Paullina Simons Quotes

What a prison you have set up for me with your first love."
She put her arms tighter around him and said teasingly, "Oh, so the first love part you believe, but the first kiss part you have a problem with? What kind of girl do you think I am?"
"The nicest girl," he whispered.

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

Lupe would have a lot to say about this. I can almost hear her gravelly voice in my head. There is no hate without fear, she'd say. Hate is fear crystallized, fear objectified. We hate what threatens our selves, our dreams, our plans, our freedom, our place in the world, our place in the hearts of the people we love. We fear first. Then we hate.

And I know what I would say to her in response. Lupe, I'd say. My troubles are just beginning.

Through the smoke she could feel bodies around her. Hot and faint, she felt for them with her hands. The gunfire came from right outside the door, but when the lattice beam fell from the ceiling, all sounds faded away, all faded away, and there was no more fear. Only regret was left. Regret for Alexander.

Soldier! Let me cradle your head and caress your face, let me kiss your dear sweet lips and cry across the seas and whisper through the icy Russian grass how I feel for you ... Luga, Ladoga, Leningrad, Lazarevo ... Alexander, once you carried me, and now I carry you. Into my eternity, now I carry you.
Through Finland, through Sweden, to America, hand outstretched, I stand and limp forward, the galloping steed black and riderless in my wake. Your heart, your rifle, they will comfort me, they'll be my cradle and my grave.
Lazarevo drips you into my soul, dawn drop by moonlight drop from the river Kama. When you look for me, look for me there, because that's where I will be all the days of my life. (Tatiana)

Tatiana said. "Go on with Dasha. She is right for you. She is a woman and I'm-" "Blind!", Alexander exclaimed. Tatiana stood, desolately failing in the battle of her heart. "Oh, Alexander. What do you want from me ... "
"Everything", he whispered fiercely.

Alexander was silent. "Now you're really tiny," he said at last. "I'm not tiny," she returned. "You're just outsized." Blushing, she lowered her gaze.

GENERAL RAGINSKY: Mr. President, in order to exhaust fully the presentation of evidence in regard to the subject-matter of my report, I ask your permission to examine witness Josif Abgarovitch Orbeli - Tatiana dropped the cup of tea she was drinking, and it fell on the tile floor and broke, and Tatiana fell on the floor, too, on her knees, and began to pick up the pieces, every moment or so emitting cries of such distress that Vikki, who was nearby, jumped up, backed away and said in a stunned voice, "What's wrong with you?" Tatiana waved her off with one hand, her other hand holding a ceramic shard which covered her mouth as she continued to listen to the bare echo that was the radio broadcast as it ceaselessly continued. A crash on the road, but the radio still plays music, still transmits sounds no matter how incongruous it is that the ear can somehow hear, that the brain can somehow listen -

I didn't know how to live my life, and suddenly I was thrust into it and had no choice but to live it.

Yes. It was Tatiana, not specter but matter. She was measurable. His little Newton had mass and occupied space. A small finite matter in infinite space. That is what math gave him - principles of design that tied together the boundless universe. That is why he measured her. Because she was order.

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.

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.

Her once twinkling green eyes set deep into the pale features looked as if they were the only ghastly crystal barriers between strangers and her soul.

Just a breath ago, an eighteen-year-old nurse was bending over Rebecca's father's father, a wounded soldier in a Soviet hospital, saying, yes, Shura, we are going to have a baby.

That I have no idea what good old Dr. Ha-ha-so-fucking-funny Bradley is thinking when he touches your back? When he kisses your hand, pretending it's just a joke, you think I don't know what he's thinking? When he stands close to you, looks into your nice red lips as you talk, when his eyes shimmer at the mention of your name? He's gone soft in the head, you think I don't know? I was the one with the hat in my hands, standing for hours waiting for you to get out of Kirov. What, said Alexander.

