Paullina Simons

“Tatiana realized she was too young to hide well what was in her heart butold enough to know that her heart was in her eyes.”

“I don't want this life to end," said Alexander. "The good, the bad, the everything, the very old, to ever end.”

“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. So when they made the dress for Tatiana, they made it full of promise. They made it as if to tell her, put it on, chérie, and in this dress you, too, shall be loved as we have loved; put it on and love shall be yours. And so Tatiana never despaired in her white dress with red roses. Had the Americans made it, she would have been happy. Had the Italians made it, she would have started praying, had the British made it, she would have squared her shoulders, but because the French had made it, she never lost hope.”

“They had no past. They had no future. They just were.”

“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.”

“Tatiana lived for that evening hour with him that propelled her into her future and into the barely formed, painful feelings that she could neither express nor understand. Friends walking in the lucent dusk. There was nothing more she could have from him, and there was nothing more she wanted from him but that one hour at the end of her long day when her heart beat and her breath was short and she was happy.”

“She was entrenched. She had dug a trench all around herself called Alexander , and she couldn't leave.”

“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.”

“Tatiana...you and I had only one moment..." said Alexander. "A single moment in time, in your time and mine...one instant, when another life could have still been possible." He kissed her lips. "Do you know what I'm talking about?" When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street."I know that moment," whispered Tatiana.”

“Some words were like that. Whole lives attached to them. Ghosts and lives and ecstasy and sorrow.”

“You have amazing gifts. Don't squander them. Don't give them out meaninglessly, don't abuse them, don't take them for granted. You are the weapon you carry with you till the day you die.-Tatiana and Alexander”

“There are some battles, no matter how much you don’t want to fight them, that you just have to fight. That are worth giving your life for.”

“He sent you to redeem me, to comfort me, and to heal me—and that’s just so far,” he added with a smile.”

“I saved you for me.”

“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.”

“Please stop looking at me, she thought, afraid of his eyes and terrified of her own heart.”

“Tatiana and the soldier were having a silence”

“Please don't die," she whispered. "I don't think I can bury you. I already buried everyone else." "How can I die," Alexander said, his voice breaking, "when you have poured your immortal blood into me?”

“When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.”

“Hello, Tatiana. I'm Alexander. Have we met before?”

“When I was in Colditz, that impenetrable fortress, whittling away my life, I wanted to know this.""Looks like you're still there, Shura.""No," he said. "I'm in New York, a fly on the wall, trying to see you without me.”

“Alexander, me has roto el corazón. Pero por haberme llevado a tu espalda, por tirar de mi trineo de muerte, por darme tu último pedazo de pan, por el cuerpo que te destrozaste pormí, por el hijo que me has dado, por los veintinueve días que vivimos en el paraíso,por todas nuestras arenas blancas de Naples y nuestros vinos de Napa, por todos losdías que has sido mi primer y mi último aliento, por Orbeli... Te perdonaré.”

“¿Es que no te acuerdas de lo que te dije en Berlín, cuando estábamos perdidos en el bosque, luchando para rebelarnos contra nuestro destino?—Sí —le contestó Tatiana, rodeándole el cuello con las manos, cerrando los ojos—. Dijiste que ya me habías dejado marchar una vez, que viviríamos juntos o moriríamos juntos.—Eso es —dijo Alexander—. Y esta vez, viviremos juntos.”

“La mesa se interponía entre ellos. Tatiana pasó al otro lado.—Shura —dijo en voz baja—, por favor, deja que te toque.—No. —El capitán se apartó.Naira volvió a asomar la cabeza.—¿Está la cena preparada?—Casi, Naira Mijailovna. —Miró a Alexandr—. Dijiste que no te marcharías hasta arreglarme —señaló—. Arréglame, Shura.—Tú misma me dijiste que nada de lo que hiciera arreglaría lo que está mal dentrode ti. Bueno, me has convencido. ¿Dónde están mis cosas?—Shura...”

“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.”

“....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.”

“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.”

“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”

“We thought the hard part was over—but we were wrong. Living is the hardest part. Figuring out how to live your life when you’re all busted up inside and out—there is nothing harder.”

