Sayers didn’t look up from the man’s wounds when he said, “Tatiana, I’m almost done here. Help me hold his sides together while I sew.”

“What’s going on, Doctor?” Tatiana repeated as she helped him.

“Let’s just finish with him first, all right?”

Tatiana looked at the doctor, looked at the patient, and put her gloved and bloodied hand on the patient’s forehead. For a few moments she kept her hand on him and then said, “He is dead, Doctor, you can stop suturing.”

The doctor stopped suturing.

Tatiana ripped off her gloves and walked outside. The doctor followed her. It was nearly the middle of March and unremittingly windy. “Listen, Tania,” Sayers said, taking hold of her hands and looking white. “I’m sorry. Something terrible has happened.” His voice half broke on happened. The circles under his eyes were so dark, it looked as if he had been beaten. Tatiana stared at him for a moment, another moment—

She pulled her hands away. “Doctor,” Tatiana said, paling and looking around for something to hold on to. “What’s happened?”

“Tania, wait, don’t shout—”

“I’m not shouting.”

“I’m very sorry to tell you this, very sorry, but Alexander—” He broke off. “Early this morning, when he was taken with two other soldiers to Volkhov . . .” Sayers couldn’t continue.

Tatiana listened motionlessly, her insides becoming anesthetized. She tried to say, “What?”

“Listen, they were going across the lake when enemy fire—”

“What enemy fire?” Tatiana whispered vehemently.

“They left to cross before the shelling started, but we’re fighting a war. You hear the bombing, the German shells flying from Sinyavino? A long-range rocket hit the ice in front of the truck and exploded.”

“Where is he?”

“I’m sorry. Five people in that truck . . . nobody survived.”

Tatiana turned her back to the doctor and shook so violently that she thought she would split open. Without looking back, she asked, “Doctor, how do you know this?”

“I was called to the scene. We tried to save the men, the truck. But the truck was too heavy. It sank.” His voice was below a whisper.

Tatiana gripped her stomach and was sick in the snow. Her pulse tearing through her body at over 200 beats a minute, she reached down, grabbed a handful of snow, and wiped her mouth. She took another handful and pressed it to her face. Her heart would not quieten. She could not stop retching. She felt the doctor’s hand on her back, heard his voice dimly calling for her, “Tania, Tania.”

She did not turn around. “Did you see him yourself?” she asked, panting.

“Yes. I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I got his cap—”

“Was he alive when you saw him?”

“I’m sorry, Tatiana. No.”

She couldn’t stand any more.

“No, please,” she heard Dr. Sayers’s voice and felt his arms holding her up. “Please.”

Straightening herself, willing herself to remain upright, Tatiana turned around and leveled her gaze at Dr. Sayers, who touched her face and said, very concerned, “You need to go and sit down immediately, you’re in a state of—”

“I know what I am in,” Tatiana said. “Give me his cap.”

“I’m sorry. It breaks my—”

“I’ll take his cap,” said Tatiana, but her hand was shaking so badly that she couldn’t grasp it for a moment, and when she did, it fell out of her hands and onto the snow.

She couldn’t hold the death certificate either. Dr. Sayers had to hold it up for her. She saw only his name and the place of death. Lake Ladoga.

The Ladoga ice.

“Where is he?” she said faintly. “Where is he now—” She could not finish.

“Oh, Tania . . . what could we do? We . . .”

Waving him off, she doubled over. “Don’t speak to me anymore. How could you not have woken me? How could you not have told me instantly?”

“Tania, look at me.” She felt herself being pulled upright. Sayers had tears in his eyes. “I did look for you after I returned. But I can barely stand in front of you now when you’ve come for me, when I’ve got no choice. If I could, I would have sent you a telegram.” He shivered. “Tania, let’s get out of here! You and I. Let’s be done with this place! I have to get out of here, I can’t do it anymore. I need to be back in Helsinki. Come on, we’ll get our things. I’ll call Leningrad, let them know.” He paused. “I have to leave tonight.” He glanced at her. “We have to leave tonight.”

Tatiana did not respond. Her mind was playing tricks on her. For some reason she couldn’t get past the death certificate. It wasn’t a Red Army certificate. It was a Red Cross death certificate.

“Tatiana,” said Sayers, “can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she said indistinctly.

“You will come with me.”

“I can’t think right now,” she managed to utter. “I need to think for a few minutes.”

