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“Someday we’ll meet in Lvov, my love and I.”
― The Bronze Horseman
― The Bronze Horseman
“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.”
― The Bronze Horseman
― The Bronze Horseman
“Shura,” she whispered, “don’t you see? Our baby is a sign from God.” “It is?” “Absolutely,” she said, her face sparkling. Suddenly Alexander understood. “That’s the radiance,” he exclaimed. “That’s why you’re like a flame walking through this hospital. It’s the baby!” “Yes,” she said. “This is what is meant for us. Think about Lazarevo—how many times did we make love in those twenty-nine days?” “I don’t know.” He smiled. “How many? How many zeros follow the twenty-nine?” She laughed quietly. “Two or three. We made love to wake the dead, and yet I didn’t get pregnant. You come to see me for one weekend, and here I am—how do you say, up the stick?” Alexander laughed loudly. “Thank you for that. But, Tania, I want to remind you, we did make love quite a bit that weekend, too.” “Yes.” They stared at each other for a silent, unsmiling moment. Alexander knew. They had both felt too close to death that gray weekend in Leningrad. And, yet, here it was— As if to confirm what he was thinking, Tatiana said, “This is God telling us to go. Can’t you feel that, too? He is saying, this is your destiny! I will not let anything happen to Tatiana, as long as she has Alexander’s baby inside her.” “Oh?” said Alexander, his hands tenderly stroking her stomach. “God is saying that, is He? Why don’t you tell that to the woman in the Ladoga truck with you and Dasha, holding her dead baby all the way from the barracks across to Kobona?” “I feel stronger now than ever,” Tatiana said, hugging him. “Where is your famous faith, big man?”
― The Bronze Horseman
― The Bronze Horseman
“What strength he once possessed had left his body and gone to a tiny girl with freckles.”
― The Bronze Horseman
― The Bronze Horseman
“You had my son. I had nothing else but you, and how you walked with me through Leningrad, across the Neva and Lake Ladoga and held my open back together and clotted my wounds, and washed my burns, and healed me, and saved me. I was hungry and you fed me. I had nothing but Lazarevo.” Alexander’s voice broke. “And your immortal blood. Tatiana, you were my only life force. You have no idea how hard I tried to get to you again. I gave myself up to the enemy, to the Germans for you. I got shot at for you and beaten for you and betrayed for you and convicted for you. All I wanted was to see you again. That you came back for me, it’s everything, Tatia. Don’t you understand? The rest is nothing to me. Germany, Kolyma, Dimitri, Nikolai Ouspensky, the Soviet Union, all of it, nothing. Forget them all, let them all go. You hear?”
“I hear,” Tatiana said. We walk alone through this world, but if we’re lucky, we have a moment of belonging to something, to someone, that sustains us through a lifetime of loneliness.”
.”
― Tatiana and Alexander
“I hear,” Tatiana said. We walk alone through this world, but if we’re lucky, we have a moment of belonging to something, to someone, that sustains us through a lifetime of loneliness.”
.”
― Tatiana and Alexander
Alejandra’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Alejandra’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,598 books
|
757 friends
1,180 books
|
175 friends
881 books
|
571 friends
933 books
|
1,947 friends
954 books
|
149 friends
1,317 books
|
23 friends
1,667 books
|
83 friends
794 books
|
449 friends
More friends…
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