Alexander stood in front of her on the pavement. “I’m a soldier in the Red Army. I’m not a doctor in America. I’m not a scientist in Britain. I’m a soldier in the Soviet Union. I could die any minute a thousand different ways to Sunday. This might be the last minute we will have together. Don’t you want to spend that minute with me?”

Mesmerized by him, Tatiana muttered, “Right now, I just want to crawl into bed—”

“Yes,” he exclaimed fervently, “crawl into bed with me!”

Weakening, Tatiana shook her head. “We have nowhere to go…” she whispered.

Alexander came up close and cupped her face as he said in a trembling, encouraged voice, “We’ll work it out, Tatiasha, I promise, somehow we’ll—”

“No!” she cried.

His hands lowered.

“You… misunderstood,” she stammered. “I meant that there is nothing for us to do.”

And then his eyes lowered.

And hers, too. “She is my sister,” Tatiana said. “Why can’t you just understand? I will not break my sister’s heart.”

Alexander took a step back and said coldly, “Oh, that’s right, you already told me. There will be other boys. But never another sister.” Without another word he turned around and began walking away.

Tatiana ran after him. “Alexander, wait!”

He kept walking.

Tatiana could not keep up. “Please, wait!” she called into Ulitsa Govorova. She held on to the wall of a yellow stucco building, whispering, “please come back.”

Alexander came back. “Let’s go,” he said flatly. “I have to get back to the barracks.”

Tatiana persisted. “Listen to me. If we stop now, at least there will be nothing to tell the people who are close to us, who love us, who depend on us not to betray them. Dasha—”

“Tatiana!” Alexander came at her so suddenly that she staggered back, letting go of the wall and nearly falling to the pavement. He grabbed her by the arms. “What are you talking about?” he said. “The betrayal—it’s an objective thing. What, you think just because we haven’t told them yet it’s not betrayal?”

“Stop.”

He didn’t. “You think when you can’t look at me because you’re afraid that everybody will see what I see, it’s not betrayal? When your face lights up a block away as you fly out of your stupid job? When you leave your hair down, when those lips of yours quiver? Are they not betraying you?” He was breathing hard.

“Stop it,” she said, red, upset, trying unsuccessfully to wrest herself away from him.

“Tatiana, every single minute that you have spent with me, you have lied to your sister, lied to Dimitri, to your parents, to God, and to yourself. When will you stop?”

“Alexander,” Tatiana said in a whisper, “you stop.”

He let go.

She was panting. “You’re right,” Tatiana said, unable to get a breath out. “But I haven’t lied to myself. That’s why I can’t do this anymore.” She paused. “Please… I don’t want to fight with you. And I don’t have the strength to hurt Dasha. I don’t have the strength for any of this.”

“The strength or the desire, Tania?”

Opening her hands pleadingly, she said, “The strength. I’ve never lied like this in my life.” Realizing what she was admitting, Tatiana flushed with embarrassment, but what could she do? She had to bravely continue. “You have no idea what it costs me every day, every minute, every night to hide from Dasha. My blank stare, my gritted teeth, my casual disregard—do you have any idea what it costs me?”

“Oh, I do,” he said, the grimmest of soldiers. “I’m the one who knows the truth. That’s why I want to end this charade.”

“End it and then what?” Tatiana exclaimed, flaring up. “Have you thought this all the way through?” She raised her voice. “End it and then what? I’ve still got to live with Dasha!” She laughed with exasperation. “What do you think, you think you can call on me after you are through with her? You think after you tell him, after I tell her, you’ll be able to come over, have dinner? Chat with my family? And, Alexander, what about me? Where am I supposed to go? To the barracks with you? Don’t you understand that I sleep in the same bed with her? And that I have nowhere else to go!” Tatiana yelled. “Understand,” she said, “you can do what you like, you can end it with Dasha, but if you do, you will never be able to see me again.”

“Don’t threaten me, Tatiana,” Alexander said loudly, his eyes blazing. “And I thought that was the whole point of this.”

Tatiana groaned, ready to cry.

Lowering his voice, he said, “All right, don’t be upset.” He rubbed her arm.

“Then stop upsetting me!”

He took his hand away.

“Go on with your life,” Tatiana said. “You’re a man.” She lowered her eyes. “Go on with Dasha. She is right for you. She is a woman and I’m—”

“Blind!” Alexander exclaimed.

Tatiana stood on Ulitsa Govorova, desolately failing in the battle of her heart. “Oh, Alexander,” she said, “what do you want from me…”

“Everything!” he whispered fiercely.

Tatiana shook her head, clenching her fists to her chest.

Running his hand down the length of her hair, Alexander said, “Tatia, I’m asking you for the last time.”

“And I’m telling you for the last time,” she said, barely able to get the words out.

Standing tall, Alexander stopped touching her.

She took a step forward, putting her gentle hand on him. “Shura… I don’t own Dasha’s life,” Tatiana said. “I cannot sacrifice my sister’s life. I can’t give it away to please you and me—”

“That’s fine,” he interrupted, pulling his arm away. “You’ve made it very clear. I can see I was wrong about you. You can stop now. But I’m telling you, I’m going to do it my way, not your way. I will end it with Dasha, and you will not see me again.”

“No, please…”

“Will you just go?” Alexander said, pointing down the street. “Walk away from me to the canal. Go home. Go to your Dasha.”

“Shura…” she said with anguish.

“Don’t call me that.” His voice was cold. He folded his arms. “Go, I said! Walk away.”

Tatiana blinked. Every night when they parted, an aching breath left her lungs where Alexander had been. She felt physically emptier in his absence. And up in her room she surrounded herself with other people to feel him less, to want him less. But invariably every night Tatiana had to climb into bed with her sister, and every night Tatiana would turn to the wall begging for strength.

I can do this, she thought. I’ve spent seventeen years with Dasha and only three weeks with Alexander. I can do this. Feel one way. Behave one way, too.

Tatiana turned and walked away.

14

True to his word, the next time Dasha came to see him, Alexander took her for a short walk down Nevsky and told her that he needed some time to himself to think things through. Dasha cried, which he hated, because he hated to see women cry, and she pleaded, which he also did not like much. But he did not relent. Alexander could not tell Dasha he was furious with her younger sister. Furious with a shy, tiny thing who could fit into the palm of his hand if she crouched, yet who would not surrender one stride, not even for him.

A few days later Alexander almost felt glad he wasn’t seeing Tatiana’s face anymore. He found out that the Germans were just eighteen kilometers south of the barely fortified Luga line, which in turn was just eighteen kilometers south of Tolmachevo. Information came into the garrison that the Germans had combed through the entire town of Novgorod in a matter of a few hours. Novgorod, the town southeast of Luga, was where Tatiana cartwheeled into Lake Ilmen.

The People’s Volunteer Army, though tens of thousands strong, had just begun digging the trenches in Luga.

Anticipating the threat of the Finns, most of the resources for field mining, antitank trenching, and concrete reinforcements had gone to the north of Leningrad. The Finnish-Soviet front line in southern Karelia was the best-defended line in the Soviet Union—and the quietest. Dimitri must be happy, Alexander thought. Hitler’s precipitous advance south of Leningrad, however, had caught the Red Army by surprise. They scrambled to build a line of defense along 125 kilometers of the Luga River from Lake Ilmen to Narva. There were some entrenchments, some gun emplacements, some tank traps dug, but not nearly enough. The Leningrad command, realizing that something had to be done and done immediately, loaded the concrete tank barriers from Karelia and trucked them down to Luga.