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By AnonymPaullina Simons
A bus came. The soldier turned away from her and walked toward it. Tatiana watched him. Even his walk was from another world; the step was too sure, the stride too long, yet somehow it all seemed right, looked right, felt right. It was like stumbling on a book you thought you had lost. Ah, yes, there it is.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Alexander knew that before he had light instead of darkness, he had to deserve light instead of darkness.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Alexander smoked and watched her from his tree stump bench. What are you doing? she would ask him. Nothing, he would reply. Nothing but growing my pain into madness.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Alexander tilted his head and kissed her deeply on the lips. He let go of her hands, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him. They kissed as if in a fever... they kissed as if the breath were leaving their bodies.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Alexander, you broke my heart. But for carrying me on your back, for pulling my dying sled, for giving me your last bread, for the body you destroyed for me, for the son you have given me, for the twenty-nine days we lived like Red Birds of Paradise, for all our Naples sands and Napa wines, for all the days you have been my first and last breath, for Orbeli- I will forgive you.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
All good things come to those who wait.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
And that's my point: all great things worth having require great sacrifice worth giving.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
And then, because she was Tatiana and because she couldn’t help herself, and because he wouldn’t have it any other way, she ran to him and was in his arms.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
....and when Tatiana lifted her glistening eyes to him, Alexander was looking down at her with his I’ll-get-on-the-bus-for-you-anytime face.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
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? ... I know who I am, she thought, taking his hand and turning to the altar. I am Tatiana. And I believe in, and hope for, and love Alexander for life.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Awash in a flood of hostility and despair, they battled and railed and shattered their bodies on one another, unable to find one strand, one sobering swallow of solace.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
But on that sunlit Sunday, Alexander knew nothing, thought nothing, imagined nothing. He forgot Dimitri and war and the Soviet Union and escape plans, and even America, and crossed the street for Tatiana Metanova.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Daughters are supposed to be friends to their mothers in their old age.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Dear God, Tatiana prayed in bed that night, turning to the wall and pulling the white sheet and the thin brown blanket over herself. If You are there somewhere, please teach me how to hide what I never knew how to show.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Do you see the Field of Mars, where I walked next to my bride in her white wedding dress, with red sandals in her hands, when we were kids?” “I see it well.” “We spent all our days afraid it was too good to be true, Tatiana,” said Alexander. “We were always afraid all we had was a borrowed five minutes from now.” Her hands went on his face. “That’s all any of us ever has, my love,” she said. “And it all flies by.” “Yes,” he said, looking at her, at the desert, covered coral and yellow with golden eye and globe mallow. “But what a five minutes it’s been.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Each day brought just another minute of the things they could not leave behind. Jane Barrington sitting on the train coming back to Leningrad from Moscow, holding on to her son, knowing she had failed him, crying for Alexander, wanting another drink, and Harold, in his prison cell, crying for Alexander, and Yuri Stepanov on his stomach in the mud in Finland, crying for Alexander, and Dasha in the truck, on the Ladoga ice, crying for Alexander, and Tatiana on her knees in the Finland marsh, screaming for Alexander, and Anthony, alone with his nightmares, crying for his father.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Falling in love with you in the Summer Garden in the white nights in Leningrad is the moment that propels me through life.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Good-bye, my moonsong and my breath, my white nights and golden days, my fresh water and my fire. Good-bye, and may you find a better life, find comfort again and your breathless smile, and when your beloved face lights up once more at the Western sunrise, be sure what I felt for you was not in vain. Good-bye and have faith, my Tatiana.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
He came over in long purposeful strides, sat at the edge of her bed, and in a tender, possessive gesture wiped the lipstick off her lips. “What is that?” he asked. “All the other girls wear it,” Tatiana said, quickly wiping her mouth, breathless at the sight of him. “Including Dasha.” “Well, I don’t want you to have anything on your lovely face,” he said, stroking her cheeks. “God knows, you don’t need it.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Here, take this, she would say, take this, and tell me where he is. Tell me whether he's dead or alive, so I can walk as his widow or his wife. No one would, or could, tell her, and so she continued to cook, and to learn new things all the while searching for an answer among the outcasts. The way he carried his body, the way he walked in my life, Tatiana thought, declared that he was the only man I had ever loved, and he knew it. And until I was alone without him, I thought it was all worth it.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
He sent you to redeem me, to comfort me, and to heal me—and that’s just so far,” he added with a smile.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
He stared at her fists and at her face and said with upset incredulity, "You promised me you would forgive me-" "Forgive you,"Tatiana hissed through her teeth, tears streaming down her face, "for your brave and indifferent face, Alexander!" She groaned in pain. "Not for your brave and indifferent heart.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
I don't want this life to end," said Alexander. "The good, the bad, the everything, the very old, to ever end.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
If there is God, I thought...Please some day let me make love to this girl while she wears that dress." "Oh..." "Tatiasha...isn't it nice to know there is a God?
