Tatiana and Alexander
Tatiana and Alexander
Paullina Simons
A powerful story of grief, hope and an epic love, from the Russian-born author of internationally bestselling novels, TULLY and ROAD TO PARADISE.The world at war … two people in love.Tatiana is eighteen years old and pregnant when she miraculously escapes war-torn Leningrad to the West, believing herself to be a widow. Her husband, Major Alexander Belov, a decorated hero of the Soviet Union, has been arrested by Stalin's infamous secret police and is awaiting imminent death as a traitor and a spy.Tatiana begins her new life in America. In wartime New York City she finds work, friends and a life beyond her dreams. However, her grief is inescapable and she keeps hearing Alexander calling out to her.Meanwhile, Alexander faces the greatest danger he's ever known. An American trapped in Russia since adolescence, he has been serving in the Red Army and posing as a Soviet citizen to protect himself. For him, Russia's war is not over, and both victory and defeat will mean certain death.As the Second World War moves into its spectacular close, Tatiana and Alexander are surrounded by the ghosts of their past and each other. They must struggle against destiny and despair as they find themselves in the fight of their lives. A master of the historical epic, Paullina Simons takes us on a journey across continents, time, and the entire breadth of human emotion, to create a heartrendingly beautiful love story that will live on long after the final page is turned.
PAULLINA SIMONS
TATIANA AND ALEXANDER
Map (#ulink_6b4ff8c6-fabe-5b69-b2fe-749a42f8652e)
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_4d6b476d-033f-595e-90e5-9cdb87c3a45f)
Harper
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First published in Great Britain by Flamingo an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2003 and also under the title The Bridge to Holy Cross
Copyright © Paullina Simons 2003
Paullina Simons asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007118892
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2015 ISBN: 9780007370078
Version: 2015-03-09
DEDICATION (#ulink_7e131164-b1f9-58b8-9132-f0914f3cdad6)
Once again for my grandfather and grandmother, ninety-eight and ninety-four, who still plant cucumbers and grow flowers and live happily ever after,
and
for our good friend Anatoly Studenkov, still as ever left behind in Russia, who does not.
EPIGRAPH (#ulink_76181885-141d-5d1b-9d2b-17e5b7aa121f)
And in the moonlight’s pallid glamour
Rides high upon the charging brute
Head held high ’mid echoing clamour
The Bronze Horseman in pursuit.
And all through that long night no matter
What road the frantic wretch might take
There would pound with ponderous clatter
The Bronze Horseman in his wake.
—Aleksandr Pushkin
CONTENTS
Cover (#u3dc751e8-cf12-5c34-a019-68320211f74c)
Title Page (#u81a3a252-3eeb-5084-ab64-e9c3139e6129)
Map (#ulink_a7431a1d-e2f1-581a-b9fb-f447afc6263d)
Copyright (#ulink_137bb4d4-c236-5e16-8da1-4df524178e6e)
Dedication (#ulink_fd46c1f8-427a-5cc4-a881-db5817f673b6)
Epigraph (#ulink_89b3c810-ff0a-5aad-be7b-04af4b10d334)
Prologue (#ulink_297552ea-d686-58c4-8998-0d55273bd502)
BOOK ONE (#ulink_11e39969-7314-5d0e-b35c-63d5a3368236)
The Second America (#ulink_11e39969-7314-5d0e-b35c-63d5a3368236)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_39919f68-8ba3-554c-acf0-c544a7eb2540)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_4a322686-0c39-50d9-8970-26373b06ff2a)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_a6dc0832-dacf-51b2-87ed-9bf9c8e6662a)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_6c81e66e-fd4d-5910-bb36-f7a155bb1340)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_2c2ea2ff-61bf-5857-acf3-c3ad0387b4b5)
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_5c984cc2-cd69-5c7a-b7f2-54fc6cc21a4f)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_0ee30843-2100-557e-aa24-81554ea3b84d)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_5b22db61-177a-5b8c-8775-3413e7d8db68)
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_0065a426-e67e-5295-bbce-9232cb259825)
CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_8384277e-545e-56e0-b33d-b15e636812fc)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#ulink_d47756cb-341a-5186-95df-222df57477b7)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#ulink_3f817443-7d59-5bdf-8487-5be4b41ceb7f)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
BOOK TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
The Bridge to Holy Cross (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
BOOK THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
Alexander (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_c76c7b27-3b4d-5a1a-9985-531fbcf7eb16)
Boston, December 1930
ALEXANDER BARRINGTON STOOD IN front of the mirror and adjusted his red Cub Scout tie. Rather, he was attempting to adjust his Cub Scout tie, because he couldn’t take his eyes off his face, a face uncharacteristically glum. His mouth was turned down. His hands were fidgeting with the gray-and-white tie, unable to do a good job, today of all days.
Stepping away from the mirror, he looked around the small room and sighed. It wasn’t much, a wood floor, drab brown-branch wallpaper, a bed, a nightstand.
It didn’t matter about the room. It wasn’t his room. It was a rented room, a furnished rented room and all the furniture belonged to the landlady downstairs. His real room was not in Boston but back in Barrington, and he had really liked his old room and hadn’t felt the same way about any other room he had lived in since. And he had lived in six different rooms since two years ago when his father sold their house and took Alexander out of Barrington.
Now they were leaving this room, too. It didn’t matter.
Rather, that’s not what mattered.
Alexander looked in the mirror again. He came up flush to the mirror, stuck his face against the glass and breathed out deeply. “Alexander,” he whispered. “What now?”
His best friend Teddy thought it was the most exciting thing in the world, Alexander’s leaving the country.
Alexander couldn’t have disagreed more.
Through his partly open door, he heard his mother and father arguing. He ignored them. They tended to argue through stress. Presently the door opened and his father, Harold Barrington, came in.
“Son, are you ready? The car is waiting for us downstairs. And your friends are downstairs, too, waiting to say goodbye. Teddy asked me if I would take him instead of you.” Harold smiled. “I told him I just might. What do you think, Alexander? You want to trade places with Teddy? Live with his crazy mother and crazier father?”
“Yes, because my own parents are so sane,” said Alexander. Harold was thin and of medium height. His one distinguishing feature was a resolutely set chin on a broad, square-jawed face. At the age of forty-eight his light-brown, graying hair was still thick upon his head, and his eyes were intense and blue. Alexander liked it when his father was in a good mood because then the eyes lost some of their seriousness.
Pushing Harold out of the way, his mother, Jane Barrington, strolled in, wearing her best silk dress and white pillbox hat, and said, “Harry, leave the boy alone. You can see he’s trying to get ready. The car will wait. And so will Teddy and Belinda.” She smoothed out her thick, long dark hair arranged under the hat. Jane’s voice still carried traces of the lilting rounded Italian accent that she had not been able to lose since coming to America at seventeen. She lowered her voice. “I never liked that Belinda, you know.”
“I know, Mom,” said Alexander. “That’s why we’re leaving the country, isn’t it?” He watched them in the mirror. He looked most like his mother. In personality he hoped he was more like his father. He didn’t know. His mother amused him, his father confounded him. “I’m ready, Dad,” he said.
Harold came over and put his arm on Alexander’s shoulder. “And you thought Cub Scouts was an adventure.”
Cub Scouts was plenty for me. “Dad?” he asked, looking not at his father but at his own reflection. “If it doesn’t work out … we can come back, right? We can come back to—” He stopped. He didn’t want his father to hear his voice crack. Taking a steadying breath, he finished, “To America?”
When Harold didn’t reply, Jane came up to Alexander, who now stood between his parents, his mother in small heels three inches taller than his father, who was a good foot and a half taller than Alexander. “Tell the boy the truth, Harold. He deserves to know. Tell him. He is old enough.”
Harold said, “No, Alexander. We are not coming back. We are going to make the Soviet Union our permanent home. There is no place for us in America.”
Alexander wanted to say that there had been a place for him. Alexander had a place in America. Teddy and Belinda had been his friends since they were all three. Barrington was a tiny, white-shingled, black-shuttered town with three steepled churches and a short main street that ran four blocks from one end of town to the other. In the woods near Barrington, Alexander had had a happy childhood. But he knew his father didn’t want to hear it, so he said nothing.
“Alexander, your mother and I, we are absolutely sure this is the right thing for our family. For the first time in our lives, we are finally able to do what we believe in. We are no longer paying lip service to the communist ideals. It’s easy to propound change while living in absolute comfort, isn’t it? Well, now we are going to live what we believe. You know it’s what I fought for my whole adult life. You’ve seen me. And your mother, too.”
Alexander nodded. He had seen them. His father and mother arrested for their principles. Visiting his father in jail. Being unwelcome around Barrington. Being laughed at in school. Constantly getting into fights for his father’s principles. He had seen his mother stand by his father’s side, picketing and protesting with him. The three of them had gone to Washington D.C. together to parade communist pride in front of the White House. They were arrested there, too. Alexander had spent a night in a juvenile detention center when he was seven. But on the plus side, he was the only boy in Barrington who had been to the White House.
He had thought all that was sacrifice enough. And then he had thought that breaking with their family and giving up the house that had been the Barrington homestead for eight generations was sacrifice enough. He thought that living in small rented rooms in busy and dusty Boston while disseminating the socialist word was sacrifice enough.
Apparently not.
Frankly, Alexander was surprised by the move to the Soviet Union, and not happily surprised. But his father believed. His father thought the Soviet Union was the place where they would finally belong, where Alexander would not be laughed at, where they would be welcomed and admired instead of shunned and ridiculed. The place where they could build their life up from “meaningless” and make it “meaningful.” Power was to the toiling man in the new Russia, and soon the toiling man would be king. His father’s belief was enough for Alexander.
His mother pressed her painted red mouth on Alexander’s forehead, leaving a bright greasy pucker, which she then rubbed off—not well. “You know, don’t you, darling, that your father wants you to learn the right way, to grow up the right way?”
A little petulantly, Alexander said, “This is really not about me, Mom—”
“No.” Harold’s voice was adamant. His hand never left Alexander’s shoulder. “This is all about you, Alexander. You’re only eleven now, but soon you will become a man. And since you have only one life, you can be only one man. I’m going to the Soviet Union to make you into the man you need to be. You, son, are my only legacy to this world.”
“There are plenty of men in America, too, Dad,” Alexander pointed out. “Herbert Hoover. Woodrow Wilson. Calvin Coolidge.”
“Yes, but not good men. America can produce greedy and selfish men, prideful and vengeful men. That’s not the man I want you to be.”
“Alexander,” said his mother. “We want you to have advantages of character that people in America just don’t have.”
“That’s right,” said Harold. “America makes men soft.”
Alexander stepped back from his parents, never taking his eyes off his solemn reflection. That’s what he had been looking at before they came in. Himself. He was looking at his face and wondering, when I grow up, what kind of a man am I going to be? Saluting his father, he said, “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll make you proud. I’ll be ungreedy and unselfish, unprideful and unvengeful. I’ll be as hard a man as they come. Let’s go. I’m ready.”
“I don’t want you to be a hard man, Alexander. I want you to be a good man.” Harold paused. “A better man than me.”
As they were walking out, Alexander turned around and caught himself in the mirror one last time. I don’t want to forget this boy, he thought, in case I ever need to come back to him.
Stockholm, May 1943
I am on a stake, thought eighteen-year-old Tatiana, waking up one cold summer morning. I cannot live like this anymore. She got up from the bed, washed, brushed her hair, collected her books and her few clothes, and then left the hotel room as clean as if she had not been in it for over two months. The white curtains blowing a breeze into the room were unrelenting.
Inside herself was unrelenting.
Over the desk there was an oval mirror. Before Tatiana tied up her hair she stared at her face. What stared back at her was a face she no longer recognized. Gone was the round baby shape; a gaunt oval remained over her drawn cheekbones and her high forehead and her squared jaw and her clenched lips. If she had dimples still, they did not show; it had been a long time since her mouth bared teeth or dimples. The scar on her cheek from the piece of the broken windshield had healed and was fading into a thin pink line. The freckles were fading too, but it was the eyes Tatiana recognized least of all. 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. She couldn’t lift them to anyone. She could not lift them to herself. One look into the green sea, and it was clear what raged on behind the frail façade.
Tatiana brushed her shoulder blade-length platinum hair. She didn’t hate her hair anymore.
How could she, for Alexander had loved it so much.
She would not think of it. She wanted to cut it all off, shear herself like a lamb before the slaughter, she wanted to cut her hair and take the whites out of her eyes and the teeth out of her mouth and tear the arteries out of her throat.
Tying the hair up in a bun on top of her head, Tatiana put a kerchief over it, to attract as little attention as possible, though in Sweden—a country full of blonde girls—it was easy to become lost in the crowd.
Certainly she had become that.
Tatiana knew it was time to go. But she could find nothing inside to propel her forward. She had the baby inside her, but it was as easy to have a baby in Sweden as it was in America. Easier. She could stay. She wouldn’t have to make her way across an unfamiliar country, get a passage on a freighter headed for Britain and then travel across the ocean to the United States in the middle of a world war. The Germans were blowing up the northern waters on a daily basis, their torpedoes detonating the Allied submarines and the blockade ships into high flame balls encircled by black smoke, incongruous against the serene seas of Bothnia and the Baltic, of the Arctic and the Atlantic. Staying safe in Stockholm required nothing more of her than what she had been doing.
What had she been doing?
She’d been seeing Alexander everywhere.
Everywhere she walked, everywhere she sat, she would turn her head to the right, and there he would be, tall in his officer’s uniform, rifle slung on his shoulder, looking at her and smiling. She would reach out and touch thin air, touch the white pillow on which she saw his face. She would turn to him and break the bread for him and sit on the bench and watch him making his slow sure way to her, crossing the street for her. She would walk after Swedish men during the day, men whose backs were broad, whose stride was long, she would stare impolitely into the faces of strangers because it was Alexander’s face she saw etched there. And then she would blink, blink again and he would be gone. And she would be gone, too. She would lower her gaze, and walk on.
She raised her eyes to the mirror. Behind her Alexander stood. He brushed the hair away from her neck and bent to her. She couldn’t smell him, nor feel his lips on her. Just her eyes saw him, almost felt his black hair on her neck.
Tatiana closed her eyes.
She went and had breakfast at Spivak café, her usual two helpings of bacon, two cups of black coffee, three poached eggs. She pretended to read the English paper she had bought at the kiosk across the street; pretended because the words were gases inside her head, her mind could not catch them. She read better in the afternoon when she was calmer. Leaving the café, she walked to the industrial pier, where she sat on the bench and watched the Swedish dockhand load up his barges full of finished paper to be taken over to Helsinki. She watched the longshoreman steadily. She knew that in a few minutes, he would go off to talk to his friends fifty meters down the pier. He would have a smoke and a small cup of coffee. He would be gone from the barge thirteen minutes. He would leave the covered barge unattended, the plank connected to the cabin of the shipping vessel.
Thirteen minutes later he would come back and continue loading the paper from the truck, wheeling it down the plank on his hand trolley. In sixty-two minutes the captain of the barge would appear; the longshoreman would salute him and untie the ropes. And the captain would take his barge across the thawed Baltic Sea to Helsinki.
This was the seventy-fifth morning Tatiana had watched him.
Helsinki was only four hours from Vyborg. And Tatiana knew from the English newspapers she bought daily that Vyborg—for the first time since 1918—was back in Soviet hands. The Red Army had taken Russia’s Karelian territories back from the Finns. A barge across the sea to Helsinki, a truck across the forests to Vyborg, and she too would be back in Soviet hands.
“Sometimes I wish you were less bloody-minded,” Alexander says. He had managed to receive a three-day furlough. They’re in Leningrad—the last time they’re in Leningrad together, their last everything.
“Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”
He grunts. “Yes. I wish the kettle were less black.” He snorts in frustration. “There are women,” he says, “I know there are, who listen to their men. I’ve seen them. Other men have them—”
She tickles him. He does not seem amused. “All right. Tell me what to do,” she says, lowering her voice two notches. “I will do exactly as you say.”
“Leave Leningrad and go back to Lazarevo instantly,” Alexander tells her. “Go where you will be safe.”
Rolling her eyes, she says, “Come on. I know you can play this game.”
“I know I can,” Alexander says, sitting on her parents’ old sofa. “I just don’t want to. You don’t listen to me about the important things …”
“Those aren’t the important things,” Tatiana says, kneeling in front of him and taking hold of his hands. “If the NKVD come for me, I will know you are gone and I will be happy to stand against the wall.” She squeezes his hands. “I will go to the wall as your wife and never regret a second I spent with you. So let me have this here with you. Let me smell you once more, taste you once more, kiss you once more,” she says. “Now play my game with me, sorrowful as it is to lie down together in wintry Leningrad. Play the miracle with me—to lie down with you at all. Tell me what to do and I will do it.”
Alexander pulls on her hand. “Come here.” He opens his arms. “Sit on top of me.”
She obeys.
“Now take your hands and place them on my face.”
She obeys.
“Put your lips on my eyes.”
She obeys.
“Kiss my forehead.”
She obeys.
“Kiss my lips.”
She obeys. And obeys.
“Tania …”
“Shh.”
“Can’t you see I’m breaking?”
“Ah,” she says. “You’re still in one piece then.”
She sat and watched the dockhand when it was sunny and she sat and watched him when it rained. Or when it was foggy, which is what it was nearly every morning at eight o’clock.
This morning was none of the above. This morning was cold. The pier smelled of fresh water and of fish. The seagulls screeched overhead, a man’s voice shouted.
Where is my brother to help me, my sister, my mother? Pasha, help me, hide in the woods where I know I can find you. Dasha, look what’s happened. Do you even see? Mama, Mama. I want my mother. Where is my family to ask things of me, to weigh on me, to intrude on me, to never let me be silent or alone, where are they to help me through this? Deda, what do I do? I don’t know what to do.
This morning the dockhand did not go over to see his friend at the next pier for a smoke and a coffee. Instead, he walked across the road and sat next to her on the bench.
This surprised her. But she said nothing, she just wrapped her white nurse’s coat tighter around herself, and fixed the kerchief covering her hair.
In Swedish he said to her, “My name is Sven. What’s your name?”
After a longish pause, she replied. “Tatiana. I don’t speak Swedish.”
In English he said to her, “Do you want a cigarette?”
“No,” she replied, also in English. She thought of telling him she spoke little English. She was sure he didn’t speak Russian.
He asked her if he could get her a coffee, or something warm to throw over her shoulders. No and no. She did not look at him.
Sven was silent a moment. “You want to get on my barge, don’t you?” he asked. “Come. I will take you.” He took her by her arm. Tatiana didn’t move. “I can see you have left something behind,” he said, pulling on her gently. “Go and retrieve it.” Tatiana did not move.
“Take my cigarette, take my coffee, or get on my barge. I won’t even turn away. You don’t have to sneak past me. I would have let you on the first time you came. All you had to do was ask. You want to go to Helsinki? Fine. I know you’re not Finnish.” Sven paused. “But you are very pregnant. Two months ago it would have been easier for you. But you need to go back or go forward. How long do you plan to sit here and watch my back?”
Tatiana stared into the Baltic Sea. “If I knew, would I be sitting here?”
“Don’t sit here anymore. Come,” said the longshoreman.
She shook her head.
“Where is your husband? Where is the father of your baby?”
“Dead in the Soviet Union,” Tatiana breathed out.
“Ah, you’re from the Soviet Union.” He nodded. “You’ve escaped somehow? Well, you’re here, so stay. Stay in Sweden. Go to the consulate, get yourself refugee protection. We have hundreds of people getting through from Denmark. Go to the consulate.”
Tatiana shook her head.
“You’re going to have that baby soon,” Sven said. “Go back, or move forward.”
Tatiana’s hands went around her belly. Her eyes glazed over.
The dockhand patted her gently and stood up. “What will it be? You want to go back to the Soviet Union? Why?”
Tatiana did not reply. How to tell him her soul had been left there?
“If you go back, what happens to you?”
“I die most likely,” she barely whispered.
“If you go forward, what happens to you?”
“I live most likely.”
He clapped his hands. “What kind of a choice is that? You must go forward.”
“Yes,” said Tatiana, “but how do I live like this? Look at me. You think, if I could, I wouldn’t?”
“So you’re here in the Stockholm purgatory, watching me move my paper day in and day out, watching me smoke, watching me. What are you going to do? Sit with your baby on the bench? Is that what you want?”
Tatiana was silent.
The first time she laid eyes on him she was sitting on a bench, eating ice cream.
“Go forward.”
“I don’t have it in me.”
He nodded. “You have it. It’s just covered up. For you it’s winter.” He smiled. “Don’t worry. Summer’s here. The ice will melt.”
Tatiana struggled up from the bench. Walking away, she said in Russian, “It’s not the ice anymore, my seagoing philosopher. It’s the pyre.”
BOOK ONE (#ulink_2f73c448-d316-5bd1-8db3-77c2bfa01176)
The Second America (#ulink_2f73c448-d316-5bd1-8db3-77c2bfa01176)
… Hold your head up all the more
This tide
And every tide
Because he was the son you bore
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide
Rudyard Kipling
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_b30a4887-7165-5a46-87e3-ec6f9e753df6)
In Morozovo Hospital, March 13, 1943
IN THE DARK EVENING, in a small fishing village that had been turned into Red Army headquarters for the Neva operation of the Leningrad front, a wounded man lay in a military hospital waiting for death.
For a long time he lay with his arms crossed, not moving until the lights went out and the critical ward grew tired and quiet.
Soon they would be coming for him.
He was a young man just twenty-three, ravaged by war. Months of lying wounded in bed threw a pallor on his face. He was unshaven, and his black hair was cropped close to his scalp. His eyes, the color of toffee, were blanks as he stared into the far distance. Alexander Belov looked grim but he was not a cruel man, and he looked resigned but he was not a cold man.
Months earlier on the ice during the Battle of Leningrad, Alexander had run out for his lieutenant Anatoly Marazov, who lay on the river Neva with a bullet in his throat. Alexander ran out to the hopeless Anatoly, and so did a doctor with no sense—an International Red Cross doctor from Boston named Matthew Sayers, who fell through the ice, and whom Alexander had to pull out and drag across the river to the armored truck for cover. The Germans were trying to blow up the truck from the air, and in their attempts they blew up Alexander instead.
It was Tatiana who had pulled him back from the four horsemen who came for him, counting his good and bad works on their black-gloved fingers. Tatiana, whom he had told, “Leave Leningrad and go back to Lazarevo instantly.” Lazarevo, deep at the foot of the Ural Mountains, a small fishing village buried in the pine woods, nestled on the shores of the Kama River, Lazarevo, where for an instant in time she could have been safe.
But she was like the doctor: she had no sense. No, she said to him. She was not going. And she said no to the four horsemen, shaking her fist at them. It’s too early for you to claim him. And then defiantly: I won’t let you take him. I will do everything in my power to keep you from taking him.
And she did. With her own blood, she had kept them from Alexander. She poured her blood inside him, she drained her arteries and filled his veins, and he was saved.
Alexander may have owed Tatiana his life but Dr. Sayers owed Alexander his, and he was going to take Alexander and Tatiana to Helsinki, from where they would make their way to the United States. With Tatiana’s help they concocted a plan, and for months Alexander lay in the hospital while his back healed and carved figures and cradles and spears out of wood and imagined driving through America with her, their hurt all vanished, just the two of them, singing to the radio.
He had lived on the fleeting wings of hope. It was such a translucent hope. He knew it even as he drowned in it. It was the hope of a man surrounded by the enemy, who, as he makes his last run to safety, his back turned, prays he will have a chance to dive into a pit of life before the enemy reloads, before they send the heavy artillery out. He hears their guns, he hears their shouts behind him, but still he runs, hoping for a reprieve from the whistle of the shell. Dive into hope, or die in despair. Dive into the River Kama.
Alexander’s fate was sealed. He wondered how long ago it had been sealed, but he did not want an answer to that question.
Since he left his small room in Boston back in December 1930, that’s how long.
Alexander could not leave Russia. But one small thread of hope still dangled in front of him. One small flicker of the waning candle.
To get Tatiana out of the Soviet Union, Alexander Belov grit his teeth and closed his eyes. He clenched his fists and backed away from her; he pushed her away, he let her go.
There was only one thing left for him to do in his old life, and that was to stand up and salute the doctor who could save his wife. For now there was nothing to do but wait.
Deciding he did not wish to be taken out of bed in his hospital clothes, Alexander asked the night shift nurse to bring him his Class A major’s uniform and his officer dress cap. He shaved with his knife and a bit of water by the side of his bed, dressed and then sat in the chair, arms folded. When they came for him, as he knew they would, he wanted to go with as much dignity as the lackeys for the NKVD would allow. He heard loud snoring from the man in the bed next to him, hidden from view by the isolation tent.
Tonight—what was Alexander’s reality? What was it that determined Alexander’s consciousness? And more important, what would happen to him in an hour or two when everything Alexander had ever been would come into question? When the secret police chairman General Mekhlis would lift his beady, lard-encrusted eyes and say to him, “Tell us who you are, Major,” what would be Alexander’s answer?
Was he Tatiana’s husband?
Yes.
“Don’t cry, honey.”
“Don’t come, yet. Please. Don’t. Not yet.”
“Tania, I have to go.” He told Colonel Stepanov he was going to be back for Sunday night roll call and he could not be late.
“Please. Not yet.”
“Tania, I’ll get another weekend leave—” He is panting. “After the Battle of Leningrad. I’ll come back here. But now …”
“Don’t, Shura, please don’t.”
“You’re holding me so tight. Release your legs.”
“No. Stop moving. Please. Just …”
“It’s nearly six, babe. I have to go.”
“Shura, darling, please … don’t go.”
“Don’t come, don’t go. What can I do?”
“Stay right here. Inside me. Forever inside me. Not yet, not yet.”
“Shh, Tania, shh.”
And five minutes later, he is bolting out the door. “I’ve got to run, no, don’t walk me to the barracks. I don’t want you walking by yourself at night. You still have the pistol I gave you? Stay here. Don’t watch me walk down the corridor. Just—come here.” He envelops her in his coat, hugging her into himself, kissing her hair, her lips. “Be a good girl, Tania,” he says. “And don’t say goodbye.”
She salutes him. “I’ll see you, the captain of my heart,” says Tatiana, her tears having fallen down her face from Friday till Sunday.
Was he a soldier in the Red Army?
Yes.
Was he the man who had entrusted his life to Dimitri Chernenko, a worthless demon disguised as a friend?
Yes, again.
But once, Alexander had been an American, a Barrington. He spoke like an American. He laughed like an American. He played summer games like an American, and swam like one and took his life for granted like one. He had friends he thought he was going to have for life, and once there were forests of Massachusetts that Alexander called home, and a child’s bag where he hid his small treasures—the shells and the eroded glass bits he had found on Nantucket Sound, the wrapper from one of the cotton candies, bits of twine and string, a photograph of his friend Teddy.
Once there was a time he had a mother, her tanned, made-up, large-eyed familiar face laughing into his memory.
And when the moon was blue and the sky black and the stars beaming down their light on him, for a stitch in eternity Alexander had found what he thought was going to elude him all of his Soviet life.
Once.
Alexander Barrington was coming to an end. Well, he wasn’t going to go quietly.
He put on his three military valor medals and his medal of the Order of the Red Star for driving a tank across the barely frozen lake, he put on his cap, sat in the chair by his bed and waited.
Alexander knew how the NKVD came for people like him. They needed to cause as little commotion as possible. They came in the middle of the night, or they came in a crowded train station while you were on your way to a Crimean resort. They came in a fish market, they came through a neighbor who wanted you to come into his room for just a sec. They asked to sit next to you in the canteen where you were having your pelmeni. They hemmed and hawed their way through a store and asked you to join them in the special order department. They sat next to you on a bench in the park. They were always polite and quiet and smartly dressed. The car that would pull up to the curb to take you to the Big House and the concealed pistols they carried were nowhere in sight. One woman, who had been arrested in the middle of a crowd, started to scream loudly and climbed a lamppost and continued carrying on so that even the normally indifferent passers-by stopped and stared; she made the NKVD work impossible. They had to leave her alone, and she, instead of disappearing somewhere to the middle of the country, went home to sleep, and they came for her in the night.
For Alexander they had previously come one afternoon after school. He was with a friend, and two men came up to him and told him he had forgotten about his meeting with his history teacher, could he possibly step back in for a moment and speak to him? He knew right away, he smelled their lies on them. Not budging, he grabbed his friend’s arm and shook his head. His friend left—precipitously—knowing when he wasn’t wanted. Alexander remained alone with the two men, reviewing his options. When he saw the black car slowly pull up to the curb, he knew his options were narrowing. He wondered if they would shoot him in the back in broad daylight while there were other people around. He decided they wouldn’t and took off. They gave chase, but they were in their thirties, not seventeen. Alexander lost them in a few minutes, side-stepped into an alley, hid and made his way to a market near St. Nicholas church. After buying a bit of bread, he was afraid to go home. He thought they would go there next to look for him. Alexander spent the night outdoors.
The next morning he went to school, thinking he would be safe in the classroom. The principal himself brought a note to Alexander, saying he was needed in the office.
As soon as he left the room, he was grabbed and quietly taken outside and placed inside the car already waiting at the curb.
