A. The nearest bridge, the Palace Bridge, is about fifty meters from the Palace, at a distance of the breadth of the quay, but, as I have already said, only one shell hit the bridge during the shellings; that is why I am sure that the Winter Palace was deliberately shelled. I cannot admit that while shelling the bridge, only one shell hit the bridge and thirty hit the nearby building.

Q. Witness, those are conclusions that you are drawing. Have you any knowledge whatsoever of artillery from which you can judge whether the target was the Palace or the bridge beside it?

A. I never was an artillery man, but I suppose that if German artillery was aiming only at the bridge then it could not possibly hit the bridge only once and hit the Palace, which is across the way, with thirty shells. Within these limits I am an artillery man. (Commotion in the court.) Q. One last question. Were you in Leningrad during the entire period of the siege?

A. I was in Leningrad from the first day of the war until 31 March, 1942. Then I returned to Leningrad when the German troops were driven out of the suburbs of Leningrad.

GENERAL RAGINSKY: We have no further questions.

THE PRESIDENT: The witness can retire. (The witness leaves.) Tatiana looked up at Vikki from the floor and then struggled up to the table where she put her head down and closed her eyes. Vikki's hands were on her back.

"I'm all right," she mouthed inaudibly. "I need one minute."

Alexander, to the last.

Orbeli standing in the street, saying goodbye to his crates.

Tatiana had been very moved by his face. She never forgot it.

It was these crates he was looking at with such heartbreak, as if they were his vanishing first love.

"Who is that man?" Tatiana asks.

"He is the curator of the Hermitage Museum."

"Why is he looking at the crates that way?"

"They are his life's sole passion. He doesn't know if he is ever going to see them again."

Tatiana stares at the man. "He's got to have more faith, don't you think?"

"I agree, Tania. He's got to have a little more faith. After the war is over, he will see his crates again."

"The way he is looking at them, after the war is over he will have to bring them back single-handedly," she replies.

Tatiasha-remember Orbeli.

Orbeli was in Alexander's eyes as Tatiana sprinted away from him in Morozovo hospital, flickered away with nary a thought, barely a look back, ta-da, darling, and be well, oh, and tell me about that Orbeli another time, Shura, tell me about him next time you see me, and one last time she turned around, laughing, and saw Josif Abgarovitch Orbeli in his eyes. She could never put her finger on his expression. Now she knew.

Every day I stand at the edge of your bed, and I salute you. I'll see you, Major. Sleep well. And you say, I'll see you, Tania.

I walk away. You call back to me, and I turn around, my trusting eyes on you.

You say to me, in your bravest voice, deep and calm, your stoic voice, you say to me, Tatiasha-remember Orbeli.

I frown for a second, but not even a tick goes through me because I'm so busy and you're so calm and Dr. Sayers calls me. And I say, Shura, darling, I have to run, tell me tomorrow, and now I know-you can't speak anymore, you've used it all up. You are mute and you nod, and I blithely mosey through the beds, and at the drab doors I turn around carelessly, one last time, and here I stop.

And there I am going to be.

Orbeli.

In the February night, in the aqua silence, Tatiana sat on the cold fire escape, wrapped in Alexander's cashmere blanket, and smelled the ocean air beyond her, as Manhattan flickered beneath her.

You will find a way to live without me. You will find a way to live for both of us, Alexander had said to her, once.

She knew now, knew for certain what she had long feared, long suspected: Alexander had handed her his life and said, this is for you. I cannot save myself, I can only save you, and you have to go and live your life the way you and only you were meant to live it. You have to be strong, and you have to be happy, and you have to love our child, and eventually, you have to love. Eventually, you have to learn to love again, and to smile again, and to put me away, you have to learn to hold another man's hand, and kiss another man's lips. You have to marry again. You have to have more children. You have to live your life-for me, for you. You have to live it as we would have lived it. All in one word: Orbeli.

Things were clearer in war: right, wrong, so easily defined, so easily defiled. Peril, absolution, privation. Emotion, anguish, passion.

I see him clearly, even in peace.

Oh-but how much life I have to mask him.

How many traditions, celebrations. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Labor, Columbus, Independence, and birthdays birthdays birthdays, every one, even mine, the cursed mine, the twisted mine, the suffering mine, the gold mine. Celebrations, food, sunshine, warmth. From dawn to dusk I fill my life with life.

With all the things he wanted for me.

My foundation is buried underneath the building, tall with windows and high with rafters; the foundation covered by trees and shrubs, pansies in the winter, tulips in the spring and my heart is covered too, healed, concealed. Sometimes I run my hand over my chest and in the running of the hand over my heart, the nerves send a small sharp shudder through my body to my brain, a shudder slightly longer than a breath, a long breath. In, out, hold. Breathe out: Alexander.

Forgive me for leaving you to the dogs of war, for being so quickly willing to believe in your death. I was slow to love, but quick to abandon you.

