The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons

evenly. “Why would I?”
    “Absolutely!” He slapped Alexander on the back. “You’re a good man. Quick question—do you want me to arrange entertainment for—”
    “No!”
    “But you’ll be on duty all night. Come on, we’ll have fun like always?”
    “No. Not tonight.” He paused. “Not again, all right?”
    “But—”
    “I’m late,” said Alexander. “I’m going to run. I’ll see you at the barracks.”

Uncharted Tides
    THE next morning when Tatiana woke up, the first image in her mind was Alexander’s face. Tatiana did not speak to Dasha, tried in fact not to look at her sister, who, as she was leaving said, “Happy birthday.”
    “Yes, Tanechka, happy birthday,” said Mama, hurrying out. “Don’t forget to lock up.”
    Papa kissed her on the head and said, “Your brother is seventeen today, too, you know.”
    “I know that, Papa.”
    Papa worked as a pipe engineer at the Leningrad waterworks plant. Mama was a seamstress at a Nevsky hospital uniform facility. Dasha was an assistant to a dentist. She had worked for him since leaving university two years ago. They had had a romance, but once it was over, Dasha continued there because she liked the job. It paid well and demanded little from her.
    Tatiana went to Kirov, where the whole morning she sat in on meetings and patriotic speeches. The manager of her department, Sergei Krasenko, asked if anyone wanted to join the People’s Volunteer Army to dig trenches down south to help defeat the hated Germans.
    Today the German was hated. Yesterday he was beloved. What about tomorrow?
    Yesterday Tatiana had met Alexander.
    Krasenko continued to speak. The fortifications north of Leningrad, along the old frontier with Finland, were to be put into full defensive order. The Red Army suspected that the Finns were going to want Karelia back. Tatiana perked up. Karelia, Finland. Alexander spoke about that yesterday. Alexander… Tatiana perked down.
    The women listened to Krasenko, but no one sprang up to volunteer for anything. No one, that is, except Tamara, the woman who followed Tatiana on the assembly line. “What have I got to lose?” she whispered with fervor as she scrambled to her feet. Tatiana had suspected that Tamara’s job was just too boring.
    Today before lunch she received goggles, a protective mask for her hair, and a brown factory coat. After lunch she was no longer packaging spoons and forks. Now small cylindrical metal bullets came to her down the assembly line. They fell by the dozen into small cardboard containers, and Tatiana’s job was to put the containers into large wooden crates.
    At five o’clock Tatiana took off her coat and her mask and goggles, splashed water on her face, retied her hair into a neat ponytail, and left the building. She walked on Prospekt Stachek, along the famous Kirov wall, a concrete structure seven meters tall that ran fifteen city blocks. She walked three of those blocks to her bus stop.
    And waiting for her at the bus stop was Alexander.
    When she saw him—Tatiana couldn’t help herself—her face lit up. Putting her hand on her chest, she stopped walking for a moment, but he smiled at her and she blushed and, gulping down whatever was in her throat, walked toward him. She noticed that his officer’s cap was in his hands. She wished she had scrubbed her face harder.
    The presence of so many words inside her head made her incapable of small talk, just at the time when she needed small talk most. “What are you doing here?” she asked timidly.
    “We’re at war with Germany,” Alexander said. “I have no time for pretenses.”
    Tatiana wanted to say something, anything, not to let his words linger in the air. So she said, “Oh.”
    “Happy birthday.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Are you doing something special tonight?”
    “I don’t know. Today is Monday, so everyone will be tired. We’ll have dinner. A drink.” She sighed. In a different world, perhaps, she might have invited him over for