Alexander let out his breath and laughed without much humor.

“What’s funny?” Tatiana did not sound amused herself.

Neither was Alexander. “I didn’t think it was possible,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t, after what I had seen at Fifth Soviet, but somehow you managed to do it.”

“Do what?” Tatiana said, no longer faintly.

“Explain to me how,” he snapped. “How did you manage to find and surround yourself with people even more needy than your family?”

“Don’t talk about my family that way, all right!”

“Why does everyone flock around you, why? Can you explain it?”

“Not to you.”

“Why do you submerge yourself in their life this way?”

“I’m not discussing this with you. You’re just being mean.”

“Do you even have a moment to yourself in that fucking house?” Alexander exclaimed. “A moment!”

“Not a moment!” Tatiana retorted. “Thank God.”

They walked in resentful silence the rest of the way, through the village, past the banya and the village Soviet, past the tiny hut that said “Library” and a small building with a gold cross on top of a white kupola.

They walked into the woods and down the path leading to the Kama. Finally they came to a wide, slightly sloping clearing surrounded by tall pines and clusters of leaning white birches. Willows and poplars framed the sparkling, streaming river.

On the left side of the clearing under the pines stood a boarded-up izba, a wooden cabin. It had a small covering on the side that served as a woodshed, but there was no wood.

“This is it?” Alexander said, walking around the cabin in thirty long strides. “It’s not very big.”

“There were only two of them,” said Tatiana, walking around with him in fifty short ones.

“But they were waiting for three grandchildren. Where would you all have fit?”

“We would have fit,” said Tatiana. “How do we fit in Naira’s house?”

“Extremely tightly,” declared Alexander, reaching into his rucksack. He pulled out his trench tool and started to break off the boards on the windows.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to see what’s inside.”

Alexander watched her walk to the sandy riverbank, sit down, and take off her sandals. He lit a cigarette and continued to break off the boards.

“Did you bring a key for the padlock?” he called to her.

He didn’t hear her response. Fed up, he strode over and said loudly, “Tatiana, I’m speaking to you. Did you bring the key for the padlock, I asked?”

“And I replied to you,” she snapped without glancing up. “I said no.”

“Fine,” he said, getting out his semiautomatic from his belt and pulling back the breechblock. “If you didn’t bring the key, I will shoot the fucking padlock off.”

“Wait, wait,” she said, tutting and taking a rope from her neck on which the key hung. “Here. Don’t snatch!” She turned away. “You’re not at war, you know. You don’t have to bring that gun everywhere.”

“Oh, yes, I do.” He started to walk away and glanced back—at her blonde hair, at her back exposed at the waist, at her shoulders. Alexander dropped the padlock key into his trouser pocket and, holding his pistol in one hand and his trench tool in the other, strode into the water, still in his boots, stood in front of her with his feet apart, and said in a determined voice, “All right, let’s have it.”

“Have what?” Still sitting down, she backed away from him slightly on her haunches.

“Have what?” he exclaimed. “Why are you upset? What did I do, or not do? What did I do too much of, or not enough of? Tell me. Tell me now.”

“Why are you talking to me like that?” Tatiana said, jumping to her feet. “You have no right in the world to be upset with me.”

“You have no right in the world to be upset with me!” he said loudly. “Tania, we are wasting our precious breath. And you’re wrong—I have plenty of right to be upset with you. But unlike you, I’m too grateful you’re alive and too happy to see you to be too upset with you.”

“I have more reason to be upset with you.” Tatiana paused. “And I am grateful you are alive.” She couldn’t look at him when she spoke. “I am happy to see you.”

“It’s hard for me to tell, your wall against me is so thick.” When she didn’t reply, Alexander said, “Do you understand that I came all the way to Lazarevo without hearing from you once in six months?” He raised his voice. “Not once in six months! I should have just thought you both were dead, no?”

“I don’t know what you thought, Alexander,” said Tatiana, looking past him at the river.

“I’m going to tell you what I thought, Tatiana. In case it’s not clear. For six months I didn’t know if you were alive or dead, because you couldn’t be bothered to pick up a fucking pen!”

“I didn’t know you wanted me to write to you,” Tatiana said, grabbing a couple of pebbles and tossing them past him into the water.

“You didn’t know?” he repeated. Was she mocking him? “What are you talking about? Hello, Tatiana. I’m Alexander. Have we met before? You didn’t know I would have wanted to hear that you were all right, or perhaps that Dasha had died?”

He saw her recoil from his words, and from him.

“I am not talking about Dasha with you!” She walked away.

He followed her. “If not with me, then with who? With Vova, perhaps?”

“Better with him than with you.”

“Oh, that’s charming.” Alexander was still trying to be rational, but if she kept saying things like that, all reason was going to leave him.

Tatiana said, “Look, I didn’t write to you because I thought Dimitri would tell you. He said he definitely would. So I thought for sure you knew.” Something unspoken remained in her after that, but Alexander’s temper didn’t let him get to it.

“You thought Dimitri would tell me?” Alexander repeated in disbelief.

“Yes!” she said challengingly.

“Why didn’t you just write me yourself?” he yelled, coming close and looming over her. “Four thousand rubles, Tatiana, you’d think I’d deserve a fucking letter from you, no? You’d think my four thousand rubles would buy you a pen to write me and not just vodka and cigarettes for your village lover!”

“Put your weapons down!” she yelled back. “Don’t you dare come near me with those things in your hands!”

Hurling away his gun and his trench tool, he came for her, making her back away, and came for her again, without touching her, making her back away once more. “What’s the matter, Tania?” he said. “Am I crowding you? Getting too close?” He paused, leaning into her face. “Scaring you?” he added bitingly.

“Yes and yes,” she said. “And yes.”

Alexander picked up a handful of pebbles and threw them hard into the water.

For a minute, maybe two, maybe three, neither of them spoke, getting their breath. He waited for her to say something, and when she didn’t, Alexander tried again to lure her back into what they felt when it was just the two of them, at Kirov, at Luga, at St. Isaac’s. “Tania, when you first saw me here…” He trailed off. “You were so happy.”

“What gave my happiness away?” she asked. “Was it my sobbing?”

“Yes,” he said. “I thought you were crying from happiness.”

“Have you seen much of that, Alexander?” Tatiana asked, and for a second, just for a moment, he wondered if there was a double meaning behind her words, but he was too confounded to think carefully.

“What did I say?” he asked.

“I don’t know. What did you say?”

“Do we have to play these guessing games?” he said in exasperation. “Can’t you just tell me?” When she didn’t say anything, Alexander sighed. “All I asked was where Dasha was.”

Tatiana almost curled into herself.

“Tania, if you’re unhappy because I’m making you remember things you want to forget then we will deal with that—”

“If only—”