In the Big House he was beaten and then transferred to the Kresty prison where he awaited the resolution of his fate. He had few illusions.
But however they came for him tonight, Alexander knew they would not want to make a ruckus in the middle of a military hospital critical ward. The charade, the pretense they were using—of taking him across to Volkhov to be promoted to lieutenant colonel—would serve the apparatchiks well until they got him alone. Alexander’s goal was to make sure he did not get to Volkhov, where the facilities for his “trial” and execution were well set up. Here in Morozovo, among the inexperienced and bumbling, he had a much better chance of living.
He knew that Article 58 of the Soviet Criminal Code of 1928 didn’t even specify him as a political prisoner. If he was accused of crimes against the state, then he was a criminal, and would be sentenced accordingly. The code, in fourteen sections, defined his offences only in the most general terms. He didn’t need to be an American, he didn’t need to be a refugee from Soviet justice, he didn’t need to be a foreign provocateur. He didn’t need to be a spy or a flag waver. He didn’t even need to commit a crime. Intention was just as criminal and equally punishable. Intention to betray was as severely looked upon as betrayal itself. The Soviet government prided itself on this clear sign of superiority to the Western constitutions, which senselessly waited for the criminal act before meting out punishment.
All actual or intended action aimed at weakening either the Soviet state or the Soviet military strength was punishable by death. And not just action. Inaction, too, was counter-revolutionary.
And as for Tatiana … Alexander knew that one way or another, the Soviet Union would have shortened her life. Long ago Alexander had planned to run to America—leaving her behind, the wife of a Red Army deserter. Or Alexander was going to die at the front—leaving her widowed and alone in the Soviet Union. Or his friend Dimitri was going to point out Alexander to the NKVD, Stalin’s secret police, as indeed he had done—leaving her as Alexander Barrington’s sole survivor, the Russian wife of an American “spy” and a class enemy of the people. These were the choking choices of Alexander and the unlucky girl who became his wife.
When Mekhlis asks me who I am, am I going to salute him and say, I am Alexander Barrington and not look back?
Could he do that? Not look back?
He didn’t think he could do that.
Arriving in Moscow, 1930
Eleven-year-old Alexander felt nauseated. “What is that smell, Mom?” he asked, as the three of them entered a small, cold room. It was dark, and he couldn’t see well. When his father turned on the light, it wasn’t much better. The bulb was dim and yellow. Alexander breathed through his mouth and asked his mother again. His mother did not reply. She took off her prim hat and her coat, and then when she realized it was too cold in the room, she put her coat back on and lit a cigarette.
Alexander’s father walked around with a manly gait, touching the old dresser, the wooden table, the dusty window coverings, and said, “This is not bad. This will be great. Alexander, you have your own room, and your mother and I will stay here. Come, I’ll show you your room.”
Alexander followed him. “But the smell, Dad …”
“Don’t worry.” Harold smiled. “You know your mother will clean. Besides, it’s nothing. Just … many people living close together.” He squeezed Alexander’s hand. “It’s the smell of communism, son.”
It had been late at night when they were finally brought to their residential hotel. They had arrived in Moscow at dawn that morning after a sixteen-hour train ride from Prague. Before Prague they had traveled twenty hours by train from Paris, where they had spent two days waiting either for papers or permission or a train, Alexander wasn’t sure. He liked Paris, though. The adults were fretting, and he ignored them as much as possible. He was busy reading his favorite book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Whenever he wanted to tune out the adults, he opened Tom Sawyer and felt better. Then of course, his mother afterward would try to explain what had just gone on between her and his father, and Alexander wished he had a way to tell her to follow Dad’s lead and not say anything.
He didn’t need her explanations.
Except now. Now he needed an explanation. “Dad, the smell of communism? What the hell is that?”
“Alexander!” his father exclaimed. “What did your mother teach you? Don’t talk like that. Where do you even pick up that stuff? Your mother and I don’t use that kind of language.”
Alexander didn’t like to disagree with his father, but he wanted to remind him that every time he and his mother argued they used that kind of language—and worse. His father was always under the impression that just because the fighting didn’t concern Alexander, Alexander couldn’t hear it. As if his parents weren’t in the next room, or right next door, or even right in front of him. In Barrington, Alexander had never heard anything. His parents’ bedroom was at the opposite end of the hallway upstairs, there were rooms and doors in between, and he had never heard a thing. It was as it should be.
“Dad,” he tried again. “Please. What is that smell?”
Uncomfortable, his father replied, “That’s just the toilets, Alexander.”
Looking around his bedroom, Alexander asked where they were.
“Outside in the hall.” Harold smiled. “Look on the bright side—you won’t have to go far in the middle of the night.”
Alexander put down his backpack and took off his coat. He didn’t care how cold he was. He wasn’t sleeping in his coat. “Dad,” he said, breathing through his mouth, wanting to retch. “Don’t you know I never get up in the middle of the night? I’m a deep sleeper.”
There was a small cot with a thin wool blanket. After Harold left the room, Alexander went to the open window. It was December, well below freezing. Looking down onto the street from the second floor, Alexander noticed five people lying on the ground in one of the doorways. He left the window open. The fresh cold air would clear out the room.
Going out into the hall, he was going to use the toilet but couldn’t. He went outside instead. Coming back, he undressed and climbed into bed. The day had been long and he was asleep in seconds, but not before he wondered if capitalism had a smell also.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_8574b475-d5aa-5e78-b73b-c53cd3ccc983)
Arriving at Ellis Island, 1943
TATIANA STUMBLED OUT OF bed and walked to the window. It was morning, and the nurse was going to bring the baby soon for a feed. She pushed the white curtains away. Opening the latch, she tried to lift the window, but it was stuck, the white paint having sealed the frame to the wall. She tugged on it. It popped open and she pulled it up, leaning her head outside. It was a warm morning that smelled like salt water.
Salt water. She breathed in deeply, and then she smiled. She liked that smell. It was unlike the smells that were familiar to her.
The seagulls cutting the air with their screeching were familiar.
The view was not familiar.
New York harbor in the foggy dawn was a misty glass-like expanse of greenish sea, and off in the distance she saw tall buildings, and to the right, through the pervading fog, a statue lifted its right arm in a flame salute.
With fascinated eyes, Tatiana sat by the window and stared at the buildings across the water. They were so tall! And so beautiful, and there were so many of them crowding the skyline, spires, flattops jutting out, proclaiming the mortal man to the immortal skies. The winding birds, the calmness of the water, the vastness of the buildings, and the glass harbor itself emptying out into the Atlantic.
Then the fog lifted and the sun came up into her eyes, and she had to turn away. The harbor became less glassy as ferries and tugboats, all manner of lighters and freighters, and even some yachts, started crisscrossing the bay, sounding their whistles and horns in such cacophonous delight that Tatiana thought about closing the window. She didn’t.
Tatiana had always wanted to see an ocean. She had seen the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea and she had seen many lakes—one Lake Ladoga too many—but never an ocean, and the Atlantic was an ocean on which Alexander once sailed when he was a little boy, watching fireworks on the Fourth of July. Wasn’t it Fourth of July soon? Maybe Tatiana could see some fireworks. She would have to ask Brenda, her nurse, who was a bit of a cow, and conveyed all her information rather gruffly, the bottom part of her face—and all of her heart—covered by a mouthpiece to protect against Tatiana.
“Yes,” Brenda said. “There will be fireworks. Fourth of July is in two days. They’re not going to be like in the days before the war, but there will be some. But don’t you go worrying about fireworks. You’ve been in America less than a week and you’re asking about fireworks? You’ve got a child to protect against an infectious disease. Have you been outside for a walk today? You know the doctor told you you’ve got to take walks in the fresh air, and keep your mouth covered in case you cough on your baby, and not lift him because that will tire you out—have you been outside? And what about breakfast?” Brenda always talked too fast, Tatiana thought, almost deliberately so that Tatiana wouldn’t understand.
Even Brenda couldn’t ruin breakfast—eggs and ham and tomatoes and milky coffee (dehydrated milk or no). Tatiana ate and drank sitting on her bed. She had to admit that the sheets, the softness of the mattress and the pillows, and the thick woolen blanket were comforts like bread—crucial.
“Can I have my son now? I need to feed him.” Her breasts were full.
Brenda slammed the window shut. “Don’t open the window anymore,” she said. “Your child will catch cold.”
“Summer air will make him catch cold?”
“Yes, moist, wet summer air will.”
“But you just said me to go outside for walk—”
“Outside air is outside air, inside air is inside air,” Brenda said.
“He has not caught my TB,” Tatiana said, coughing loudly for effect. “Bring me my baby, please.”
After Brenda brought the baby and Tatiana fed him, she went to open the window again and then perched herself up on the window sill, cradling the infant in her arms. “Look, Anthony,” whispered Tatiana in her native Russian. “Do you see? Do you see the water? It is pretty, right? And across the harbor there is a big city with people and streets, and parks. Anthony, as soon as I am better, we will take one of those loud ferry boats and walk on the streets of New York. Would you like that?” Stroking her infant son’s face, Tatiana stared across the water.
“Your father would,” she whispered.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_3077b7c7-a9c0-5933-8c7a-e41c4a3db1ee)
Morozovo, 1943
MATTHEW SAYERS APPEARED BY Alexander’s bed at around one in the morning and stated the obvious. “You’re still here.” He paused. “Maybe they won’t take you.”
Dr. Sayers was an American and an eternal optimist.
Alexander shook his head. “Did you put my Hero of the Soviet Union medal in her backpack?” was all he said.
The doctor nodded.
“Hidden, as I told you?”
“As hidden as I could.”
Now it was Alexander’s turn to nod.
Sayers brought from his pocket a syringe, a vial, and a small medicine bottle. “You’ll need this.”
“I need tobacco more. Have you got any of that?”
Sayers took out a box full of cigarettes. “Already rolled.”
“They’ll do.”
Sayers showed Alexander a small vial of colorless liquid. “I’m giving you ten grains of morphine solution. Don’t take it all at once.”
“Why would I take it at all? I’ve been off it for weeks.”
“You might need it, who knows? Take a quarter of a grain. Half a grain at most. Ten grains is enough to kill two grown men. Have you ever seen this administered?”
“Yes,” said Alexander, Tania springing up in his mind, syringe in her hands.
“Good. Since you can’t start an IV, in the stomach is best. Here are some sulfa drugs, to make sure infection does not recur. A small container of carbolic acid; use it to sterilize your wound if all the other drugs are gone. And a roll of bandages. You’ll need to change the dressing daily.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
They fell silent.
“Do you have your grenades?”
Alexander nodded. “One in my bag, one in my boot.”
“Weapon?”
He patted his holster.
“They’ll take it from you.”
“They’ll have to. I’m not surrendering it.”
Dr. Sayers shook Alexander’s hand.
“You remember what I told you?” Alexander asked. “Whatever happens to me, you’ll take this”—he took off his officer cap, handing it to the doctor—“and you will write me a death certificate and you will tell her that you saw me dead on the lake and then pushed me into an ice hole, and that’s why there is no body. Clear?”
Sayers nodded. “I’ll do what I have to,” he said. “I don’t want to do it.”
“I know.”
They were grim.
“Major … what if I do find you dead on the ice?”
“You will write me a death certificate and you will bury me in Lake Ladoga. Make a sign of the cross on me before you push me in.” He shuddered slightly. “Don’t forget to give her my cap.”
“That guy, Dimitri Chernenko, is always around my truck,” Sayers said.
“Yes. He won’t let you leave without him. Guaranteed. You must take him.”
“I don’t want to take him.”
“You want to save her, don’t you? If he doesn’t come, she has no chance. So stop thinking about the things you can’t change. Just watch out for him. Trust him with nothing.”
“What do I do with him in Helsinki?”
Here Alexander allowed himself a small smile. “I’m not the one to be advising you on that one. Just—don’t do anything to endanger you or Tania.”
“Of course not.”
Alexander spoke. “You must be very careful, nonchalant, casual, brave. Leave with her as soon as you can. You’ve already told Stepanov you’re headed back?” Colonel Mikhail Stepanov was Alexander’s commander.
“I told him I’m headed back to Finland. He asked me to bring … your wife back to Leningrad. He said it would be easier for her if she left Morozovo.”
Alexander nodded. “I already spoke to him. I asked him to let her leave with you. You’ll be taking her with his approval. Good. It’ll be easier for you to leave the base.”
“Stepanov told me it’s policy for soldiers to get transported to the Volkhov side for promotions. Was that duplicity? I can’t understand anymore what’s truth and what’s a lie.”
“Welcome to my world.”
“Does he know what’s happening with you?”
“He is the one who told me what’s about to happen to me. They have to take me across the lake. They don’t have a stockade here,” Alexander explained. “But he will tell my wife what I have told her—I’m getting promoted. When the truck blows up, it will be even easier for the NKVD to go along with the official story—they don’t like to explain arrests of their commanding officers. It’s so much easier to say I’ve died.”
“But they do have a stockade here in Morozovo.” Sayers lowered his voice. “I didn’t know it was the stockade. I was asked to go check on two soldiers who were dying of dysentery. They were in a tiny room in the basement of the abandoned school. It was a bomb shelter, divided into tiny cells. I thought they had been quarantined.” Sayers glanced at Alexander. “I couldn’t even help them. I don’t know why they didn’t just let them die, they asked for me so late.”
“They asked for you just in time. This way they died under doctor’s care. An International Red Cross doctor’s care. It’s so legitimate.”
Breathing hard, Dr. Sayers asked, “Are you afraid?”
“For her,” said Alexander, glancing at the doctor. “You?”
“Ridiculously.”
Alexander nodded and leaned back against the chair. “Just tell me one thing, Doctor. Is my wound healed enough for me to go and fight?”
“No.”
“Is it going to open again?”
“No, but it might get infected. Don’t forget to take the sulfa drugs.”
“I won’t.”
Before Dr. Sayers walked away, he said quietly to Alexander, “Don’t worry about Tania. She’ll be all right. She’ll be with me. I won’t let her out of my sight until New York. And she’ll be all right then.”
Faintly nodding, Alexander said, “She’ll be as good as she can be. Offer her some chocolate.”
“You think that’ll do it?”
“Offer it to her,” Alexander repeated. “She won’t want it the first five times you ask. But she will take it the sixth.”
Before Dr. Sayers disappeared through the doors of the ward, he turned around. The two men stared at each other for a short moment, and then Alexander saluted him.
Living in Moscow, 1930
When they were first met at the train station, even before heading to their hotel they were escorted to a restaurant where they ate and drank all evening. Alexander delighted in the fact that his father was right—life seemed to be turning out just fine. The food was passable and there was plenty of it. The bread was not fresh, however, and, oddly, neither was the chicken. The butter was kept at room temperature, so was the water, but the black tea was sweet and hot, and his father even let Alexander have a sip of vodka as they all raised their crystal shot glasses, their boisterous voices yelling, “Na zdorovye!” or “Cheers!” His mother said, “Harold! Don’t give the child vodka, are you out of your mind?” She herself was not a drinker, and so she barely pressed the glass to her lips. Alexander drank his vodka out of curiosity, hated it instantly, his throat burning for what seemed like hours. His mother teased him. When it stopped burning, he fell asleep at the table.
Then came the hotel.
Then came the toilets.
The hotel was fetid and dark. Dark wallpaper, dark floors, floors that in places—including Alexander’s room—were not exactly at right angles with the walls. Alexander always thought they needed to be, but what did he know? Maybe the feats of Soviet revolutionary engineering and building construction had not made their mark on America yet. The way his father talked about the Soviet hope, Alexander would not have been surprised to learn that the wheel had not been invented before the Glorious October Revolution of 1917.
The bedspreads on their beds were dark, the upholstery on their couches was dark, the curtains were dark brown, in the kitchen the wood-burning stove was black, and the three cabinets were dark wood. In the adjacent rooms down the dark, badly lit hall lived three brothers from Georgia by the Black Sea, all curly dark-haired, dark-skinned and dark-eyed. They immediately embraced Alexander as one of their own, even though his skin was fair and his hair was straight. They called him Sasha, their little Georgian boy, and made him eat liquid yogurt called kefir, which Alexander did not just hate but loathe.
There were many Russian foods that—much to his misfortune—he discovered he loathed. Anything bathed in onions and vinegar he could not share the same table with.
Most of the Russian food placed before them by the other well-meaning compatriots of the hotel was bathed in onions and vinegar.
Except for the Russian-speaking Georgian brothers, the rest of the people on their floor did not speak much Russian at all. There were thirty other people living on the second floor of Hotel Derzhava, which meant “fortress” in Russian; thirty other people who came to the Soviet Union largely for the same reasons the Barringtons did. There was a communist family from Italy, who had been thrown out of Rome in the late twenties, and the Soviet Union took them in as their own. Harold and Alexander thought that was an honorable deed.
There was a family from Belgium, and two from England. The British families Alexander liked most because they spoke something resembling the English he knew. But Harold didn’t like Alexander continuing to speak English, nor did he like the British families very much, nor the Italians, nor really anyone on that floor. Every chance he got, Harold tried to dissuade Alexander from associating with the Tarantella sisters, or with Simon Lowell, the chap from Liverpool, England. Harold Barrington wanted his son to make friends with Soviet girls and boys. He wanted Alexander to be immersed in the Moscow culture and to learn Russian, and Alexander, wanting to please his father, did.
Harold had no problem finding employment in Moscow. During his life in America he, who didn’t have to work, had dabbled in everything, and though he could do few things expertly, he did many things well, and what he didn’t know he learned quickly. In Moscow the authorities placed him in a printing plant for Pravda, the Soviet newspaper, for ten hours a day cranking the mimeograph machine. He came home every night with his fingers ink-stained so dark blue they looked black. He could not wash the ink off.
He could have also been a roofer, but there wasn’t much new construction in Moscow—“not yet,” Harold would say, “but very very soon.” He could have been a road builder, but there wasn’t much road building or repairing in Moscow—“not yet, but very very soon.”
Alexander’s mother followed his father’s cues; she endured everything—except the shabbiness of the facilities. Alexander teased her (“Dad, do you approve of Mom’s scrubbing out the smell of the proletariat? Mom, Dad doesn’t approve, stop cleaning.”), but Jane would nonetheless spend an hour scrubbing the communal bathtub before she could get in it. She would clean the toilet every day after work—before she made dinner. Alexander and his father waited for their food.
“Alexander, I hope you wash your hands every time you leave that bathroom—”
“Mom, I’m not a child,” said Alexander. “I know to wash my hands.” He would take a long sniff. “Oh, l’eau de communism. So pungent, so strong, so—”
“Stop it. And in school, too. Wash your hands everywhere.”
“Yes, Mom.”
Shrugging, she said, “You know, no matter how bad things smell around here they’re not as bad as down the hall. Have you smelled Marta’s room?”
“How could you not? The new Soviet order is especially strong in there.”
“Do you know why it’s so bad? She and her two sons live in there. Oh, the filth, the stench.”
“I didn’t know she had two sons.”
“Oh, yes. They came from Leningrad to visit her last month and stayed for good.”
Alexander grinned. “Are you saying they’re stinking up the place?”
“Not them,” Jane replied with a repugnant sneer. “The whores they bring with them from the Leningrad rail station. Every other night they have a new harlot in there with them. And they do stink up the place.”
“Mom, you’re so judgmental. Not everyone is able to buy Chanel perfume as they pass through Paris. Maybe you should offer the whores some—for French cleansing.” Alexander was pleased at his own joke.
“I’m going to tell your father on you.”
Father, who was right there, said, “Maybe if you stop talking to our eleven-year-old son about whores, all would be well.”
“Alexander, darling, Merry Christmas Eve.” Having changed the subject, Jane smiled wistfully. “Dad doesn’t like us to remember the meaningless rituals—”
“It’s not that I don’t like to,” interjected Harold. “I just want them placed in their proper perspective—past and gone and unnecessary.”
“And I agree with him completely,” Jane calmly continued, “but it does get you in the chest once in a while, doesn’t it?”
“Particularly today,” said Alexander.
“Yes. Well, that’s all right. We had a nice dinner. You’ll get a present on New Year’s like all the other Soviet boys.” She paused. “Not from Father Christmas, from us.” Another pause. “You don’t believe in Santa Claus anymore, do you, son?”
“No, Mom,” Alexander said slowly, not looking at his mother.
“Since when?”
“Since just now,” he replied, standing up and gathering the plates off the table.
Jane Barrington found work lending books at a university library but after a few months was transferred to the reference section, then to the maps, then to serving lunch in the university cafeteria. Every night, after cleaning the toilets, she cooked a Russian dinner for her family, once in a while lamenting the lack of mozzarella cheese, the absence of olive oil to make good spaghetti sauce, or of fresh basil, but Harold and Alexander didn’t care. They ate the cabbage and the sausage and the potatoes and the mushrooms, and black bread rubbed with salt, and Harold requested that Jane learn how to make a thick beef borscht in the tradition of good Russian women.
Alexander was asleep when his mother’s shouting woke him. He reluctantly got out of his bed and came into the hall. His mother in her white nightgown was yelling obscenities at one of Marta’s sons, who was skulking down the hall not turning around. In her hands, Jane held a pot.
“What’s going on?” said Alexander. Harold had not gotten up.
“There I was, going to the bathroom, and I thought, let me go get a drink of water. It’s the middle of the night, mind you, what could be the problem with that? And what did I find in the kitchen but that hound, that filthy animal, with his disgusting paw in my borscht, digging out the meat and eating it! My meat! My borscht! Right out of the pot! Filth!” she called down the hall. “Filth and slime! No respect for people’s property!”
Alexander stood and listened to his mother, who kept on for a few more minutes and then, with angry relish, threw the entire pot of recently cooked soup into the sink. “To think that I would eat anything after that animal’s hands were in it,” she said.
Alexander went back to bed.
The next morning Jane was still talking about it. And the next afternoon, when Alexander came home from school. And the next dinner—which was not delicious borscht but something meatless and stewed that he did not like. Alexander realized he preferred meat to no meat. Meat filled him up like few other things did. His growing body confounded him, but he needed to feed it. Chicken, beef, pork. Fish if there was some. He didn’t care much for an all vegetable dinner.
Harold said to Jane, “Calm down. You’re really getting yourself worked up.”
“How could I not? Let me ask you, do you think that scum washed his hands after he pawed the whore from the train station that was with fifty other filthy scum just like him?”
“You threw the soup out. Why such a fuss?” said Harold.
Alexander tried to keep a serious face. He and his father exchanged a look. When his father didn’t speak, Alexander cleared his throat and said, “Mom, um, may I point out that this is not very socialist of you. Marta’s son has every right to your soup. Just as you have every right to his whore. Not that you would want her, of course. But you would be entitled to her. As you are to his butter. Would you like some of his butter? I’ll go and get some for you.”
Harold and Jane stared at Alexander cheerlessly.
“Alexander, have you lost your mind? Why would I want anything that belongs to that man?”
“That’s my point, Mom. Nothing belongs to him. It’s yours. And nothing belongs to you, either. It’s his. He had every right to rummage in your borscht. That’s what you’ve been teaching me. That’s what the Moscow school teaches me. We are all better for it. That’s why we live like this. To prosper in each other’s prosperity. To rejoice and reap benefit from each other’s accomplishment. Personally, I don’t know why you made so little borscht. Do you know that Nastia down the hall hasn’t had meat in her borscht since last year?” Brightly Alexander looked at his parents.
His mother said, “What in the name of the Lord has gotten into you?”
Alexander finished his cabbagy, oniony dinner and said to his father, “Hey, when’s the next Party meeting? I can’t wait to go.”
“You know what? I think no more meetings for you, son,” said Jane.
“Just the opposite,” said Harold, ruffling Alexander’s hair. “I think he needs more of them.”
Alexander smiled.
They had arrived in Moscow in the winter, and after three months they realized that to get the goods they needed, the white or rye flour, or electric bulbs, they had to go to the private sellers, to the speculators who loitered around railroad stations selling fruit and ham out of their furlined coat pockets. There were few of them and their prices were exorbitant. Harold objected to it all, eating the small rationed black bread portions, and borscht without meat, and potatoes without butter but with plenty of linseed oil—previously thought to be good only for making paint and linoleum and for oiling wood. “We have no money to give away to private traders,” he would say. “We can live one winter without fruit. Next winter there will be fruit. Besides, we don’t have any extra money. Where is this money to buy from speculators coming from?” Jane would not reply, Alexander would shrug because he did not know, but in the dark after Harold was asleep, Jane would creep into his room and whisper to him to go the next day and buy himself oranges so the scurvy wouldn’t get him, and ham so dystrophy wouldn’t get him, or some rare and dubiously fresh milk. “Hear me, Alexander? I’m putting American dollars in your school bag, in the inner pocket, all right?”
“All right, Mom. Where is this American money coming from?”
“Never mind that, son. I brought a little extra, just in case.” She would creep to him and in the dark her mouth would find his forehead. “Things are not expected to be good overnight. Do you know what’s going on in our America? The Depression. Poverty, unemployment, things are difficult all over; these are difficult times. But we are living according to our principles. We are building a new state not on exploitation but on camaraderie and mutual benefit.”
“With a few extra American dollars?” Alexander would whisper.
“With a few extra American dollars,” Jane would agree, gathering his head into her arms. “Don’t tell your father, though. Your father would get very upset. He’d feel as if I’d betrayed him. So don’t tell him.”
“I won’t.”
The following winter, Alexander was twelve and there was still no fresh fruit in Moscow. It was still bitterly cold, and the only difference between the winter of 1931 and the winter of 1930 was that the speculators near the railroads had vanished. They had all been given ten years in Siberia for counter-revolutionary anti-proletarian activity.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_1e44a7f7-9753-5dad-8cbf-4365accd6af2)
Living on Ellis Island, 1943
TATIANA TRIED TO READ to improve her English while she got better. In the small but well-stocked Ellis library, she found many books in English donated by nurses, by doctors, by other benefactors. The library even had some books in Russian: Mayakovsky, Gorky, Tolstoy. Tatiana read in her room, but reading in English could not keep her attention and when her attention wandered, images of rivers and ice and blood mixed with images of bombing, planes, mortars, and ice holes, and knitting, and sewing, and motionless mothers on sofas with their body bags in their hands and famished frozen sisters on piles of dead bodies and brothers who vanished on exploding trains and fathers who burned down to ashes and grandfathers with infected lungs and grandmothers dying of grief. White camouflage, pools of blood, wet matted black hair, an officer’s cap strewn to the side, lying on the ice, images all so visceral she would have to stagger down the hall and throw up in the shared bathroom and afterwards force herself into learning better and better English that sufficiently commanded her attention so that her mind did not wander and go where the heart could not help but wander, meander into the emptiness in the middle of her chest, a black void that felt so much like fear that when she closed her eyes, her whole body choked on it.
She would lift a sleeping Anthony out of his bassinet and lay him on her chest for comfort, for closeness. But no matter how good Anthony smelled, and how silky his black hair felt against her lips, she could not keep her mind from wandering. If anything …
But she liked to smell him. She liked to undress him if it was sufficiently warm, and feel his chubby pink soft body. She liked to smell his hair and his neck and his milky baby breath. She liked to turn him over and touch his back and his legs and his long feet, and smell the back of his neck. Contentedly he slept and did not wake up, not even with all the prodding and caressing.
“Does this child ever wake up?” asked Dr. Edward Ludlow on one of his rounds.
In slow English Tatiana replied, “Think him as lion. He sleeps twenty hours in day and wakes up in night to hunt.”
Edward smiled. “You must be getting better. You’re making a joke.”
She smiled wanly. Dr. Ludlow was a thin, graceful man of fluid motion. He did not raise his voice, he did not jerk his hands. He was soothing in his eyes, in his speech, in his movements. He had a good bedside manner, a must for a fine doctor. He was in his mid-thirties, Tatiana guessed, and carried himself so upright that she suspected he might have been a military man once. She felt that she could trust him. He had serious eyes.
Dr. Ludlow had delivered Anthony when she had arrived in the Port of New York and gone into labor, a month early. He now came every day to check on her, even though Brenda said that normally he worked at Ellis only a couple of days a week.
Glancing at his watch, Edward said, “It’s almost lunchtime. Why don’t we take a walk if you’re up to it, and eat in the cafeteria? Put on your robe and we’ll go.”
“No, no.” She didn’t like to leave her room. “What about TB?”
He waved her off. “Put on your face mask and walk down the hall.”
Reluctantly she went. They had lunch at one of the narrow rectangular tables lining the large open room with high windows.
“It’s not great,” Edward said, looking at his meal. “I get a little beef. Here, have some of mine.” He cut half of his chipped beef with gravy and put it on her plate.
“Thank you, but look at all food I have,” said Tatiana. “I have white bread. I have margarine. I have potatoes and rice and corn. There is so much food.”
In the dark room she sits and in front of her is a plate and on the plate lies a black hunk of bread the size of a deck of cards. The bread has sawdust in it, and cardboard. She takes a knife and a fork, and cuts it slowly into four pieces. She eats one, chews it deliberately, pushes it with difficulty through her dry throat, eats another and another and finally the last one. She lingers especially on the last one. She knows after this piece is gone there will be no more food until tomorrow morning. She wishes she could be strong enough to save half of the bread until dinner, but she isn’t, she can’t. When she looks up from her plate, her sister, Dasha, is staring at her. Her plate is long empty.