What, what? What do you need, son?" Alexander kept saying.
Anthony's only arm was around his father's shoulder. "A fucking cigarette.

And then, because she was Tatiana and because she couldn't help herself, and because he wouldn't have it any other way, she ran to him and was in his arms.

Alexander speaks. Anthony, I'm going to tell you something. In 1941, when I met your mother, she had turned seventeen and was working at the Kirov factory, the largest weapons production facility in the Soviet Union. Do you know what she wore? A ratty brown cardigan that belonged to her grandmother. It was tattered and patched and two sizes too big for her. Even though it was June, she wore her much larger sister's black skirt that was scratchy wool. The skirt came down to her shins. Her too-big thick black cotton stockings bunched up around her brown work boots. Her hands were covered in black grime she couldn't scrub off. She smelled of gasoline and nitrocellulose because she had been making bombs and flamethrowers all day. And still I came every day to walk her home.

Alexander - " "Now that it's morning, I'm suddenly Alexander again?" Gazing up at him, Tatiana whispered, "Oh, Shura ... " And Alexander could no longer bear it. He bent to her face and kissed her. Her lips were as soft and young and full as he had imagined them to be. Tatiana's whole body started to tremble as she kissed him back with such tenderness, such passion, such need that Alexander involuntarily emitted a small groan. He was bewildered by her hands pressing his head into hers and not letting go. "Oh, God ... " he whispered into her parted mouth.

She held the money to her chest and tried to fathom Alexander's heart. He was the man who, a few meters away from freedom, from America, had chosen to turn his back on his lifelong drea. Feel one way. Behave one way, too. Alexander may have hoped for America, but he believed more in him-self. And he loved Tatiana most of all. Alexander knew who he was.
He was a man who kept his word.
And he had given it to Dimitri.

Sanchez got the phone call, listened carefully, glanced over at Spencer, in Whittaker's office, having his morning coffee. Hung up the phone, got up, went and knocked on the door, asked if he could see Spencer a moment, and lowering his voice said, "Carl downstairs just called me because someone wants to file a vagrancy report.
Spencer slapped him on the back. "Detective Sanchez, thank you for bringing the particulars of your job description to my attention. Well done. Go to it.
Sanchez hemmed and said, "The young woman says she is Lily Quinn. Specifically asked for me, Carl says.
Spencer didn't slap him on the back this time. He stared at Carl and then said, "All right smart-ass, go back to you desk.
"That's what I thought," said Sanchez.

What little I had was all for you. It was you who was everybody else's. But I was only yours.

Love is, to be loved," said Alexander, "in return.

Alexander looked into the barrel of one of the guns. He blinked.
O God, please look after Tania all alone in the world.

I'm getting off the boat at Coconut Grove. It's six and you're not on the dock. I finish up, and start walking home, thinking you're tied up making dinner, and then I see you and Ant hurrying down the promenade. He is running and you're running after him. You're wearing a yellow dress. He jumps on me, and you stop shyly, and I say to you, come on, tadpole, show me what you got, and you laugh and run and jump into my arms. Such a good memory.
I love you, babe.

Tatia, let me take care of you. He stopped and took a breath.

As Stepanov turned to go, Alexander said, "Sir ... " He was so weak he almost couldn't get the words out. He didn't care how cold the wall was, he could not stand on his own anymore. He pressed his body against the icy concrete and then sank down to the floor. "Did you see her?" He lifted his gaze to Stepanov, who nodded. "How was she?" "Don't ask, Alexander." "Was she - " "Don't ask." "Tell me." "Do you remember when you brought my son back to me?" Stepanov asked, trying to keep his voice from breaking. "Because of you I had comfort. I was able to see him before he died, I was able to bury him." "All right, no more," said Alexander. "Who was going to give that comfort to your wife?" Alexander put his face into his hands. Stepanov left. Alexander sat motionlessly on the floor. He didn't need morphine, he didn't need drugs, he didn't need phenobarbital. He needed a bullet in his fucking chest.

