Elbe, the train continued.

Alexander covered his face with the crook of his arm. The Kama was covered in ice. Through the night in front of him was her laughing, freckled face.

Through the mountains the train sped, past the pines and the moss and the stone treasure caves.

Days and days and nights and nights, a cycle of the moon, and still they were not done.

They had gruel for breakfast, for dinner.

It got cold inside the train car at night. The northern German plateau lay vast around them.

He slept.

He dreamed of her.

She wakes up screaming, and sits up in bed pushing away something in front of her. Alexander, murky from sleep, sits up slightly behind her. "Tania," he says and gets hold of one of her arms. With astonishing strength, she rips herself away from him in defined fear and fury and without even turning around, with the back of her clenched fist, punches him square in the face. He is unprepared and has no time to move. His nose opens up like a dam. He is less sleepy. Concerned for her, he grabs her by the arms, this time much tighter, and says in his loudest, deepest voice, "Tania!" All the while the blood streams from his nose down his mouth and chin and chest. It is the middle of the night, and the bright blue moon outside illuminates just enough of the cabin to see her bare silhouette panting in front of him, and to see black drops falling on the white sheet.

Tania comes to, breathes and starts to shake. He figures it is safe to let go of her arms.

"Oh, Shura," she says, "you wouldn't believe the dream I just had," and then turns to him and gasps. "Dear God, what happened to you?"

Alexander sits and holds the bridge of his nose.

Tatiana jumps over him, jumps from the bed, runs to get a towel, climbs back up and sits against the wall, pulling him to her. "Come here," she said, "come here, quick." She cradles his head against her knees, keeping him slightly elevated as she holds his nose with the towel.

"Dis is great," Alexander says, "but I can't breede." He gets up for a moment, spits out blood, and lies back down on her, lifting the towel slightly away from his mouth.

"I'm sorry, honey," Tania whispers. "I didn't mean to-but you won't believe the dream I had."

"I had better beed caught with adother womad," Alexander says.

"Worse," she replies. "You were alive, but motionless, lying in front of me, and you were being fed to me piece by piece. They-"

"Who's they?"

"Couldn't see their faces. They were pinning my arms back, and one was cutting flesh from your side and shoving it in my mouth."

He looks up at her. "You were eating me alive?" he asks.

She gulps.

Alexander raises his eyebrows.

"A chunk of your side"-she touches him below his right rib-"was missing."

"How do you know I was alive?"

"Only your eyes were moving, blinking, pleading with me to help you." She closes her eyes. "Oh, God..."

"So you were helping me by punching your captors?"

She nods, looking down at him with misty eyes. "What did I do?" she whispers.

"Break my nose, I think," he says casually.

Tania starts to cry.

"I'm joking," he says, reaching for her. "I'm joking, Tatia. It's just a nosebleed. It'll stop in a minute."

Alexander catches her remorseful expression. Remnants of the dream are lodged in her squared jaw, in the tense bones of her face.

"I'm all right," he says. He turns his head and kisses her breast next to him and then presses his cheek against her as she holds him to her, squeezing the bridge of his nose with one hand and stroking his hair with the other.

"You were alive," she whispers, "and pieces of you were being fed to me. Do you understand?"

"Extremely well," Alexander says. "I'm bleeding to prove it."

Tania kisses his head. Soon he stops bleeding. "I'll go and wash off. Tomorrow we'll deal with the sheets."

"Wait-don't go. I'll get something to clean you with. Hop down, can you get down? We have water in the cabin. Do you want me to help? Here, hold my arm."

"Tania," says Alexander, holding her arm, hopping down and perching on the hearth, "I have a nosebleed. I'm not dying."

"No, you're going to be quite bruised tomorrow." She wets a small towel, sits on the hearth and gently cleans the blood off his face and neck and chest. "I'm dangerous," she murmurs. "Look what I did to you."

"Hmm. I'll say this-I've never felt you that crazed before. You were in that state. I sometimes see men in war like that when their normal strength becomes the strength of ten people."

"I'm sorry. Come, you're all cleaned up. Don't have a bad dream about me, Shura, all right?"

"Where you're lying in front of me and I'm eating you?" he asks, smiling. "That would be a terrible dream."

"Not that one, or any other one, either. Climb up. Do you need my help?"