“I wish Alexander was coming back,” says Dasha. “He might have food for us.”
I wish Alexander was coming back, thinks Tatiana.
She shuddered; her potato fell to the floor. She bent and picked it up, dusted it off, and ate it without saying a word.
Edward stared at her, his fork full of beef suspended between the plate and his mouth.
“There is sugar and tea and coffee and condensed milk,” Tatiana tremulously continued. “There is apples and oranges.”
“There’s hardly any chicken, there’s practically no beef, there’s only very little milk and there’s no butter,” Edward said. “The wounded need all the butter we have and we don’t have any, you know they’d get better faster if they had some but they don’t.”
“Maybe they do not want to get better faster. Maybe they like it here,” Tatiana said, and found Edward studying her again. She thought of something. “Edward, you say you have milk?”
“Not much, but yes, regular milk, not condensed.”
“Bring me some milk and a large vat, and long wooden spoon. Maybe ten liters of milk, twenty. The more the better. Tomorrow we will have butter.”
Edward said, “What does milk have to do with butter?”
Now it was Tatiana’s turn to study Edward, who smiled and said, “I’m a doctor, not a farmer. Eat, eat. You need it. And you’re right. Despite everything, there is still plenty.”
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_1331f3f3-0418-592a-9111-d9c10fe6cb88)
Morozovo, 1943
THEY CAME FOR HIM a few hours into the night. Alexander, sleeping in the chair, was roughly shaken awake by four men in suits, motioning him to stand.
Slowly he stood.
“You’re going to Volkhov to get promoted. Hurry. There is no time to waste. We’ve got to get across the lake before it gets light. The Germans bomb Ladoga constantly.” The sallow man who was speaking in hushed tones was obviously in charge. The other three never opened their mouths.
Alexander picked up his rucksack.
“Leave that here,” said the man.
“Well, I’m a soldier. I always take my ruck with me if it’s all the same to you.”
“Have you got your sidearm?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s have that.”
Alexander took a step toward them. He was a head taller than the tallest. They looked like thugs in their drab gray winter coats. On top of the coats they had small blue stripes, the symbol of the NKVD—the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs—the way the Red Cross was a symbol of international empathy. “Let me understand what you’re asking me,” he said quietly but not that quietly.
“So it’s easier for you,” the first man stammered. “You’re wounded, no? It must be hard for you to carry all your gear—”
“This isn’t all my gear. These are just my few personal things. Let’s go,” Alexander said loudly, moving out from the side of the bed, pushing them out of his way. “Now, comrades. We’re wasting time.” It was not an even fight. He was an officer, a major. He couldn’t see their rank in their shoulder bars or demeanor. They had no authority until they were out of the building and took his away from him. This police liked to do its work in private, in the dark. They did not like to be overheard by barely sleeping nurses, by barely sleeping soldiers. This police liked it to seem as if everything was just as it should be. A wounded man was being taken in the middle of the night across the lake to get a promotion. What was so out of the ordinary about that? But they had to leave his gun with him to continue with the pretense. As if they could have taken it away.
As they were walking out, Alexander noticed that the two beds next to him were empty. The soldier with the breathing difficulties and another had gone. He shook his head. “Are they going to get promoted, too?” he asked dryly.
“No questions, just go,” said one of the men. “Quickly.”
Alexander had slight trouble walking quickly.
As he made his way through the corridor, he wondered where Tatiana was sleeping. Was it behind one of those doors? Was she there now, somewhere? Still so close. He took a deep breath, almost as if he were smelling for her.
The armored truck was waiting outside behind the building. It was parked next to Dr. Sayers’s Red Cross jeep. Alexander recognized the white and red emblem in the dark. As they got closer to their truck, a silhouette hobbled out from the shadows. It was Dimitri. He was hunched over his casted arm, and his face was a black pulp with a swollen protuberance instead of a nose—earlier courtesy of Alexander.
He stood for a moment and said nothing. Then, “Going somewhere, Major Belov?” His hissing voice placed special emphasis on Belov. It sounded like Beloffffff.
“Don’t come close to me, Dimitri,” Alexander said.
Dimitri, as if heeding the advice, took a step back, then opened his mouth and laughed silently. “You can’t hurt me anymore, Alexander.”
“Nor you me.”
“Oh, believe me,” said Dimitri in a smooth sweet-sour voice, “I can still hurt you.” And right before Alexander was pushed into the NKVD truck by the militia men, Dimitri threw his head back as if in studied delirium and wagged a shaking finger at Alexander, baring the yellow teeth under his bloodied nose and narrowing his slit eyes.
Alexander turned his head, squared his shoulders, and without even looking in Dimitri’s direction as he jumped into the truck, said very loudly and clearly and with as much satisfaction as he could get his voice to muster, “Oh, fuck you.”
“Get in the truck and shut up,” barked one of the NKVD men to Alexander, and to Dimitri: “Go back to your ward, it’s past curfew. What are you doing skulking around here?”
In the back of the truck, Alexander saw his two shivering ward mates. He hadn’t expected two other people, two Red Army soldiers, to be in the truck with him. He had thought it would be just him and the NKVD men. No one to risk or sacrifice except them and himself. Now what?
One of the NKVD men grabbed his ruck. Alexander yanked it away. The man did not let go. “It looks as if it’s hard for you to carry it,” he said, struggling. “I’ll take it and give it back to you on the other side.”
Shaking his head, Alexander said, “No, I’ll keep it.” He wrenched it from the man.
“Belov—”
“Sergeant!” said Alexander loudly. “You’re talking to an officer. Major Belov to you. Leave my belongings alone. Now, let’s start driving. We’ve got a long way ahead of us.” Smiling to himself, he turned away, dismissing the man. His back didn’t hurt as badly as he had imagined: he was able to walk, jump up, talk, bend, sit down on the floor of the truck. But his weakness upset him.
The truck’s idling motor revved up and they began driving away—from the hospital, from Morozovo, from Tatiana. Alexander took a deep breath and turned to the two men sitting in front of him.
“Who the fuck are you?” he said. The words were gruff but the tone was resigned. He looked them over briefly. It was dark, he could barely make out their features. They were huddled against the wall of the truck, the smaller one wore glasses, the larger one sat, body wrapped in his coat, head wrapped in a bandage, and only his eyes, nose, and mouth showed. His eyes were bright and alert, discernible even in the dark, even at night. Bright perhaps wasn’t quite the right word. Mischievous. You couldn’t say the same about the smaller man’s eyes. They were lackluster.
“Who are you?” Alexander repeated.
“Lieutenant Nikolai Ouspensky. This is Corporal Boris Maikov. We were wounded in Operation Spark, on January fifteenth, over on the Volkhov side—we were housed in a field tent until we—”
“Stop,” Alexander said, putting his hand out. Before he continued with them he wanted to shake their hands. He wanted to feel what they were made of. Ouspensky was all right—his handshake was steady and friendly and unafraid. His hand was strong. Not frail Maikov’s.
Alexander sat back against the truck and felt for the grenade in his boots. Damn it. He could hear Ouspensky’s rattling breathing. Ouspensky was the one Tania had moved next to Alexander and put a tent around, the one with only one lung, the one who could not hear or speak. Yet here he was sitting, breathing on his own, hearing, speaking.
“Listen, both of you,” said Alexander. “Summon your strength. You’re going to need it.”
“For getting a medal?” Maikov said suspiciously.
“You’re going to be getting a posthumous medal if you don’t get hold of yourself and stop shaking,” said Alexander.
“How do you know I’m shaking?”
“I can hear your boots knocking together,” Alexander replied. “Quiet, soldier.”
Maikov turned to Ouspensky. “I told you, Lieutenant, this didn’t seem right, to be woken in the middle of the night—”
“And I told you to shut up,” said Alexander.
There was a bit of dull blue light coming in from the narrow window in the front of the truck.
“Lieutenant,” Alexander said to Ouspensky, “can you stand up? I need you to stand up and block the view from the window.”
“Last time I heard that, my quartermate was getting some blow,” said Ouspensky with a smile.
“Well, rest assured, no one is getting blow here,” Alexander said. “Stand up.”
Ouspensky obeyed. “Tell us the truth. Are we getting promoted?”
“How should I know?” Once Nikolai blocked the small window, Alexander took off his boot and pulled out one of the grenades. It was dark enough that neither Maikov nor Ouspensky saw what he was doing.
He crawled to the back of the truck and sat with his back against the doors. There were only two NKVD men in the front cabin. They were young, they had no experience, and no one wanted to cross the lake: the danger of German fire was ever-present and unwelcome. The driver’s lack of experience broadcast itself in his inability to drive the truck faster than twenty kilometers an hour. Alexander knew that if the Germans were monitoring Soviet army activity from their positions in Sinyavino, the truck’s leisurely speed would not escape their reconnaissance agents. He could walk across the ice faster.
“Major, are you getting promoted?” asked Ouspensky.
“That’s what they told me, and they let me keep my gun. Until I hear otherwise, I’m optimistic.”
“They didn’t let you keep your gun. I saw. I heard. They just didn’t have the strength to take it from you.”
“I’m a critically injured man,” Alexander said, taking out a cigarette. “They could have taken it from me if they wanted to.” He lit up.
“Have you got another one?” said Ouspensky. “I haven’t smoked in three months.” He looked Alexander over. “Nor seen anyone but my nurses.” He paused. “I’ve heard your voice, though.”
“You don’t want to smoke,” Alexander said. “From what I understand, you have no lungs.”
“I have one lung, and my nurse has been keeping me artificially sick so I don’t get sent back to the front. That’s what she did for me.”
“Did she?” asked Alexander, trying not to close his eyes at the image of Nikolai’s nurse—the small, clear-eyed bright sunny morning of a girl, the crisp Lazarevo morning of a sweet blonde girl.
“She brought in ice and made me breathe the cold fumes to get my lungs rattling and working. I wish she would have done a little more for me.”
Alexander handed him a cigarette. He wanted Nikolai to stop talking. He did not think Ouspensky would be particularly pleased to discover that Tatiana had saved him only long enough to be now sent into Mekhlis’s clutches.
Taking out his Tokarev pistol, Alexander got up, pointed at the back door and fired, blowing out the padlock. Maikov squealed. The truck slowed down. There was obviously some confusion in the driver’s cabin as to the source of the noise. Now down on the floor, Ouspensky was no longer blocking the window. Alexander had seconds before the truck stopped. Flinging the doors open, he pulled the pin out of the grenade, pulled himself above the roof of the creeping vehicle and threw the grenade forward. It landed a few meters in front of the truck’s path; seconds later there was a shattering explosion. He had just enough time to hear Maikov bleat, “What is that—” when he was thrown from the truck onto the ice. The pain he felt in the unhealed wound in his back was so jolting he thought his scars were tearing apart a millimeter at a time.
The truck jerked and began to rumble to a sliding stop. It skidded, teetered and fell sideways onto the ice, crunching to a halt at the ice hole made by Alexander’s grenade. The hole was smaller than the truck, but the truck was heavier than the broken ice. The ice cracked and the hole became wider.
Alexander got up and ran limping to the back doors, motioning for the two men to crawl to him. “What was that?” Maikov cried. He had bumped his head and his nose was bleeding.
“Jump out of the truck!” Alexander yelled.
Ouspensky and Maikov did as he commanded—just in time, as the front end of the truck slowly sank beneath the surface of the Ladoga. The drivers must have been knocked unconscious by the impact against the glass and ice. They were making no attempts to get out.
“Major, what the hell—”
“Shut up. The Germans will begin shooting at the truck in three or four minutes.” Alexander had no intention of actually dying on the ice. Before he saw Ouspensky and Maikov, he had had a small hope he might be alone, and would, after blowing up the truck with the NKVD men in it, make his way back to the Morozovo shores and into the woods. All of his hopes seemed to have this one common denominator nowadays: short-fucking-lived.
“You want to stay here and observe the efficient German army in action, or you want to come with me?”
“What about the drivers?” asked Ouspensky.
“What about them? They are NKVD men. Where do you think those drivers were taking you at dawn?”
Maikov tried to stand up. Before he could say another word, Alexander pulled him down onto the ice.
They weren’t far from the shore, maybe two kilometers. It was predawn. The cabin of the truck was submerged and cracking a larger hole in the ice, large enough soon for the whole truck to fit through.
“Pardon me, Major,” Ouspensky said, “but you’re talking out of your ass. I’ve never done anything wrong in my entire military career. They haven’t come for me.”
“No,” Alexander said. “They’ve come for me.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
The truck was disappearing into the water.
Ouspensky stared at the ice, at the shivering, dumbfounded and bleeding Maikov, at Alexander, and laughed. “Major, perhaps you could tell us your plans for what the three of us are going to do alone on the open ice once the truck sinks?”
“Don’t worry,” said Alexander with a heavy sigh. “I guarantee you, we won’t be alone for long.” He nodded in the direction of the distant Morozovo shore and took out his two pistols. The headlights of a light army vehicle were getting closer. The jeep stopped fifty meters from them, and out of it jumped five men with five machine guns all pointing at Alexander. “Stand up! Stand up on the ice!”
Ouspensky and Maikov stood instantly, hands in the air, but Alexander didn’t like to take orders from inferior officers. He would not stand up and with good reason. He heard the whistling sound of a shell and put his hands over his head.
When he looked, two of the NKVD men were lying face down, while the other three were crawling to Alexander, rifles aimed at him, hissing, stay down, stay down. Maybe the Germans will kill them before I have a chance to, Alexander thought. He tried to make out the shore. Where was Sayers? The NKVD jeep was stationary, providing a convenient practice target for the Germans. When the NKVD men got very close, Alexander suggested to them that maybe they should get back inside their vehicle and return to Morozovo with all deliberate speed.
“No!” one of them yelled. “We have to get you across to Volkhov!”
Another shell whistled by, this one falling twenty meters from the jeep—the only transport they had to get either to Volkhov or back to Morozovo. Once the Germans hit their jeep, the cluster of men would last several unprotected seconds on the open lake against German artillery.
On his stomach, Alexander stared at the NKVD men on their stomachs. “You want to drive to Volkhov under German fire? Let’s go.”
The men looked at the armored truck that had carried Alexander. It had nearly gone below the surface of the water. Alexander watched with amusement as self-preservation battled it out with orders.
“Let’s go back,” said one of the NKVD. “We will return to Morozovo and await further instructions. We can always get him to Volkhov tomorrow.”
“I think that’s wise,” said Alexander.
Ouspensky was watching Alexander with amazement. Alexander ignored him. “Come on, all of you. On three. Run to your jeep before it’s blown up.” Aside from wanting to keep alive, Alexander wanted to remain dry. His life wasn’t worth much to him wet. He knew that whether he was in Volkhov or Morozovo he would get dry clothes when donkeys flew. The wet clothes would remain on his body until after they’d given him pneumonia and killed him, and still they’d be wet on his corpse in the March damp.
All six men crawled to the jeep. The three NKVD troops ordered the men to get into the back. Both Ouspensky and Maikov glanced at Alexander with considerable anxiety.
“Just get in.”
Two of the NKVD men got into the back with them. Ouspensky and Maikov breathed out in relief.
Alexander took out a cigarette and passed one to Nikolai and to white-faced Maikov who refused.
“Why did you do that?” whispered Ouspensky to Alexander.
“I’ll tell you,” said Alexander. “I did it because I just didn’t feel like getting promoted.”
Back on shore, the jeep proceeded to headquarters, passing a medical truck heading for the river. Alexander spotted Dr. Sayers in the passenger seat. Alexander managed a smile as he smoked, though he noticed the tips of his fingers trembling. It was going as well as could be expected. The scene on the lake genuinely looked like the aftermath of a German onslaught. Dead men on the ice, one truck down. Sayers would write out the death certificate, sign it, and it would be as if Alexander had never existed. The NKVD would be grateful—they preferred making their arrested parties invisible anyway—and by the time Stepanov learned of what had really happened, and that Alexander was still alive, Tatiana and Sayers would be long gone. Stepanov would not have to lie to Tatiana. Lacking any actual information, he himself would believe that Alexander, with Ouspensky and Maikov, had perished on the lake.
He ran a hand over his capless head and closed his eyes, quickly opening them again. The bleak Russian landscape was better than what was behind his closed lids.
Everybody won. The NKVD would not have to answer questions from the International Red Cross, the Red Army would pretend to mourn a number of downed and drowned men, while Mekhlis still had his paws on Alexander. Had they wanted to kill him, they would have killed him instantly. Those were not their orders. He knew why. The cat wanted to play with the mouse before he ripped the mouse to pieces.
It was eight in the morning by the time they got back to Morozovo, and since the base was coming to life and since they had to be hidden until they could be safely transported to unsafety, Alexander, Ouspensky and Maikov were thrown into the stockade in the basement of the old school. The stockade was a concrete cell just over a meter wide and less than two meters long. The militia ordered the three soldiers to lie flat on the floor and not move.
The cell was too short for Alexander; there was not enough room to lie down on the floor. As soon as the guards left, the three men crouched on the ground, drawing their knees up to their chests. Alexander’s wound was throbbing. Sitting on the cold cement wasn’t helping.
Ouspensky kept on at him. Alexander said, “What do you want? Stop asking. This way when you’re questioned you won’t have to lie.”
“Why would we be questioned?”
“You’ve been arrested. Isn’t that clear?”
Maikov was looking into his hands. “Oh, no,” he said. “I’ve got a wife, a mother, two small children. What’s going to happen?”
“You?” said Nikolai. “Who are you? I’ve got a wife and two sons. Two small sons. I think my mother is still alive, too.”
Maikov didn’t reply, but both he and Ouspensky turned to stare at Alexander. Maikov lowered his gaze. Ouspensky didn’t.
“All right,” said Ouspensky. “What did you do?”
“Lieutenant!” Alexander pulled rank whenever and wherever necessary. “I’ve heard enough from you.”
Ouspensky remained undaunted. “You don’t look like a religious zealot.”
Alexander was silent.
“Or a Jew. Or a skank.” Ouspensky looked him over. “Are you a kulak? A member of the Political Red Cross? A closet philosopher? A socialist? A historian? Are you an agricultural spoiler? An industrial wrecker? An anti-Soviet agitator?”
“I’m a Tatar drayman,” said Alexander.
“You will get ten years for that. Where is your dray? My wife would find it very useful for hauling onions from nearby fields. Are you telling me we were arrested because we had the fucking bad luck to be bedded next to you?”
Maikov emitted a whimper that bordered on a wail. “But we know nothing! We did nothing!”
“Oh?” said Alexander. “Tell that to the group of musicians and a small audience that used to gather in the early thirties for an evening of piano without clearing it first with the housing council. To help defray the costs of the wine, they would collect a few kopecks from each person. When they were all arrested for anti-Soviet agitation, the money they had collected was deemed to have gone to prop up the nearly extinct bourgeoisie. The musicians and the audience all got from three to ten years.” Alexander paused. “Well, not all. Only those who confessed to their crimes. Those who refused to confess were shot.”
Ouspensky and Maikov stared at him. “And you know this how?”
Alexander shrugged. “Because I, being fourteen, escaped through the window before they had a chance to catch me.”
They heard someone coming and fell quiet. Alexander stood up, and as the door was opened, Alexander said to Maikov, “Corporal, imagine your old life is gone. Imagine they’ve taken from you all they can and there is nothing left—”
“Come, Belov, let’s go!” shouted a stout man with a single-shot Nagant rifle.
“It’s the only way you will make it,” Alexander said, stepping out of the cell and hearing the door slam closed behind him.
He sat in a small room in the abandoned school, in a school chair, in front of a table that was in front of a blackboard. He thought at any minute the schoolmaster was going to come in with a textbook and proceed with the lesson on the evils of imperialism.
Instead two men came in. There were now four people in the room, Alexander in the chair, a guard at the back of the class and two men behind the teacher’s table. One man was bald and very thin with a long, thoughtful nose. He introduced himself kindly as Riduard Morozov. “Not the Morozov of this town?” asked Alexander.
Morozov smiled thinly. “No.”
The other man was extremely heavy, extremely bald and had a round bulbous nose with broken capillaries. He looked like a heavy drinker. He introduced himself—somewhat less kindly—as Mitterand, which Alexander found almost humorous since Mitterand was the leader of the tiny French “Resistance movement in Nazi-occupied France.
Morozov began. “Do you know why you’re here, Major Belov?” he asked, smiling warmly, speaking in polite, friendly tones. They were having a conversation. In a moment Mitterand was going to offer Alexander some tea, maybe a shot of vodka to calm him. Alexander thought of it as a joke, but oddly, the bottle of vodka actually did materialize from behind a desk, along with three shot glasses. Morozov poured.
“Yes,” Alexander said brightly. “I was told yesterday I’m getting promoted. I’m going to be lieutenant colonel. And no, thank you,” he said to the drink being offered to him.
“Are you refusing our hospitality, Comrade Belov?”
“I am Major Belov,” Alexander said, standing up and raising his voice to the man in front of him. “Do you have a rank?” He waited. The man said nothing. “I didn’t think so. You’re not wearing a uniform. If you had a uniform to wear, you would be wearing it. Now, I will not have your drink. I will not sit down until you tell me what you want with me. I will be glad to cooperate in whatever way I can, comrades,” he added, “but don’t sit there and insult me by pretending we’re the best of friends. What’s going on?”
“You’re under arrest.”
“Ah. So no promotion then? It only took you since four this morning. Ten hours. You have not told me what you want with me. I don’t know if you know yourselves. Why don’t you go and find someone who can actually tell me? In the meantime, take me back to my cell and stop wasting my time.”
“Major!” That was Morozov. The voice was less kind. The vodka, however, had been drunk by both men. Alexander smiled. If he kept them in the classroom drinking, they’d be leading him to the Soviet-Finnish border themselves, talking to him in soft English. They called him major. Alexander understood the psychology of rank extremely well. In the army there was only one rule—you never spoke rudely to your superiors. The pecking order was precisely established. “Major,” Morozov repeated. “Stay right here.”
Alexander returned to his chair.
Mitterand spoke to the young guard by the door; Alexander didn’t hear the individual words. He understood the essence. This was not only out of Morozov’s hands, this was out of his league. A bigger fish was needed to deal with Alexander. And soon the fish would be coming. But first they were going to try to break him.
“Put your hands behind your back, Major,” said Morozov.
Alexander threw his cigarette on the floor, twisted his foot over it, and stood up.
They relieved him of his sidearm and his knife and pillaged through his rucksack. Having found bandages and pens and her white dress—nothing worth removing—they decided to take Alexander’s medals off his chest, and they also tipped his shoulder bars and they told him he was not a major anymore and had no right to his title. They still hadn’t told him the charges against him, nor had they asked him any questions.
He asked for his ruck. They laughed. Almost helplessly, he glanced at it once, in their hands, knowing Tatiana’s dress was there. Just one more thing to be trampled on, to be left behind.
Alexander was taken to a solitary concrete cell with no window, no Ouspensky, no Maikov. He had no bench, he had no bed, and he had no blanket. He was alone, and his only sources of oxygen came from the guards opening the door, or from opening the sliding steel reinforced window on the door, or from the peephole they peered at him through, or from the small hole in the ceiling that was probably used for poison gas.
They left him his watch, and because they didn’t search his person they did not find the drugs in his boots. He had a feeling the drugs were not safe. But where to put them? Slipping off the boots, he took the syringe, the morphine vial and the small sulfa pills and stuffed them in the pocket of his BVDs. They would have to search more thoroughly than they usually did to find them there.
Bending reminded him of his sharply throbbing back, which, as the day wore on, felt as if it were swelling and expanding. He debated giving himself a morphine shot, then decided against it. He didn’t want to numb himself to what was about to come. He did chew one of the sulfa tablets, bitter and acidic, without crushing it, without asking for water. He just put it into his mouth and chewed it, shuddering with the swallow. Alexander sat quietly on the floor, realizing they couldn’t see him because it was so dark in the cell, and closed his eyes. Or maybe they had remained open; it was hard to tell. It didn’t matter in the end. He sat and waited. Had the day gone? Had it been one day? He wanted a smoke. He remained motionless. Had Sayers and Tatiana left? Had Tania allowed herself to be convinced, to be goaded, to be comforted? Had she taken her things and got into Sayers’s truck? Had they fled Morozovo? What Alexander wouldn’t give for a word. He was very afraid that Dr. Sayers would break down, not convince her, and she would still be here. He tried to feel for her up close, sensing nothing but the cold. If she were still in Morozovo, he knew that once they started interrogating him for real and once they knew of her, he would be finished. He couldn’t breathe thinking of her still so close. He needed to stall the NKVD for a little while longer until he knew for sure she was out. The sooner she left, the sooner he could give himself over to the state.
She seemed very close. He could almost reach for his ruck and feel for her dress, and see her, white dress with red roses, hair long and flowing, teeth gleaming. She was very close. He didn’t have to touch the dress. He didn’t need comfort. She needed comfort. She needed him so much, how was she going to get through this without him?
How was she going to get through losing him without him?
Alexander needed to think about something else.
Soon he didn’t have to.
“Idiot!” he heard from the outside. “How do you plan to observe the prisoner if he has no light? He could have killed himself in there for all you know. Stupid moron!”
The door opened and a man walked in with a kerosene lamp. “You need to be illuminated at all times,” said the man. It was Mitterand.
“When is someone going to tell me what’s going on around here?” said Alexander.
“You are not to question us!” Mitterand shouted. “You are not a major anymore. You are nothing. You will sit and wait until we are ready for you.”
That seemed to be the sole purpose of Mitterand’s visit—to yell at Alexander. After Mitterand left, the guard brought Alexander some water and three-quarters of a kilo of bread. Alexander ate the bread, drank the water, and then felt around the floor for a drain hole. He did not want to be illuminated. He also did not want to compete for oxygen with a kerosene lamp. Opening the bottom of the lamp, he poured the kerosene down the drain, leaving just a little left at the bottom that burned out in ten minutes. The guard opened the door and shouted, “Why is the lamp out?”
“Ran out of kerosene,” Alexander said pleasantly. “Have you got more?”
The guard did not have more.
“That’s too bad,” Alexander said.
He slept in the darkness, in a sitting position, in the corner, with his head leaning against the wall. When he woke up it was still pitch black. He didn’t know for sure he had woken up. He dreamed he had opened his eyes, and it was black. He dreamed of Tatiana, and when he woke up, he thought of Tatiana. Dreams and reality were mingled. Alexander didn’t know where the nightmare ended and real life began. He dreamed he closed his eyes and slept.
He felt disconnected from himself, from Morozovo—from the hospital, from his life—and he felt strangely comforted in his detachment. He was cold. That attached him back to his cramped and uncomfortable body. He preferred it the other way. The wound in his back was merciless. He grit his teeth and blinked away the darkness.
Harold and Jane Barrington, 1933
Hitler had become the Chancellor of Germany. President Von Hindenburg had “stepped down.” Alexander felt an inexplicable stirring in the air of something ominous he could not quite put his finger on. He had long stopped hoping for more food, for new shoes, for a warmer winter coat. But in the summer he didn’t need a coat. The Barringtons were spending July at their dacha in Krasnaya Polyana and that was good. They rented two rooms from a Lithuanian widow and her drunken son.
One afternoon, after a picnic of hard-boiled eggs and tomatoes and a little bologna, and vodka for his mother (“Mom, since when do you drink vodka?”), Alexander was lying in the hammock reading when he heard someone behind him in the woods. When he languidly turned his head, he saw his mother and father. They were near the clearing by the lake, throwing pebbles into the water, chatting softly. Alexander was not used to his parents talking quietly, so strident had their relationship become with their conflicting needs and anxieties. Normally he would have looked back into his book. But this quiet chatter, this convivial closeness—he didn’t know what to make of it. Harold took the pebbles out of Jane’s hands and brought her to stand close to him. One of his hands was around her waist. He was holding her other hand. And then he kissed her and they began to dance. They waltzed slowly in the clearing, and Alexander heard his father singing—singing!
As they continued to waltz, their bodies spinning in a conjugal embrace, and as Alexander watched his mother and father in a moment they had never had before in front of him and would never have again, he was filled with a happiness and longing he could neither define nor express.
They drew away from one another, looked at him, and smiled.
Uncertainly he smiled back, embarrassed but unable to look away.
They came over to his hammock. His father’s arm was still around his mother.
“It’s our anniversary today, Alexander.”
“Your father is singing the anniversary song to me,” said Jane. “We danced to that song the day we were wed thirty-one years ago. I was nineteen.” She smiled at Harold.
“Are you going to stay in the hammock, son? Read for a while?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good,” said Harold, taking Jane by the hand and heading with her toward the house.
Alexander looked into his book, but after an hour of turning the pages, he could not see or remember a single word of what he had just read.
Winter came too soon. And during the winter on Thursday evenings after dinner Harold would take Alexander by the hand and walk with him in the cold to Arbat—the Moscow street vendors’ mall of musicians and writers and poets and troubadours and old ladies selling chachkas from the days of the Tsar. Near Arbat, in a small, smoke-filled two-room apartment, a group of foreigners and Soviet men, all devout communists, would meet for two hours from eight to ten to drink, smoke and discuss how to make communism work better in the Soviet Union, how to make the classless society arrive faster at their doorstep, a society in which there was no need for the state, for police, for an army because all grounds for conflict had been removed.
