Tatiana whispered to Dasha, “Where were you last night? You didn’t come in till well past dawn.” There’s going to be an important announcement on the radio in a few minutes.” Tatiana felt a momentary tenderness, but before Dasha could say anything, Mama’s grating voice intruded. Her hand was on Tatiana’s leg, and Dasha bent over as if to kiss her. “What, Mama?” Tatiana said, not lifting her head from the pillow. She looked bedraggled and done with her Sunday. She wore a kerchief to keep her hair back from her face, for she had probably already been down on her knees washing the communal bathroom in her blue summer frock. She was small, boisterous, and full of indignant, overflowing energy. There was nothing soft about Irina Metanova. Tatiana could never say that her mother’s voice was harmonious. “Can’t you see I’m sleeping? What are you? My mother?” “Stop it,” Tatiana muttered, fishing helplessly behind her for the sheet and pulling it back over her. Never was their seven-year age difference more apparent than now, when Tatiana wanted to sleep and Dasha was. Dasha’s strong hands were vigorously shaking Tatiana, while her usually harmonious voice was dissonantly hissing, “Psst! Tania! Wake up. Dasha was trying to wake her up and, unfortunately, succeeding. Right now, however, Tatiana wanted to smother her. She represented everything that was dear to Tatiana. The bedroom door opened, and she heard the floor creak once. When the sun’s rays moved across the room to rest at the foot of Tatiana’s bed, she pulled the sheet over her head, trying to keep the daylight out. But most of all, intoxicated with life, she slept the exuberant sleep of undaunted youth. Tatiana Metanova slept the sleep of the innocent, the sleep of restless joy, of warm, white Leningrad nights, of jasmine June.

LIGHT came through the window, trickling morning all over the room.

Our Souls have sight of that immortal seaĪnd see the Children sport upon the shore,Īnd hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. Appendix: Lev and Maria’s Story: Paullina Simons’s Tribute to Her Grandparents, Survivors of Russia’s Terrible Twentieth Centuryįor my beloved grandparents, Maria and Lev Handler, who have lived through World War I, the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War, who have lived through World War II, the siege of Leningrad and evacuation, through famine and purges, through Lenin and Stalin, and in the golden twilight of their lives, through twenty non-air-conditioned summers in New York.

Paullina simons the bronze horseman