“The way he is looking at them, after the war is over he is going to bring them back single-handedly,” declared Tatiana. Four gray armored trucks were parked outside the museum. “What do you think is going on?”

Alexander said nothing but he stopped her from walking further, motioning her to watch. In a moment four more men appeared out of the wide green doors carrying wooden crates down the ramp. The crates had holes drilled in them.

“Paintings?”

He nodded.

“Four truckloads of paintings?”

“That’s nothing, I’m sure it’s a small percentage of their load.”

“Alexander, why are they getting the paintings out of the Hermitage?”

“Because there’s a war on.”

“So they’re getting the artwork out?” Tatiana said indignantly.

“Yes.”

“If they’re so worried Hitler is going to come to Leningrad, why don’t they get the people out?”

Alexander smiled at her, and she nearly forgot her question. “Tania, who will be left to fight the Nazis if the people leave? Paintings can’t fight for Leningrad.”

“Wait, we are not trained in fighting.”

“No, but we are. That’s why I’m here. Our garrison is thousands of soldiers strong. We will barricade the city and fight. First we will send the frontovik—”

“You mean Dimitri?”

“Yes, him. Into the streets with a gun. When he is dead, we will send me, with a tank, like the one you’ve been making for me. When I’m dead, all the barricades down, all the weapons and tanks gone, they will send you with a rock.”

“And when I’m dead?” Tatiana asked.

“You’re the last line of defense. When you’re dead, Hitler will march through Leningrad the way he marched through Paris. Do you remember that?”

“That’s not fair. The French didn’t fight,” Tatiana said, wanting to be anywhere right now but standing in front of men loading artwork from the Hermitage onto armored trucks.

“They didn’t fight, Tania, but you will fight. For every street and for every building. And when you lose—”

“The art will be saved.”

“Yes! The art will be saved,” Alexander said emotionally. “And another artist will paint a glorious picture, immortalizing you, with a club in your raised hand, swinging to hit the German tank as it’s about to crush you, all against the backdrop of the statue of Peter the Great atop his bronze horse. And that picture will hang in the Hermitage, and at the start of the next war the curator will once again stand on the street, crying over his vanishing crates.”

Tatiana watched the men disappear behind the green doors and descend the ramp a few minutes later with more crates. “You make it sound so romantic,” she said to him. “You make dying for Leningrad sound almost worthwhile.”

“Isn’t it worthwhile?”

“Maybe it’s not so bad to be a Nazi.” Tatiana raised her right arm outward and upward. “We can salute the Führer. We salute Comrade Stalin now anyway.” She bent her arm in a salute. “We won’t be free, we’ll all be slaves. But so what? We’ll have food. We’ll have our life. A free life is better, but any life is better than no life, right?”

When Alexander, staring at her, did not reply, Tatiana continued, “We won’t be able to go to other countries. But we can’t now. Who wants to go to the dissolute Western free world slums anyway, where strangers kill each other for fifty—what is it?—cents? Isn’t that what they teach us in Soviet schools?” Tatiana peered into Alexander’s eyes. “You know,” she said, “maybe I would rather die in front of the Bronze Horseman with a rock in my hand and have someone else live the free life that I can’t even fathom.”

“Yes,” Alexander said hoarsely, “you would,” and in a gesture both desperate and tender, he placed his palm on Tatiana’s bare skin, right below her throat. His palm was so large it covered her from her clavicle to the top of her breast. Her heart nearly flew out of her chest into his hand.

Tatiana looked up at him helplessly and watched him bend to her, but a uniformed guard stepped up to the curb and shouted across the street, “Move it, you two! Move it! What are you standing gawking for? What’s there to gawk at? That’s enough! You’ve seen it all. Move on!”

Alexander took his hand away from Tatiana, turned around, and glared at the guard, who backed off, muttering that Red Army officers were as bound by the law as anyone else.

When they said good-bye to each other a few minutes later, they did not speak about what had happened, but neither could Tatiana look up at Alexander, which was just as well, because Alexander didn’t look at Tatiana.

At home was a dinner of cold potatoes and cold fried onions. Tatiana ate quickly and then went up to the roof to sit and look at the sky for enemy planes, but the planes could have come and razed the whole city, because all Tatiana could see was Alexander’s impassioned eyes, all Tatiana could feel was Alexander’s impassioned hand on her rapidly beating heart.

Somewhere in those weeks Tatiana’s innocence was lost. The innocence of honesty was gone forever, for she knew she would have to live in deceit, every day in verse and prose, in close quarters, in the same bed, every night when her foot touched Dasha’s, she would live in deceit. Because she felt for him.

But what Tatiana felt for Alexander was true.

What Tatiana felt for Alexander was impervious to the drumbeat of conscience.

Oh, to be walking through Leningrad white night after white night, the dawn and the dusk all smelting together like platinum ore, Tatiana thought, turning away to the wall, again to the wall, to the wall, as ever. Alexander, my nights, my days, my every thought. You will fall away from me in just a while, won’t you, and I’ll be whole again, and I will go on and feel for someone else, the way everyone does.

But my innocence is forever gone.

12

Two days later, on the second Sunday in July, Alexander and Dimitri, dressed in their civilian clothes, called on Tatiana and Dasha. Alexander wore black linen trousers and a white cotton button-down short-sleeved shirt. Tatiana had never seen him in a short-sleeved shirt before, seen skin beyond his face and hands. His forearms were muscular and tanned. His face was clean-shaven. She had never seen him clean-shaven. By the time the evening hour fell, Alexander always had stubble. Tatiana thought, her heart catching on him, that he looked almost impossibly handsome.

“Where do you girls want to go? Let’s go somewhere special,” said Dimitri. “Let’s go to Peterhof.”

They packed some food and went to catch the train from Warsaw Station. Peterhof was an hour’s train ride away. All four of them walked a block along Obvodnoy Canal, where Alexander and Tatiana ambled every day. Tatiana walked in silence. Once when Alexander jumped off the narrow pavement and strolled ahead of her with Dasha, his bare arm brushed against her bare arm.

On the train Dasha said, “Tania, tell Dima and Alex what you call Peterhof. Tell them.”

Tatiana came out of her thoughts. “What? Oh. I call it the Versailles of the Soviet Union.”

Dasha said, “When Tania was younger, she wanted to be a queen and live in the Great Palace, didn’t you, Tanechka?”

“Hmm.”

“What did the kids in Luga used to call you?”

“Can’t remember, Dasha.”

“No, they called you something so funny. The queen of… the queen of…”

Tatiana glanced at Alexander, who glanced at Tatiana.

“Tania,” asked Dimitri, “what would have been your first act as queen?”

“To restore peace to the monarchy,” she said. “And then to behead all transgressors.”

Everybody laughed. Dimitri said, “I really missed you, Tania.” Alexander stopped laughing and stared out the window. Tatiana, too, stared out the window. They were sitting diagonally across from each other on facing seats.