“Marx said the only conflict is economic conflict between classes. Once it’s gone, the need for police would be gone. Citizens, what are we waiting for? Is it taking longer than we anticipated?” That was Harold.
Even Alexander chipped in, remembering something he had read: “‘While the state exists, there can be no freedom. When there will be freedom, there will be no state.’” Harold smiled approvingly at his son quoting Lenin.
At the meetings Alexander made friends with sixty-seven-year-old Slavan, a withered, gray man who seemed to have wrinkles even on his scalp, but his eyes were small blue alert stars, and his mouth was always fixed in a sardonic smile. He said little, but Alexander liked the look of his ironic expression and the bit of warmth that came from him whenever he looked Alexander’s way.
After two years of meetings, Harold and fifteen others were called into the Party regional headquarters or Obkom—Oblastnyi Kommitet—and asked if the focus of their future meetings could perhaps be something other than how to make communism work better in Russia since that implied it wasn’t working quite so well. After hearing about it from his father, Alexander asked how the Party knew what a group of fifteen drunk men talked about once a week on Thursdays in a city of five million people. Harold said, himself quoting Lenin, “‘It is true that liberty is precious. So precious that it must be rationed.’ They obviously have ways of finding out what we talk about. Perhaps it’s that Slavan. I’d stop talking to him if I were you.”
“It’s not him, Dad.”
After that the group still met on Thursdays, but now they read aloud from Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? or from Rosa Luxembourg’s pamphlets, or from Marx’s Communist Manifesto.
Harold often brought up the approval of American communist supporters to show that Soviet communism was slowly being embraced internationally and that it was all just a matter of time. “Look what Isadora Duncan said about Lenin before she died,” Harold would say and quote: “‘Others loved themselves, money, theories, power. Lenin loved his fellow men … Lenin was God, as Christ was God, because God is love, and Christ and Lenin were all love.’”
Alexander smiled approvingly at his father.
During one full night, many hours of it, fifteen men, except for a silent and smiling Slavan, tried to explain to a fourteen-year-old Alexander the meaning of “value subtraction.” How an item—say shoes—could cost less after it was made than the sum total value of its labor and material parts. “What don’t you understand?” yelled a frustrated communist who was an engineer by day.
“The part of how you make money selling shoes.”
“Who said anything about making money? Haven’t you read the Communist Manifesto?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you remember what Marx said? The difference between what the factory pays the worker to make the shoes and what the shoes actually cost is capitalist theft and exploitation of the proletariat. That’s what communism is trying to eradicate. Have you not been paying attention?”
“I have, but value subtraction is not just eliminating profit,” Alexander said. “Value subtraction means it’s actually costing more to make the shoes than the shoes can be sold for. Who is going to pay the difference?”
“The state.”
“Where is the state going to find the money?”
“The state will temporarily pay the workers less to make the shoes.”
Alexander was quiet. “So in a period of flagrant worldwide inflation, the Soviet Union is going to pay the workers less? How much less?”
“Less, that’s all.”
“And how are we going to buy the shoes?”
“Temporarily we’re not. We’ll have to wear last year’s shoes. Until the state gets on its feet.” The engineer smiled.
“Good one,” Alexander said calmly. “The state got on its feet enough to cover the cost of Lenin’s Rolls Royce, didn’t it?”
“What does Lenin’s Rolls Royce have to do with what we’re talking about?” screamed the engineer. Slavan laughed. “The Soviet Union will be fine,” the engineer continued. “It is in its infancy stages. It will borrow money from abroad if it has to.”
“With all due respect, citizen, no country in the world will lend money to the Soviet Union again,” said Alexander. “It repudiated all of its foreign debt in 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution. They will not see any foreign money for a long time to come. The world banks are closed to the Soviet Union.”
“We have to be patient. Changes will not happen overnight. And you need to have a more positive attitude. Harold, what have you been teaching your son?”
Harold didn’t reply, but on the way home he said, “What’s gotten into you, Alexander?”
“Nothing.” Alexander wanted to take his father’s hand, like always, but suddenly thought he was too old. He walked alongside him, and then took it anyway. “For some reason, the economics are not working. This revolutionary state is built foremost on economics, and the state has figured out everything except how to pay the labor force. The workers feel less and less like proletariat than like the state-owned factories and machines. We’ve been here over three years. We just finished the first of the Five-Year Plans. And we have so little food, and nothing in the stores, and—” He wanted to say, and people keep disappearing, but he kept his mouth shut.
“Well, what do you think is going on in America?” Harold asked. “Thirty per cent unemployment, Alexander. You think it’s better there? The whole world is suffering. Look at Germany: such extraordinary inflation. Now this man Adolf Hitler is promising the Germans the end of all their troubles. Maybe he will succeed. The Germans certainly hope so. Well, Comrades Lenin and Stalin promised the same thing to the Soviet Union. What did Stalin call Russia? The second America, right? We have to believe, and we have to follow, and soon it will be better. You’ll see.”
“I know, Dad. You may be right. Still, I know that the state has to pay its people somehow. How much less can they pay you? We already can’t afford meat and milk, not that there is any, even if we could. And will they pay you less until—what? They’ll realize they need more money, not less, to run the government, and your labor is their largest variable cost. What are they going to do? Reduce your salary every year until—until what?”
“What are you afraid of?” Harold said, squeezing Alexander’s reluctant hand. “When you get big, you will have meaningful work. You still want to be an architect? You will. You will have a career.”
“I’m afraid,” said Alexander, extricating himself from his father, “that it’s just a matter of time before I am, before we all become nothing more than fixed capital.”
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_4e86abac-4595-5638-9443-d8947e266d23)
Edward and Vikki, 1943
TATIANA WAS SITTING BY the window, holding her two-week-old baby with one hand and a book with the other. Her eyes were closed, and then she heard a breath, and instantly opened her eyes.
Edward Ludlow was standing a few feet away from her with an expression of curiosity and concern. She could understand. She had been very silent since her baby was born. She did not think that was so unusual. Many people who came here, leaving their life behind, must have been silent, as if the enormity of what was behind and what was ahead was just dawning on them in their small white rooms as they stared at the robes of Lady Liberty. “I was worried about you dropping the baby,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you …”
She showed him how tightly she was holding Anthony. “Don’t worry.”
“What are you reading?”
She looked at her book. “I’m not reading, just … sitting.” It was The Bronze Horseman and Other Poems by Aleksandr Pushkin.
“Are you all right? It’s the middle of the afternoon. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
She rubbed her eyes. The baby was still sleeping. “This child not sleep at night, only day.”
“Much like his mother.”
“Mother on his schedule.” She smiled. “Everything all right?”
“Yes, yes,” said Dr. Ludlow hurriedly. “I wanted to let you know that an INS worker is here to talk to you.”
“What he want?”
“What does he want? He wants to give you a chance to stay in the United States.”
“I thought because my son … because he was born on American ground …”
“American soil,” Dr. Ludlow corrected her gently. “The Attorney General needs to look at your case personally.” He paused. “We don’t have many stowaways coming to the United States during war, you have to understand. Especially from the Soviet Union. It’s unusual.”
Tatiana said, “Does he feel is safe to come here? Did you say him I have TB?”
“I told him. He’ll be wearing a mask. How are you feeling, by the way? Any blood in the cough?”
“None. And fever is gone. I feel better.”
“You’ve been going out a bit?”
“Yes, salty air is good.”
“Yes.” He stared at her solemnly. She stared solemnly back. “The salt air is good.” He cleared his throat and continued. “The nurses are all amazed your boy hasn’t caught TB.”
“Explain to them, Edward,” said Tatiana, “that if ten thousand people come to see me every day for whole year and I had TB every day for whole year, only ten to sixteen people contract disease from me.” She paused. “It’s not so contagious as people think. So send in INS man if he thinks he strong enough. But tell him odds. And tell him I don’t speak so good English.”
Smiling, Edward said her English was just fine and asked if she wanted him to stay.
“No. No, thank you.”
The INS man, Tom, talked to her for fifteen minutes to see if she spoke rudimentary English. Tatiana spoke rudimentary English. He asked about her skills. She told him she was a nurse, and that she could also sew and cook.
“Well, there is certainly a shortage of nurses during the war,” he said.
“Yes, much of it here at Ellis,” said Tatiana. She thought of Brenda being in the wrong profession.
“We don’t get many cases like you.”
She made no reply.
“You want to stay in the United States?”
“Of course.”
“You think you could get a job, to help in the war effort?”
“Of course.”
“Not be a public charge? That’s very important to us in time of war. You understand? The attorney general comes under scrutiny every time he lets a person like you slip through his fingers. The country is in turmoil. We must make sure you stay productive, and that you have allegiance to this country, not your old country.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “As soon as my TB goes and they let me work, I will get job. I will be nurse, or seamstress, or cook. I will be all three, if need to. I will do what I have to after I am good again.”
As if suddenly remembering she had TB, Tom stood up and went to the door, tightening the mask around his mouth. “Where will you live?” he said in a muffled voice.
“I want to stay here.”
“After you get better, you’ll have to get an apartment.”
“Yes. Do not worry.”
He nodded, writing something down in his book. “And the name you want to go by? I saw on the documents you brought with you that you got out of the Soviet Union as a Red Cross nurse named Jane Barrington.”
“Yes.”
“How fake are those documents?”
“I do not understand what you mean.”
Tom fell silent. “Who is Jane Barrington?”
Now Tatiana was silent. “My husband’s mother,” she said at last.
Tom sighed. “Barrington? Not very Russian.”
“My husband was American.” She lowered her gaze.
Tom opened the door. “Is that the name you want to use to get your permanent residency card?”
“Yes.”
“No Russian name for you?”
She thought about it.
Tom came closer to her. “Sometimes refugees who come here like to cling to a little bit of their past. Maybe they leave just the first name the same. Change the last name. Think about it.”
“Not me,” she replied. “Change all. I don’t want to—how you put it? Cling to anything.”
He wrote something down in his book. “Jane Barrington it is, then.”
When he left, Tatiana opened her Bronze Horseman book as she sat once more by the window, looking out onto the New York harbor and the Statue of Liberty. She touched the picture of Alexander she had kept in there; without looking at it she touched his face and his uniformed body, and she whispered small short words in Russian to comfort herself this time, not Alexander, not his child, but herself. Shura, Shura, Shura, whispered Jane Barrington, once known as Tatiana Metanova.
Tatiana’s days consisted of feeding Anthony and changing Anthony and washing Anthony’s few nightgowns and cloth diapers in the bathroom sink and going on short, fragrant walks outside the hospital and sitting on benches with Anthony wrapped in blankets in her arms. Brenda brought her breakfast to her room. Tatiana ate lunch and dinner in her room. Unless Anthony was sleeping, Tatiana had him in her arms. She looked at only two things: the New York harbor and her son. But whatever comfort she received from holding her baby was dissipated from being alone day in and day out. Brenda and Dr. Ludlow called it convalescing. Tatiana called it solitary confinement.
One morning at the end of July, tired of herself, of sitting in her room, Tatiana decided to take a walk down the corridor while Anthony was sleeping.
She heard groans from the corridor and followed the groans into a ward filled with wounded men. Brenda was on duty—the only one on duty—looking less than pleased with her lot and showing the wounded men exactly how she felt. Grumbling, curt, displeasingly surly, she was washing out a wound on a soldier’s leg despite repeated and loud pleas from the soldier to either do it more gently or to shoot him.
Tatiana walked over and asked Brenda if she needed help, to which Brenda replied that she certainly didn’t need a sick girl making her prisoners sicker, and could Tatiana immediately go back to her room. Not moving, Tatiana stood, stared at Brenda, stared at the raw hole in the soldier’s thigh, at the soldier’s eyes, and said, “Let me bandage leg, let me help you. Look, I have mask over my nose and mouth. You got four men screaming for you on other side of hospital. One just lose a tooth in his morning coffee. One have raging fever. One is oozing blood through his ear.”
Brenda let go of the bucket and the soldier’s leg and left, though Tatiana could see that for a moment Brenda had struggled with what actually gave her more displeasure: taking care of the soldiers or letting Tatiana have her way.
Tatiana finished washing out the wound; the soldier never peeped, looking soothed and asleep; either asleep or dead, Tatiana concluded as she bandaged his leg, still without motion from him, and moved on.
She disinfected an arm wound and a head wound, started an IV, and administered morphine, wishing for a bit of morphine for herself to dull her inner aching, at the same time thinking how lucky the German submarine men were to have had the luck to be brought to American shores for imprisonment and convalescence.
Suddenly Brenda appeared and, as if surprised that Tatiana was still in the ward, asked her to immediately go back to her room before she infected all her patients with TB, sounding almost as if she cared what happened to the patients.
As Tatiana was heading back, out in the corridor by the water fountain, she saw a tall, slim girl in a nurse’s uniform standing and crying. Long-haired and long-legged, she was quite beautiful; if you didn’t look at her mascara-streaked, tear-streaked, swollen eyes and cheeks. Tatiana needed a drink of water, and so with great discomfort she proceeded past the girl, stopping just half a foot away from her to get to the fountain. The girl sobbed loudly. Tatiana put her hand on the girl’s elbow and said, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” the girl sobbed.
“Oh.”
The girl continued to cry. She held a slightly moist cigarette in her hands. “If you only knew how freakishly miserable I am at the moment.”
“Can I do anything?”
The girl looked out of her wet hands at Tatiana. “Who are you?”
“You can call me Tania.”
“Aren’t you the TB stowaway?”
“I am better now,” Tatiana said quietly.
“You’re not Tania. I processed your documents myself. Tom gave them to me. You’re Jane Barrington. Oh, what do I care? My life is in shambles and we’re talking about your name. I wish I had your problems.”
Trying quickly to find the words to say something comforting in English, Tatiana said, “It could be worse.”
“That’s where you’re so wrong, missy. It’s as bad as can be. Nothing worse can happen. Nothing.”
Tatiana noticed the wedding band on the girl’s finger, and her sympathy flowed. “I am sorry.” She paused. “Is it about your husband?”
Without looking away from her hands, the girl nodded.
“It is terrible thing,” said Tatiana. “I know. This war …”
The girl nodded. “It’s the pits.”
“Your husband … he is not coming back?”
“Isn’t coming back?” the girl exclaimed. “That’s the whole point! He is very much coming back. Very much so. Next week.”
Tatiana took a puzzled step away.
“Where are you going? You look like you’re ready to fall down. It’s not your fault he is coming back. Don’t look so upset. I guess worse things have happened to girls at war, I just don’t know of any. You want to go grab a coffee? Want a cigarette?”
Tatiana paused. “I have coffee with you.”
They sat down in the long dining room at one of the rectangular tables. Tatiana sat across from the girl who introduced herself as Viktoria Sabatella (“But call me Vikki.”), shook Tatiana’s hand vigorously and said, “You here with your parents? I haven’t seen any immigrants come this way in months. The boats are not bringing them in. So few—what? You’re sick?”
“I am better now,” said Tatiana. “I am here with myself.” She paused. “With my son.”
“Get out!” Viktoria slammed her coffee cup on the table. “You don’t have a son.”
“He almost month old.”
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“God, they start early where you’re from. Where are you from?”
“Soviet Union.”
“Wow. How’d you get this baby anyway? You have a husband?”
Tatiana opened her mouth, but Vikki went on as if the question had not been asked. Before she drew her next breath, she told Tatiana that she herself had never known her father (“Dead, or gone, all the same”) and barely knew her mother (“Had me too young”) who was in San Francisco, living with two men (“Not in the same apartment”) and pretending to be either sick (“Yes, mentally”) or dying (“From all that passion”). Vikki had been raised by her maternal grandparents (“They love Mumsy but they don’t approve of her”) and was living with them still (“Less fun than you might think”). She had originally wanted to be a journalist, then a manicurist (“In both professions you work with your hands; I thought it was a natural progression”) and finally decided (“Was forced to, more like it,”) to go into nursing when the European war looked like it would suck the United States into it. Tatiana was listening quietly and attentively when Vikki suddenly looked at her and said, “Got a husband?”
“Once.”
“Yeah?” Vikki sighed. “Once. Would that I had a husband once—”
At that moment their conversation was interrupted by a painfully angular, very tall, immaculately dressed woman in a white brim hat, walking briskly through the dining hall, swinging her white purse and yelling, “Vikki! I’m talking to you! Vikki! Have you seen him?”
Vikki sighed and rolled her eyes at Tatiana. “No, Mrs. Ludlow. I haven’t seen him today. I think he is still cross-town at NYU. He is here on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.”
“Afternoons? He’s not at NYU! And how do you know his schedule so well?”
“I’ve worked with him for two years.”
“Well, I’ve been married to him for eight and I still don’t know where the hell he is.” She came up to the table and towered over the two girls. She eyed Tatiana suspiciously. “Who are you?”
Tatiana pulled up her cloth mask from her neck to her mouth. Vikki stepped in. “She is from the Soviet Union. She barely speaks English.”
“Well, she should learn, shouldn’t she, if she expects to earn her keep in this country. We’re at war, we have no business supporting wards.” And swinging her purse, nearly hitting Tatiana on the head, the woman swept from the dining room.
“Who she?” asked Tatiana.
Vikki waved her hand. “Never mind her. The less you know about her, the better. That’s Dr. Ludlow’s crazy wife. She storms in here once a week looking for her husband.”
“Why she keep losing him?”
Vikki laughed. “The question I think should be why does Dr. Ludlow let himself be lost so often.”
“All right, why?”
Vikki waved Tatiana off. Tatiana understood. Vikki did not want to be talking about Dr. Ludlow. With a small smile, Tatiana appraised Vikki. Now that she had stopped crying, Tatiana could see that Vikki was a striking girl, a proper girl who was pretty and knew it and did everything to make sure everyone knew it. Her hair was shiny and long and swept over her face and shoulders, her eyes were outlined in black eyeliner and runny mascara, and her full lips had traces of bright red lipstick. Her white uniform was tight on her long-limbed figure and came just a touch too high above the knee. Tatiana wondered how the wounded men responded to so much … Vikki.
“Vikki, why you cry? You not love your husband?”
“Oh, I love him, all right. I love him.” She sighed. “I just wish I could love him from five thousand miles away.” Lowering her voice, she continued. “This is really not a good time for him to come back.”
“For husband to come back to his wife?” When was not a good time for that?
“I wasn’t expecting him.” She started to cry again, into her coffee. Tatiana moved the cup away slightly so Vikki could finish the coffee later if she wanted to.
“When were you …?” What was the word? Expecting?
“At Christmas!”
“Oh. Why he coming home so soon?”
“Can you believe it? He was shot down over the Pacific.”
Tatiana stared.
“Oh, he’s fine,” Viktoria said dismissively. “It’s a scrape. A little superficial shoulder wound. He flew the plane ninety miles after he was shot. How bad could it be?”
Tatiana stood from the table. “I think I go feed my son.”
“Yes, but Chris is going to be miserable.”
“Who is Chris?”
“Dr. Pandolfi. You haven’t met him? He comes here with Dr. Ludlow.”
Chris Pandolfi. That’s right. “Oh, I met him.” Dr. Pandolfi was the doctor who had come aboard the ship she was on and decided he was not going to help to deliver her baby on U.S… . soil. He wanted to send her back to the Soviet Union, broken amniotic waters, TB and all. It was Edward Ludlow who had said no and made Dr. Pandolfi help get Tatiana to the hospital on Ellis Island. Tatiana patted Vikki on the shoulder. She wasn’t sure Chris Pandolfi was such a great catch. “You be fine, Viktoria. Maybe stay away from Dr. Pandolfi. Your husband is coming home. You are so lucky.”
Viktoria got up and followed Tatiana down the hall to her room. “Call me Vikki,” she said. “Can I call you Jane?”
“Who?”
“Isn’t your name Jane?”
“You call me Tania.”
“Why would I call you Tania when your name is Jane?”
“Tania my name. Jane just on documents.” She saw Vikki’s uninterested and confused face. “Call me what you like.”
“When are you getting out?”
“Getting out?”
“Out of Ellis.”
Tatiana thought about it. “I do not think I am getting out,” she said. “I have nowhere to go.”
Vikki followed Tatiana into her room and glanced at her son sleeping in his bassinet. “He’s kind of little,” she said absent-mindedly, touching Tatiana’s blonde hair. “His father was dark-haired?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s it like being a mother?”
“It’s—”
“Well, when you’re all better, I want you to come home with me. Meet Grammy and Grampa. They love little babies. They keep wanting me to have one.” Vikki shook her head. “God help me.” She glanced again at Anthony. “He’s sort of cute. Too bad his father has never seen him.”
“Yes.”
The boy was so helpless. He couldn’t move, or turn his head, or hold his head. He was so difficult to dress—his floppy arms and head defying Tatiana’s awkward mothering skills—that some days she kept him naked just in a cloth diaper, swaddled underneath the blankets. She had no clothes for him except for the few nightgowns Edward had brought for her. It was summer and warm and he didn’t need much, thank goodness, for the head would not fit in the nightgown hole, the arms refused to go into the long sleeves. Bathing him was even harder, if that were possible. His bellybutton had not healed completely, so she washed his body with a cloth, and that was not too bad, but washing his hair was outside her expertise. He couldn’t do anything, he could not help her in any way, he could not lift his arms or stay still when she needed him still or be propped up. His head bobbed backward, his body slipped out of her grasp, his legs dangled precariously above a sink. She lived in fear that she would drop him, that he would slither out of her arms and onto the black-and-white tile floor. Her feelings about his absolute dependence on her fluctuated from intense anxiety over his future to an almost suffocating tenderness. Somehow, and maybe that was how nature intended it, his need for her made her stronger.
And she needed to be made stronger. Too often when he was asleep and safe, Tatiana herself felt that her own bobbing head, her own dangling arms and legs, her fragile body would slip on the sill and plummet down to the concrete ground below.
And so to draw sustenance from him, she would uncover him, unwrap him and touch him. She would lift him from his bed and place him on her chest, where he would sleep, head on her heart. He was long, his limbs were long, and as she caressed him, she imagined looking at another boy through the eyes of his mother, a baby boy, long like Anthony, dark like him, soft like him, touched by his mother, bathed, nursed, caressed by his new mother who had waited her whole life to have this one boy.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_2784f06f-ee39-5f40-877c-1527b80f4c63)
The Interrogation, 1943
HE HEARD VOICES OUTSIDE, and the door opened.
“Alexander Belov?”
Alexander was going to say yes but for some reason thought of the Romanovs shot in a small basement room in the middle of the night. Was it the middle of the night? The same night? The next night? He decided to say nothing.
“Come. Now.”
He followed the guard to a small room upstairs, this one not a classroom. It was an old storage area, maybe a nurses’ station.
He was told to sit in the chair. Then he was told to stand up. Then to sit back down again. It was still dark outside. He couldn’t figure out what the time was. When he asked, he was met with a “Shut up!” He decided not to ask again. After a few moments, two men entered the room. One of them was the fat Mitterand, one of them was a man he did not know.
The man shined a bright light into Alexander’s face. He closed his eyes.
“Open your eyes, Major!”
Fat Mitterand said softly, “Vladimir, now now. We can do this another way.”
He liked that they were calling him major. So they still couldn’t get a colonel to interrogate him. As he had suspected, they didn’t have anyone to deal with him here in Morozovo. What they needed to do was get him to Volkhov where things would be different for him, but they didn’t want to risk any more of their men for a drive across the river. They had already failed once. Eventually he would go in a barge, but the ice would have to melt first. He could spend another month in the Morozovo cell. Could he take another minute in it?
Mitterand said, “Major Belov, I am here to inform you that you are under arrest for high treason. We have irrefutable documents accusing you of espionage and treason to your mother country. What say you to these charges?”
“They’re baseless and unfounded,” said Alexander. “Anything else?”
“You are accused of being a foreign spy!”
“Not true.”
“We are told you have been living under a false identity,” said Mitterand.
“Not true, the identity is my own,” said Alexander.
“In front of us we have a few words we would like you to sign, to the effect that we have informed you of your rights under the Criminal Code of 1928, Article 58.”
“I am not signing a single thing,” said Alexander.
“The man next to you in the hospital told us that he thought he heard you speaking English to the Red Cross doctor who came to visit you every day. Is that true?”
“It is not.”
“Why did the doctor come to visit you?”
“I don’t know if you are aware of why soldiers go to the critical ward of a hospital, but I was wounded in action. Maybe you should talk to my superiors. Major Orlov—”
“Orlov is dead!” snapped Mitterand.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Alexander, momentarily flinching. Orlov was a good commanding officer. He was no Mikhail Stepanov, but then who was?
“Major, you stand accused of joining the army under an assumed name. You stand accused of being an American named Alexander Barrington. You stand accused of escaping while en route to a corrective camp in Vladivostok after having been convicted of anti-Soviet agitation and espionage.”
“All bald-faced lies,” said Alexander. “Where is my accuser? I’d like to meet him.” What night was it? Was it at least the next night? Had Tania and Sayers gotten out? He knew that if they had, they would have taken Dimitri with them, and then it would be very difficult for the NKVD to maintain that there was an accuser when the accuser himself disappeared like one of Stalin’s Politburo cabinet ministers. “I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do,” said Alexander with a helpful smile. “Probably more so. Where is he?”
“You are not to ask questions of us!” Mitterand yelled. “We will ask the questions.” Trouble was, they had no more questions. Rather, they had the same question over and over again: “Are you an American named Alexander Barrington?”
“No,” would reply the American named Alexander Barrington. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Alexander could not tell how long this continued. They shined a flashlight into his face; he closed his eyes. They ordered him to stand up, which Alexander took as an opportunity to stretch his legs. He stood gleefully for what seemed like an hour, and regretted being told to sit back down. He didn’t know it was precisely an hour but to keep himself occupied during the repetitive questioning, he started counting the seconds it took for each round to be completed from “Are you an American named Alexander Barrington?” to “No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
It took seven seconds. Twelve if he drew out his response, if he tapped his feet together, if he rolled his eyes, or if he sighed heavily. Once he started to yawn and could not stop for thirty seconds. That made the time go faster.
They asked the question 147 times. Mitterand had to take a drink six times to continue. Finally he passed the reins to Vladimir, who needed less to drink and fared much better, even asking Alexander if he wanted a drink. Alexander politely declined, grateful for the diversion. He knew he must never accept anything they offered him. That was their invitation into his graces.
Still not diverting enough. One hundred and forty-seven times later Vladimir said, with naked frustration in his voice and on his face, “Guard, take him back to his cell.” And then he added, “We will make you confess, Major. We know the accusations against you are true and we will do all it takes to make you confess.”
Usually, when the Party apparatchiks interrogated prisoners with the intention of convicting them as soon as possible and sending them to a forced labor camp, everyone knew the charade being played. The interrogators knew the charges were bogus, and the stunned and dazed prisoners knew the charges were bogus, but in the end, the alternatives presented to them were too stark for them to continue to deny the obvious fallacies. Tell us, you-who-have-lived-next-door-to-an-anti-proletarian-revolutionary, that you are in collusion with him, or it will be twenty-five years in Magadan for you. If you confess you will get only ten. That was the choice and the prisoners confessed—to save themselves, or to save their families, or because they were beaten, degraded, broken-down, paralyzed from thought by the barrage of lies. But Alexander wondered if this was the first time since these sham interrogations began decades ago that the prisoner was accused of the actual truth—that he indeed was Alexander Barrington—and the interrogators for the first time were armed with truth, and truth stood in front of them, truth that Alexander had to deny, truth that Alexander had to bury under a barrage of lies if he were to live. He thought about pointing this out to Mitterand and Vladimir but he didn’t think they would either understand or appreciate the grim irony.
After he was taken back to his cell, two guards came in and, with their two rifles pointed at him, ordered Alexander to undress. “So we can launder your uniform,” they said. He undressed down to his BVDs. They asked him to remove his watch and boots and socks. Alexander was unhappy about the socks, for the floor in his cell was numbingly cold. “You need my boots?”
“We will polish them.”
Alexander was grateful for the foresight that had made him move Dr. Sayers’ drugs from his boots to his BVDs.
Reluctantly he handed over the boots, which they snatched from him and left without a word.
After the door had closed and he was left alone, Alexander picked up the kerosene lamp and held it close to his body to warm himself up. He didn’t care about losing oxygen any longer.
The guard saw and yelled not to touch the lamp. Alexander did not put the lamp down. The guard came in and took the lamp out, leaving Alexander cold and in darkness again.
His back wound, though having been bandaged thoroughly by Tatiana, was throbbing. The dressing was wrapped around his stomach. He wished he could wrap his whole body in the white bandage.
He needed as little of his body touching the cold as possible. Alexander stood in the middle of his cell, so that only his feet were on the icy floor. He stood and imagined warmth.
His hands were behind his head, they were behind his back, they were in front of his chest.
He imagined …
Tania standing in front of him, her head on his bare chest, listening for his heart, and then lifting her gaze at him and smiling. She was standing tiptoed on his feet holding on to his arms, as she reached up with her neck extended and lifted her head to him.