I know what keeping a promise means." "No, you only know what making a promise means," Alexander said. "You are very good at making the promise. It's keeping the promise you have a problem with.

I'll take your breath any way you give it to me, Shura.

I found my true love on the banks of the river Kama," whispered Alexander, staring at her. "I found my true love on Ulitsa Saltykov-Schedrin, while I sat on a bench eating ice cream." "You didn't find me. You weren't even looking for me. I found you." Long pause. "Alexander, were you ... looking for me?" "All my life.

What were you doing fighting with me at Kirov, knowing all this was stacked against us?

Raging against my fate.

Memory - that fiend, that cruel enemy of comfort.

Up on the roof Tatiana thought about the evening minute, the minute she used to walk out the factory doors, turn her head to the left even before her body turned, and look for his face. The evening minute as she hurried down the street, her happiness curling her mouth upward to the white sky, the red wings speeding her to him, to look up at him and smile.

Alexander. Here he is, before he was Tatiana's, at the age of twenty, getting his medal of valor for bringing back Yuri Stepanov during the 1940 Winter War. Alexander is in his dress Soviet uniform, snug against his body, his stance at-ease and his hand up to his temple in teasing salute. There is a gleaming smile on his face, his eyes are carefree, his whole man-self full of breath-taking, aching youth. And yet, the war was on, and his men had already died and frozen and starved … and his mother and father were gone… and he was far away from home, and getting farther and farther, and every day was his last – one way or another, every day was his last. And yet, he smiles, he shines, he is happy.

This late afternoon, they stood shoulder to shoulder at the masthead, watching the dockhands tie up the boat. Though she was four years younger and a girl, they were nearly the same height, Gina and Salvo. Gina was actually taller. No one could figure out where she got the height; her parents and brothers were not tall. Look, the villagers would say. Two "piccolo" brothers and a "di altezza" sister. Oh, that's because we have different fathers, Gina would reply dryly. Salvo would smack her upside the head when he heard her say this. Think what you're saying about our mother, he would scold, crossing himself and her at her impudence.

Why was this more difficult for me than for my father? I didn't know for certain that it was. But where I wanted to linger, he wanted to speed up. He wanted to rush through his Shepelevo, so he could again leave it behind and forget. With our American eyes we saw our past life. There was so much that needed to be forgotten. I was crushed by the relentless poverty of it. But the smell, the heady, intoxicating smell, more powerful even than the sight of Shepelevo. The sight of Shepelevo tore us up inside. Yet the smell was nothing but bliss.

Tatiana: "Why did we spend two days fighting when we could have been doing this?"
Alexander: "That wasn't fighting, Tatiana. That was foreplay.

Courage, Alexander.....
Courage, Tatiana

Thank you," she whispered, "for keeping yourself alive, soldier."
"You're welcome," he whispered back.

Come on, he said quietly, bending to her and lifting her whole into his arms. He carried her inside. After setting her down next to the sink, he crushed five trays of ice into it and filled it with cold water. Tatiana thought he was going to tell her to put her face into it, and was about to meekly impotently protest - when Alexander submerged his own head into the ice.

Why was it that the young were always convinced they had invented sex?

Never forget where you came from, Gina Attaviano, Alessandro said to her before he died. Then it will always be easy.

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.

He yanked up a couple of mushrooms. "Tania, can we eat these?"
Taking them out of his hands and throwing them back on the ground, Tatiana said, "Yes. But we will only be able to eat them once.

When I was growing up, 'Anna Karenina' was one of my favourite books.

Tatia: I think its too big to fit

I want amnesia! I want a fucking lobotomy. Could I please never think again? Look what's happened to us, us, Tania. Don't you remember how we used to be? Just look what's happened.

Only one bear eats from this honey pot, Tatia

The presence of so many words inside her head made her incapable of small talk, just at the time when she needed small talk most.

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.

