At eight in the evening Tatiana ran outside with her clean hands and her straightened-out collar and her brushed-out hair, not believing she could be running at the end of an eleven-hour day, yet running nonetheless, so afraid that Alexander wouldn’t be waiting for her.

But he was.

He was waiting for her but not smiling.

Out of breath, Tatiana tried to regain her composure. She was alone with him for the first time since last Friday, alone in a sea of strangers. She wanted to say, I’m so happy you came to see me. What had happened to don’t come and see me anymore?

Someone yelled out her name; Tatiana reluctantly turned around. It was Ilya, a boy of sixteen, who worked alongside her on the tank tracks. “You catching the bus?” Ilya asked, glancing at Alexander, who said nothing.

“No, Ilya, but I’ll see you tomorrow.” Tatiana motioned for Alexander to cross the street.

“Who was that?” Alexander asked.

Puzzled, Tatiana glanced at him. “Who? Oh, just some boy I work with.”

“Is he bothering you?”

“What? No, no.” Ilya actually was bothering her a little bit. “I started in a new department. We’re building tanks to send to the Luga line,” she said proudly.

Nodding, he said, “How fast can you make them?”

“My department is making one every two days,” she replied. “That’s good, right?”

“To help at the Luga line,” Alexander said, “you’re going to need ten a day.”

Detecting something… she looked up at him, tried to figure it out but couldn’t. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

She thought. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

The people near the tram stop were standing silently, smoking. No one was talking to anyone else. “You want to walk back home?” Tatiana asked shyly.

Alexander shook his head. “I’ve been in military training all day.”

Nudging him with her fingers, Tatiana said teasingly, “I thought you already were in the military.”

“Yes. Not for me, for them. Maneuvers, gun training, more air-raid shelters.” He sounded depleted for some reason. Was she that close to the nuances of his voice? Of his face?

“What’s the matter?” she asked again.

“Nothing,” he repeated. But then he took her arm, pulling up her sleeve a little to reveal the dark bruises on the underside. “Tania, what’s this?”

Ah. “Nothing.” She tried to pull her arm away. He would not let go as he stood very close to her.

“Really nothing,” she said, unable to look up at him. “Come on. I’m fine.”

“I don’t believe you,” Alexander said. “I told you, don’t take up with Di-mitri.”

“I’m not taking up with him,” Tatiana said.

They glanced at each other, and then Tatiana stared at his uniform buttons.

“Alexander, it’s nothing,” she said. “He was just trying to get me to sit with him.”

“I want you to tell me if he grabs you this hard again, do you hear?” Alexander said, letting go of her.

She didn’t want his tender, firm fingers to let go of her. “Dima is a nice enough man. He is just used to a different kind of girl, I think.” She coughed. “Who isn’t? Well, listen, I took care of it. I’m sure it won’t happen again.”

“Oh?” Alexander said. “Like you took care of talking about Pasha to your family?”

Tatiana didn’t speak at first but then said, “Alexander, I told you it was going to be hard for me. You can’t even get my twenty-four-year-old sister to do it. Why don’t you try? Come over for dinner one night, have some vodka with Papa, and bring it up. See how they take it. Show me how it’s done. Because I can’t do it.”

“You can’t talk to your own family about your brother, but you can stand up to Dimitri?”

“That’s right,” Tatiana replied, raising her voice a little, and thought unhappily, are we fighting? Why are we fighting?

There was a seat for them on the tram. Tatiana held on to the bench in front of her. Alexander’s hands were folded in his lap. He was quiet and didn’t look at her. Something continued to upset him. Was it Dimitri? Still they sat close, his arm pressed into her arm and his leg pressed into her leg. His leg felt made of marble. Tatiana didn’t move her body away from him; as if she could, as if that were even an option. She was magnetized to him.

Trying to alleviate the tension between them, Tatiana brought up the war. “Where is the front now, Alexander?”

“Moving north.”

“But it’s far still. Right? Far from… ?”

He didn’t look at her. “For all our military bravado, we are a civilian country.” He snorted. “Our silly maneuvers, our exercises, our grounded planes, our pathetic tanks. We didn’t know who we were dealing with.”

She pressed lightly into his side, assimilating him through her skin. “Alexander, why does Dimitri seem so reluctant to go and fight? I mean, it is to get the Germans out of our country.”

“He doesn’t care about the Germans. He cares about only one thing—” He broke off.

Tatiana waited.

“You will learn something about Dimitri, Tania. He treats self-preservation as his inalienable right.”

She gazed at him. “Alexander, what is… inalienable?”

He smiled. “A right that no one can assail.”

Tatiana thought. “Who says that? Do we even have those kinds of rights? Aren’t they usually reserved for the state?”

“We? Where?”

“Here.” She lowered her voice. “In the Soviet Union.”

“No, Tania. Here we do not. Here those rights are reserved for the state.” Alexander paused. “And Dimitri. Especially self-preservation.”

“Inalienable. I’ve never heard anyone say that word before,” Tatiana said thoughtfully.

“No, you wouldn’t,” he said, his face softening. “How was the rest of your Sunday? What did you do? How is your mother? Every time I see her, she looks ready to fall down.”

“Yes, too much worry for Mama these days.” Tatiana turned to the window. She didn’t want to speak about Pasha again. “You know what I did yesterday? I learned some English words. Want to hear?”

“Let’s get off, and then yes, very much. Any good words?”

She didn’t know quite what he meant, but she blushed anyway.

They got off the tram, and as they were walking past Warsaw Station, Tatiana saw a crowd of people huddled together: women with their children, old people with luggage, waiting in a focused disorder.

“What are they waiting for?” she asked.

“A train. They are the smart ones. They’re leaving this city,” said Alexander.

“Leaving?”

“Yes.” He paused. “Tania… as you should be leaving.”

“Leaving and going where?”

“Anywhere. Away from here.”

Why was it that a week ago the thoupbght of evacuation was so thrilling, yet today it felt like a death sentence? It wasn’t evacuation. It was exile.

“What I hear,” Alexander continued, “is that we’re getting routed by the Germans. Trounced. We’re unprepared, unequipped; we have no tanks and no weapons.”

“Don’t worry,” Tatiana said with false levity. “We’ll have a tank tomorrow.”

“We have nothing except men, Tania. No matter what the cheerful radio reports say.”

“They are quite cheerful,” Tatiana said, trying to sound cheerful herself—and failing.

“Tania?”

“Yes?”

“Are you listening? The Germans are eventually headed for Leningrad. It’s not safe. You really have to leave.”

“But my family is staying put!”

“So? Leave without them.”

“Alexander, what are you talking about?” Tatiana exclaimed and laughed. “I’ve never been anywhere by myself in my whole life! I barely go to the store by myself. I can’t go by myself. Where? By myself to the Urals or to some place where they evacuate people? Is that where you want me to go? Or maybe to America, where you’re from? Will I be safe there?” Tatiana chuckled. It was just preposterous.

“Certainly if you went where I’m from, you’d be safe there,” Alexander said grimly.