Where is he? Where is the splendid horseman, my gold ring and my chain, my black bag and my brightest day?

And here Tatiana was, sitting by the bay, wanting her life to begin, to end, but she was not ended, and she was not begun.

The truth was, she was nowhere.

This stage, how long did it last? And would there ever come a time when she wasn't in a stage anymore? When she was just in life?

Before finding Alexander's Hero of the Soviet Union medal? No.

After finding Alexander's Hero of the Soviet Union medal? No.

After Paul Markey, no.

And never again after Orbeli.

The soul was at war.

She wanted one word from him? Here it was.

I am trying to send you to a place where you will be safe. Don't despair, he was saying, and have faith.

But what to do now? Something had to be done, must be done, but what?

Whatever she did, wherever she went, it meant leaving behind her son. Was that not folly? Was it not lunacy? Was it not madness?

It was all those things.

To go and leave her son behind? What would Alexander say if he were to find out she had left his son to go traipsing through the world looking for him among its horror stores?

Tatiana sat motionless and smelled the air, smelled the water, smelled the sky, tried to find Perseus in the sky and couldn't, tried to find the full moon in the sky and couldn't. It was late and the moon was under cloud cover.

Her baby boy needed his mother.

Did he need his mother more than Alexander needed his wife?

And was that the choice?

Was the choice between the father and the son?

Was she abandoning one for the other?

She had to entertain the possibility she would not be back. Was that the life she was prepared to give her child?

All she had to do was stay where she was, go on as she was.

But there was no Tatiana here. Tatiana remained with Alexander. Her arms were around him in Lake Ladoga, where she lay down with him every night. Her arms were holding him bleeding out into the Lake Ladoga ice. She could have let go of him then, could have given him to God; God was certainly calling for him.

But she didn't.

And because she didn't, she was here in America, sitting on the ledge of the rest of her life. It certainly felt that way, that seminal moment where she knew that whatever her decision, her life would take either one course or it would take another.

One way the path was plain and vivid.

And the other was black and fraught with doubt.

To stay was to accept the good.

To go was to embrace the unknowable.

To stay was to make his sacrifice not be in vain.

To go was to go into death.

Could she accept life without him?

Could she imagine life without him? Maybe not now, but could she imagine herself in ten years' time, in twenty years' time, in fifty years' time? Could she imagine herself being seventy and without him, married to Edward, having Edward's children, sitting with Edward at the long table?

That Bronze Horseman would pursue her into her grave. She felt it. Into her eternity, clambering behind her in the night and in the day, in every hour of sorrow, in every minute of weakness, in darkness, in light, through all of America he would be rattling at her heels, the way he had been relentlessly rattling at her through the past eleven hundred days, through the past eleven hundred nights, right into her maddening dust. How much longer for Tatiana's life?

How much longer for the Bronze Horseman?

Orbeli-was that not proof that wherever he was, in his own blackest night, Alexander was calling for her?

And if she believed that he was alive and did not try to find him, she would be turning her back on him.

What did that say for her?

Maybe she could close that dark window that led to night and not listen for him anymore. Perhaps she could even convince herself that Alexander would forgive her for her turned back, for her indifferent heart.

Ask yourself these three questions, Tatiana, and you will know who you are.

What do you hope for?

What do you believe in?

But most important, what do you love?

She climbed back inside, closed the window and went to lie in bed next to her son.

"Vikki, I have to talk to you," Tatiana said the next morning as they were standing in the kitchen eating croissants and drinking coffee before they rushed off to work.

"Can it wait till tonight? We're late already. Anthony needs to be in playgroup."

Tatiana took Vikki's hand. Vikki's mouth was covered with croissant crumbs. She looked very endearing and skinny and dark-haired standing at the counter, her mouth full, looking down at Tatiana with exasperated affection. Tatiana hugged her. "I love you so much," she said. "Now, sit down. I have to talk to you."

Vikki sat down.

"Vik, you know that I work at Ellis, and I volunteer for Red Cross, and I walk through the veterans' hospitals, and I look through every refugee boat that comes into New York. You know I call Sam Gulotta in Washington every month, and that I got in touch with Esther that first time, all for only one reason?"

"What izh that weason?" Vikki said, chewing.

"To find out what happened to Alexander."

"Oh."

"But I haven't been able to find out anything."

Vikki patted Tatiana's hand.

"It's time for me to do more."

Vikki smiled. "More than Iowa?"

"Now I need your help."

"Oh, no." Vikki rolled her eyes. "Where are we going now?"

"I would like nothing more than for you to come with me," said Tatiana. "But I need you for even bigger things."

"What things? And where are you going?"

"I'm going to find Alexander."

A small piece of croissant fell out of Vikki's mouth. "Go find Alexander where?" she said disbelievingly.

"I will start in Germany. Then I go to Poland, then Soviet Union."