Marx himself wrote that capitalism produces above all its own gravediggers. Do you think that perhaps he wasn't talking about capitalism?

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 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?

Ask yourself these three questions, Tatiana Metanova, and you will know who you are. Ask: What do believe in? What do you hope for? What do you love?

I know how it works, Esther. I graduated from Harvard." "Book-smart, but life-stupid," said Esther.

Tania." Her voice was soothing. "There is a second love. And a third love. And if you're lucky, a fourth and a fifth, too.

I can't brethe."
She was embracing him the way he used to embrace her in Lazarevo. And for the same reason. "Open your mouth," she whispered, leaning onto his face. "I'll breath for you.

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Alexander, my nights, my days, my every thought. You will fall away from me in just a while, won't you, and I'll be whole again, and I will go on and feel for someone else, the way everybody does.
But my innocence is gone forever.

Tania, when I found you, I felt for that hour or two we were together - before Dimitri, before Dasha - that somemhow I was going to right my life." Alexander smiled bitterly. "I had a sense of hope and destiny that I can neither explain nor understand.

Oh,to be walking through Leningrad white night after white night, the dawn to dusk all smelting together like platinum ore, Tatiana thought, turning away to the wall, again to the wall, the wall, as ever. Alexander, my nights, my days, my every thought. You will fall away from me in just a while, won't you, and I'll be whole again, and I will go on and feel for someone else, the way everyone does.
But my innocence is forever gone.

Tatiana realized she was too young to hide well what was in her heart but
old enough to know that her heart was in her eyes.

All grimy and sweaty, Alexander drew her to him, his palms on her back, and bending to her and tilting his head, whispered into her mouth, Tatiasha, I know you won't believe this, but if I'm looking at the sheets when I'm making love to you, we've got a bigger problem than what damn color they are.

I couldn't wait to get out of the car. The first thing I did was smell the air. I closed my eyes and took a breath, the biggest breath of my life, knowing I was taking the biggest breath of my life. I was taking a breath to smell Shepelevo. Breathing in Shepelevo was like hitting the right note on the piano. There was only one right note. When I was young, Shepelevo was the smell of nettles, of salted smoked fish, of fresh water from the Gulf of Finland, and of burning firewood, all wrapped up in one Shepelevo. As it had been, so it was. Across two continents, a dozen countries, twenty cities, three colleges, two marriages, three children, three books, and twenty-five years of another life, I breathed it and smelled the air. Nowhere else in the world had it. "Papa," I said, my voice breaking. "Do you think we could photograph the smell?" He gave me a look and then laughed.

The next day the German police picked them up, loaded them onto an armored truck and took them back to Colditz. Alexander was badly beaten by the German guards and taken to solitary, where he spent so long he lost track of time. With Pasha's death came the death of faith. Release me, Tatiana, release me, forgive me, forget me, let me forget you. I want to be free of you, free of your face, free of your freedom, free of your fire, free, free, free. The flight across the ocean was over, and with it all the warmth of his imagination. A numbness encroached on him, freezing him from the heart out, the anesthetic of despair creeping its tentacles over his ten-dons and his arteries, over his nerves and his veins until he was stiff inside and bereft of hope and bereft of Tatiana. Finally. But not quite.

Why do you enjoy torturing yourself? Do you feel life has been too good to you?"
Tatiana stared at him. "Life has," she said slowly, "been too good to me.

Do you remember what you're supposed to do now? Kiss the palm of your hand and press it against your heart.

He sent you to redeem me, to comfort me, and to heal me - and that's just so far, he added with a smile.

When Tatiana had been a child in Luga, her beloved Deda, seeing her depressed one summer and unable to find her way, said to her, 'Ask yourself these three questions, Tatiana Metanova, and you will know who you are. Ask: what do you believe in? What do you hope for? But most important - ask, what do you love?

