There were some pieces of his fascinating life that Alexander did not wish to talk about—and didn’t. Not about the last time he saw his father, not about how he became Alexander Belov, not about how he received his medal of valor. Tatiana didn’t care and never did more than gently press him. She would take from him what he needed to give her and wait impatiently for the rest.

11

“My days are too long,” Tatiana said to him one Friday evening, smiling the beaten smile of someone who had worked solidly for twelve hours. “I made you a whole tank today, Alexander! With a red star and a number thirty-six. Do you know how to operate a tank?”

“Better than that,” he replied. “I know how to command it.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I do nothing except shout orders and get killed.”

Tatiana didn’t smile back. “How is that better?” she muttered. “I want to get transferred to the breadmaking facility. Instead of tanks, some lucky people are making bread.”

“The more the better,” said Alexander.

“Tanks?”

“Bread.”

“They promised all of us a bonus—can you believe it?—if we made tanks over our quota. A bonus!” Tatiana chuckled. “The economics of profit during war: strange that we should want to work harder for a couple of extra rubles—goes against everything they’ve been teaching us from birth—but there it is.”

“There it is, indeed, Tania,” said Alexander. “But don’t worry, they won’t stop reconstructing you until you won’t want to work harder even for a couple of extra rubles.”

“Stop being subversive.” She smiled. “No wonder you’re not safe. In any case, it nearly killed Zina. She said she was ready to join the volunteers, that it couldn’t be worse than this pressure.”

Alexander was thoughtful. The pavement was wide, but they walked close together, their arms bumping. “Zina is right,” he said finally. “Don’t make any mistakes. You’ve heard the story of Karl Ots, haven’t you?”

“Who?”

“He used to be the Kirov plant director when it was still called Putilov Works. Karl Martovich Ots. After Kirov’s assassination in 1934, Ots tried to maintain order, to protect his workers from the threat of… retaliation, for lack of a better word.”

Tatiana had heard something about Sergei Kirov from her father and grandfather. “Arrest? Death?” she said.

Alexander nodded. “Yes and yes. Anyway, one day when a T-28 tank was being inspected, a bolt was found to be missing. The tank had been about to be delivered to the army. There was of course a scandal and a frenzied search for the ‘enemy saboteurs’ to reveal themselves.” Alexander took a breath. Tatiana waited.

“Now, Ots knew,” he continued as they stopped at a junction, “that it had just been a stupid mistake, an oversight of the mechanic who had forgotten to screw in the bolt—no more, no less. Ots knew, so he refused to permit a witch hunt.”

“Let me guess,” Tatiana said. “He failed.”

“It was like walking into a tornado and saying, but it’s just wind.”

“A tornado?” Tatiana asked quizzically.

Alexander went on. “Hundreds more people vanished from the factory.”

Tatiana bowed her head. “Ots?”

“Hmm. With him vanished his able successor, the heads of the bookkeeping department, the tank-production units, the personnel department, the machine-tool shop, not to mention former Putilov plant workers—those who had moved on and were employed elsewhere in high positions in the government, such as the Novosibirsk Party Secretary, the Secretary of the Neva Party region—oh, and let’s not forget the Mayor of Leningrad. He disappeared, too.”

The light had turned green, then red, then green again. When it was red, the two of them crossed the street, not touching arms anymore. Tatiana was deep in thought. Finally she spoke. “So what you’re saying is, be careful with the bolts?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Zina is right. We don’t need that kind of pressure. She is exhausted. All she wants is to go to Minsk and join her sister.” Minsk was the capital of Byelorussia.

Alexander rubbed his eyes and adjusted his cap. “Tell her,” he said tensely, “to forget Minsk. Concentrate on the tanks. How many are you supposed to make in a month?”

“One hundred and eighty. We’re falling short.”

“They’re asking too much of you.”

“Wait, wait.” Tatiana put her hand on his arm and then, surprised at herself, took it away. “Why forget Minsk?”

“Minsk fell to the Germans thirteen days ago,” Alexander said with grave finality.

“What?”

“Yes.”

“Thirteen days ago? Oh, no, no.” She shook her head. “No, Alexander, it can’t be. Minsk is only a few kilometers south of…” Tatiana couldn’t say it.

“Not a few, Tania, many,” he said by way of comforting her. “Hundreds of kilometers.”

“No, Alexander,” said Tatiana, feeling her legs giving out. “Not that many. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tania, it’s classified army information! I tell you as much as I can, and then no more. I keep hoping you will hear something on the radio that sounds like the truth. When I know you haven’t heard, I tell you some more. Minsk fell after only six days of war. Even Comrade Stalin was surprised.”

“Why didn’t he tell us when he spoke to us last week?”

“He called you his brothers and sisters, didn’t he? He wanted you to rise up with anger and fight. What good would it do to tell you how deep in the Soviet Union the Germans are?”

“How deep are they?”

When Alexander didn’t answer, she asked in a despondent voice, barely able to get the words out, “What about our Pasha?”

“Tania!” he said loudly. “I don’t understand what you want me to do. I have been coming here and telling you from day one to get him out of Tolmachevo!”

Tatiana turned her face away from him and struggled not to cry. She didn’t want him to see that.

“They’re not in Luga yet,” said Alexander, quieter. “They haven’t reached Tolmachevo. Try not to worry. But I’ll just tell you that on the first day of war, we lost 1,200 planes.”

“I didn’t know we had 1,200 planes.”

“About that many.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“We?” said Alexander, glancing at her and pausing. “I told you, Tania. Leave Leningrad.”

“And I told you my family isn’t going without Pasha.”

Alexander said nothing. They continued to walk.

“Are you tired?” he asked quietly. “You want to go home?”

I am tired. I don’t want to go home.

When Tatiana didn’t reply, Alexander said, “Want to walk to Palace Bridge? I think they still sell ice cream in a shop near the river.”

After having ice cream, Alexander and Tatiana were walking along the Neva embankment heading west into the sunset and across from the green-and-white splendor of the Winter Palace when on the opposite side of the street Tatiana spotted a man who made her stop suddenly.

A tall, thin, middle-aged man with a long, gray Jovian beard stood outside the Hermitage Museum with an expression of absolute shattered regret.

Tatiana instantly reacted to his face. What could make a man look this way? He was standing next to the back of a military truck, watching young men carry wooden crates down the ramp from the Winter Palace. It was these crates the man looked at with such profound heartbreak, as if they were his vanishing first love.

“Who is that man?” she asked, tremendously affected by his expression.

“The curator of the Hermitage.”

“Why is he looking at the crates that way?”

Alexander said, “They are his life’s sole passion. He doesn’t know if he is ever going to see them again.”

Tatiana stared at the man. She almost wanted to go and comfort him. “He’s got to have more faith, don’t you think?”

“I agree, Tania.” Alexander smiled. “He’s got to have a little more faith. After the war is over, he will see his crates again.”