Warmth.
There was no morning and no night. There was no brightness and no light. He had nothing to measure time with. The images of her were constant, he could not measure how long he had been thinking of her. He tried counting and found himself swaying from exhaustion. He needed to sleep.
Sleep or cold? Sleep or cold?
Sleep.
He huddled in the corner and shook uncontrollably, trying to stave off misery. Was it the following day, the following night?
The following day from what? The following night from what?
They’re going to starve me to death. They’re going to thirst me to death. Then they will beat me to death. But first my feet will freeze and then my legs and then my insides, they will all turn to ice. And my blood, too, and my heart, and I will forget.
Tamara and Her Stories, 1935
There was an old babushka named Tamara who had lived for twenty years on their floor. Her door was always open and sometimes after school Alexander would stop in and talk to her. He noticed that old people loved the company of young people. It gave them an opportunity to impart their life experience to the young. Tamara, sitting in her uncomfortable wooden chair near the window one afternoon, was telling Alexander that her husband was arrested for religious reasons in 1928 and given ten years—
“Wait, Tamara, Mikhailovna, ten years where?”
“Forced labor camp, of course. Siberia. Where else?”
“They convicted him and sent him there to work?”
“To prison …”
“To work for free?”
“Oh, Alexander, you’re interrupting, and I need to tell you something.”
He fell quiet.
“The prostitutes near Arbat were arrested in 1930 and not only were they back on the street months later but had also been reunited with their families in the old cities they used to frequent. But my husband, and the band of religious men, will not be allowed to return, certainly not to Moscow.”
“Only three more years,” Alexander said slowly. “Three more years of forced labor.”
Tamara shook her head and lowered her voice. “I received a telegram from the Kolyma authorities in 1932—without right of correspondence, it said. You know what that means, don’t you?”
Alexander didn’t want even to hazard a guess.
“It means he is no longer alive to correspond with,” said Tamara, her voice shaking and her head lowering.
She told him how, from the church down the block, three priests were arrested and given seven years for not putting away the tools of capitalism, which in their case was the organized and personal and unrepentant belief in Jesus Christ.
“Also forced labor camp?”
“Oh, Alexander!”
He stopped. She continued. “But the funny thing is—have you noticed the hotel down the street that had the harlots right outside a few months ago?”
“Hmm.” Alexander noticed.
“Well, have you noticed how they all disappeared?”
“Hmm.” Alexander noticed that too.
“They were taken away. For disturbing the peace, for disrupting the public good—”
“And for not putting away the tools of capitalism,” Alexander said dryly, and Tamara laughed and touched his head.
“That’s right, my boy. That’s right. And do you know how long they had been given in that forced labor camp that you care so much about? Three years. So just remember—Jesus Christ, seven, prostitutes, three.”
“All right,” said Jane, coming into the room, taking her son by the hand and leading him out. Before she left, she turned around and said in an accusatory tone to Tamara, but addressed to Alexander, “Can we not be learning about prostitutes from toothless old women?”
“Who would you like me to learn about prostitutes from, Mom?” he asked.
“Son, your mother wanted me to talk to you about something.” Harold cleared his throat. Alexander crimped his lips together and sat quietly. His father looked so uncomfortable that Alexander had to sit on his hands to keep himself from laughing. His mother was pretending to clean something in another part of the room. Harold glared in Jane’s direction.
“Dad?” said Alexander in his deepest voice. His voice had broken a few months ago, and he really liked the way his new self sounded. Very grown-up. He also had shot up, growing more than eight inches in the course of the last six months, but he couldn’t seem to put any flesh on his bones. There just wasn’t enough of … anything. “Dad, do you want to go for a walk and talk about it?”
“No!” said Jane. “I can’t hear a thing. Talk here.”
Nodding, Alexander said, “All right, Dad, talk here.” He scrunched up his face and tried to look serious. It wouldn’t have mattered if he were sitting cross-eyed and sticking his tongue out. Harold was not looking at Alexander.
“Son,” said Harold. “You’re getting to be at that age where you’re, well, I’m sure, you’re—and also you’re—you’re a fine boy, and good-looking, I want to help, and soon, or maybe already—and I’m sure that you’re—”
Jane tutted in the background. Harold fell quiet.
Alexander sat for a few seconds, then got up, slapped his father on the back and said, “Thanks, Dad. That was helpful.”
He went into his room, and Harold didn’t follow him. Alexander heard his parents bickering next door, and in a minute there was a knock. It was his mother. “Can I talk to you?”
Alexander trying to keep a composed face, said, “Mom, really, I think Dad said all there was to say, I don’t know if there’s anything to add—”
She sat down on his bed while he sat in the chair near the window. He was going to be sixteen in May. He liked summer. Maybe they would get a room at a dacha in Krasnaya Polyana again like they did last year.
“Alexander, what your father didn’t mention—”
“Was there something Dad didn’t mention?”
“Son …”
“Please—go ahead.”
“I’m not going to give you a lesson in girls—”
“Thank goodness for that.”
“Listen to me, the only thing I want you to do is remember this—” She paused.
He waited.
“Martha told me one of her derelict sons has had his horn removed!” she whispered. “Removed, Alexander, and do you know why?”
“I’m not sure I want to.”
“Because he got frenchified! Do you know what that is?”
“I think—”
“And her other son’s got French pigs all over his body. It’s the most revolting thing!”
“Yes, it—”
“The French curse! The French crown! Syphilis! Lenin died from it eating up his brain,” she whispered. “No one talks about it, but it’s true all the same. Is that what you want for yourself?”
“Hmm …” said Alexander. “No?”
“Well, it’s all over the place. Your father and I knew a man who lost his whole nose because of it.”
“Personally, I’d rather lose the nose than—”
“Alexander!”
“Sorry.”
“This is very serious, son. I have done all I can to raise you a good, clean boy, but look where we are living, and soon you’ll be out on your own.”
“How soon you think?”
“What do you think is going to happen when you don’t know where the harlot you’re with has been?” Jane asked resolutely. “Son, when you grow up, I don’t want you to be a saint or a eunuch. I just want you to be careful. I want you to protect what’s yours at all times. You must be clean, you must be vigilant, and you must also remember that without protection, you will get a girl up the stick, and then what? You’re going to marry someone you don’t love because you weren’t careful?”
Alexander stared at his mother. “Up the stick?” he said.
“She’ll tell you it’s yours and you’ll never know for sure, all you’ll know is that you’re married, and your horn is falling off!”
“Mother,” said Alexander. “Really, you must stop.”
“Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“How can I not?”
“Your father was supposed to explain to you.”
“He did. I think he did very well.”
Jane got up. “Will you just once stop with your joking around?”
“Yes, Mom. Thanks for coming in. I’m glad we had this chat.”
“Do you have any questions?”
“Absolutely none.”
The Changing of the Hotel’s Name, 1935
One frostbitten late January Thursday, Alexander asked his father as they headed out to their Party meeting, “Dad, why is our hotel’s name changing again? It’s the third time in six months.”
“Surely not the third time.”
“Yes, Dad.” They walked side by side down the street. They weren’t touching. “When we first moved in, it was the Derzhava. Then the Kamenev Hotel. Then the Zinoviev Hotel. Now it’s the Kirov Hotel. Why? And who is this Kirov chap?”
“He was the Leningrad Party Chief,” said Harold.
At their meeting, the old man Slavan laughed raucously after he heard Alexander’s question repeated. He beckoned Alexander to him, patted him on the head and said, “Don’t worry, son, now that’s it’s Kirov, Kirov it will stay.”
“All right, enough now,” Harold said, trying to pull his son away. But Alexander wanted to hear. He pulled away from his father.
“Why, Slavan Ivanovich?”
Slavan said, “Because Kirov is dead.” He nodded. “Assassinated in Leningrad last month. Now there’s a manhunt on.”
“Oh, they didn’t catch his killer?”
“They caught him, all right.” The old man smirked. “But what about all the others?”
“What others?” Alexander lowered his voice.
“All the conspirators,” said the old man. “They have to die, too.”
“It was a conspiracy?”
“Well, of course. Otherwise how can we have a manhunt?”
Harold called sharply for Alexander, and later on, when they were walking home, he said, “Son, why are you so friendly with Slavan? What kinds of things has that man been telling you?”
“He is a fascinating man,” Alexander said. “Did you know he’s been to Akatui? For five years.” Akatui was the Tsarist Siberian hard labor prison. “He said they gave him a white shirt, and in the summer he worked only eight hours and in the winter six, and his shirt never got dirty, and he got a kilo of white bread a day, plus meat. He said they were the best years of his life.”
“Unenviable,” grumbled Harold. “Listen, I don’t want you talking to him so much. Sit by us.”
“Hmm,” said Alexander. “You all smoke too much. It burns my eyes.”
“I’ll blow my smoke the other way. But Slavan is a troublemaker. Stay away from him, do you hear?” He paused. “He is not going to last long.”
“Last long where?”
Two weeks later, Slavan disappeared from the meetings.
Alexander missed the nice old man and his stories.
“Dad, people keep disappearing from our floor. That lady Tamara is gone.”
“Never liked her,” put in Jane, sipping her vodka. “I think she is sick in the hospital. She was old, Alexander.”
“Mom, two young men in suits are living in her room. Are they going to share that room with Tamara when she returns from the hospital?”
“I know nothing about that,” said Jane firmly, and just as firmly poured herself another drink.
“The Italians have left. Mom, did you know the Italians have left?”
“Who?” said Harold loudly. “Who is disappearing? The Frascas have not disappeared. They are on vacation.”
“Dad, it’s winter. Vacation where?”
“The Crimea. In some resort near Krasnodar. Dzhugba, I think. They’re coming back in two months.”
“Oh? What about the van Dorens? Where have they gone? Also the Crimea? Someone new is living in their room, too. A Russian family. I thought this was a floor only for foreigners?”
“They moved to a different building in Moscow,” said Harold, picking at his food. “The Obkom is just trying to integrate the foreigners into Soviet society.”
Alexander put down his fork. “Did you say moved? Moved where? Because Nikita is sleeping in our bathroom.”
“Who is Nikita?”
“Dad, you haven’t noticed that there is a man in the bathtub?”
“What man?”
“Nikita.”
“Oh. How long has he been there?”
Alexander exchanged a blank look with his mother. “Three months.”
“He’s been in the bathtub for three months? Why?”
“Because there is not a single room for him to rent in all of Moscow. He came here from Novosibirsk.”
“Never seen him,” Harold said in a voice that implied that since he had never seen Nikita, Nikita must not exist. “What does he do when I want to have a bath?”
Jane said, “Oh, he leaves for a half-hour. I give him a shot of vodka. He goes for a walk.”
“Mom,” said Alexander, eating cheerfully, “his wife is coming to join him in March. He begged me to talk to everybody on the floor to ask if we could have our baths earlier in the evening, to let them have a bit of—”
“All right, you two, you’re having me on,” said Harold.
Alexander and his mother exchanged a look, and then Alexander said, “Dad, go check it out. And when you come back, you tell me where the van Dorens could have moved to in Moscow.”
When Harold came back, he shrugged and said, “That man is a hobo. He is no good.”
“That man,” said Alexander, looking at his mother’s vodka glass, “is the head engineer for the Baltic fleet.”
A month later, in February 1935, Alexander came home from school and heard his mother and father fighting—again. He heard his name shouted out once, twice.
His mother was upset for Alexander. But he was fine. He spoke Russian fluently. He sang and drank beer and played hockey on the ice in Gorky Park with his friends. He was all right. Why was she upset? He wanted to go in and tell her he was fine, but he never liked to interrupt his parents’ fights.
Suddenly he heard something being thrown, and then someone being hit. He ran into his parents’ room and saw his mother on the floor, her cheek red, his father bending over her. Alexander ran to his father and shoved him in the back. “What are you doing, Dad?” he yelled. He kneeled down next to his mother.
She half sat up and glared at Harold. “Fine thing you’re showing your son,” she said. “You brought him to the Soviet Union for this, to show him how to treat a woman? His wife, perhaps?”
“Shut up,” said Harold, clenching his fists.
“Dad!” Alexander jumped to his feet. “Stop!”
“Your father has abandoned us, Alexander.”
“I’m not abandoning you!”
Squaring off, Alexander pushed his father in the chest.
Harold shoved Alexander and then hit him open-handed across the face. Jane gasped. Alexander swayed but did not fall. Harold went to strike him again, but this time Alexander moved away. Jane grabbed Harold’s legs, yanked, and sent him down on his back. “Don’t you dare touch him!” she yelled.
Harold was on the floor, Jane, too; only Alexander was standing. They couldn’t look at one another; everyone was panting. Alexander wiped his bleeding lip.
“Harold,” Jane said, still on her knees. “Look at us! We’re being destroyed by this fucking country.” She was crying. “Let’s go home, let’s start over.”
“Are you crazy?” hissed Harold, looking from Alexander to Jane. “Do you even know what you’re saying?”
“I do.”
“Have you forgotten that we gave up our U.S. citizenship? Have you forgotten that at the moment you and I are citizens of no country; that we’re waiting for our Soviet citizenship to come through? You think America is going to want us back? Why, they practically kicked us out. And how do you think the Soviet authorities are going to feel once they find out we’re turning our backs on them, too?”
“I don’t care what the Soviet authorities think.”
“God, you are so naïve!”
“Is that what I am? What does that make you? Did you know it was going to be like this and brought us here anyway? Brought your son here?”
He stared at her with disappointment. “We didn’t come for the good life. The good life we could have had in America.”
“You’re right. And we had it. We’ll make do with what we have here, but Harold, Alexander is not meant to be here. At least send him back home.”
“What?” Harold could not find his voice to say it above a whisper.
“Yes.” She was helped off the floor by Alexander as she stood in front of Harold. “He is fifteen. Send him back home!”
“Mom!” said Alexander.
“Don’t let him die in this country—can’t you see? Alexander sees it. I see it. Why can’t you?”
“Alexander doesn’t see it. Do you, son?”
Alexander was silent. He did not want to side against his father.
“You see?” Jane exclaimed triumphantly. “Please, Harold. Soon it will be too late.”
“You’re talking rubbish. Too late for what?”
“Too late for Alexander,” Jane said brokenly, pale with despair. “For him, forget your pride for just one second. Before he has to register for the Red Army when he turns sixteen in May, before tragedy befalls us all, while he is still a U.S. citizen, send him back. He has not relinquished his rights to the United States of America. I will stay with you, I will live out my life with you—but—”
“No!” Harold exclaimed in an aghast voice. “Things didn’t turn out the way I had hoped, look, I’m sor—”
“Don’t be sorry for me, you bastard. Don’t be sorry for me—I lay down in this bed with you. I knew what I was doing. Be sorry for your son. What do you think will happen to him?”
Jane turned away from Harold.
Alexander turned away from his parents. He went to the window and looked outside. It was February and night.
Behind him, he heard his mother and father.
“Janie, come on, it’ll be all right. You’ll see. Alexander will be better off here eventually. Communism is the future of the world, you know this as well as I do. The wider the chasm between the rich and the poor in the world, the more essential communism is going to become. America is a lost cause. Who else is going to care about the common man, who else will protect his rights but the communist? We’re just living through the toughest part. But I have no doubt—communism is the future.”
“God!” Jane exclaimed. “When will you ever stop?”
“Can’t stop now,” he said. “We’re going to see this through to the end.”
“That’s right,” Jane said. “Marx himself wrote that capitalism produces above all its own gravediggers. Do you think that perhaps he wasn’t talking about capitalism?”
“Absolutely,” agreed Harold, while Alexander looked the other way. “The communists hate to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions. The fall of capitalism is inevitable. The fall of selfishness, greed, individuality, personal attainment.”
“The fall of prosperity, comfort, humane living conditions, privacy, liberty,” said Jane, spitting the words out, as Alexander doggedly stared out the window. “The second America, Harold. The second fucking America.”
Without turning back, Alexander saw his father’s angry face and his mother’s despairing one, and he saw the gray room with the falling plaster, and the broken lock held together by tape, and he smelled the washroom from ten meters away, and he was silent.
Before the Soviet Union, the only world that had made sense to him was America, where his father could get up on the pulpit and preach the overthrow of the U.S. government, and the police that protected that government would come and remove his father from the pulpit and put him into a Boston cell to sleep off his insurrectionist zeal, and then in the next day or two they would let him out so he could recommence with renewed fervor preaching to the curious the lamentable deficiencies of 1920s America. And according to Harold there were plenty, though he himself admitted to Alexander that he could not for the life of him understand the immigrants who poured into New York and Boston, who lived in deplorable conditions working for pennies and put generations of Americans to shame because they lived in deplorable conditions and worked for pennies with such joy—a joy that was diminished only by the inability to bring more of their family members to the United States to live in deplorable conditions and work for pennies.
Harold Barrington could preach revolution in America and that made perfect sense to Alexander, because he read John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and John Stuart Mill told him that liberty didn’t mean doing what you damn well pleased, it meant saying what you damn well pleased. His father was upholding Mill in the greatest tradition of American democracy; what was so wrong with that?
What didn’t make sense to him when he had arrived in Moscow was Moscow. As the years passed, Moscow made only less and less sense to him; the privation, the senselessness, the discomfort encroached upon his youthful spirit. He had stopped holding his father’s hand on the way to Thursday meetings; what he keenly felt absent from his own hand, however, was an orange in the winter.
Hailing Russia as the “second America,” Comrade Stalin proclaimed that in a few years the Soviet Union would have as many railroads, as many paved roads, as many single family houses, as the United States. He said that America had not industrialized as fast as the USSR was industrializing because capitalism made progress chaotic, whereas socialism spearheaded progress on all fronts. The U.S. was suffering thirty-five per cent unemployment, unlike the Soviet Union which had near full employment. The Soviets were all working—proof of their superiority—while the Americans were succumbing to the welfare state because there were no jobs. That was clear, nothing confusing about that. Then why was the sense of malaise so pervasive?
But Alexander’s feelings of confusion and malaise were peripheral. What wasn’t peripheral was youth. And he was young, even in Moscow.
He turned back to his mother, handing her a napkin to wipe her face while wiping his own with his sleeve. Before walking out and leaving them to their misery, Alexander said to his father, “Don’t listen to her. I will not go to America alone. My future is here, for better or worse.” He came a little closer. “But don’t hit my mother again.” Alexander was already several inches taller than Harold. “If you hit her again, you’ll have to deal with me.”
A week later Harold was removed from his job as a printer because as the new laws would have it, foreigners were no longer allowed to operate printing machinery, no matter how proficient they were and how loyal to the Soviet state. Apparently there was too much opportunity for sabotage, for printing false papers, false affidavits, false documents, false news information, and for disseminating lies to subvert the Soviet cause. Many foreigners had been caught doing just that and then distributing their malicious propaganda to hard-working Soviet citizens. So no more printing for Harold.
He was redeployed to a tool-making factory, melting metal into screw-drivers and ratchets.
That job lasted a few weeks. Apparently it also wasn’t safe. Foreigners had been caught making knives and weapons for themselves instead of tools for the Soviet state.
He was then employed as a shoemaker, which amused Alexander (“Dad, what do you know about making shoes?”).
That job lasted only a few days. “What? Shoe-making isn’t safe either?” Alexander asked.
Apparently it wasn’t. Foreigners had been known to make galoshes and mountain boots for good Soviet citizens to escape through marshes and through mountains.
A somber Harold came home one April evening in 1935 and instead of cooking (it was Harold who cooked dinner for his family now), sat down heavily at the table and said that a Party Obkom man had come to see him at the school where he was working as a floor sweeper and asked him to find a new place to live. “They want us to find our own rooms. Be a little more independent.” He shrugged. “It’s only right. We’ve had it relatively easy the last four years. We need to give something back to the state.” He paused and lit a cigarette.
Alexander saw his father glance at him furtively. He coughed and said, “Well, Nikita has disappeared. Maybe we can take his bathtub.”
There was no room for the Barringtons in all of Moscow. After a month of looking, Harold came home from work and said, “Listen, the Obkom man came to see me again. We can’t stay here. We have to move.”
“By when?” Jane exclaimed.
“Two days from now. They want us out.”
“But we have nowhere to go!”
Harold sighed. “They offered me a transfer to Leningrad. There is more work—an industrial plant, a carpentry plant, an electricity plant.”
“What, no electricity plants in Moscow, Dad?”
Harold ignored Alexander. “We’ll go there. There’ll be more rooms available. You’ll see. Janie, you’ll get a job at the Leningrad public library.”
“Leningrad?” Alexander exclaimed. “Dad, I’m not leaving Moscow. I got friends here, school. Please.”
“Alexander, you’ll start a new school. Make new friends. We have no choice.”
“Yes,” Alexander said loudly. “But once we had a choice, didn’t we?”
“Alexander! You will not raise your voice to me,” Harold said. “Do you hear?”
“Loud and clear!” shouted Alexander. “I’m not going. Do you hear?”
Harold jumped up. Jane jumped up. Alexander jumped up.
Jane said, “No, stop it, stop it, you two!”
“You will not speak to me this way,” Harold said. “We are moving, and I don’t want to talk another minute about it.”
He turned to his wife and said, “Oh, and one more thing.” Sheepishly, he coughed. “They want us to change our name. To something more Russian.”
Alexander scoffed. “Why now? Why after all these years?”
“Because!” Harold shouted, losing control. “They want us to show our allegiance! You’re going to be sixteen next month. You’re going to register for the Red Army. You need a Russian name. The fewer questions, the better. We need to be Russians now. It will be easier for us.” He lowered his gaze.
“God, Dad,” Alexander exclaimed. “Will this ever stop? We can’t even keep our name anymore? It’s not enough to kick us out of our home, to move us to another city? We need to lose our name, too? What else have we got?”
“We are doing the right thing. Our name is an American name. We should have changed it long ago.”
“That’s right,” said Alexander. “The Frascas didn’t. The van Dorens didn’t. And look what happened to them. They’re on vacation. Extended vacation, right, Dad?”
Harold raised his hand to Alexander, who pushed him away. “Don’t touch me,” he said coldly.
Harold tried again. Alexander pushed him away again, but this time he didn’t let go of his father’s hands. He did not want his mother to see him lose his temper, his poor mother, who stood shaking and crying, clasping her hands at her two men, pleading, “Darlings, Harold, Alexander, I beg you, stop it, stop it.”
“Tell him to stop it!” Harold said. “You’ve raised him like this. No respect for anybody.”
His mother came over to Alexander and grabbed hold of his arms. “Please, son,” she said. “Calm down. It’ll be all right.”
“You think so, Mom? We’re moving cities, we’re changing our name just like this hotel. You call that all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “We still have each other. We still have our lives.”
“How the definition of being all right changes,” said Alexander, extricating himself from his mother and taking his coat.
“Alexander, don’t walk out that door,” said Harold. “I forbid you to walk out that door.”
Alexander turned to his father, looked him in the eye, and said, “Go ahead and stop me.”
He left and did not come back home for two days. And then they packed up and left the Kirov Hotel.
His mother was drunk and unable to help carry the suitcases to the train.
When did Alexander first begin to feel, to know, to sense that something was desperately wrong with his mother? That was the point: something wasn’t desperately wrong with her all at once. At first she had been slightly not herself, and it wasn’t for Alexander to say what was the matter with his adult parent. His father could have seen, but his father had no eyes. Alexander knew his father was the kind of man who simply could not keep the personal and the global in his head at the same time. But whether Harold was aware and plainly ignored it, or whether he was actually oblivious, didn’t matter, and it didn’t change the simple fact that Jane Barrington gradually, without fanfare, without much to-do, much introduction and much warning permanently ceased to be the person she once was and became the person she wasn’t.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_aa1bf484-1eec-5f6d-9f21-d831210f2f51)
Ellis Island, 1943
EDWARD CAME IN TO check on Tatiana in the middle of August. She’d been in America seven weeks. She was sitting in her usual place by the window, with a naked and diapered Anthony on her lap, tickling him between his toes. She had been feeling much better, her breathing was deep, she was almost not coughing. She had not seen blood in her cough for a month. The New York air was doing her good.
Edward took the stethoscope from her chest. “Listen, you are doing much better. I think I’m going to have to discharge you.”
Tatiana said nothing.
“Do you have anywhere to go?” Edward paused. “You will need to get a job.”
“Edward,” said Tatiana, “I like it here.”
“Well, I know. But you’re all better.”
“I was thinking, maybe I work here? You need more nurse.”
“You want to work at Ellis?”
“Very much.”
Edward talked to the chief surgeon at the Public Health Department, who came in to talk to Tatiana, informing her that she would have to be put on something called a three-month probation to see if she could keep up with the work, if she had the necessary skills. He told her that she would not be employed by Ellis Island but by the PHD and as such would sometimes have to pull duty at the New York University hospital downtown if they had a shortage of nurses there. Tatiana agreed, but asked if she could live at Ellis, “maybe work as night nurse?” The surgeon was not keen. “Why would you want to? You could get yourself an apartment right across the bay. Our citizens don’t live here.”
Tatiana explained as best she could that she hoped some of the detained refugees at Ellis could look after her son while he was still small, and though she wanted to work, she had no one to leave him with and to make matters easier for everyone she could stay in her current convalescent room.
“But it’s so small!”
“One room just right for me.”
Tatiana asked Vikki to buy her a uniform and shoes. “You know you only get two pairs of shoes?” said Vikki. “War rationing. You want one of them to be nurse’s shoes?”
“I want my only pair to be nurse’s shoes,” said Tatiana. “What I need more shoes for?”
“What if you wanted to go dancing?” asked Vikki.
“Go where?”
“Dancing! You know, do a little lindy hop, a little jitterbug? What if you wanted to look nice? Your husband isn’t coming back, is he?”
“No,” said Tatiana, “my husband isn’t coming back.”
“Well, you definitely need nice new shoes if you’re going to be a widow.”
Tatiana shook her head. “I need nurse’s shoes and white uniform, and I need to stay at Ellis, and I not need nothing else.”
Vikki shook her head, her eyes flickering. “It’s anything else. When can you come have dinner with us? How about this Sunday? Dr. Ludlow says you’re being discharged.”
Vikki bought Tatiana a uniform that was slightly big, and shoes that were the right size, and after Edward discharged her, she continued to do what she had been doing in her white hospital gown and gray hospital robe—look after the foreign soldiers who were shipped to New York, treated, and then sent elsewhere on the continent to do POW labor duty. Many of them were German soldiers, some were Italian, some Ethiopian, one or two French. There were no Soviet soldiers.
“Oh, Tania, what am I going to do?” Vikki was in her room, sitting on the bed, while Tatiana lay in bed, breastfeeding Anthony. “Are you on a break?”
“Yes, a lunch break.” Tatiana smiled, but the irony went past Vikki’s unlistening ears.
“Who takes care of your boy while you do rounds?”
“I take him with me. I put him on empty bed while I take care of soldiers.” Brenda palpitated every time she saw it, but Tatiana didn’t like to leave him sleeping alone in the room, so she didn’t care how much Brenda palpitated. If only there had been more immigrants, someone could take care of her baby while she worked. But there were very few people coming through Ellis. Twelve in the month of July, eight in the month of August. And they all had their own children, their own problems.
“Tania! Can we talk about my situation? You know, don’t you, that my husband is home with me now.”
“I know. Wait little while,” Tatiana said. “Maybe war will take him again.”
“That’s the problem! They don’t want him. He can’t operate heavy machinery. He’s been honorably discharged. He wants us to have a baby. Can you even imagine?”
Tatiana was quiet. “Vikki, why you get married?”
“It was war! What do you mean, why did I get married? Why did you get married? He was going off to war, he asked me to marry him, I said yes. I thought, what’s the harm? It’s war. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“This,” said Tatiana.
“I didn’t think he’d be coming back so soon! I thought he’d be back for Christmas, once, twice. Maybe he’d be killed. Then I could say I had been married to a war hero.”
“Is he not war hero now?”
“It doesn’t count—he’s alive!”
“Oh.”
“Before he came back I had been going dancing every weekend, but now I can’t do anything. God!” she exclaimed. “Being married is a real drag.”
“Do you love him?”
“Sure.” Vikki shrugged. “But I love Chris, too. And two weeks ago, I met a radiologist who was nice … but it’s all over for that now.”
“You right,” Tatiana said. “Marriage very inconvenient.” She paused. “Why do you not get, what is it called?”
“A divorce?”
“Yes.”
“What are you, crazy? What kind of country do you come from? What kind of customs do you have there?”
“In my country,” said Tatiana, “we faithful to our husbands.”
“He wasn’t here! Surely I can’t be expected to be faithful to him when he is thousands of miles away, and getting up to no good in the Far East? As far as divorce … I’m too young to get divorced.”
“But not too young to be widow?” Tatiana flinched when she said it.
“No! There is an honor that comes with being a widow. I can’t be a divorcée. What am I, Wallis Simpson?”
“Who?”
“Tania, you’re doing well. Brenda tells me, albeit grudgingly”—Edward smiled—“that you are very good with the patients.” Edward and Tatiana were walking between the patient beds. Tatiana was carrying an awake and alert Anthony.
“Thank you, Edward.”
“Are you afraid your boy is going to get sick from being around sick people?”