At night in the tent, he leaves the flaps open, to feel the fire outside, to hear Anthony in the trailer, to see her better. She asks him to lie on his stomach, and he does, though he can't see her, while she runs her bare breasts over his disfigured back, her nipples hardening into his scars. You feel that? she whispers. Oh, he does. He still feels it. She kisses him from the top of his head downward, from his buzz-cut scalp, his shoulder blades, his wounds. Inch by inch she cries over him and kisses her own salt away, murmuring into him, why did you have to keep running? Look what they did to you. Why didn't you just stay put? Why couldn't you feel I was coming for you?

You thought I was dead, he says. You thought I had been killed and pushed through the ice in Lake Ladoga. And what really happened was, I was a Soviet man left in a Soviet prison. Wasn't I dead?

He is fairly certain he is alive now, and while Tatiana lies on top of his back and cries, he remembers being caught by the dogs a kilometer from Oranienburg and held in place by the Alsatians until Karolich arived, and being flogged in Sachsenhausen's main square and then chained and tattooed publicly with the 25-point star to remind him of his time for Stalin, and now she lies on his back, kissing the scars he received when he tried to escape to make his way back to her so she could kiss him.

As he drives across Texas, Alexander remembers himself in Germany lying in the bloody straw

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.

Will you remember that? Anywhere you are, if you can look up and find Perseus in the sky, find that smile, and hear the galactic wind whisper your name, you'll know that it's me, calling for you ... calling you back to Lazarevo. (Alexander)

And sometimes, when Alexander talked, Tatiana found her lower jaw drifting down and was suddenly and awkwardly aware that she had been staring at him so long that her mouth had dropped open. She didn't know what to look at when he talked - his caramel eyes that blinked and smiled and shined and were grim or his vibrant mouth that moved and opened and breathed and spoke. Her eyes darted from his eyes to his lips and circled from his hair to his jaw as if they were afraid she would miss something if she didn't stare at everything all at once.

Father continues to make the vulgar error," she said, "that to a woman, love is her whole existence.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved
earth and heaven, that which we are, we are
Unyielding.

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

The feeling he had had all his young life - that he was brought on this earth for something special - had not left Alexander, not quite; what it did was dissipate inside him, became translucent in his blood vessels. It no longer pulsed through his body. He was no longer filled with a sense of purpose as he traveled through his adolescence. He was filled with a sense of despair.
My childhood was good, he thought. And my adolescence - I could have lived through it all. I could have lived through it all if only I continued to have the feeling that at the end of childhood, at the end of adolescence, there was something else in this life that would be mine, that I could make with my bare hands, and once I had made it, I could say, I did this to my life. I made my life so.
Hope.
It was gone from Alexander on this sunny crisp Sunday, and the feeling of purpose had vanished, was vanquished in his veins.

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.

Tania, we desperately need to have a minute," he said. "And you know it." She knew it. "This isn't right." "It's the only thing that's right." "All right. Go." "Will you come?" "I will try. Now, go." "Lift your - " Before he stopped speaking, Tatiana raised her face to him. They kissed deeply. "Do you have any idea what I feel?" Alexander whispered, his hands in her hair. "No," Tatiana replied, holding on to him, her legs numb. "I only have an idea what I feel.

Love is when he is hungry and you feed him. Love is knowing when he is hungry.

Who said memory is kind? Memory is merciless. My father was right. 'All the things you want to remember, Paullina, I want to forget'.

You and I want to much from this Soviet life".
"I want nothing from this life", said Tatiana. "Just you".
"Me, and running hot water, and electricity, and a little house in the desert, and a State that doesn't ask for your life in return for these small things".
"No", Tatiana said, shaking her head. "Just you".
Moving her hair back under her scarf, Alexander studied her face. "And a State that doesn't ask for your life in return for me.

He was new. Transcendentally new. Immemorially new. She had thought all the while that their instant familiarity was based on the things she understood- compassion, empathy, fondness, friendship. Two people resoundingly coming together. Needing to sit close together on the tram, to bump into each other, to make each other laugh. Needing each other. Needing happiness. Needing youth.

