“Wait!” he said loudly, raising his hand. “I said if that’s what it is. But if it’s something else—” He stopped. Her face looked so upset. Lowering his voice back to calm, opening his hands to her, looking at her with everything he felt for her, Alexander said, “Listen. How about this? I will forgive you for not writing me, if you will forgive me for one thing that’s bothering you.” He smiled. “Is there only one?”

“Alexander, there are so many things that are bothering me, I don’t even know where to begin.”

He saw that she really didn’t. And through it all, the hurt remained in her eyes.

It was Tatiana’s eyes that Alexander reacted to now: they were the same eyes he had seen on the Fifth Soviet pavement when she yelled to him that she could forgive him for his indifferent face but not for his indifferent heart. Weren’t they past that? He wore his heart for her as a medal on his chest; weren’t they beyond all the lies?

How much was there beyond that Fifth Soviet pavement?

Alexander realized, only death was beyond that. They had never fixed that fight. And all the things that preceded it. And all the things that surpassed it.

And through all those things ran Dasha, whom Tatiana had tried to save and could not. Whom Alexander had tried to save and could not.

“Tania, is all this because Dasha and I were planning to get married?”

She didn’t reply.

Aha.

“Is all this because of the letter that I wrote to Dasha?”

She didn’t reply.

Aha.

“Is there more?”

“Alexander,” Tatiana said, shaking her head, “how petty you manage to make it all sound. How trivial. All my feelings have now been reduced to your contemptuous ‘all this.’ ”

“I’m not contemptuous,” he said, with surprise. “It’s not trivial. It’s not petty, but it’s all in the past—”

“No!” she cried. “It’s all right here, right now, all around me and inside, too! I live here now. And here,” she said raising her voice even more, “they have been waiting for you to come to marry my sister! And I don’t mean just the old women. I mean everybody in the village. Since I came to live here, it’s all I’ve heard, and not just every day but every dinner, every lunch, every sewing circle. Dasha and Alexander. Dasha and Alexander. Poor Dasha, poor Alexander.” She shuddered. “Does that seem like the past to you?”

Alexander tried to reason with her. “How is that my fault?”

“Oh, did they perhaps ask Dasha to marry you?”

“I told you, I didn’t ask her to marry me—”

“Don’t play this game with me, Alexander, don’t toy with me! You told her you would be married this summer.”

“And I did this why?” he said sharply.

“Oh, just stop it! At St. Isaac’s we agreed to keep away from each other. Except you couldn’t keep away from me, so you made plans to marry my sister.”

“He left you alone after that, didn’t he?” Alexander declared grimly.

“He would have left me alone if you’d never come to the apartment again, too!” she yelled.

“Which would you have preferred?”

She stopped moving for a moment. “Are you really asking me,” she said, panting, “what I would have preferred?” Her eyes were wide. “Are you in all honesty asking me if I would have preferred your marrying my sister to not seeing you again?”

“Yes! At St. Isaac’s you were ready to beg me not to stay away from you. So don’t give me this shit. It’s only easy to say now, in retrospect.”

“Oh, is that what this is—easy?” Tatiana was walking around the clearing in such furious circles she was almost spinning. With his long strides Alexander kept up with her, but she was making him dizzy.

“Stop moving!” he shouted. She stopped. “I see, so you set the rules and then you don’t like that I play by them. Well, live with it.”

“I am living with it,” Tatiana retorted. “Every single damned day since the day I met you.”

“Oh, this is the fight you want?” Alexander yelled. “This fight? You won’t win this one, because this one goes right back to you—”

“I don’t want to hear it!”

“Of course you don’t!”

Breathing hard, Tatiana said, “You told Dasha you would get married, she told my grandmother, my grandmother told the village. You wrote her a letter saying you were coming to marry her. Words have meaning, you know.” Tatiana fell briefly quiet. “Even words you don’t mean.”

Why did he think she wasn’t talking about Dasha now?

“If you felt so strongly about this,” he said, “then why didn’t you write me a letter back, saying, ‘You know what, Alexander, Dasha didn’t make it, but I’m right here.’ “ I would have come sooner. And I wouldn’t have lived the six months I lived not knowing if you had survived!”

“After the letter you wrote her,” Tatiana said incredulously, “you think I’d be writing you and asking you to come here? You think after that letter I’d be asking you for anything? I’d be an idiot to do that, wouldn’t I? An idiot, or—” She stopped.

“Or what?” he demanded.

“Or a child,” she said, not looking at him.

Alexander took a deep breath. “Oh, Tania—”

“These games you grown-ups play,” she said, backing away from him. “These lies—you’re just too good at them.” She lowered her head. “Too good for me.”

All Alexander wanted that instant was to touch her. Her lips, her anger, her face—he wanted to touch it all. “Tania…” he whispered, holding out his hands to her. “What are you talking about? What games, what lies?”

“Why did you come here, why?” she said coldly.

He felt himself about to choke on his words. “How can you even ask me that?”

“How? Because the last thing you wrote was that you were coming to marry Dasha. How much you loved her. How she was the woman for you. The only woman for you. I read that letter. That’s what you wrote. Because one of the last things I heard you say on Lake Ladoga was that you never—”

“Tatiana!” Alexander screamed, the pin falling to the ground. “What the hell are you talking about? Did you forget you made me promise to lie till the last? You made me promise. As late as November I was still saying, let’s tell the truth. But you! Lie, lie, lie, Shura, marry her, but promise me you won’t break my sister’s heart. Do you remember?”

“Yes, and you did commendably well,” Tatiana said acidly. “But did you have to be so convincing?”

Running his hand through his hair, Alexander shook his head. “You know I didn’t mean it.”

“Which part?” she said loudly, stepping up close and looking up at him, angry and unafraid. “The marrying Dasha part? The loving her part? Which part of all those lies do I know you didn’t mean?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he exclaimed. “What answer did you want me to give her as she lay dying in your arms?”

“The only answer you could give her,” she replied. “The only answer you meant to give, living your life of lies.”

“We both live that life of lies, Tatiana—because of you!” he yelled, wanting to tear her hair out. “But you know I didn’t mean what I said.”

“I thought you didn’t mean it,” Tatiana said. “I hoped you didn’t mean it. But can you understand that it was the only thing I heard all the way on the train to Molotov and all the way across the Volga ice and for two months in the hospital as I struggled for my breath, can you understand that?”

She struggled for her breath now as Alexander stood and watched her, feeling unbearable remorse.

“I wouldn’t have cared,” Tatiana continued. “I told you, I don’t need much, I don’t need much comfort.” She clenched her fists again. And the hurt was in her eyes. “But I do need a little bit,” she said, her voice unsteady. “I need a little bit for me, and then you could have said what you needed to say to Dasha, as you absolutely had to!” She took a breath. “I wanted your eyes on me for a second to let me know that I wasn’t nothing, so I could have a little faith. But no,” she said. “You treated me like you always do—as if I weren’t there.”