Paullina Simons: All good things come to those who wait.

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.

Paullina Simons

wall white night

I love you breathlessly, my amazing man.

Paullina Simons

amazing-man love-you men

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.

Paullina Simons

battle fighting giving

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

Paullina Simons

hungry knowing love-is

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

Paullina Simons

idealism left gone

We walk alone through this world, but if we're lucky, we have a moment of belonging to something, to someone, that sustains us through a lifetime of loneliness.

Paullina Simons

lucky loneliness world

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

Paullina Simons

ecstasy sorrow ghost

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?

Paullina Simons

making-love nice girl

I love you. I'm blind for you, wild for you. Sick with you. I told you that our first night together when I asked you to marry me, I am telling you now. Everything that's happened to us, everything, is because I crossed the street for you. I worship you. You know that through and through.

Paullina Simons

worship-you love-you night

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

Paullina Simons

ice-cream saws soldier

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.

Paullina Simons

sunday war america

Memory - that fiend, that cruel enemy of comfort.

Paullina Simons

comfort memories enemy

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

Paullina Simons

be-patient patient stills

I'm going to die with Alexander's hand on my face, Tatiana thought. That is not a bad way to die. I cannot move. I can't get up. Just can't. She closed her eyes and felt herself drifting. Through the haze in front of her she heard Alexander's voice. "Tatiana, I love you. Do you hear me? I love you like I've never loved anyone in my whole life. Now, get up. For me, Tatia. For me, please get up and go take care of your sister. Go on. And I'll take care of you.

Paullina Simons

eye love-you moving

"Alexander, were you looking for me?" "All my life."

Paullina Simons

Tania,” he whispers, “promise me you won’t forget me when I die.” “You won’t die, soldier,” she says. “You won’t die. Live! Live on, breathe on, claw onto life, and do not let go. Promise me you will live for me, and I promise you, when you’re done, I will be waiting for you.” She is sobbing. “Whenever you’re done, Alexander, I will be here, waiting for you.

Paullina Simons

soldier waiting letting-go

You will find a way to live without me. You will find a way to live for both of us,' Alexander said to Tatiana as the swelling Kama River flowed from the Ural Mountains through a pine village named Lazarevo, once when they were in love, and young.

Paullina Simons

way-to-live mountain rivers

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.

Paullina Simons

distance war long

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

Paullina Simons

breaths giving way

We can’t forget that I owe you my life.” She gazed at him. “We can’t forget that I belong to you.” “I like that sound of that,” Alexander said, hugging her tighter.

Paullina Simons

hug sound forget