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The Bronze Horseman

Book by Paullina Simons · 15 quotes · Tatiana Metanova, Alexander Belov, Soldier

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The Bronze Horseman Quotes

“For what?" "I don't know," she said, lowering her gaze. "To go with you." "Go with me where?" he gasped. "Anywhere." She turned her eyes up. "Anywhere you go." Tatiana said, "I will go with you." Alexander tried to speak but couldn't; he found himself without words. "But, Tania...I'm going back to the front." She was looking down at the ground. "Are you, Alexander?" she asked quietly without looking up. "Of course. Where else would I be going?" Her eyes stared at him with profound emotion. "You tell me." Blinking and stepping away from her, as if being too close to her left him unprotected, Alexander said, still holding her backpack, "Tania, I'm going back to the front. Colonel Stepanov gave me extra time to come here. I gave him my word I would return." "And that's one thing about you Americans," she said, "you always keep your word." "Yes, that's one thing about us," Alexander said bitterly. "It's no use talking about it. You know I have to go back." Shivering. Tatiana raised her seaweed eyes to him and in a small voice said, "Then I'll go back with you. I'll go back to Leningrad.”

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“There were other things,too, to ask him. Always she tries to be less forward. Always she tried to find the right thing to say and didn't trust the etiquette pendulum swinging in her head, so she simply said nothing, which was perceived either as painful shyness of haughtiness. Dasha never had that problem. She just said the first thing that came into her head. Tatiana knew she needed to rust her inner voice more. It was certainly loud enough”

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“What was she thinking?” muttered Alexander, closing his eyes and imagining his Tania. “She was determined. It was like some kind of a personal crusade with her,” Ina said. “She gave the doctor a liter of blood for you—” “Where did she get it from?” “Herself, of course.” Ina smiled. “Lucky for you, Major, our Nurse Metanova is a universal donor.” Of course she is, thought Alexander, keeping his eyes tightly shut. Ina continued. “The doctor told her she couldn’t give any more, and she said a liter wasn’t enough, and he said, ‘Yes, but you don’t have more to give,’ and she said, ‘I’ll make more,’ and he said, ‘No,’ and she said, ‘Yes,’ and in four hours, she gave him another half-liter of blood.” Alexander lay on his stomach and listened intently while Ina wrapped fresh gauze on his wound. He was barely breathing. “The doctor told her, ‘Tania, you’re wasting your time. Look at his burn. It’s going to get infected.’ There wasn’t enough penicillin to give to you, especially since your blood count was so low.” Alexander heard Ina chuckle in disbelief. “So I’m making my rounds late that night, and who do I find next to your bed? Tatiana. She’s sitting with a syringe in her arm, hooked up to a catheter, and I watch her, and I swear to God, you won’t believe it when I tell you, Major, but I see that the catheter is attached to the entry drip in your IV.” Ina’s eyes bulged. “I watch her draining blood from the radial artery in her arm into your IV. I ran in and said, ‘Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? You’re siphoning blood from yourself into him?’ She said to me in her calm, I-won’t-stand-for-any-argument voice, ‘Ina, if I don’t, he will die.’ I yelled at her. I said, ‘There are thirty soldiers in the critical wing who need sutures and bandages and their wounds cleaned. Why don’t you take care of them and let God take care of the dead?’ And she said, ‘He’s not dead. He is still alive, and while he is alive, he is mine.’ Can you believe it, Major? But that’s what she said. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I said to her. ‘Fine, die yourself. I don’t care.’ But the next morning I went to complain to Dr. Sayers that she wasn’t following procedure, told him what she had done, and he ran to yell at her.” Ina lowered her voice to a sibilant, incredulous whisper. “We found her unconscious on the floor by your bed. She was in a dead faint, but you had taken a turn for the better. All your vital signs were up. And Tatiana got up from the floor, white as death itself, and said to the doctor coldly, ‘Maybe now you can give him the penicillin he needs?’ I could see the doctor was stunned. But he did. Gave you penicillin and more plasma and extra morphine. Then he operated on you, to get bits of the shell fragment out of you, and saved your kidney. And stitched you. And all that time she never left his side, or yours. He told her your bandages needed to be changed every three hours to help with drainage, to prevent infection. We had only two nurses in the terminal wing, me and her. I had to take care of all the other patients, while all she did was take care of you. For fifteen days and nights she unwrapped you and cleaned you and changed your dressings. Every three hours. She was a ghost by the end. But you made it. That’s when we moved you to critical care. I said to her, ‘Tania, this man ought to marry you for what you did for him,’ and she said, ‘You think so?’ ” Ina tutted again. Paused. “Are you all right, Major? Why are you crying?”

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“Soldato, lascia che ti accarezzi il viso e baci le tue labbra, lasciami urlare attraverso i mari e sussurrare attraverso i prati ghiacciati della Russia quello che sento per te... Luga, Ladoga, Leningrado, Lazarevo... Alexander, un tempo tu mi hai portata e io ora porto te. Nella mia eternità ora io porto te. Attraverso la Finlandia, attraverso la Svezia, fino in America con le mani tese, mi ergerò e mi farò avanti, destriero nero che galoppa senza cavaliere nella notte. Il tuo cuore, il tuo fucile mi conforteranno, saranno la mia culla, la mia tomba. Lazarevo stilla il tuo essere nel mio cuore, goccia d'alba al chiaro di luna, goccia del fiume Kama. Quando mi cerchi, cercami là, perchè là sarò tutti i giorni della mia vita.”

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“Lowering his voice, he said, "In America we have a custom. When you're given presents for your birthday, you're supposed to open them and say thank you." Tatiana nervously looked down at the present. "Thank you." Gifts were not something she was used to. Wrapped gifts? Unheard of, even when they came wrapped only in plain brown paper. "No. Open first. Then say thank you." She smiled. "What do I do? Do I take the paper off?" "Yes. You tear it off." "And then what?" "And then you throw it away." "The whole present or just the paper?" Slowly he said, "Just the paper." "But you wrapped it so nicely. Why would I throw it away?" "It's just paper." "If it's just paper, why did you wrap it?" "Will you please just open my present?" said Alexander”

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“Alexander: “First we will send the frontovik into the streets with guns. When they are dead, we will send me, with a tank, like the one you’ve been making me. When I’m dead, all the barricades down, all the weapons and tanks gone, they will send you with a rock.” Tania: “And when I’m dead?” Alexander: “You’re the last line of defense. When you’re dead, Hitler will march through Leningrad the way he marched through Paris. Do you remember that?” Tania: “That’s not fair the French didn’t fight” Alexander: “The didn’t fight Tania, but you will fight. For every street and for every building. And when you lose —”

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