The days of idealism had gone. Only life was left.

Experiment with this - on such and such a day I slept so many hours and felt this way afterward. I ate x amount of food and was able to work for this long. In my forties my face began to line - science has told us this is the beginning of old age. How can the science that measures and combines and mixes and observes tell us what is behind the sleep?" Alexander laughed. "Ouspensky, science can measure how long we sleep, but can it tell us what we dreamed about? It will observe our reactions, it can tell if we twitched or laughed, or cried, but can it tell us what was inside our own head?

Tatiana was order. She was finite matter in infinite space. Tatiana was the standard-bearer for the flag of grace and valor that she carried forward with Bounty and perfection in herself, the flag Alexander had followed sixteen hundred kilometers east to the Kama River, to the Ural Mountains, to Lazarevo.

This is the best time, Tatiana," Alexander said. "Do you want to know why?" "Please don't tell me." "There will never be a time like this again. Never this simple, this uncomplicated." "You call this uncomplicated?" Tatiana shook her head. "Of course." Alexander paused. "We're just friends, walking through Leningrad in the lucent dusk.

Dasha bent him to her and kissed him on the mouth. And kissed him and kissed him. And kissed him.

Harry leaned back, his hat over his inscrutable face.
"Well?" Ben nudged him. "Thomas Paine, or a nubile beauty from Sicily?"
"Clearly Thomas Paine. I'd be asleep now in my bed."
"Do you remember the name of the street they live on?"
"Let's see ... Crazy Street? Cuckoo Street? Commitment Street? Cranial Injury Inflicted by Enraged Sibling Street?"
"Canal Street! Thank you."
"I'm going to stop speaking."
"Harry, admit it, if you weren't so utterly uninterested in all women save Alice, you would be sitting on this train yourself."
"Ben Shaw, I hate to point out the startlingly obvious, but I am sitting on this train myself."
"Exactly!"
"Ugh."
"I'm surprised to learn that Lawrence is the world leader in the production of cotton and woven textiles. Are you?"
"Stunned.

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

Shura," she whispered. "I'm going to have a baby."
At first she didn't think Alexander heard her, he was mute so long. "You what?" he said in horror.
"I'm going to have a baby," she mouthed, her shoulders quaking, her swollen lips quivering.

Here, take this, she would say, take this, and tell me where he is. Tell me whether he's dead or alive, so I can walk as his widow or his wife.
No one would, or could, tell her, and so she continued to cook, and to learn new things all the while searching for an answer among the outcasts.
The way he carried his body, the way he walked in my life, Tatiana thought, declared that he was the only man I had ever loved, and he knew it.
And until I was alone without him, I thought it was all worth it.

Not bombs nor my broken heart can take away from me walking barefoot with you in jasmine June through the Field of Mars.

I will make you insane, her memory screamed at her near the winter window sill as Tatiana smelled the brine of eternity. On the outside you will walk and smile as if indeed you are a normal woman, but on the inside you will twist and burn on the stake, I will never free you, you will never be free.

Someday we'll meet in Lvov, my love and I.

The struggle doesn't end just because you know the way. That's when it's only beginning.

Are you worried? About moving to Russia?" She smiled. "No, mio caro figlio. I'm not worried either." She kissed him. "My lovely, living boy," she said, kissing him between each word. "My hope" - kiss - "my happiness" - kiss - "my love, my life, my joy." Kiss, kiss, kiss.

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.

How instant it was, desire. It was like a bomb exploding, fragmenting and igniting all her nerve endings.

No! he wanted to cry out. No, Tania, please come back. What can I leave her with, what can I say, what one word can I leave with her, for her? What one word for my wife?
"Tatiasha," Alexander called after her. God, what was the curator's name ... ?
She glanced back.
"Remember Orbeli-