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
I have a certain sensibility that I bring to my writing that comes from knowing two things: what I as a reader like to read, and what as a writer I am capable of. I know my own limits. I know there are things I cannot do.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
I know that sometimes the things we carry become too much for us. We are burned down, but somehow we have to pick ourselves up and keep going
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
I love you breathlessly, my amazing man.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
I love you. I'm blind for you, wild for you. Sick with you. I told you that our first night together when I asked you to marry me, I am telling you now. Everything that's happened to us, everything, is because I crossed the street for you. I worship you. You know that through and through.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
I'm going to die with Alexander's hand on my face, Tatiana thought. That is not a bad way to die. I cannot move. I can't get up. Just can't. She closed her eyes and felt herself drifting. 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.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
I'm not hungry," Alexander whispered. "I'm famished. Watch out for me. Now, don't make a single sound," he said, moving on top of her. "Tania, God....I'll cover your mouth, just like this, and you hold on to me, just like this, and I'm going to-just like this-
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
In Alexander's life there was one thread that could not be broken by death, by distance, by time, by war. Could not be broken. As long as I am in the world, she said with her breath and her body, as long as I am, you are permanent, soldier.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
I tend to be a great optimist when it comes to the United States and the American way of life, I think precisely because I wasn't born into it.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
I want you to know that should something happen to me, don’t worry about my body. My soul isn’t going to return to it, nor to God. It’s flying straight to you, where it knows it can find you, in Lazarevo. I want to be neither with kings nor heroes, but with the queen of Lake Ilmen.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
I was blinded by stupidity for a brief moment in our life, for a flicker in the eternity in which you and I live, and I stumbled.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
I wish I could spend six years writing one novel.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Lazarevo drips you into my soul, dawn drop by moonlight drop from the river Kama. When you look for me, look for me there, because that's where I'll be all the days of my life.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Live as if you have faith,” she said, “and faith shall be given to you.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Not bombs nor my broken heart can take away from me walking barefoot with you in jasmine June through the Field of Mars.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Oh Alexander," she said, "what do you want from me..." "Everything!" he whispered fiercely.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Oh,to be walking through Leningrad white night after white night, the dawn to dusk all smelting together like platinum ore, Tatiana thought, turning away to the wall, again to the wall, the wall, as ever. Alexander, my nights, my days, my every thought. You will fall away from me in just a while, won't you, and I'll be whole again, and I will go on and feel for someone else, the way everyone does. But my innocence is forever gone.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Open your eyes, soldier,” Tatiana said fondly, caressing his face.“Are you hungry?” “I was hungry,” Alexander said. “But you fed me.” His body was shaking underneath his sheet.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Please stop looking at me, she thought, afraid of his eyes and terrified of her own heart.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Tatiana and the soldier were having a silence
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Shura...are you...in love with me?" "Turn to me," Alexander said. She turned. "Tatia, I worship you. I'm crazy in love with you. I want you to marry me.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Shura, I’m yours. You may not like it today, you may not want it tonight, you may wish for it all to be different now, but it remains, and I remain, as always, only yours. Nothing can change that. Not your wrath, your fists, your body or your death.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Some words were like that. Whole lives attached to them. Ghosts and lives and ecstasy and sorrow.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Tania,” he whispers, “promise me you won’t forget me when I die.” “You won’t die, soldier,” she says. “You won’t die. Live! Live on, breathe on, claw onto life, and do not let go. Promise me you will live for me, and I promise you, when you’re done, I will be waiting for you.” She is sobbing. “Whenever you’re done, Alexander, I will be here, waiting for you.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Tatia: I think its too big to fit
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Tatiana said. "Go on with Dasha. She is right for you. She is a woman and I'm-" "Blind!", Alexander exclaimed. Tatiana stood, desolately failing in the battle of her heart. "Oh, Alexander. What do you want from me..." "Everything", he whispered fiercely.
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By AnonymPaullina Simons
Tatiana: "Why did we spend two days fighting when we could have been doing this?" Alexander: "That wasn't fighting, Tatiana. That was foreplay.
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