“By yourself?”

“No,” he said, rolling his eyes. “With a group of seven forty-year-old men who have never carried a rifle.”

“Teach them how, Alexander. You must be a good teacher.”

Glancing at her, he said, “We’ve just spent the whole morning putting up tank barricades on Moscow Prospekt leading south. No trams are running there now.” He paused. “But Kirov is still open and pushing out those tanks. They’re just now deciding to move the production east. Little by little, other industries are leaving in trucks and the last of the trains.” He paused again. “Tania? Are you listening to me?”

“What?” She broke free of the deafening noise in her head.

“How is the ice cream?”

“Very good. An unexpected treat.”

“I think that’s a good way to think about many things in life,” Alexander said, getting up. “I have to be going.”

“No!” Tatiana said quickly, and then more quietly, “Wait.”

Alexander sat back down.

“About the other night…” she said. “I’m sorry. I—”

Alexander shook his head. “Forget it.”

Tatiana couldn’t think of anything to say besides low-spirited words. “Why did you take so long to come by?”

“What do you mean? I come by and see you every day.”

Tatiana didn’t say anything, and neither did he.

They looked at each other.

“I would have come alone,” he said. “I just thought there was little point. It wasn’t going to make you or me feel better.”

An image sprang up, an image of him bending over her, washing blood from her naked body. She breathed with difficulty. Another image… sleeping next to him, in his arms, her lips pressed to his chest, her hands touching him. Feeling closer to him than to anyone on earth. Standing with her arms around him on the train. And worse—the visceral sensation of his lips parting her lips. She turned her face from him. “You’re right, I know,” she whispered.

Alexander got up, and this time Tatiana didn’t stop him. “I’ll see you,” he said, bending over her and pressing his lips to her head.

Well, my head, that’s something, thought Tatiana. When he was by the door, she asked, “Will you come again? If you can. For just a few minutes.”

With his cap in his hands, he said, “Tania…”

“I know. You’re right. Don’t.”

“Tania, all the nurses here… someone will mention my visit in front of your family. It’ll just end badly.”

But it will end. “You’re right,” she said. “Don’t.”

After he left, Tatiana thought in loathing self-flagellation, I’m a very bad sister. I’ve always thought of myself as a good sister, but I realize that I have never been tested before. The first time I have been—look how I’m behaving.

2

One night a week later, Tatiana woke up feeling her face being stroked. She wanted to open her eyes, but it felt so much like a dream, and she felt so drugged and tired that she let her eyes stay closed. A man with big hands and vodka on his breath was stroking her face. She knew only one man with big hands. She kept her eyes shut, but she knew that her breathing pattern had changed from sleepy breaths to shallow rasps. He stopped touching her. “Tatia?”

She so wanted the illusion to continue. The illusion of being touched by Alexander in the middle of an August night. Tatiana opened her eyes.

It was Alexander. He wasn’t wearing his hat. There was that look in his molasses eyes again; even in the dark she could make it out.

“Did I wake you?” He smiled.

She sat up. “Yes. I think.” She reached out and touched his arm. “It seems like the middle of the night.”

“It is,” he said. He stared at her blanket, and she looked at the top of his black head. “It’s around three.”

They were speaking in just above a whisper.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I just wanted to see if you were all right. I keep… thinking of you here by yourself. Are you sad? Lonely?”

“Yes and yes,” Tatiana said. She smelled vodka on him. “Have you been drinking?”

“Hmm.” His wandering eyes were slightly unfocused. “For the first time in a while. I had a night off tonight. Marazov and I went out, had a few drinks.” He stopped. “Tatia…”

Her heart pounding, she waited breathlessly. His hands were on her blanket. Her legs were underneath the blanket. “Shura,” she said, and suddenly, for an instant, felt happy. The way she felt coming out of Kirov and turning her head and seeing his smile. Happier.

Alexander said, “I can’t find the right words. I thought maybe after I’d had enough to drink…”

“Every word you’re saying is the right word,” Tatiana told him. “What?”

Alexander took her hands and pressed them to his chest. His head remained bent. He said nothing.

What to do? Tatiana was a child. Any other girl would know what to do. She didn’t even know what the right thing might be. I’m like a newborn. How I wish I knew what to do now in this moment with him. In my hospital bed, with my ribs taped up, with my leg in a cast, yes, but alone with him.

Dasha’s face appeared between them, as if Tatiana’s conscience could not let her heart have even a moment of stolen joy. That is how it should be, she said to herself, wanting desperately to lift his head and kiss him. Suddenly Dasha’s face evaporated. Tatiana leaned toward him and kissed his hair. It smelled of soap and smoke. Alexander looked up. They were centimeters away from each other; she smelled his delicious, vodka-laden, Alexander-laden breath. “I’m so happy you came to see me, Shura,” she whispered, feeling an aching pull in her lower body.

Alexander tilted his head and kissed her deeply on the lips. He let go of her hands, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him. They kissed as if in a fever… they kissed as if the breath were leaving their bodies.

The aching in her stomach got to be too much to bear; Tatiana opened her mouth and moaned. Alexander took her face into his hands. “You sweet thing,” he murmured. “You’re the sweetest thing. I don’t know what to do, what to do, Tania.” He kissed her lips and licked them with his tongue and kissed her eyes and her cheeks and her neck. Tatiana moaned again, still holding on to him; she felt herself incinerating from within. His lips were so insistent and hungry that Tatiana, suddenly unable to breathe or sit, started to float down onto the bed.

Alexander held her up. Tatiana felt his hands gently moving up and down on her partially exposed back where her nightgown opened. Slowly he untied the strings of her gown. Alexander was completely clothed, sitting on her bed and kissing her as he pulled the nightgown down. Tatiana breathed out, shuddering.

He pulled back from her face, still holding her, still whispering. His eyes were blazing. “Tania, you are too much for me… I can’t take you, not in small doses, not in large ones, not here, not on the street, nowhere.” His hands moved around to hold her just above her bandaged ribs.

“Shura,” she whispered, her whole aching weakness in her voice. “What’s happening to me? What is this?”

Alexander cupped her breasts and fondled them. Flattening out his palms, he rubbed her nipples in circles. Tatiana moaned. He rubbed them harder. Pulling away and staring at her breasts, he muttered, “Oh, God… look at you…” Tatiana watched him as he bent down to her breast, put her nipple in his mouth, and sucked it, while rubbing her other nipple with his fingers. Then he sucked the other nipple. Watching and feeling Alexander’s lips on her nipples utterly overwhelmed Tatiana. Her hands clutching his head, she moaned so loudly that he pulled away and lightly put his hand over her mouth. “Shh,” he whispered. “They’ll hear you outside.” His right hand never stopped. Spanning her, his thumb and his little finger kneaded her nipples. Tatiana moaned just as loudly. His left hand went around her mouth a little firmer. “Shh,” he said, smiling, short of breath.