They sat.

Tatiana brightened. “Alexander,” she said, “want to hear a joke?”

“Dying to.”

“When we get married, I’ll be there to share all your troubles and sorrows.”

“What troubles? I don’t have any troubles,” said Alexander.

“I said when we get married,” replied Tatiana, her tearful eyes twinkling. “You have to admit that you getting killed at the front so I can live in the Soviet Union, and me hanging myself over a bathtub so you can live in America is an ironic tale quite well told, don’t you think?”

“Hmm. But since we are not leaving a scrap of family behind,” said Alexander, “there will be no one to tell it.”

“There is that,” said Tatiana. “But still… how Greek of us, don’t you think?” She smiled and squished his face.

Alexander shook his head. “How do you do that?” he asked. “Find comfort? Through anything. How?”

“Because I’ve been comforted by the master,” she said, kissing his forehead.

He tutted. “Some master I am. Couldn’t even get one tiny tadpole of a wife to stay in Lazarevo.”

Tatiana watched him stare at her. “What, husband?” she said. “What are you thinking?”

“Tania… you and I had only one moment…” said Alexander. “A single moment in time, in your time and mine… one instant, when another life could have still been possible.” He kissed her lips. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”

When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.

“I know that moment,” whispered Tatiana.

“Regret that I crossed the street for you?”

“No, Shura,” she replied. “Before I met you, I could not imagine living a life different from my parents, my grandparents, Dasha, me, Pasha, our children. Could not have conceived of it.” She smiled. “I didn’t dream of someone like you even when I was a child in Luga. You showed me, in a glimpse, in our tremor, a beautiful life…” She peered into his eyes. “What did I ever show you?”

“That there is a God,” whispered Alexander.

“There is!” exclaimed Tatiana. “And I felt your need for me clear across the steppes. I’m here for you. And one way or another we will fix this.” She squeezed him. “You’ll see. You and I will fix this together.”

“How? And now what?” came Alexander’s voice at her head.

Taking a frigid breath, Tatiana spoke, trying to sound as cheerful as possible. “How, I don’t know. What now? Now we go blindly into the thick forest at the other side of which awaits the rest of our short but oh-so-blissful time on this earth. You go and fight me a nice war, Captain, and you stay alive, as promised, and keep Dimitri off your back—”

“Tania, I could kill him. Don’t think I haven’t thought about it.”

“In cold blood? I know you couldn’t. And if you could, how long do you think God would look after you then in war? And me in the Soviet Union?” She paused, trying to get hold of her departing senses. It wasn’t as if she herself hadn’t thought about it… but Tatiana had the feeling that it was not the Almighty who was keeping Dimitri alive.

“And what about you?” asked Alexander. “What now for you? I don’t suppose you might consider going back to Lazarevo?”

Smiling, Tatiana shook her head. “Don’t worry about me. You must know that having survived last winter’s Leningrad, I’m ready for the worst.” She traced her glove along Alexander’s cheeks, thinking, and the very best, too. “And though I do sometimes wonder,” she continued, “what’s ahead of me if I needed Leningrad to pave my way into it… it doesn’t matter. I’m here for the long haul, or the short haul. I’m here to stay. And I’m paved and ready for it all.” Her heart throbbing, Tatiana hugged him to her. “Regret crossing the street for me, soldier?”

Taking her hand into both of his, Alexander said, “Tania, I was spellbound by you from the first moment I saw you. There I was, living my dissolute life, and war had just started. My entire base was in disarray, people were running around, closing accounts, taking money out, grabbing food out of stores, buying up the entire Gostiny Dvor, volunteering for the army, sending their kids to camp—” He broke off. “And in the middle of my chaos, there was you!” Alexander whispered passionately. “You were sitting alone on this bench, impossibly young, breathtakingly blonde and lovely, and you were eating ice cream with such abandon, such pleasure, such mystical delight that I could not believe my eyes. As if there were nothing else in the world on that summer Sunday. I give you this so that if you ever need strength in the future and I’m not there, you don’t have to look far. You, with your high-heeled red sandals, in your sublime dress, eating ice cream before war, before going who knows where to find who knows what, and yet never having any doubt that you would find it. That’s what I crossed the street for, Tatiana. Because I believed that you would find it. I believed in you.”

Alexander wiped the tears from her eyes and, pulling off her glove, pressed his warm lips to her hand.

“But I would’ve come back empty-handed that day if it weren’t for you.”

He shook his head. “No. You didn’t start with me. I came to you because you already had yourself. You know what I bring you?”

“What?”

His voice choking with emotion, he said, “Offerings.”

Alexander and Tatiana sat a long time with their wet, cold faces pressed against each other, his arms around her, her hands cradling his head, while the wind blew the last dead leaves off the trees, while the sky was a leaky November gray.

A tram went by. Three people walked down the street at the end of which Smolny Monastery stood, concealed with scaffolding and camouflage. Down by the granite carapace the river was icy and still. And past the empty Summer Garden the Field of Mars lay flat under blackened snow.

A Window to the West

AFTER Alexander left, Tatiana wrote to him every day until her ink ran out. When her ink ran out, she went across the street to Vania Rechnikov’s apartment. She had heard he had ink he lent sometimes. Vania was dead at his writing table. He had put his head down on the letter he had been writing and died. Tatiana couldn’t pry the pen from his stiff fingers.

Tatiana went to the post office every day in hopes of hearing from Alexander. She couldn’t take the silence in between the letters. Alexander wrote her a stream, but the stream would come in a flood instead of a steady trickle. The damn mail.

She stayed in her room when she was not working and practiced her En-glish. During air raids she read her mother’s cookbook. Tatiana started cooking dinner for Inga, who was sick and alone.

One afternoon the postmaster wouldn’t give her any of Alexander’s letters, offering her not only his letters but a bag of potatoes, too, in return for something from her.

She wrote to Alexander about it, afraid that none of his future letters would get through.

Tania,

Please go to the barracks and ask for Lieutenant Oleg Kashnikov. He is on base duty, I think from eight to six. He has three bullets lodged in his leg and can’t fight anymore. He is the one who helped me dig you out in Luga. Ask him for some food. I promise he won’t ask for anything in return. Oh, Tatia.

Also, give him your letters, and he will bring them to me in a day. Please don’t go to the post office.

What do you mean, Inga is alone? Where is Stan?

Why are you still working such crazy hours? The winter is getting harsher.