“Will you . . .” Sayers let out. “Will you please come back to my office? You’re not — Come, sit in my chair. You’ll—”

Backing away from Sayers, Tatiana watched him with an intensity she knew was excruciating to him. She turned and walked as fast as she could to the main building. She had to find Colonel Stepanov. The colonel was busy and refused to see her at first.

She waited outside the front door until he came out.

“I’m headed for the mess tent. Walk with me?” Stepanov said to her, not catching her eye and hurrying forward.

“Sir,” Tatiana said into his back, not taking a step, “what happened to your officer—” She couldn’t say his name out loud.

Stepanov slowed down, stopped, and faced her. “I’m sorry about your husband,” he said gently.

Tatiana didn’t speak. Coming close to him, she took Colonel Stepanov’s hand. “Sir, you are a good man, and you were his commanding officer.” Wind was whipping her face. “Please tell me what happened to him.”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

Tatiana stood small before the uniformed colonel.

The colonel sighed. “All I know is that one of our armored trucks carrying your husband, Lieutenant Ouspensky, one corporal, and two drivers exploded this morning under what appeared to be enemy fire and eventually sank. I have no other information.”

“Armored? He told me he was going to Volkhov to get promoted this morning,” she said in a faint whisper.

“Nurse Metanova,” said Colonel Stepanov, pausing and blinking. “The truck sank. Everything else is moot.”

Tatiana never looked away from him for a moment.

Stepanov nodded. “I’m sorry. Your husband was—”

“I know what he was, sir,” Tatiana broke in, holding the cap and the certificate to her chest.

With a small shiver of his voice, staring at her with hurting blue eyes, Colonel Stepanov said, “Yes. We both do.”

Mutely they stood in front of each other.

“Tatiana!” said Colonel Stepanov emotionally. “Go back with Dr. Sayers. As soon as you can. It’ll be easier and safer for you in Leningrad. Maybe Molotov? Go with him.”

Tatiana saw him button the top of his uniform. She didn’t take her eyes off him. “He brought your son back,” she whispered.

Stepanov lowered his eyes. “Yes.”

“But who is going to bring him back?”

The bitter wind whistled through her words.

How to move, how to move now, can I get on my hands and knees and crawl, no, I will walk, I will look at the ground, and I will walk away, and I won’t stumble.

I will stumble.

She fell on the snow, and the colonel came over and picked her up, patting her back, and she closed her coat around her and, without looking again at Stepanov, staggered down the road to the hospital, holding on to the walls of buildings.

To hide him her whole life, to hide him every step of the way, to hide him from Dasha, from Dimitri, to hide him from death, and now to hide him even from herself. Her weakness felt insuperable.

Finding Dr. Sayers in his small office, Tatiana said, “Doctor, look at me, look me in the eye and swear to me that he is dead.”

Sinking to her knees, she looked at him, her hands in a plea.

Dr. Sayers crouched down and took Tatiana’s hands. “I swear,” he said, “he is dead.” He did not look at her.

“I can’t,” she said in a guttural voice. “I can’t take it. I can’t take the thought of him dying in that lake without me. Do you understand? I can’t take it,” she whispered wrenchingly. “Tell me he’s been taken by the NKVD. Tell me he’s been arrested and he’ll be storming bridges next week, tell me he’s been sent to the Ukraine, to Sinyavino, to Siberia — tell me anything. But please tell me he did not die on the ice without me. I’ll bear anything but that. Tell me, and I will go with you anywhere, I promise, I will do exactly as you say, but I beg you, tell me the truth.”

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Sayers said, “I couldn’t save him. With my whole heart I’m sorry I couldn’t save him for you.”

Tatiana crawled away to the wall and put her face into her hands.

“I am not going anywhere,” she said. “There is no point.”

“Tania,” Sayers said, coming after her and putting his hand on her head, “please don’t say that. Honey . . . please . . . let me save you for him.”

“There is no point.”

“No point? What about his baby?” exclaimed the doctor.

She took her hands away from her face and stared dully at Sayers. “He told you we are having a baby?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Flustered, the doctor said, “I don’t know.” His hand was still on Tatiana’s head. “You don’t feel good. You’re all cold. You’re—”

She did not reply. She was convulsing.

“Are you going to be all right?”

She covered her face.

“Will you stay here? Just stay in my office and wait. Don’t get up, all right. Sleep maybe?”

Tatiana made a rasping noise that sounded like an animal pressing its gaping wound into the ground, hoping to die before it bled to death.