“They not sick,” Tatiana replied. “Right, Anthony? They wounded. I bring my boy, and he makes them happy. Some of them have wives and sons back home. They touch him and they happy.”
Edward smiled. “He is a very fine boy.” Edward stroked Anthony’s dark head. Anthony paid Edward back by grinning toothlessly. “You take him outside?”
“All time.”
“Good. Babies need fresh air. And you, too.” He cleared his throat. “You know, on Sundays the doctors from NYU and PHD play softball in Sheep Meadow, in Central Park, and the nurses come to cheer us on. Would you like to come this Sunday with Anthony?”
Tatiana was too flustered to answer. They were on the stairs when they heard the clomping of high heels. “Edward?” a voice screeched from the ground floor. “Is that you?”
“Yes, sweetheart, it’s me.” Edward’s voice was calm.
“Well, thank goodness I found you. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“I’m right here, sweetheart.”
Mrs. Ludlow walked up the stairs, panting, and the three of them stopped on the landing. Tatiana held her baby closer. Disapprovingly, Edward’s wife eyed Tatiana and said, “A new nurse, Edward?”
“Nurse Barrington? Have you met Marion?”
“Yes,” said Tatiana.
“No, we never met,” declared Marion. “I never forget a face.”
“Mrs. Ludlow,” said Tatiana. “We meet every Tuesday in dining room. You ask me where Edward, and I say I don’t know.”
“We have never met,” repeated Mrs. Ludlow, with extra firmness to her voice.
Tatiana said nothing. Edward said nothing.
“Edward, can I talk to you in private? And you,” she added, glaring at Tatiana, “are too young to be carrying a child. You’re not carrying him correctly. You’re not holding his head. Where is the baby’s mother?”
“Marion, she is the baby’s mother,” said Edward.
Mrs. Ludlow was critically silent for a moment, then tutted and before anyone could say anything, she tutted again with emphasis, muttered the word “immigrants” and dragged Edward away.
Vikki stormed into the hospital ward, grabbed Tatiana by the arm and pulled her out into the corridor. “He asked me for a divorce!” Vikki whispered in an indignant and offended hiss. “Can you believe it?”
“Um—”
“I said I wasn’t giving him a divorce, it wasn’t proper, and he said he would sue me for a divorce and win because I—I don’t even know what he said—broke some covenant. Oh, I said to him, like you weren’t with Far Eastern whores while you were away from me, and you know what he said?”
“Um—”
“He said yes! But it’s different for soldiers, he said. Do you even believe it?” Vikki shook, Vikki shrugged, Vikki warded off the insulted glint in her eyes. Her mascara did not run, and her lips never lost their shine. “Fine, I said, just fine, you’re the one who is going to be sorry, and he said he was already sorry. Ugh.” She shuddered and brightened. “Hey, come for dinner on Sunday. Grammy is making Sunday lasagna.”
But Tatiana didn’t.
Come for dinner, Tania. Come to New York, Tania. Come play softball in Sheep Meadow with us, Tania. Come on the ferry ride with us, Tania, come for a car ride to Bear Mountain with us, Tania. Come, Tania, come back to us, the living.
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_cc89770d-1d18-5b11-a84c-132826022800)
With Stepanov, 1943
WHEN ALEXANDER OPENED HIS eyes—did he open them?—it was still black, still cold. He was shaking, his arms around himself. There is no shame in dying in war, in dying young, in dying in a cold cell, in saving your body from humiliation.
Once, when he was convalescing, Tatiana asked without looking at him as she was dressing his wound, did you see the light? And he replied, no, he had not seen.
It was only a partial truth.
Because he had heard …
The gallop of the red horse.
But here all the colors had run dry.
As if in a stupor, Alexander dimly heard the sliding of the metal bolt, the turning of the key. His commander, Colonel Mikhail Stepanov, came into his cell with a flashlight. Alexander was hunched in the corner.
“Ah,” said Stepanov. “So it’s true. You are alive.”
Alexander wanted to shake Stepanov’s hand, but he was too cold and his back was too sore. He did not move and said nothing.
Stepanov crouched by him. “What in the world happened to that truck? And I saw the Red Cross doctor’s death certificate for you myself. I told your wife you were dead. Your pregnant wife thinks you’re dead!”
“Everything is as it should be,” replied Alexander. “It’s good to see you, sir. Try not to inhale. There is not enough oxygen here for both of us.”
“Alexander,” said Stepanov. “You didn’t want to tell her what was happening to you?”
Alexander shook his head.
“But why the truck explosion, the death certificate?”
“I wanted her to think there was no hope for me.”
“Why?”
Alexander didn’t answer.
“Anywhere you go—I will go with you,” Tatiana says. “But if you are staying, then I’m staying, too. I’m not leaving my baby’s father in the Soviet Union.” She bends over an overwhelmed Alexander. “What did you say to me in Leningrad? What kind of a life can I build, you said, knowing I have left you to die—or to rot—in the Soviet Union? I’m quoting you back to you. Those were your words.” She smiles. “And on this one point, I will have to agree with you.” She lowers her voice. “If I left you, no matter which road I took, with ponderous clatter indeed, the Bronze Horseman would pursue me all through that long night into my own maddening dust.”
He couldn’t tell that to his commander. He didn’t know if Tatiana had left the Soviet Union.
“You want a smoke?”
“Yes,” replied Alexander. “But can’t here. Not enough oxygen for a smoke.”
Stepanov pulled Alexander up to his feet. “Stand for a few minutes,” Stepanov said. “Stretch your legs.” He looked at Alexander’s bent-sideways head. “This cell is too small for you. They didn’t expect that.”
“Oh, they did. That’s why they put me here.”
Stepanov stood with his back to the door, while Alexander stood across from him.
“What day is it, sir?” asked Alexander. “How long have I been here? Four, five days?”
“The morning of the sixteenth of March,” said Stepanov. “The morning of your third day.”
Third day! Alexander thought with shock.
Third day! Alexander thought with excitement. That would probably mean that Tania …
He didn’t continue with his thoughts. Very quietly, almost inaudibly, Stepanov leaned forward and Alexander thought he said, “Keep talking loudly, so they can hear, but listen to me so that I can laugh with you when you come back in the clover field, and I will show you how to eat clover.”
Alexander looked at Stepanov’s face, more drawn than ever, his eyes gray, his mouth turned down with sympathy and anxiety. “Sir?”
“I didn’t say anything, Major.”
Shaking off the hallucination in his head, of a meadow, of sun, of clover, Alexander repeated in a low voice, “Sir?”
“Everything’s gone to shit, Major,” whispered Stepanov. “They’re already looking for your wife, but … she seems to have disappeared. I convinced her to go back to Leningrad with Dr. Sayers, just as you asked me. I made it easy for her to leave.”
Alexander said nothing, digging his nails into the palms of his hands.
“But now she’s gone. You know who else disappeared? Dr. Sayers. He had informed me he was going back to Leningrad with your wife.”
Alexander dug his nails harder into his palms to keep himself from looking at Stepanov and from speaking.
“He was on his way to Helsinki, but he was supposed to have gone to Leningrad first!” Stepanov exclaimed. “To drop her off, to pick up his own Red Cross nurse he had left in Grechesky hospital. Listen to me, are you listening? They never reached Leningrad. Two days ago his Red Cross truck was found burned, pillaged and turned over on the Finnish-Soviet border at Lisiy Nos. There was an incident with the Finnish troops and four of our men were shot and killed. No sign of Sayers, or of Nurse Metanova.”
Alexander said nothing. He wanted to pick up his heart from the floor. But it was dark, and he couldn’t find it. He heard it roll away from him, he heard it beating, bleeding, pulsing in the corner.
Stepanov lowered his voice another notch. “And Finnish troops shot and killed, too.”
Silence from Alexander.
“And that’s not all.”
“No?” Alexander thought he said.
“No sign of Dr. Sayers. But …” Stepanov paused. “Your good friend, Dimitri Chernenko, was found shot dead in the snow.”
That was small comfort to Alexander.
But it was some comfort.
“Major, why was Chernenko at the border?”
Alexander did not answer. Where was Tatiana? All he wanted to do was ask that question. Without a truck how could they have gotten anywhere? Without a truck what were they doing—walking on foot through the marshes of Karelia?
“Major, your wife is missing. Sayers is gone, Chernenko is dead—” Stepanov hesitated. “And not just dead. But shot dead in a Finn’s uniform. He was wearing a Finnish pilot’s uniform and carrying Finnish ID papers instead of his domestic passport!”
Alexander said nothing. He had nothing to hide except the information that would cost Stepanov his life.
“Alexander!” Stepanov exclaimed in a hissing whisper. “Don’t shut me out. I’m trying to help.”
“Sir,” Alexander said, attempting to mute his fear. “I’m asking you please not to help me anymore.” He wished he had a picture of her. He wanted to touch her white dress with red roses one more time. Wanted to see her young and with him, standing newly married on the steps of the Molotov church.
The fear, the stabbing panic he felt prohibited Alexander from thinking of Tania past. That’s what he would have to learn to do: forbid himself from looking at her even in his memory.
With trembling hands he made a sign of the cross on himself. “I was all right,” he finally managed to say, “until you came here and told me my wife was missing.” He began to shiver uncontrollably.
Stepanov came closer to Alexander. He took off his own coat and gave it to him. “Here, put this around your shoulders.”
Immediately he heard a voice from the outside yell, “It’s time!”
In a whisper, Stepanov said, “Tell me the truth, did you tell your wife to leave with Sayers for Helsinki? Was that your plan all along?”
Alexander said nothing. He didn’t want Stepanov to know—one life, two, three, was enough. The individual was a million people divided by one million; Stepanov did not deserve to die because of Alexander.
“Why are you being so stubborn? Stop it! Having gotten nowhere, they’re bringing in a new man to question you. Apparently the toughest interrogator they have. He has never failed to get a signed confession. They’ve kept you here nearly naked in a cold cell, and soon they’ll come up with something else to break you; they’ll beat you, they’ll put your feet in cold water, they’ll shine a light in your face until you go mad, the interrogator will deliberately tell you things you will want to kill him for, and you need to be strong for all that. Otherwise you have no chance.”
Alexander said faintly, “Do you think she is safe?”
“No, I don’t think she is safe! Who is safe around here, Alexander?” Stepanov whispered. “You? Me? Certainly not her. They’re looking everywhere for her. In Leningrad, in Molotov, in Lazarevo. If she is in Helsinki, they’ll find out, you know that, don’t you? They’ll bring her back. They were calling the Red Cross hospital in Helsinki this morning.”
“It’s time!” someone yelled again.
“How many times in my life will I have to hear those words?” Alexander said. “I heard them for my mother, I heard them for my father, I heard them for my wife, and now I hear them for me.”
Stepanov took his coat. “The things they accuse you of—”
“Don’t ask me, sir.”
“Deny them, Alexander.”
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.
The door opened. Alexander had not been given any bread or water, or any clothes. He had no idea how long he had been left undressed in the cold cell.
A man came in who apparently did not want to stand. Behind him a guard brought in a chair and the tall, bald, unpleasant-faced man sat down and in a pleasant-sounding nasal voice said, “Do you know what I’m holding in my hands, Major?”
Alexander shook his head. There was a kerosene lamp between them.
“I’m holding all your clothes, Major. All your clothes and a wool blanket. And look, I’ve got a nice piece of pork for you, on the bone. It’s still warm. Some potatoes too, with sour cream and butter. A shot of vodka. And a nice long smoke. You can leave this damn cold place, have some food, get dressed. How would you like that?”
“I would like that,” Alexander said impassively. His voice wasn’t going to tremble for a stranger.
The man smiled. “I thought you would. I came all the way from Leningrad to talk to you. Do you think we could talk for a bit?”
“I don’t see why not,” Alexander replied. “I don’t have much else to do.”
The man laughed. “No, that’s right. Not much at all.” His non-laughing eyes studied Alexander intently.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“You, mostly, Major Belov. A couple of other things.”
“That’s fine.”
“Would you like your clothes?”
“I’m sure,” Alexander said, “that to a smart man like yourself, the answer is obvious.”
“I have another cell for you to go to. It’s warmer, bigger and has a window. Much warmer. It must be twenty-five degrees Celsius in there right now, not like this one, it’s probably no more than five Celsius in here.” The man smiled again. “Or would you like me to translate that into Fahrenheit for you, Major?”
Fahrenheit? Alexander narrowed his eyes. “That won’t be necessary.”
“Did I mention tobacco?”
“You mentioned it.”
“All these things, Major—comfort things. Would you like any of them?”
“Didn’t I answer that question?”
“You answered that question. I have one more for you.”
“Yes?”
“Are you Alexander Barrington, the son of Harold Barrington, a man who came here in December of 1930, with a beautiful wife and a good-looking eleven-year-old son?”
Alexander didn’t blink as he stood in front of the sitting interrogator. “What is your name?” he asked. “Usually you people introduce yourselves.”
“Us people?” The man smiled. “I tell you what. You answer me and I will answer you.”
“What’s your question?”
“Are you Alexander Barrington?”
“No. What is your name?”
The man shook his head.
“What?” said Alexander. “You asked me to answer your question. I did. Now you answer mine.”
“Leonid Slonko,” said the interrogator. “Does that make any difference to you?”
Alexander studied him very carefully. He had heard the name Slonko before. “Did you say you came from Leningrad to talk to me?”
“Yes.”
“You work in Leningrad?”
“Yes.”
“A long time, Comrade Slonko? They tell me you’re very good at your job. A long time in your line of work?”
“Twenty-three years.”
Alexander whistled appreciatively. “Where in Leningrad?”
“Where what?”
“Where do you work? Kresty? Or the House of Detention on Millionnaya?”
“What do you know about the House of Detention, Major?”
“I know it was built during Alexander II’s reign in 1864. Is that where you work?”
“Occasionally I interview prisoners there, yes.”
Nodding, Alexander went on. “Nice city, Leningrad. I’m still not used to it, though.”
“No? Well, why would you be?”
“That’s right, why would I? I prefer Krasnodar. It’s warmer.” Alexander smiled. “And your title, comrade?”
“I’m chief of operations,” Slonko replied.
“Not a military man, then? I didn’t think so.”
Slonko bolted up, holding Alexander’s clothes in his hands. “It just occurred to me, Major,” he said, “that we are finished here.”
“I agree,” said Alexander. “Thanks for coming by.”
Slonko departed in such an angry rush that he left the lamp and the chair. It was some time before the guard came in and took them.
Darkness again.
So debilitating. But nothing so diminishing as fear.
This time he didn’t wait long.
The door opened and two guards came in and ordered him to come with them. Alexander said, “I’m not dressed.”
“You won’t need clothes where you’re going.”
The guards were young and eager—the worst kind. He walked between them, slightly ahead of them, barefoot up the stone stairs, and down the corridor of the school, out the back way to the woods, barefoot in the March slush. Were they going to ask him to dig a hole? He felt the rifles at his back. Alexander’s feet were numb, and his body was going numb, but his chest wasn’t numb, his heart wasn’t numb, and if only his heart could stop hurting, he would be able to take it much better.
He remembered the ten-year-old Cub Scout, the American boy, the Soviet boy. The bare trees were ghostly but for a moment he was happy to smell the cold air and to see the gray sky. It’s going to be all right, he thought. If Tania is in Helsinki and remembers what I told her, then she would have convinced Sayers to leave as soon as possible. Perhaps they’ve gone already. Perhaps they’re already in Stockholm. And then nothing else matters.
“Turn around,” one of the guards said.
“Do I stop walking first?” Alexander said. His teeth chattered.
“Stop walking,” said the flustered guard, “and turn around.”
He stopped walking. He turned around.
“Alexander Belov,” said the shorter guard in the most pompous voice he could muster, “you have been found guilty of treason and espionage against our Motherland during the time of war against our country. The punishment for military treason is death, to be carried out immediately.”
Alexander stood still. He put his feet together and his hands at his side. Unblinkingly he looked at the guards. They blinked.
“Well, now what?” he asked.
“The punishment for treason is death,” the short guard repeated. He came over to Alexander, proffering a black blindfold. “Here,” he said. Alexander noticed the young man’s hands were shaking.
“How old are you, Corporal?” he asked quietly.
“Twenty-three,” replied the guard.
“Funny—me too,” said Alexander. “Just think, three days ago I was a major in the Red Army. Three days ago I had a Hero of the Soviet Union medal pinned to my chest. Amazing, isn’t it?”
The guard’s hands continued to shake as he lifted the blindfold to Alexander’s face. Alexander backed away and shook his head. “Forget it. And I’m not turning around, either.”
“I’m just following orders, Major,” said the young guard, and Alexander suddenly recognized him as one of the corporals who had been in the emplacement with him three months ago at the storming of the Neva to break the Leningrad blockade. He was the corporal Alexander had left on the anti-aircraft gun as he ran out to help Anatoly Marazov.
“Corporal … Ivanov?” Alexander said. “Well, well. I hope you do a better job shooting me than you did blowing up those fucking Luftwaffe planes that nearly killed us.”
The corporal wouldn’t even look at Alexander. “You’re going to have to look at me when you aim, Corporal,” Alexander said, standing tall and straight. “Otherwise you will miss.”
Ivanov went to stand by the other guard. “Please turn away, Major,” he said.
“No,” Alexander said, his hands at his sides, and his eyes on the two men with rifles. “Here I am. What are you afraid of? As you can see I’m nearly naked and I’m unarmed.”
He pulled himself up taller. The two guards were paralyzed. “Comrades,” said Alexander. “I will not be the one to issue you an order to lift your rifles. You’re going to have to do that on your own.”
The other corporal said, “All right, lift your rifle, Ivanov.”
They lifted their rifles. Alexander looked into the barrel of one of the guns. He blinked. O God, please look after Tania all alone in the world.
“On three,” said the corporal, as the two men cocked their rifles.
“One—”
“Two—”
Alexander looked into their faces. They were both so afraid. He looked into his own heart. He was cold, and he felt that he had unfinished business on this earth, business that couldn’t wait an eternity. Instead of seeing the trembling corporals, Alexander saw his eleven-year-old face in the mirror of his room in Boston the day he was leaving America. What kind of man have I become? he thought. Have I become the man my father wanted me to be? His mouth tightened. He didn’t know. But he knew that he had become the man he himself wanted to be. That would have to be good enough at a time like this, he thought, squaring his shoulders. He was ready for “three.”
But “three” did not come.
“Wait!” He heard a voice shout from the side. The guards put down their rifles. Slonko, dressed in a warm coat, felt hat and leather gloves, walked briskly to Alexander. “Stand down, Corporals.” Slonko threw a coat he was carrying onto Alexander’s back. “Major Belov, you’re a lucky man. General Mekhlis himself has issued a pardon on your behalf.” He put his hand on Alexander. Why did that make Alexander shudder?
“Come. Let’s go back. You need to get dressed. You’ll freeze in this weather.”
Alexander studied Slonko coldly. He had once read about Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s similar experience with Alexander II’s guards who were ready to execute him. Dostoyevsky was spared at the last minute with a show of mercy from the emperor and exiled instead. That experience of looking death in the face and then being shown mercy transformed Dostoyevsky. Alexander, on the other hand, did not have time to look so deep into his soul as to be changed even for five minutes. He thought it wasn’t mercy they were showing him but a ruse. He was calm before, and he remained calm now except for an occasional shiver from his skin to his bones. Also, unlike Dostoyevsky, he had stared death in the face too often in the last six years to have been daunted by it now.
Alexander followed Slonko back to the school building with the two corporals bringing up the rear. In a small, warm room he found his clothes and his boots and food on a table. Alexander got dressed, his body shaking. He put his feet into his socks, which had been—surprisingly—laundered, and rubbed his feet for a long time to get the blood flowing again. He saw some black spots on his toes and momentarily worried about frostbite, infection, amputation; but only momentarily because the wound in his back was on fire. Corporal Ivanov came and offered him a glass of vodka to warm his insides. Alexander drank the vodka and asked for some hot tea.
Having slowly eaten his food in the warm room and drunk his tea, Alexander felt full and sleepy. Not just sleepy, close to unconsciousness. The black spots on his feet became fainter and grayer. He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again, Slonko sat in front of him. “Your life has been saved by General Mekhlis himself,” Slonko said. “He wanted to show we are not unreasonable and that we believe in mercy.”
Alexander made no move even to nod. It required all he had to stay awake.
“How do you feel, Major Belov?” asked Slonko, getting out a bottle of vodka and two glasses. “Come, we’re both reasonable men. Let’s have a drink. We have no differences.”
Alexander acknowledged Slonko by shaking his head. “I ate, and I had my tea,” he said. “I feel as good as I possibly can.” He couldn’t keep himself upright.
“I want to talk to you for a few minutes.”
“You seem to want a lie from me, and I cannot give it to you. No matter how cold you make me.” He pretended to blink. Really he was just closing his eyes.
“Major, we spared your life.”
With great effort, Alexander opened them again. “Yes, but why? Did you spare it because you believed in my innocence?”
Slonko shrugged. “Look, it’s so simple.” He pushed a piece of paper in front of Alexander. “All you need to do is sign this document in front of you that says you understand your life has been spared. You will be sent to exile in Siberia, and you will live out your days in peace and away from the war. Would you like that?”
“I don’t know,” said Alexander. “But I’m not signing anything.”
“You have to sign, Major. You are our prisoner. You have to do as you’re told.”
“I have nothing to add to what I already told you.”
“Don’t add, just sign.”
“I’m not putting my name on anything.”
“And exactly what would your name be?” Slonko said suddenly. “Do you even know?”
“Very well,” said Alexander, his head bobbing forward.
“I can’t believe you’re making me drink by myself, Major. I find it almost rude.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t drink, Comrade Slonko. It’s so easy to fall into the abyss.”
Slonko lifted his eyes from the vodka and stared at Alexander for what seemed to be minutes. Finally he said slowly, “You know, a long time ago, I knew a woman, a very beautiful woman who used to drink.”
No reply was required of Alexander, so he made none.
“Yes. She was something. She was very brave and suffered terribly not to have a drink in prison. When we picked her up for questioning, she was drunk. It took her several days to get sober. When she became sober, we talked for a long time. I offered her a drink, and she took it, and I offered her a piece of paper to sign and she signed it gratefully. She wanted only one thing from me—do you know what it was?”
Alexander managed to shake his head. That’s where he heard the name Slonko!
“To spare her son. That was the only thing she asked. To spare her only son—Alexander Barrington.”
“That was good of her,” said Alexander. He clenched his hands together to still them. He willed his body to remain still. He wanted to be like the chair, like the desk, like the blackboard. He didn’t want to be like the glass rattling in the March wind. Any minute now the glass was going to pop out of the frame. Like the stained glass in a church in Lazarevo.
“Let me ask you, Major,” Slonko said amiably, downing his drink and tapping the empty glass on the wooden table. “If you yourself were going to ask for one thing before you were put to death, what would it be?”
“To have a cigarette,” Alexander replied.
“Not for mercy?”
“No.”
“Do you know your father also begged me to show you mercy?”
Alexander paled.
Slonko said in English, “Your mother begged me to fuck her but I refused.” He paused, and then smiled. “At first.”
Alexander ground his teeth together. Nothing else on him moved. In Russian he said, “Are you speaking to me, comrade? Because I speak only Russian. They tried to get me to learn French in school, but I’m afraid I wasn’t very good at languages.” After that he said nothing. His mouth was dry.
“I’m going to ask you again,” said Slonko. “I’m going to ask you patiently and politely. Are you Alexander Barrington, son of Jane and Harold Barrington?”
“I will answer you patiently and politely,” said Alexander patiently and politely. “Though I have been asked this a hundred and fifty times already. I am not.”
“But Major, why would the person who told us this lie? Where would he get this information from? He couldn’t have made it up. He knew details about your life no one could have had any idea about.”
“Where is this person?” Alexander said. “I’d like to see him, I’d like to ask him if he is sure it’s me he is talking about. I for one am certain he made a mistake.”
“No, he is sure you’re Alexander Barrington.”
Alexander raised his voice. “If he is so sure, let him identify me. He is an upstanding comrade, this man you talk about? He is a proper Soviet citizen? He is not a traitor, he has not spat on his country? He served it proudly as I have? He’s been decorated, he never shied away from battle, no matter how one-sided, no matter how hard-won? This man you speak of, he is an example to us all, correct? Let me meet the paragon of new Soviet consciousness. Let him look at me, point his finger and say, “This is Alexander Barrington.” Alexander smiled. “And then we will see.”
Now it was Slonko’s turn to pale. “I came from Leningrad to talk to you like a reasonable man,” he hissed, losing some of that effacing false humility, baring his teeth, narrowing his eyes.
“And I am certainly glad to talk to you,” Alexander said, feeling his own dark eyes darken. “As always I am happy to talk to an earnest Soviet operator, who seeks the truth, who will stop at nothing to find it. And I want to help you. Bring my accuser here. Let’s clear up this matter once and for all.” Alexander stood up and took one half-menacing step in the direction of the desk. “But once we get this cleared up, I want my besmirched name back.”
“Which name would that be, Major?”
“My rightful name. Alexander Belov.”
“Do you know that you look like your mother?” Slonko said suddenly.
“My mother has long died. Of typhus. In Krasnodar. Surely your moles told you that?”
“I’m talking about your real mother. The woman who would suck off any guard to get a shot of vodka.”
Alexander did not flinch. “Interesting. But I don’t think my mother, who was a farmer’s wife, had ever seen a guard.”
Slonko spat and left.
A guard came to stand over Alexander. It was not Corporal Ivanov. All Alexander wanted to do was close his eyes and fall asleep. But every time he closed his eyes, the guard rammed the butt of the rifle under his chin with a call to wake up. Alexander had to learn to sleep with his eyes open.
The bleak sun set and the room became dark. The corporal turned on the bright light, and shined it into Alexander’s face. He became rougher with the rifle. The third time he tried to slam the barrel into Alexander’s throat, Alexander grabbed the barrel, twisted it out of the guard’s hands and turned it on him. Standing over him, he said, “All you have to do is ask me not to fall asleep. No stronger measures are required. Can you do that?”
“Give me my rifle back.”
“Answer me.”
“Yes, I can do that.”
He gave the guard the weapon back. The guard took it, and struck Alexander in the forehead with the butt of the rifle. He flinched, saw black for a moment but made no sound. The guard left the classroom and returned shortly with his replacement, Corporal Ivanov, who said, “Go ahead, Major. Close your eyes. When they come I will yell. You will open your eyes then, yes?”
“Instantly,” Alexander said in a grateful voice, closing his eyes in the most uncomfortable of chairs, which had a short back and no arms. He hoped he wouldn’t fall over.
“That’s what they do, you know,” he heard Ivanov say. “They keep you from sleeping day and night, they don’t feed you, they keep you naked, wet, cold, in darkness at day and in light at night until you break down and say white is black and black is white and sign their fucking paper.”
“Black is white,” Alexander said without opening his eyes.
“Corporal Boris Maikov signed their fucking paper,” said Ivanov. “He was shot yesterday.”
“What about the other one? Ouspensky?”
“He’s back in the infirmary. They realized he had only one lung. They’re waiting for him to die. Why waste a bullet on him?”
Alexander was too exhausted to speak. Ivanov lowered his voice another notch, and said, “Major, I heard Slonko arguing with Mitterand a few hours ago. He said to Mitterand, ‘Don’t worry. I will break him or he will die.’”
Alexander made no reply.
He heard Ivanov’s whispering. “Don’t let them break you, Major.”
Alexander didn’t answer. He was sleeping.
Leningrad, 1935
In Leningrad, the Barringtons found two small rooms next to each other in a communal apartment in a ramshackle nineteenth-century building. Alexander found a new school, unpacked his few books, his clothes, and continued being fifteen. Harold found work as a carpenter in a table-making factory. Jane stayed home and drank. Alexander stayed away from the two rooms they called home. He spent much of his time walking around Leningrad, which he liked better than Moscow. The pastel stucco buildings, the white nights, the river Neva; he found Leningrad historic and romantic with its gardens and palaces and wide boulevards and small rivers and canals criss-crossing the never-sleeping city.
At sixteen, as he was obliged to, Alexander registered for the Red Army as Alexander Barrington. That was his rebellion. He was not changing his name.
In their communal apartment they tried to keep to themselves—having so little for each other and nothing for other people—but a married couple on the second floor of their building, Svetlana and Vladimir Visselsky, made friendly approaches. They lived in one room with Vladimir’s mother, and at first were quite taken with the Barringtons and lightly envious of the two rooms they had for themselves. Vladimir was a road engineer, Svetlana worked at a local library and kept telling Jane there was a job for her there, too. Jane got a job there, but was unable to get up in the mornings to go to work.
Alexander liked Svetlana. In her late thirties, she was well-dressed, attractive, witty. Alexander liked the way she talked to him, almost as if he were an adult. He was restless during the summer of 1935. Emotionally and financially broke, his parents did not rent a dacha. The summer in the city without a way to make new friends did not appeal much to Alexander, who did nothing but walk around Leningrad by day and read by night. He got a library card where Svetlana worked, and often found himself sitting and talking to her. And, very occasionally, reading. Frequently she walked home with him.
