When you die, you’ll be wearing your white dress with red roses, and your hair will be long and falling around your shoulders. When they shoot you, up on your damn roof or walking alone on the street, your blood will look like another red rose on your dress, and no one will notice, not even you when you bleed out for Mother Russia.
Through the haze in front of her she heard Alexander’s voice, “Tatiana, I love you. Do you hear me? I love you like I’ve never loved anyone in my whole life. Now, get up. For me, Tatia. For me, please get up and go take care of your sister. Go on. And I’ll take care of you.” His lips kissed her cheek.
All nations were different. The Russians were unparalleled in their suffering, the English in their reserve, the Americans in their love of life, the Italians in their love of Christ, and the French in their hope of love.
Up on the roof Tatiana thought about the evening minute, the minute she used to walk out the factory doors, turn her head to the left even before her body turned, and look for his face. The evening minute as she hurried down the street, her happiness curling her mouth upward to the white sky, the red wings speeding her to him, to look up at him and smile.
When Tatiana had been a child in Luga, her beloved Deda, seeing her depressed one summer and unable to find her way, said to her, ‘Ask yourself these three questions, Tatiana Metanova, and you will know who you are. Ask: what do you believe in? What do you hope for? But most important – ask, what do you love?
Hold your head high, and if you’re going to go down, go down knowing you have not in any way compromised your soul.
What little I had was all for you. It was you who was everybody else’s. But I was only yours.
Whenever you’re unsure of yourself, whenever you’re in doubt, ask yourself three questions. What do you believe in? What do you hope for? But most important, ask yourself, what do you love?” His arm was around her. “And when you answer, Tania, you will know who you are. And more important – if you ask this question of the people around you, you will know who they are, too.
Someday we’ll meet in Lvov, my love and I.
I will make you insane, her memory screamed at her near the winter window sill as Tatiana smelled the brine of eternity. On the outside you will walk and smile as if indeed you are a normal woman, but on the inside you will twist and burn on the stake, I will never free you, you will never be free.
Her once twinkling green eyes set deep into the pale features looked as if they were the only ghastly crystal barriers between strangers and her soul.
To live as a child in a world without time – not in infinity, but in eternity, what a joy. To never count your minutes. To just be – in the eternal present. What bliss.
Tania, we desperately need to have a minute,” he said. “And you know it.” She knew it. “This isn’t right.” “It’s the only thing that’s right.” “All right. Go.” “Will you come?” “I will try. Now, go.” “Lift your – ” Before he stopped speaking, Tatiana raised her face to him. They kissed deeply. “Do you have any idea what I feel?” Alexander whispered, his hands in her hair. “No,” Tatiana replied, holding on to him, her legs numb. “I only have an idea what I feel.
What strength he once possessed had left his body and gone to a tiny girl with freckles.
Through the smoke she could feel bodies around her. Hot and faint, she felt for them with her hands. The gunfire came from right outside the door, but when the lattice beam fell from the ceiling, all sounds faded away, all faded away, and there was no more fear. Only regret was left. Regret for Alexander.
Alexander was suffocating under the weight of his love.
It was a perfect day. For five minutes there was no war, and it was just a glorious Sunday in a Leningrad June. When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.
Tania.” Her voice was soothing. “There is a second love. And a third love. And if you’re lucky, a fourth and a fifth, too.
Everyone feels that way, that we will never stop loving someone, that we will never love anyone else, that we can never feel more than we do right now, but yet... we do, somehow, stop loving. We do get over it. Don’t we? We have to. We must. Otherwise, how could we go on?
He was new. Transcendentally new. Immemorially new. She had thought all the while that their instant familiarity was based on the things she understood- compassion, empathy, fondness, friendship. Two people resoundingly coming together. Needing to sit close together on the tram, to bump into each other, to make each other laugh. Needing each other. Needing happiness. Needing youth.