“If I can live through this, he thought, I can live through anything. If I can live through this, I WILL live through anything.”

“They came with their children, for no one left the children behind - it was for the children they had come, wanting to give them the halls of American, the streets, the seasons, the New York of America.”

“And that's my point: all great things worth having require great sacrifice worth giving.”

“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.”

“There is one moment, a moment in eternity. Before we find out the truth about one another. That simple moment is the one that propels us through life – what we felt at the very edge of our future, standing over the abyss, before we knew for sure we loved. Before we knew for sure we loved forever. … Before all that, you and I walked through The Summer Garden, and once in a while my bare arm touched your arm, and once in a while you spoke and that gave me an excuse to look up into your face, into your laughing eyes, to catch a glimpse of your mouth and I, who had never been touched, tried to imagine what it might be like to have your mouth touch me. Falling in love with you in The Summer Garden in the white nights of Leningrad is the moment that propels me though life.”

“Tania, there is so much still ahead of you. Be patient with life”

“I can't do it," Tatiana said "I can't walk down the streets of our life with you.""I know." They turned back to the reflections in the mirror.”

“Anthony Anthony...mi senti figliolo? Sei la mia vita e la vita di tua madre. Per me sarai sempre il bambino di 3 anni che gioca in cortile, che si taglia i capelli come i miei, che cammina come me, mi porta le coccinelle, mi riempie di gioia, mi tiene in vita. Ecco cosa vedo quando ti guardo. Ricordi quando pescavamo insieme, quando eri piccolo? Non hai idea di quanta felicità mi donassi. Mi hai sempre reso fiero da quando sei nato. Devi alzarti e seguirmi. Vedrai non mollerai, non tu. Ti rimetterai, ma alzati figliolo. Coraggio, alzati, Anthony.”

“«Tania...» sussurrò Alexander. «Non ti lascerò andare finché non ti avrò avuta abbastanza. Finché non mi avrai scaldato dentro e fuori».”

“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.”

“in the dark room she sits and in front of her is a plate and on the plate lies a black hunk of bread the size of a deck of cards. The bread has sawdust in it, and cardboard. She takes a knife and a fork, and cuts it slowly into four pieces. She eats one, chews it deliberately, pushes it with difficulty through her dry throat. eats another and another and finally the last one. She lingers especially on the last one. She knows after this piece is gone there will be no more food until tommorow morning. She wishes she could be strong enough to save half of the bread until dinner, but she isn't, she can't. When she looks up from her plate, her sister Dasha, is staring at her. Her plate is long empty. " I wish Alexander was coming back" says Dasha. " He might have food for us"I wish Alexander was coming back, thinks Tatiana.”

“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.”

“She knew that alexander was sitting on the bench by the house slightly behind her, and that he was watching her. he was doing that more and more often. Watching her as he smoked. And smoked. And smoked.”

“All she had to do was stay where she was, go on as she was.But there was no Tatiana here. Tatiana remained with Alexander. Her arms were around him in LakeLadoga, where she lay down with him every night. Her arms were holding him bleeding out into the LakeLadoga ice. She could have let go of him then, could have given him to God; God was certainly callingfor him.But she didn’t.And because she didn’t, she was here in America, sitting on the ledge of the rest of her life. It certainlyfelt that way, that seminal moment where she knew that whatever her decision, her life would take eitherone course or it would take another.One way the path was plain and vivid.And the other was black and fraught with doubt”

“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?”

“Tatiana had imagined her Alexander since she was a child, before she believed that someone like him was even possible. When she was a little girl, she dreamed of a fine world in which a good man walked its winding roads, perhaps somewhere in his wandering soul searching for her.”

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days movedearth and heaven, that which we are, we are—Unyielding.”

“This Zippo read, 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.. for I'm the baddest motherfucker in the valley.”

“She hadn't meant to do it. Falling this crashingly in love with Spencer didn't take Lily by accident. It took her by storm.”

“To lead a life so wholly happy, so wholly unexamined that she could be dying, could be betrayed, could be besieged on all sides and never even know it.”

“Memory - that fiend, that cruel enemy of comfort.”