His mother brightened a bit under Svetlana’s casual attention but soon went back to drinking in the afternoons.
Alexander spent more and more of his days at the library. When she walked home with him, Svetlana would offer him a cigarette, which he stopped refusing, or some vodka, which he continued to refuse. The vodka he could take or leave. The cigarettes he thought he could take or leave too, but he had gradually begun to look forward to their bitter taste in his mouth. The vodka altered him in ways he did not like, but the cigarettes provided a calming crutch to his adolescent frenzy.
One afternoon they had come home earlier than usual to find his mother in a stupor in her bedroom. They went to his room to sit down for a second, before Svetlana had to go back downstairs. She offered Alexander another cigarette, and as she did so, she moved closer to him on the couch. He studied her for a moment, wondering if he was misreading her intentions, and then she took the cigarette out of her mouth and put it into his, kissing him lightly on the cheek. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t bite.”
So he was not misreading her intentions.
He was sixteen and he was ready.
Her lips moved to his mouth. “Are you afraid?” she said.
“I’m not,” he said, throwing the cigarette and the lighter on the floor. “But you should be.”
They spent two hours together on the couch, and afterward Svetlana moved from the room and down the hall with the shaken walk of someone who had come into the battle thinking it was going to be an easy conquest and was now stumbling away having lost all her weapons.
Stumbling away past Harold, who was coming home from work, and who passed Svetlana in the hall with a nod and a “You don’t want to stay for dinner?”
“There is no dinner,” Svetlana replied weakly. “Your wife is still asleep.”
Alexander closed his own door and smiled.
Harold cooked dinner for himself and Alexander, who spent the rest of the evening holed up in his room pretending to read, but really just waiting for tomorrow.
Tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough.
Another afternoon of Svetlana, and another, and another.
For a month in the summer she and Alexander met in the late afternoons.
He enjoyed Svetlana. She never failed to tell him exactly what he needed to do to bring her pleasure, and he never failed to do exactly as he was told. Everything he learned about patience and perseverance, he learned from her. Combined with his own natural tendency to stay until the job was done, the result was that Svetlana left work earlier and earlier. He was flattered. His summer flew by.
On the weekends when Svetlana came over with her husband to visit the Barringtons, and she and Alexander barely acknowledged their intimacy, he found the sexual tension to be almost an end in itself.
Then Svetlana began to question the evenings he spent out.
Trouble was, now that Alexander had seen what was on the other side of the wall, all he wanted was to be on the other side of the wall, but not just with Svetlana.
He would have gladly continued with her and made time with girls his own age, but one Sunday evening as the five of them were sitting down to a dinner of potatoes and a little herring, Vladimir, Svetlana’s husband said to no one in particular, “My Svetochka, I think, needs to get a second job. The library has apparently reduced her hours to part-time.”
“But then when would she come and visit my wife?” said Harold, spooning another helping of potatoes onto his plate. They were all crowded in Alexander’s parents’ room around the small table.
“You come and visit me?” asked Jane of Svetlana. No one at the table responded for a moment. Then Jane nodded. “Of course you do. Every day. I see you in the afternoon.”
“You girls must have a great time around here,” said Vladimir. “She always comes home full of such good spirits. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was having a raucous affair.” He laughed in the tone of a man who thought the very idea of his wife’s having an affair was so absurd as to be almost delicious.
Svetlana herself threw her head back and laughed. Even Harold chuckled. Only Jane and Alexander sat stonily. For the rest of the dinner Jane said nothing to anyone but got drunker and drunker. Soon she was passed out on the couch while the rest of them cleaned up. The next day, when Alexander came home, he found his mother waiting for him in his room, somber and sober.
“I sent her away,” she said to him as he came in and threw down his bag of library books and jacket on the floor and stood in front of his mother with his arms folded.
“Okay,” he said.
“What are you doing, Alexander?” she asked quietly. He could tell she had been crying.
“I don’t know, Mom. What are you doing?”
“Alexander …”
“What are you concerned about?”
“That I’m not looking after my son,” she replied.
“You’re concerned about that?”
“I don’t want it to be too late,” she said in a small, remorseful voice. “It’s my fault, I know. Lately I haven’t been much of …” She broke off. “But whatever is happening in our family, she can’t come here anymore, not if she wants to keep this from her husband.”
“Like you’re keeping what you do in the afternoons from yours?”
“Like he cares,” retorted Jane.
“Like Vladimir cares,” retorted Alexander.
“Stop it!” she yelled. “What’s the point of this? To wake me up?”
“Mom, I know you will find this hard to believe, but it has nothing to do with you.”
“Alexander,” Jane said bitterly, “indeed I find that very hard to believe. You, the most beautiful boy in all of Russia, you’re telling me you could not have found a young school girl to parry with instead of a woman nearly my age who just happens to be my friend?”
“Who says I haven’t? And would a school girl have gotten you sober?”
“Oh, I see, so this does have something to do with me after all!” She didn’t get up off the couch while Alexander, with his arms crossed, stood in front of her. “Is this what you want to do with your life? Become a toy for bored older women?”
Alexander felt his temper rising. He grit his teeth. His mother was too upsetting for him.
“Answer me!” she said loudly. “Is this what you want?”
“What?” he said, just as loudly. “Does it seem to you as if I’ve got so many more attractive options? Which part do you find so repellent?”
Jane jumped up. “Don’t go forgetting yourself,” she said. “I am still your mother.”
“Then act like my mother!” he yelled.
“I’ve looked after you!”
“And look where it’s gotten all of us—all of us Barringtons making a life for ourselves in Leningrad while you spend half of Dad’s wages on vodka, and still that’s not enough. You’ve sold your jewelry, you’ve sold your books, your silks and your linens for vodka. What’s left, Mom? What else have you got left to sell?”
For the first time in her life, Jane raised her hand and slapped Alexander. He deserved it and knew it, but couldn’t keep himself from saying it.
“Mom, you want to offer me a solution, offer me a solution. You want to tell me what to do—after months of not speaking to me—forget it. I will not listen. You’re going to have to do better.” He paused. “Stop drinking.”
“I’m sober now.”
“Then let’s talk again tomorrow.”
But tomorrow she was drunk.
School started. Alexander busied himself with getting to know a girl named Nadia. One afternoon, Svetlana met him at the school doors. He was laughing with Nadia. Excusing himself, Alexander walked down the block with Svetlana.
“Alexander, I want to talk to you.” They walked to a small park and sat under the autumn trees. “Your mother knows, doesn’t she?”
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Listen … we needed to stop anyway.”
“Stop?” She said the word as if it had never actually occurred to her.
He looked at her with surprise.
“Not stop!” she exclaimed. “Whatever in the world for?”
“Svetlana …”
“Alexander, can’t you see?” she said, trembling and taking hold of his arm. “This is just a test for us.”
He pulled his arm away. “It’s a test I’m meant to fail. I don’t know what you could possibly be thinking. I’m in school. I’m sixteen. You’re a married thirty-nine-year-old woman. How long did you imagine this would go on?”
“When we first started,” she said hoarsely, “I imagined nothing.”
“All right.”
“But now …”
His gaze dropped. “Oh, Sveta …”
She got up off the bench. The throaty cry she emitted hurt Alexander’s lungs—as if he had breathed inside himself her miserable addiction to him. “Of course. I’m ridiculous.” She struggled with her breath. “You’re right. Of course.” She tried to smile. “Maybe one last time?” she whispered. “For old times’ sake? To say goodbye properly?”
Alexander bowed his head by way of replying.
She stumbled a step back from him, composed herself and said as steadily as she could, “Alexander, remember this as you go through your life—you have amazing gifts. Don’t squander them. Don’t give them out meaninglessly, don’t abuse them, don’t take them for granted. You are the weapon you carry with you till the day you die.”
They did not see each other again. Alexander got himself a card at a different library. Vladimir and Svetlana stopped coming over. At first Harold was curious why they no longer visited and then he forgot about them. Alexander knew his father’s inner life was too unsettled to worry about why he no longer saw people he didn’t like very much to begin with.
Fall turned into winter. 1935 turned into 1936. He and his father celebrated New Year’s by themselves. They went to a local beer bar, where his father bought him a glass of vodka and tried to talk to him. The conversation was brief and strained. Harold Barrington—in his own sober, defiant way—was oblivious to his son and his wife. The world his father lived in Alexander did not know, stopped understanding, didn’t want to understand even if he could have. He knew that his father would have liked Alexander to side with him, to understand him, to believe in him, the way he did when he was younger. But Alexander did not know how to do that anymore. The days of idealism had gone. Only life was left.
Giving Up One Room, 1936
Could it get less tolerable?
Shortly.
An undergrown man from Upravdom—the housing committee—arrived at their doorstep one dark January Saturday morning, accompanied by two people with suitcases, and waved about a piece of paper, informing the Barringtons that they were going to have to give up one of their rooms to another family. Harold didn’t have the strength to argue. Jane was too drunk to object. It was Alexander who raised his voice but only briefly. There was no point. There was no one to go to, to correct this.
“You can’t tell me this is unjust,” the smirking Upravdom member said to Alexander. “You have two nice rooms for the three of you. There are two of them, and they have no rooms at all. She is pregnant. Where is your socialist spirit, comrade soon-to-be Comsomol?” The Comsomols were young members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Alexander and Harold moved the cot and his small dresser and his few personal belongings and his bookshelf. Alexander put his cot next to the window, and the dresser and bookshelf between himself and his parents as an angry barrier. When his father wanted to know if he was upset, Alexander barked, “It’s been my dream to share a room with you at sixteen. I know you don’t want any privacy either.” They talked in English, which was more natural and more colloquial, and provided an opportunity to say the word privacy, a word that did not exist in Russian.
The next morning when Jane woke up she wanted to know what Alexander was doing in their room. It was a Sunday.
“I’m here for good,” said Alexander, and went out. He took a train to Peterhof and walked the grounds by himself, sullen and confused. 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. He was filled with a sense of despair.
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.
The End, 1936
Harold stopped bringing vodka into the house.
“Dad, you don’t think Mom will be able to get vodka any other way?”
“With what? She has no money.”
Alexander didn’t mention the thousands of American dollars his mother had been hoarding since the day they came to the Soviet Union.
“Stop talking about me as if I’m not here!” Jane shouted.
They looked at her with surprise. Afterward Jane started stealing money from Harold’s pockets and going to buy the vodka herself. Harold started keeping his money out of the house. Jane was then caught in someone else’s apartment, going through their things, already drunk on some French perfume she had found.
Alexander began to be afraid that the next natural step for his mother would be to drink her way through the money she had brought with them from America. It wouldn’t end until all the money was gone. First the Soviet rubles she had saved from her job in Moscow, then the American dollars. It would take his mother a year to buy vodka with all her dollars on the black market, but buy it she would, gone the money would be, and then what?
Without that money, Alexander was finished.
Alexander had to get his mother sober for long enough to let him hide the money in a place that was not home. He knew that if she found out he had taken it without her knowledge or permission her hysteria would not cease until Harold knew of her treachery. Once Harold knew his wife had mistrusted him from the moment they left the United States, mistrusted him even in her love and her respect, mistrusted him and his motives and his ideals and all the dreams he thought she shared with him from the very start, once he knew that, Alexander felt his father would not recover. And he didn’t want to be responsible for his father’s future, all he wanted was the money to help him be responsible for his own. That’s what his sober mother wanted, too. He knew that. Sober, she would let him hide the money. The trick was to get her sober.
Over the course of one difficult and contemptible weekend Alexander tried to dry out his mother. She, in her convulsing rage, flooded him with such obscenities and vitriol that finally even Harold said, “Oh, for God’s sake, give her a drink and tell her to shut up.”
But Alexander didn’t give her a drink. He sat by her, and he read aloud from Dickens, in English, and he read Pushkin to her, in Russian, and he read her the funniest of Zoshchenko’s anecdotes, and he fed her some soup and he fed her some bread, and gave her coffee, and put cold wet towels on her head, but still she wouldn’t stop ranting. Harold, in a quiet moment, asked Alexander, “What did she mean about you and Svetlana, what was she talking about?”
“Dad, haven’t you learned by now, you have to shut her off? You can’t listen to a word she is saying.”
“No, no, of course not,” muttered Harold thoughtfully, walking away from Alexander, though not far, because there wasn’t anywhere in the narrow room to go.
On Monday, after his father left for work, Alexander cut school and spent all day convincing his morosely, miserably sober mother that her money needed to be put in a safe place. Alexander tried to explain to her, first patiently and quietly, then impatiently and shouting, that if something, God forbid, were to happen to them, and they were arrested—
“You’re talking nonsense, Alexander. Why would they arrest us? We’re their people. We’re not living well, but then we shouldn’t be living any better than the rest of the Russians. We came here to share their fate.”
“We’re doing that gallantly,” said Alexander. “Mom, wise up. What do you think happened to the other foreigners that lived with us in Moscow?” He paused. His mother considered. “Even if I’m wrong, I’m saying it’s not going to hurt us to be a little prudent and hide the money. Now how much money is left?”
After thinking for a few moments, Jane said she did not know. She let Alexander count it. There was ten thousand dollars and four thousand rubles.
“How many dollars did you bring with you from America?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe seventeen thousand. Maybe twenty.”
“Oh, Mom.”
“What? Some of that money went to buy you oranges and milk in Moscow, or did you forget already?”
“I didn’t forget,” Alexander replied in a weary voice. How much for the oranges and milk, he wanted to know. Fifty dollars? A hundred?
Jane, smoking and watching Alexander, narrowed her eyes at him. “If I let you hide the money, will you let me have a drink, as a thank you?”
“Yes. Just one.”
“Of course. One small one is all I want. I feel much better when I’m sober, you know. But just one small drink to get me through the heebie-jeebies would help me stay sober, you know that, don’t you?”
Alexander wanted to ask his mother just how naïve she thought he was. He said nothing.
“All right,” said Jane. “Let’s get it over with. Where are you planning to hide it?”
Alexander suggested gluing the money into the back binding of a book, producing one of his mother’s good, thick-covered hardbacks to show exactly what he meant.
“If your father finds out, he will never forgive you.”
“He can add it to the list of things he won’t forgive me for. Go on, Mom. I have to get to school. After the book is ready, I’m putting it in the library.”
Jane stared at the book Alexander was proposing. It was her ancient copy of Pushkin’s The Bronze Horseman and Other Poems. “Why don’t we glue it inside the Bible we brought from home?”
“Because finding a Pushkin book in the Pushkin section of the Leningrad library is not going to alert anyone. But finding a Bible in English anywhere in the Russian library just might.” He smiled. “Don’t you think?”
Jane almost smiled back. “Alexander, I’m sorry I haven’t been well.”
He lowered his head.
“I don’t want to talk to your father about this anymore because he no longer has any patience for me, but I’m having trouble with our life.”
“We know,” Alexander said. “We’ve noticed.”
She put her arms around him. He patted her on the back. “Shh,” he said. “It’s all right.”
“This money, Alexander,” she said, looking up at him, “you think it will help you somehow?”
“I don’t know. Having it is better than not having it.”
He took the book with him, and after school went to the Leningrad public library and in the back, in the three-aisle-wide Pushkin section, found a place on a bottom shelf for his book. He put it between two scholarly-looking tomes that had not been checked out since 1927. He thought it was a good bet no one would check out his book, either. But still, it didn’t feel completely safe. He wished there were a better hiding place for it.
When Alexander came home later that evening, his mother was drunk again, showing none of the remorseful affection he had seen in her eyes earlier in the day. He ate dinner quietly with his father, while listening to the radio.
“School good?”
“Yes. It’s fine, Dad.”
“You have good friends?”
“Sure.”
“Any good friends who are girls?” His father was trying to make conversation.
“Some friends who are girls, yes.”
His father cleared his throat. “Nice Russian girls?”
Smiling, Alexander asked, “Compared with what?”
Harold smiled. “Do the nice Russian girls,” he asked carefully, “like my boy?”
Alexander shrugged. “They like me all right.”
Harold said, “I remember you and Teddy hung out with that girl, what was her name again?”
“Belinda.”
“Yes! Belinda. She was nice.”
“Dad.” Alexander laughed. “We were eight. Yes, she was nice for an eight-year-old.”
“Oh, but what a crush on you she had!”
“And what a crush on her Teddy had.”
“That about sums up all the relationships on God’s earth.”
They went out for a drink. “I miss our home in Barrington a little,” Harold admitted to Alexander. “But it’s only because I have not lived a different way long enough. Long enough to change my consciousness and make me into the person I’m supposed to be.”
“You have lived this way long enough. That’s why you miss Barrington.”
“No. You know what I think, son? I think it’s not working so well here, because it’s Russia. I think communism would work much better in America.” He smiled beseechingly at Alexander. “Don’t you agree?”
“Oh, Dad, for God’s sake.”
Harold didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Never mind. I’m going over to Leo’s for a little while. You want to come?”
The choice was, either go back home to the room with his unconscious mother or sit in a smoked-out room with his father’s communist cronies regurgitating obscure parts of Das Kapital and talking about bringing the war back home.
Alexander wanted to be with his father but alone. He went home to his mother. He wanted to be alone with somebody.
The next morning, as Harold and Alexander were getting ready for their day, Jane, still inebriated from the night before, held on to Alexander’s hand for a moment and said, “Stay behind, son, I have to talk to you.”
After Harold left, Jane said in a hurried voice, “Collect your things. Where is that book? You have to run and get it.”
“What for?”
“You and I are going to Moscow.”
“Moscow?”
“Yes. We’ll get there by nightfall. Tomorrow first thing in the morning I’ll take you to the consulate.” They’ll keep you there until they contact the State Department in Washington. And then they’ll send you home.”
“What?”
“Alexander, yes. I’ll take care of your father.”
“You can’t take care of yourself.”
“Don’t worry about me,” said Jane. “My fate is sealed. But yours is wide open. Concern yourself only with you. Your father goes to his meetings. He thinks by playing with the grown-ups he won’t be punished. But they have his number. They have mine. But you, Alexander, you have no number. I have to get you out.”
“I’m not going without you or Dad.”
“Of course you are. Your father and I will never be allowed to return. But you will do very well back home. I know it’s hard in America these days, there aren’t many jobs, but you’ll be free, you’ll have your life, so come and stop arguing. I’m your mother. I know what I’m doing.”
“Mom, you’re taking me to Moscow to surrender me to the Americans?”
“Yes. Your Aunt Esther will look after you until you graduate secondary school. The State Department will arrange for her to meet your ship in Boston. You’re still only sixteen, Alexander, the consulate won’t turn you away.”
Alexander had been very close to his father’s sister once. She adored him, but she had an ugly fight with Harold over Alexander’s dubious future in the Soviet Union, and they had not spoken or written since.
“Mom, two things,” he said. When I turned sixteen, I registered for the Red Army. Remember? Mandatory conscription. I became a Soviet citizen when I joined. I have a passport to prove that.”
“The consulate doesn’t have to know that.”
“It’s their business to know it. But the second thing is …” Alexander broke off. “I can’t go without saying goodbye to my father.”
“Write him a letter.”
The train ride was long. He had twelve hours to sit and think. How his mother managed those hours without a drink, he didn’t know. Her hands were shaking badly by the time they arrived at the Leningrad Station in Moscow. It was night; they were tired and hungry. They had no place to sleep. They had no food. It was a fairly mild late April, and they slept on a bench in Gorky Park. Alexander had strong bittersweet memories of himself and his friends playing ice hockey in Gorky Park.
“I need a drink, Alexander,” Jane whispered. “I need a drink to take an edge off my life. Stay here, I’ll be right back.”
“Mother,” said Alexander, putting his steady hand on her to keep her from getting up. “If you leave, I will go straight to the station and take the next train back to Leningrad.”
Deeply sighing, Jane moved closer to Alexander and motioned to her lap. “Lie down, son. Get some sleep. We have a long day tomorrow.”
Alexander put his head on his mother’s shoulder and eventually slept.
The next morning they had to wait an hour at the consulate gate until someone came to see them—only to tell them they could not come in. Jane gave her name and a letter explaining about her son. They waited restlessly for another two hours until the sentry called them over and said the consul was unable to help them. Jane pleaded to be let in for just five minutes. The sentry shook his head and said there was nothing he could do. Alexander had to restrain his mother. Eventually he led her away and returned by himself to speak to the guard. The man apologized. “I’m sorry,” he said in English. “They did look into it, if you want to know. But the file on your mother and father has been sent back to the State Department in Washington.” The man paused. “Yours, too. Since you’re Soviet citizens, you’re not under our jurisdiction anymore. There is nothing they can do.”
“What about political asylum?”
“On what grounds? Besides, you know how many Soviets come this way asking for asylum? Dozens every day. On Mondays, near a hundred. We’re here by invitation from the Soviet government. We want to maintain our ties to the Soviet community. If we started accepting their people, how long do you think they’d allow us to stay here? You’d be the last one. Just last week, we relented and let a widowed Russian father with two small children pass. The father had relatives in the United States and said he would find work. He had a useful skill, he was an electrician. But there was a diplomatic scandal. We had to give him back.” The sentry paused. “You’re not an electrician, are you?”
“No,” replied Alexander. “But I am an American citizen.”
The sentry shook his head. “You know you can’t serve two masters in the military.”
Alexander knew. He tried again. “I have relatives in America. I will live with them. And I can work. I’ll drive a cab. I will sell produce on the street corner. I will farm. I will cut down trees. Whatever I can do, I will do.”
The sentry lowered his voice. “It’s not you. It’s your father and mother. They’re just too high profile for the consulate to get involved. Made too much of a fuss when they came here. Wanted everyone to know them. Well, now everyone knows them. Your parents should have thought twice about relinquishing their U.S. citizenship. What was the hurry? They should have been sure first.”
“My father was sure,” said Alexander.
The trip back from Moscow was only as long as the trip to Moscow; why did it seem decades longer? His mother was mute. The countryside was flat bleak fields; there was still no food.
Jane cleared her throat. “I desperately wanted to have a baby. It took me ten years and four miscarriages to have you. The year you were born the worldwide flu epidemic tore through Boston, killing thousands of people, including my sister, your father’s parents and brother, and many of our close friends. Everybody we knew lost someone. I went to the doctor for a check-up because I was feeling under the weather and was terrified it might be the dreaded flu. He told me I was pregnant. I said, how can it be, we’ll fall sick, we’ve given up our family inheritance, we are broke, where are we going to live, how will we stay healthy, and the doctor looked at me and said, “The baby brings his own food.”
She took Alexander’s hand. He let her.
“You, son—you brought your own food. Harold and I both felt it. When you were born, Alexander—when you were born, it was late at night, and you came so suddenly, I didn’t even have time to go to the hospital. The doctor came, delivered you in our bed, and said that you seemed in a great hurry to get on with living. You were the biggest baby he had ever seen, and I still remember, after we told him we were naming you Anthony Alexander after your great grandfather, he lifted you, all purple and black-haired, and exclaimed, “Alexander the great!” Because you were so big, you see.” She paused. “You were such a beautiful boy,” she whispered.
Alexander took his hand away and turned to the window.
“Our hopes for you were extraordinary. I wish you could imagine the kinds of things we dreamed for you as we strolled down the Boston Pier with you in the carriage and all the old ladies stopping to gaze at the baby with hair so black and eyes so shining.”
The flat fields were rushing by.
“Ask your father—ask him—when next you can, if his dreams for you ever included this for his only son.”
“I just didn’t bring enough food, did I, Mom?” said Alexander, with hair so black and eyes so shining.
CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_eda98527-e731-5880-b70b-1824314f53fc)
The Ghosts of Ellis Island, 1943
THERE WAS SOMETHING UNDENIABLY comforting about living and working at Ellis. Tatiana’s world was so small, so insular, and so full that there was little left of her to imagine a different life, to move forward in her imagination to New York, to the real America, or backward in her memory, to Leningrad, to the real Alexander. So long as she stayed at Ellis with her infant son, lived with him in a small stone room with the large white window, slept in her single bed on her white linen, wore her one set of white clothes and sensible shoes, so long as she lived in that room with Anthony and her black backpack, she didn’t have to imagine an impossible life in America without Alexander.
Desperately trying to get away from that black backpack, she frequently longed for the noise of her family, for the chaos and the arguing, for the music of loud vodka drinkers, for the smell of incessant cigarette smokers. She wished for her impossible brother, for her sister, for her bedraggled mother, her gruff father and for her grandmother and grandfather—revered by her. She ached for them the way she used to ache for bread during the blockade. She wished for them to walk loudly down the Ellis halls with her as they did now every day, silent ghosts by her side, helpless before his screaming ghost also by her side.
During the day she carried her boy and bandaged and fed the wounded, leaving her own festering wounds until night-time when she licked them and nursed them, and remembered the pines and the fish and the river and the axe and the woods and the fire and the blueberries and the smell of cigarette smoke and the loud laughter coming from one male throat.
It was impossible to walk the stripped bare corridors of Ellis Island Three without hearing the millions of footsteps that had walked there on the black-and-white checkered floor before Tatiana. When she ventured across the short bridge to the Great Hall on Ellis Island One, the sense grew. Because unlike Ellis Three, where present life was continuing, Ellis One was deserted. All that remained in the gothic building, on the stairs, the corridors, the gray dusty rooms was the spirit of the past—of those who came before, since 1894, those who came by shiploads, seven times a day, who docked across the water at Castle Garden or who came off the planks here, right into Immigration Hall, and then trudged upstairs into the Great Registry Room clutching their bags and children, adjusting their head coverings, having left behind everything in the Old World: mothers and fathers, husbands, brothers and sisters, having either promised to send for them or having promised nothing. Five thousand a day, eighty thousand a month, eight million one year, twenty million from 1892 to 1924, without visas, without papers, without money, but with the clothes they wore and whatever useful skills they had—as carpenters, seamstresses, cooks, metalworkers, bricklayers, salesmen.
Mama would have done well here, sewing. And Papa would have fixed their water pipes, and Pasha would have fished. And Dasha would have looked after Alexander’s boy while I worked. Ironic and sad as that would have been, she would have done it.
They came with their children, for no one left the children behind—it was for the children they had come, wanting to give them the halls of America, the streets, the seasons, the New York of America. New York, right across the water, so close yet impossibly far for those who had to be cleared through immigration and medical examinations before they could step on the shores of Manhattan Island. Many had been sick like Tatiana, and worse. The combination of contagious illness, no language skills, and no work skills occasionally made the doctors and the INS officers turn the immigrants away—not a lot, handfuls a day. Older parents and their grown children could be split up. Husbands and wives could be split up.
Like I was split up. Like I am split up.
The threat of failure, the fear of return, the longing to be admitted was so strong that it remained in the walls and the floors, permeating the stone between the cracked glass windows, and all the yearning hope echoed off the walls of Ellis and into Tatiana as she walked the herringbone tile corridors with Anthony in her arms.
After the clampdown in 1924, Ellis Island stopped being the nucleus for nearly all immigration into the United States. Nonetheless, ships with immigrants arrived each day, then each week, then each month. Processing at Ellis dwindled from millions a year to thousands, to hundreds. Most people came to Port of New York with visas already in hand. Without visas, the immigrants could now be legally turned away and often were, and so fewer and fewer people risked making a life-changing, life-threatening journey only to be turned back at the port of call. But still, 748 people smuggled themselves in between crates of tomatoes in the year before the war, without papers, without money.
They were not turned away.
Just as talk was beginning to swell about closing down the largely unneeded Ellis Island, World War II broke out, and suddenly in 1939, 1940, 1941, Ellis became useful as a hospital for refugees and stowaways. Once America entered the war, it would bring the wounded and captured Germans and Italians from the Atlantic and detain them at Ellis.
That’s when Tatiana arrived.
And she felt needed. No one wanted to work at Ellis, not even Vikki, who instinctively felt that her natural and prodigious flirting skills were utterly wasted on the foreign wounded men who would be going back to their home country or to work on U.S. farms as field-hands. Vikki grudgingly pulled her duty at Ellis but she much preferred the NYU hospital, where the wounded, if they did not die first, had a hope of pleasing Vikki—the medium-term gal—in the medium-term.
Quietly the German wounded continued to be brought to Ellis Island, and continued to convalesce. The Italian men, too, who talked even as they were dying, talked in a language Tatiana did not understand; yet they spoke with a cadence, with a fervor and a fury that she did understand. They had hearty laughs and throaty cries and clutching fingers with which they would grab onto her as they were carried off the boats, as they stared into her face and muttered hopes for life, chances for survival, words of thanks. And sometimes before they died, if holding her hands wasn’t enough, and if they had nothing contagious or infectious, she brought them her boy and placed him on their chests, so that their war-beaten hands could go around his small sleeping form and they would be comforted, and their hearts would beat at peace.
She wished she could have brought Alexander his sleeping son.
Something about Ellis Island’s contained, confined nature soothed her. She could stay in her whitewashed, clean-linen room with Anthony, and she could eat three meals at the cafeteria, saving her meat rations and her butter rations. She could nurse her son, pleased by the heft of him, by the size of him, by the health and shine of him.
