She can’t imagine moving out to an apartment of her own. It suits her because she can have the baby with her and because she is used to being around people. When Tatiana has recovered, she begins to look after some of the patients in the hospital, first unofficially but soon she is actually working there, living in the hospital and working shifts, looking after immigrants/refugees and war casualties. Fortunately the TB was never passed along to the baby and he thrived. She was taken to Ellis Island suffering from tuberculosis again and spent a lengthy time in the hospital recovering. She was barely on American soil (in fact I’m not sure she was at all, I think she was still on the boat) when she gave birth to their son, Anothony Alexander Barrington, giving him Alexander’s American name as the papers for her escape named her as Jane Barrington (Alex’s mother’s name, which she takes as her name in the US). Tatiana is now in the US after Alexander made it possible for her to escape without him at the end of The Bronze Horseman. So if you haven’t read that book (and want to) and don’t want to find out how it ends, definitely skip this review.** “We’ll meet again in Lvov, my love and I…” Tatiana hums, eating her ice cream, in our Leningrad, in jasmine June, near Fontanka, the Neva, the Summer Garden, where we are forever young.**Note: It is impossible to review this book without giving away huge SPOILERS for the end of The Bronze Horseman. And she will give your life meaning, she will save you. He stepped off the curb and out of the deadfall. He saw it because he wanted to see it, because he wanted to change his life. He is thinking of sailboats in distant oceans, the desert from dimmest childhood, the ghost of fortune, the girl on the bench. They’re sitting shoulder to bare shoulder.He knocks into her with his stretched-out leg. The green eyes sparkle, the freckles multiply, her red sandal toe bounces up and down with her crossed leg, and the strap of her white dress slips off her shoulder.

In front of her he stands and she raises her eyes to get a good look at him. To follow her? To hop on the bus, after her? That was his moment in Leningrad, on an empty street, when his life became possible-when Alexander became possible. On the other side of the pavement, Alexander smiles. She hums a slow sweet Russian song from long ago.

It’s summer, it’s June, her birthday is tomorrow.

Tatiana sits under the palms and eats her ice cream.

Tatiana the bronze horseman