Alexander Belov/Barrington: 91 winters and summers

“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.”

***

“Tatiasha-remember Orbeli.”

***

“”Do you hear the stellar winds, carrying from the heavens a whisper, straight from antiquity… into eternity…”
“What are they whispering?”
“Tatiana… Tatiana… Ta… tiana…”
“Please stop.”
“Will you remember that? Anywhere you are, if you can look up and find Persus in the sky, find that smile, and hear the galactic wind whisper your name, you’ll know it’s me, calling for you… calling you back to Lazarevo.”
Tatiana wiped her face on Alexander’s arm and said, “You won’t have to call me back, soldier. I’m not ever leaving here.””

***

Alexander,
The brave soldier, the tender lover, the father, the friend, the best among men.
The king and the Hero.
You’re father and mother’s only child.
Tania’s husband.
Anthony, Pasha, Harry and Jane’s only father.

We loved you through America, back in Barrington with Teddy and Belinda.
We loved you through Russia, through Red Army and Winter War. Through Yuri Stepanov whom you gave up your America for.
We loved you through your wandering days.

And we loved you on June 22, 1941. When you made your way to Ulitsa Saltykov-Schedrin, all tired after only one hour of sleep. And on that day, you heard her delicate sweet voice carried by the wind; carried only for you. “We’ll Meet Again In Lvov, My Love And I.” She sang and you became paralyzed by her. And on that day you crossed the street for Tatiana Metanova, and we loved you for that.

“Love is to be loved, in return.” You said, as she couldn’t take her eyes off Peterhof, as Dasha and Dimitri were there. You said so once, when everything was still ahead of you. When war, famine, passion, love, Lazarevo, separation, Orbeli, they all were ahead of you.

We loved you through World War II, through the blockade and starvation, through raveling passion and impossible choices, through Dasha and Dimitri and your Tania.
We loved you even more through Lazarevo, through the magical days on the banks of the mighty Kama and on the foot of the magnificent Urals. The Kama and the Urals saw it all, smelled it all, and so did we.

We loved you for scarifying your own life just to give her hope, and loved you for leaving her with the one right word: Orbeli.
We loved you through Slonko and the NKVD, through interrogations and through the too small cell.
We loved you through separation. Through penal battalion and Ouspensky. Through Pasha and his death, through Russia, Poland, Germany and finally, America.

And we continued to love you through your America life, with your beloved wife and your sweet boy.

And every year we will remember our most loved hero, our brave brash knight, who once, many years ago crossed the street for a young girl on a bench, in a white dress adorned with the most beautiful blood-red roses and smiling green leaves, and made us believe in eternal love and destiny.


Happy May 29th.
Khulood.

Well, I guess it's an addiction after all.

Hello there! It has been few weeks since my last post. I've missed you!

So I know, in my "currently reading" it says that I'm so fully immersed in Wuthering Heights, living the lives of Cathy and Heathcliff, struggling with their difficulties and biting my lower lip over their unbelievable passion...
But yeah. It's not so precise after all.
My addiction has managed to pull me out of the book and make me tiptoe to my bookshelf in the middle of the night, to make sure no one was looking and to take hold of my Bronze Horseman copy and turn the first page. For what harm could it make?! I will only read two-three pages of the book, just a glimpse, so naively I thought a week and half ago to myself.
For an instant in eternity I forgot about my sick obsession over the books of Paullina Simons. And an instant was what it took for me to be locked once again in the pages of my favorite book. It is so wonderful, that I have managed to find a book that will keep me interested, even throughout my fourth reread. It's so wonderful and yet dangerous! The comfort I find in this book will always make me unable to find myself in the pages of another.
Sometimes, women are obsessively drawn to a dangerous man, and despite knowing they should move on, they keep coming back to him. The Bronze Horseman is this man for me!
Yeah, The Bronze Horseman isn't dangerous, but... I hope you got my point.

Maybe I don't get the whole point of a "books blog", shouldn't I be doing posts about various books? Not just one book? Shouldn't I be always on the search for new books, new authors?
But here I am, STUCK in this bubble that is The Bronze Horseman trilogy and Paullina Simons.
Oh yeah, in case you are interested, I've finished the first book in the trilogy and have moved to the second one. Tatiana And Alexander. I seriously could eat this book whole. What is in this book that is so engrossing? I keep asking myself, although I know the answer for that question. I know it for a fact. It is the Alexander before Tatiana, I have never in my life been so interested in a character like I am in Alexander.
And this forever young Alexander is turning 91 this weekend. on May 29th.


I guess that's it for now,
Have a great day, keep on reading.
Khulood

Another last page was turned... A Song In The Daylight

"Nothing is what it seems..."

O God. What a book.

I really don't believe some hated it. I do understand hardly caring for the main character, but hating the book? What for? It was so... Shocking? Outrageous? Heartbreaking? Heart wrenching? Yeah!
Please allow me to unload what is weighing on my shoulder concerning the self-absorbed Larissa Stark. A woman that isn't a wife, not a friend, nor a mother. A woman who thinks only for herself and does only what's good for her. (I do have my doubts about whether it was good for her what she did) Remarkable, a mother who is ready to give up on her family, her loving husband, her adorable kids, her friends, in order to collect few of her belongings, to hop on her lover's Ducati with him driving it, to press herself to his back and to runaway with him to find adventures and excitement.

In the first half of the book I was actually rooting for Larissa, thinking, "what the heck, she's following her heart. Her husband is so mundane, her kids are too annoying, her friends are self-concerned... She deserves to be happy."
I hate myself for thinking this way, and luckily the second half of the book came to prove me wrong, came to slap me for thinking Larissa was right. She was so wrong!

I don't think fate brought Larissa and Kai (her lover) together, they met as people meet, obviously Larissa doesn't sit all day at her house, she does go out, she meets people. Yes, she found Kai to be quite attractive, it's not unremarkable to meet someone who is good looking.
It was her lack of judgment that led her to commit adultery and eventually have an affair with Kai...
It wasn't an impossible bond they had with each other, it wasn't some magical power, or irresistible passion they had from the very beginning, at least it wasn't like that with Larissa. I honestly don't think you meet someone and immediately you want to go to bed with him, it's a process, a process Larissa never cared to cut or stop for the sake of her family and life. And that's what she did wrong, she would've stopped everything had she said, "Kai, I have a husband and three kids. It's not right."
But no! She had to have lunches with him, she had to sit with him in her car, she had to go to his apartment with him.
I might be talking nonsense, I'm still a child with no experience whatsoever, but I do believe fate had nothing to do with what happened to Larissa, it was the consequences of her acts and, yeah, sins.

In the end, they all got what they deserved. Larissa got what she deserved. What she did to her family, what she did to her husband came around like a boomerang and punched her right in her pretty face.
Her husband got over his wife's betrayal. Her kids... I'm pretty sure they are still waiting for her to come back... But they will eventually stop waiting.

I still need to do some thinking over this book. Hmm...
Have a great day.
Love,
Khulood <3