Edward and Vikki, one late summer afternoon, sat her down in the cafeteria, put a cup of coffee in front of her and tried to convince her to move to New York. They told her New York was booming during war, there were night clubs, there were parties, there were clothes and shoes to buy and perhaps she could rent a small apartment with a kitchen and perhaps she could have her own room, and Anthony could have another, and perhaps perhaps perhaps.
Thousands of miles away there was war. Thousands of miles away there was the River Kama, the Ural Mountains which had watched it all, seen it all, known it all. And the galaxies. They knew. They bent their midnight rays to shine through Tatiana’s window at Ellis Island, and they whispered to her, keep going. Let us weep. You live.
The echoes spoke to Tatiana, the corridors felt familiar, the white sheets, the salty smell, the back of the robes of Lady Liberty, the night air, the twinkling lights across the bay of a city of dreams. Tatiana already lived on an island of dreams, and what she needed, New York could not give her.
The fire has gone out. The clearing is dark, but on the cold blanket they remain. Alexander sits with his legs open and Tania sits between them, her back to his chest. His arms swaddle her. They are both looking up at the sky. They are mute.
“Tania,” Alexander whispers, kissing her head, “do you see the stars?”
“Of course.”
“You want to make love right here? We’ll throw the blanket off and make love and let them see us—so they will never forget.”
“Shura …” Her voice is soft and sad. “They’ve seen us. They know. Look, can you see that constellation up to the right? You see how the cluster stars at the bottom form a smile? They’re smiling at us.” She pauses. “I’ve seen them many times, looking beyond your head.”
“Yes,” Alexander says, wrapping his arms and the blanket tighter around her. “I think that constellation is in the galaxy of Perseus, the Greek hero—”
“I know who Perseus is.” She nods. “When I was a little girl, I lived inside the Greek myths.” She presses against him. “I like that Perseus is smiling at us while you make love to me.”
“Did you know that the stars in Perseus that are yellow might be close to imploding, but the stars that are blue, the biggest, the brightest—”
“And they are called novas.”
“Yes, they shine, gain in brilliance, explode, then fade. Look how many blue stars there are around the smile, Tatia.”
“I see.”
“Do you hear the stellar winds?”
“I hear rustling.”
“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 Perseus 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 wipes her face on Alexander’s arm and says, “You won’t have to call me back, soldier. I’m not ever leaving here.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#ulink_7dd413c3-a99f-5d70-a825-5e418bb7259e)
Baseball in Central Park, 1943
JULY HAD GONE BY, and August, too, and September. Seven months since she left the Soviet Union. Tatiana stayed at Ellis, not venturing once across the harbor, until finally Edward and Vikki had had enough of her, and they took her and Anthony—nearly by force—in the ferry one Saturday afternoon to see New York. Against Tatiana’s objections (“Vikki, I don’t have carriage to put Anthony.”) Vikki bought a carriage for four dollars at a second-hand shop. “It’s not for you. It’s for the baby. You can’t refuse a present for your baby.”
Tatiana didn’t refuse. She often wished her boy could have a few more clothes, a few more toys. A carriage perhaps for the walks around Ellis. In the same shop Tatiana bought Anthony two rattles and a teddy bear, though he preferred the paper bags they came in.
“Edward, what’s your wife going to say when she finds out you’re out with not one but two of your nurses, gallivanting around gay New York?” asked Vikki with a grin.
“She will scratch out the eyes of the wench who told her.”
“My mouth is shut. What about you, Tania?”
“I’m not speak English,” said Tatiana, and they laughed.
“I can’t believe this girl has never once been to New York. Tania, how do you keep from going to the Immigration Department? Don’t you need to speak to them every few weeks so they can see how you’re doing?”
Looking at Edward gratefully, Tatiana said, “Justice Department come to me.”
“But three months! Didn’t you want to go to New York and see for yourself what all the fuss is about?”
“I busy working.”
“Busy nursing,” punned Vikki, and laughed at herself. “He is a nice boy. He is not going to fit into the carriage soon. I think he is extra big for his age. All that milk.” She glanced at Tatiana’s abundant chest and coughed loudly.
“I do not know,” said Tatiana, looking at Anthony with swelling pride. “I do not know boys his age.”
“Trust me, he is gigantic. When are you going to come for dinner? How about tomorrow? I don’t want to hear it from Grammy about my divorce anymore. It’s official, you know. I’m divorced. And my grandmother every Sunday dinner says to me that no man shall ever want me again, a tainted divorced woman.” Vikki rolled her eyes.
“Vikki, but why do you have to prove her so wrong?” said Edward. Tatiana stifled a laugh.
“I have eyes but for one man. Chris Pandolfi.”
Tatiana snorted. Edward smiled. “Our Tania doesn’t much like Chris, do you, Tania?”
“Why?” asked Vikki.
“Because he calls me Nurse Buttercup. I think he make fun of me. What is this buttercup?”
Shaking his head and smiling, Edward placed his arm on Tatiana’s back and said, “Happy yellow flower,” but Vikki was already talking about how Chris was going to take her to Cape Cod for Thanksgiving weekend, and how she had found the most exquisite chiffon dress to go dancing in next Saturday.
The market in front of Battery Park was teeming with people.
Tatiana, Vikki, and Edward pushed a sleeping Anthony past the market, through Church Street and then turned down Wall Street and crossed downtown to go to South Street, through the Fulton Fish Market and then up to Chinatown and Little Italy. Edward and Vikki were exhausted. Tatiana walked on, mesmerized by the tall buildings, by the swarming crowds, everyone shouting, cheerful, hot, by the street vendors selling candlesticks, candles, old books, apples, by the musicians on street corners, playing harmonica and accordion. She walked as if her feet did not belong to her and did not touch the hard pavement. She was amazed at the potatoes and peas and cabbages spilling out of bushels onto the sidewalks, by the peaches and apples and grapes, by the horse-drawn carriages selling cottons and linens, by the cabs and cars, thousands of them, millions of them, by the double-decker buses, by the constant clang of the el on Third Avenue, on Second Avenue, amazed, open-mouthed by it all.
They stopped at a coffee house on Mulberry Street, and Vikki and Edward sank into the sidewalk chairs. Tatiana remained standing, her hand on the carriage. She was looking at the bride and groom descending the church steps into the courtyard across the street. There were many people around them. They looked happy.
“You know she’s a tiny girl and looks deceptively as if she will fall down any second, but look at her, Edward. She’s not even out of breath,” said Vikki.
“I, however, have lost several pounds. I have not walked this much since my days in the army,” said Edward.
Ah, so Edward was a military man. “Edward, you walk this much through hospital beds every day,” Tatiana said, not turning away from the couple at the church. “But your New York, it is something.”
“How does it compare to the Soviet Union?” asked Vikki.
“Favorably,” Tatiana replied.
“Someday, you’ll have to tell me about it,” said Vikki. “Oh, look, peaches! Let’s go buy some.”
“New York is always like this?” said Tatiana, trying not to sound wide-eyed.
“Oh, no. It’s only like this because of the war. Usually it’s very lively.”
Two Sundays later, Tatiana went with Anthony and Vikki to Central Park to watch Edward play softball against the health officials at PHD, including Chris Pandolfi. Edward’s wife did not come. He said she was resting.
Tatiana smiled at the passers-by and at the fruit stand sellers. The birds were joyous overhead and life bustled forward in freshwater color spurts, and she bowed her head and held her son with one hand and the peaches in the other, and said, yes, these are ripe and smell sweet. She was contemplating taking a ride with Vikki and Edward up to Bear Mountain one Sunday, when Edward had a few gallons of rationed gasoline and his wife was home resting and the leaves were changing. But this Sunday Tatiana was in Central Park, in New York, in the United States of America, holding Anthony while the sun was bright and Edward played softball, and Vikki jumped up and down at every hit and every catch, and Tatiana was not dreaming.
But where is Anthony’s mom? What’s happened to her? Tatiana wanted that girl back, the girl before June 22, 1941, the girl who sat on the bench in her French-made, Polish-bought white dress with red roses and ate ice cream on the day war started for Russia. The girl who swam with her brother, Pasha, who read away her summer days, the girl with everything in front of her. With the Red Army first lieutenant in his Sunday best Class As standing across the sunlit street in front of her. She could have not bought the ice cream, she could have gotten on the earlier bus and hurtled across town in a different direction toward a different life. Except she had to have bought the ice cream. That was who she was. And because of that ice cream now she was here.
Now, wartime New York with its bustling fervor and Vikki with her brightest laugh and Anthony with his fiercest cry, and Edward with his gentle good humor were all trying to bring that girl back. Everything that had been in front of Tatiana was behind her now. The very worst and the very best, too. She lifted her freckled face at a loud and jumping Vikki on the baseline and smiled and went to the drink stand to buy some Coca Cola for her friends. Tatiana’s long blonde hair was in a long braid, as always. She was wearing a simple blue sundress that was too big for her, too long and too wide.
Edward caught up with her and asked if he could carry Anthony for a bit. Tatiana nodded. She bent her head low so she wouldn’t see Edward carrying Alexander’s boy, so the ancient ruins would stay in Rome where they belonged, far away from an afternoon in Sheep Meadow with Vikki and Edward.
He bought the Cokes, water and some strawberries, and the three of them slowly walked back to her blanket on the grass. Tatiana didn’t speak.
“Tania,” said Edward. “Look at how he’s smiling.” He laughed. “The infant smile, nothing quite like it, is there?”
“Hmm,” said Tatiana, not looking. She knew Anthony’s toothless ear-to-ear smile. She’d seen it in action in the infirmary at Ellis. The German and Italian soldiers worshipped Anthony.
“I bought something nice for you and him. You think it’s too early for him to eat strawberries?”
“I do, yes.”
“But look—aren’t they nice? I bought too many. Have some. Maybe you can cook them up or something.”
“I can,” Tatiana said quietly, taking a long drink of water. “I can make jam, I can make jelly, I can preserve them whole in sugar, I can make pie out of them, and crumble, I can cook them and freeze them for winter. I am queen of preserving fruit.”
“Tania—how many ways are there of cooking blueberries?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I’m already surprised. What are you making me now?”
“Blueberry jam.”
“I like the skim off them.”
“Come here and have some.”
She brings the spoon to his mouth and lets him taste. He licks his lips. “I love that.”
“Hmm.” She sees the look in his eyes. “Shura, no. I have to finish this. It needs to be stirred constantly. This is for the old women for the winter.”
“Tania …”
“Shura …”
His arms go around her. “Did I mention that I’m sick to death of blueberries?”
“You’re impossible.”
CHAPTER TWELVE (#ulink_c2dceecd-eee1-52aa-a9c5-a803121b8550)
Conversations with Slonko, 1943
“MAJOR!”
Instantly, Alexander opened his eyes. He was still in the interrogation classroom, still in the wooden chair, still guarded by Ivanov. In walked Slonko with grim strides.
“Well, Major, it looks like you’re going to have to stop playing games.”
“That’ll be fine,” said Alexander. “I’m not in a playing mood.”
“Major!”
“Why is everyone shouting?” Alexander rubbed his head. His skull was cracking.
“Major, do you know a woman by the name of Tatiana Metanova?”
It was harder for Alexander to stay composed. He kept still through willpower. If I can live through this, he thought, I can live through anything. If I can live through this, I will live through anything. He wasn’t sure whether to lie, whether to tell the truth. Slonko was obviously planning something.
“Yes,” said Alexander.
“And who would she be?”
“She was one of the nurses at Morozovo hospital.”
“Was?”
“Well, I’m not there anymore, am I?” Alexander said mildly.
“Turns out she is not there either.”
That was not a question. Alexander said nothing.
“She is more than just a nurse, though, isn’t she, Major?” said Slonko, producing Alexander’s domestic passport out of his pocket. “Why, right in here, it says that she is your wife.”
“Yes,” Alexander said. His whole life in one line. He steadied himself. He knew Slonko was not done by a long shot. He needed to be ready.
“Ah. And where is she at the moment?”
“I would have to be omniscient to know that,” Alexander said.
“She is with us,” said Slonko, bending forward. “We have her in our custody.” He laughed with satisfaction. “What do you think of that, Major?”
“What do I think of that?” said Alexander, not taking his gaze away from Slonko. He folded his arms around his chest and waited. “Could I have a smoke?” he asked, and was brought one. He lit it with steady hands. Before anyone spoke again, Alexander decided Slonko was bluffing. He decided to believe Slonko was bluffing. Just yesterday, was it, Stepanov had told Alexander that Tatiana was missing and no one could find her. Stepanov said Mekhlis’s men were all in a panic. Yet there was nothing about that from Slonko in their previous two conversations. Nothing at all, as if the matter were unknown to him. Suddenly now, he had pulled Tatiana out of his hat with the proud air of a peacock. He was bluffing. Had they caught her, Alexander would have been asked about her sooner. Slonko would have certainly brought up that they were looking for her and could not find her. But there had been not a word from him about Dimitri, not a word about Sayers, and not a word about Tatiana.
Still, he was alone, and Slonko was with three guards. There was bright light shining directly into Alexander’s face, there was the feeling of weakness all over his body, of no sleep, of mental exhaustion, of an aching wound in his back, and there was his weighted-down heart. He said nothing, but the effort cost him considerable resources. How many resources did he have left? In 1936 when he was arrested he had all his resources and he had not been wounded. Why couldn’t he have met Slonko then? Alexander grit his teeth and waited for the rest.
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Paullina Simons
A powerful story of grief, hope and an epic love, from the Russian-born author of internationally bestselling novels, TULLY and ROAD TO PARADISE.The world at war … two people in love.Tatiana is eighteen years old and pregnant when she miraculously escapes war-torn Leningrad to the West, believing herself to be a widow. Her husband, Major Alexander Belov, a decorated hero of the Soviet Union, has been arrested by Stalin's infamous secret police and is awaiting imminent death as a traitor and a spy.Tatiana begins her new life in America. In wartime New York City she finds work, friends and a life beyond her dreams. However, her grief is inescapable and she keeps hearing Alexander calling out to her.Meanwhile, Alexander faces the greatest danger he's ever known. An American trapped in Russia since adolescence, he has been serving in the Red Army and posing as a Soviet citizen to protect himself. For him, Russia's war is not over, and both victory and defeat will mean certain death.As the Second World War moves into its spectacular close, Tatiana and Alexander are surrounded by the ghosts of their past and each other. They must struggle against destiny and despair as they find themselves in the fight of their lives. A master of the historical epic, Paullina Simons takes us on a journey across continents, time, and the entire breadth of human emotion, to create a heartrendingly beautiful love story that will live on long after the final page is turned.
PAULLINA SIMONS
TATIANA AND ALEXANDER
Map (#ulink_6b4ff8c6-fabe-5b69-b2fe-749a42f8652e)
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_4d6b476d-033f-595e-90e5-9cdb87c3a45f)
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Flamingo an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2003 and also under the title The Bridge to Holy Cross
Copyright © Paullina Simons 2003
Paullina Simons asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780007118892
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2015 ISBN: 9780007370078
Version: 2015-03-09
DEDICATION (#ulink_7e131164-b1f9-58b8-9132-f0914f3cdad6)
Once again for my grandfather and grandmother, ninety-eight and ninety-four, who still plant cucumbers and grow flowers and live happily ever after,
and
for our good friend Anatoly Studenkov, still as ever left behind in Russia, who does not.
EPIGRAPH (#ulink_76181885-141d-5d1b-9d2b-17e5b7aa121f)
And in the moonlight’s pallid glamour
Rides high upon the charging brute
Head held high ’mid echoing clamour
The Bronze Horseman in pursuit.
And all through that long night no matter
What road the frantic wretch might take
There would pound with ponderous clatter
The Bronze Horseman in his wake.
—Aleksandr Pushkin
CONTENTS
Cover (#u3dc751e8-cf12-5c34-a019-68320211f74c)
Title Page (#u81a3a252-3eeb-5084-ab64-e9c3139e6129)
Map (#ulink_a7431a1d-e2f1-581a-b9fb-f447afc6263d)
Copyright (#ulink_137bb4d4-c236-5e16-8da1-4df524178e6e)
Dedication (#ulink_fd46c1f8-427a-5cc4-a881-db5817f673b6)
Epigraph (#ulink_89b3c810-ff0a-5aad-be7b-04af4b10d334)
Prologue (#ulink_297552ea-d686-58c4-8998-0d55273bd502)
BOOK ONE (#ulink_11e39969-7314-5d0e-b35c-63d5a3368236)
The Second America (#ulink_11e39969-7314-5d0e-b35c-63d5a3368236)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_39919f68-8ba3-554c-acf0-c544a7eb2540)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_4a322686-0c39-50d9-8970-26373b06ff2a)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_a6dc0832-dacf-51b2-87ed-9bf9c8e6662a)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_6c81e66e-fd4d-5910-bb36-f7a155bb1340)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_2c2ea2ff-61bf-5857-acf3-c3ad0387b4b5)
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_5c984cc2-cd69-5c7a-b7f2-54fc6cc21a4f)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_0ee30843-2100-557e-aa24-81554ea3b84d)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_5b22db61-177a-5b8c-8775-3413e7d8db68)
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_0065a426-e67e-5295-bbce-9232cb259825)
CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_8384277e-545e-56e0-b33d-b15e636812fc)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#ulink_d47756cb-341a-5186-95df-222df57477b7)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#ulink_3f817443-7d59-5bdf-8487-5be4b41ceb7f)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
BOOK TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
The Bridge to Holy Cross (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
BOOK THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
Alexander (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_c76c7b27-3b4d-5a1a-9985-531fbcf7eb16)
Boston, December 1930
ALEXANDER BARRINGTON STOOD IN front of the mirror and adjusted his red Cub Scout tie. Rather, he was attempting to adjust his Cub Scout tie, because he couldn’t take his eyes off his face, a face uncharacteristically glum. His mouth was turned down. His hands were fidgeting with the gray-and-white tie, unable to do a good job, today of all days.
Stepping away from the mirror, he looked around the small room and sighed. It wasn’t much, a wood floor, drab brown-branch wallpaper, a bed, a nightstand.
It didn’t matter about the room. It wasn’t his room. It was a rented room, a furnished rented room and all the furniture belonged to the landlady downstairs. His real room was not in Boston but back in Barrington, and he had really liked his old room and hadn’t felt the same way about any other room he had lived in since. And he had lived in six different rooms since two years ago when his father sold their house and took Alexander out of Barrington.
Now they were leaving this room, too. It didn’t matter.
Rather, that’s not what mattered.
Alexander looked in the mirror again. He came up flush to the mirror, stuck his face against the glass and breathed out deeply. “Alexander,” he whispered. “What now?”
His best friend Teddy thought it was the most exciting thing in the world, Alexander’s leaving the country.
Alexander couldn’t have disagreed more.
Through his partly open door, he heard his mother and father arguing. He ignored them. They tended to argue through stress. Presently the door opened and his father, Harold Barrington, came in.
“Son, are you ready? The car is waiting for us downstairs. And your friends are downstairs, too, waiting to say goodbye. Teddy asked me if I would take him instead of you.” Harold smiled. “I told him I just might. What do you think, Alexander? You want to trade places with Teddy? Live with his crazy mother and crazier father?”
“Yes, because my own parents are so sane,” said Alexander. Harold was thin and of medium height. His one distinguishing feature was a resolutely set chin on a broad, square-jawed face. At the age of forty-eight his light-brown, graying hair was still thick upon his head, and his eyes were intense and blue. Alexander liked it when his father was in a good mood because then the eyes lost some of their seriousness.
Pushing Harold out of the way, his mother, Jane Barrington, strolled in, wearing her best silk dress and white pillbox hat, and said, “Harry, leave the boy alone. You can see he’s trying to get ready. The car will wait. And so will Teddy and Belinda.” She smoothed out her thick, long dark hair arranged under the hat. Jane’s voice still carried traces of the lilting rounded Italian accent that she had not been able to lose since coming to America at seventeen. She lowered her voice. “I never liked that Belinda, you know.”
“I know, Mom,” said Alexander. “That’s why we’re leaving the country, isn’t it?” He watched them in the mirror. He looked most like his mother. In personality he hoped he was more like his father. He didn’t know. His mother amused him, his father confounded him. “I’m ready, Dad,” he said.
Harold came over and put his arm on Alexander’s shoulder. “And you thought Cub Scouts was an adventure.”
Cub Scouts was plenty for me. “Dad?” he asked, looking not at his father but at his own reflection. “If it doesn’t work out … we can come back, right? We can come back to—” He stopped. He didn’t want his father to hear his voice crack. Taking a steadying breath, he finished, “To America?”
When Harold didn’t reply, Jane came up to Alexander, who now stood between his parents, his mother in small heels three inches taller than his father, who was a good foot and a half taller than Alexander. “Tell the boy the truth, Harold. He deserves to know. Tell him. He is old enough.”
Harold said, “No, Alexander. We are not coming back. We are going to make the Soviet Union our permanent home. There is no place for us in America.”
Alexander wanted to say that there had been a place for him. Alexander had a place in America. Teddy and Belinda had been his friends since they were all three. Barrington was a tiny, white-shingled, black-shuttered town with three steepled churches and a short main street that ran four blocks from one end of town to the other. In the woods near Barrington, Alexander had had a happy childhood. But he knew his father didn’t want to hear it, so he said nothing.
“Alexander, your mother and I, we are absolutely sure this is the right thing for our family. For the first time in our lives, we are finally able to do what we believe in. We are no longer paying lip service to the communist ideals. It’s easy to propound change while living in absolute comfort, isn’t it? Well, now we are going to live what we believe. You know it’s what I fought for my whole adult life. You’ve seen me. And your mother, too.”
Alexander nodded. He had seen them. His father and mother arrested for their principles. Visiting his father in jail. Being unwelcome around Barrington. Being laughed at in school. Constantly getting into fights for his father’s principles. He had seen his mother stand by his father’s side, picketing and protesting with him. The three of them had gone to Washington D.C. together to parade communist pride in front of the White House. They were arrested there, too. Alexander had spent a night in a juvenile detention center when he was seven. But on the plus side, he was the only boy in Barrington who had been to the White House.
He had thought all that was sacrifice enough. And then he had thought that breaking with their family and giving up the house that had been the Barrington homestead for eight generations was sacrifice enough. He thought that living in small rented rooms in busy and dusty Boston while disseminating the socialist word was sacrifice enough.
Apparently not.
Frankly, Alexander was surprised by the move to the Soviet Union, and not happily surprised. But his father believed. His father thought the Soviet Union was the place where they would finally belong, where Alexander would not be laughed at, where they would be welcomed and admired instead of shunned and ridiculed. The place where they could build their life up from “meaningless” and make it “meaningful.” Power was to the toiling man in the new Russia, and soon the toiling man would be king. His father’s belief was enough for Alexander.
His mother pressed her painted red mouth on Alexander’s forehead, leaving a bright greasy pucker, which she then rubbed off—not well. “You know, don’t you, darling, that your father wants you to learn the right way, to grow up the right way?”
A little petulantly, Alexander said, “This is really not about me, Mom—”
“No.” Harold’s voice was adamant. His hand never left Alexander’s shoulder. “This is all about you, Alexander. You’re only eleven now, but soon you will become a man. And since you have only one life, you can be only one man. I’m going to the Soviet Union to make you into the man you need to be. You, son, are my only legacy to this world.”
“There are plenty of men in America, too, Dad,” Alexander pointed out. “Herbert Hoover. Woodrow Wilson. Calvin Coolidge.”
“Yes, but not good men. America can produce greedy and selfish men, prideful and vengeful men. That’s not the man I want you to be.”
“Alexander,” said his mother. “We want you to have advantages of character that people in America just don’t have.”
“That’s right,” said Harold. “America makes men soft.”
Alexander stepped back from his parents, never taking his eyes off his solemn reflection. That’s what he had been looking at before they came in. Himself. He was looking at his face and wondering, when I grow up, what kind of a man am I going to be? Saluting his father, he said, “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll make you proud. I’ll be ungreedy and unselfish, unprideful and unvengeful. I’ll be as hard a man as they come. Let’s go. I’m ready.”
“I don’t want you to be a hard man, Alexander. I want you to be a good man.” Harold paused. “A better man than me.”
As they were walking out, Alexander turned around and caught himself in the mirror one last time. I don’t want to forget this boy, he thought, in case I ever need to come back to him.
Stockholm, May 1943
I am on a stake, thought eighteen-year-old Tatiana, waking up one cold summer morning. I cannot live like this anymore. She got up from the bed, washed, brushed her hair, collected her books and her few clothes, and then left the hotel room as clean as if she had not been in it for over two months. The white curtains blowing a breeze into the room were unrelenting.
Inside herself was unrelenting.
Over the desk there was an oval mirror. Before Tatiana tied up her hair she stared at her face. What stared back at her was a face she no longer recognized. Gone was the round baby shape; a gaunt oval remained over her drawn cheekbones and her high forehead and her squared jaw and her clenched lips. If she had dimples still, they did not show; it had been a long time since her mouth bared teeth or dimples. The scar on her cheek from the piece of the broken windshield had healed and was fading into a thin pink line. The freckles were fading too, but it was the eyes Tatiana recognized least of all. 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. She couldn’t lift them to anyone. She could not lift them to herself. One look into the green sea, and it was clear what raged on behind the frail façade.
Tatiana brushed her shoulder blade-length platinum hair. She didn’t hate her hair anymore.
How could she, for Alexander had loved it so much.
She would not think of it. She wanted to cut it all off, shear herself like a lamb before the slaughter, she wanted to cut her hair and take the whites out of her eyes and the teeth out of her mouth and tear the arteries out of her throat.
Tying the hair up in a bun on top of her head, Tatiana put a kerchief over it, to attract as little attention as possible, though in Sweden—a country full of blonde girls—it was easy to become lost in the crowd.
Certainly she had become that.
Tatiana knew it was time to go. But she could find nothing inside to propel her forward. She had the baby inside her, but it was as easy to have a baby in Sweden as it was in America. Easier. She could stay. She wouldn’t have to make her way across an unfamiliar country, get a passage on a freighter headed for Britain and then travel across the ocean to the United States in the middle of a world war. The Germans were blowing up the northern waters on a daily basis, their torpedoes detonating the Allied submarines and the blockade ships into high flame balls encircled by black smoke, incongruous against the serene seas of Bothnia and the Baltic, of the Arctic and the Atlantic. Staying safe in Stockholm required nothing more of her than what she had been doing.
What had she been doing?
She’d been seeing Alexander everywhere.
Everywhere she walked, everywhere she sat, she would turn her head to the right, and there he would be, tall in his officer’s uniform, rifle slung on his shoulder, looking at her and smiling. She would reach out and touch thin air, touch the white pillow on which she saw his face. She would turn to him and break the bread for him and sit on the bench and watch him making his slow sure way to her, crossing the street for her. She would walk after Swedish men during the day, men whose backs were broad, whose stride was long, she would stare impolitely into the faces of strangers because it was Alexander’s face she saw etched there. And then she would blink, blink again and he would be gone. And she would be gone, too. She would lower her gaze, and walk on.
She raised her eyes to the mirror. Behind her Alexander stood. He brushed the hair away from her neck and bent to her. She couldn’t smell him, nor feel his lips on her. Just her eyes saw him, almost felt his black hair on her neck.
Tatiana closed her eyes.
She went and had breakfast at Spivak café, her usual two helpings of bacon, two cups of black coffee, three poached eggs. She pretended to read the English paper she had bought at the kiosk across the street; pretended because the words were gases inside her head, her mind could not catch them. She read better in the afternoon when she was calmer. Leaving the café, she walked to the industrial pier, where she sat on the bench and watched the Swedish dockhand load up his barges full of finished paper to be taken over to Helsinki. She watched the longshoreman steadily. She knew that in a few minutes, he would go off to talk to his friends fifty meters down the pier. He would have a smoke and a small cup of coffee. He would be gone from the barge thirteen minutes. He would leave the covered barge unattended, the plank connected to the cabin of the shipping vessel.
Thirteen minutes later he would come back and continue loading the paper from the truck, wheeling it down the plank on his hand trolley. In sixty-two minutes the captain of the barge would appear; the longshoreman would salute him and untie the ropes. And the captain would take his barge across the thawed Baltic Sea to Helsinki.
This was the seventy-fifth morning Tatiana had watched him.
Helsinki was only four hours from Vyborg. And Tatiana knew from the English newspapers she bought daily that Vyborg—for the first time since 1918—was back in Soviet hands. The Red Army had taken Russia’s Karelian territories back from the Finns. A barge across the sea to Helsinki, a truck across the forests to Vyborg, and she too would be back in Soviet hands.
“Sometimes I wish you were less bloody-minded,” Alexander says. He had managed to receive a three-day furlough. They’re in Leningrad—the last time they’re in Leningrad together, their last everything.
“Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”
He grunts. “Yes. I wish the kettle were less black.” He snorts in frustration. “There are women,” he says, “I know there are, who listen to their men. I’ve seen them. Other men have them—”
She tickles him. He does not seem amused. “All right. Tell me what to do,” she says, lowering her voice two notches. “I will do exactly as you say.”
“Leave Leningrad and go back to Lazarevo instantly,” Alexander tells her. “Go where you will be safe.”
Rolling her eyes, she says, “Come on. I know you can play this game.”
“I know I can,” Alexander says, sitting on her parents’ old sofa. “I just don’t want to. You don’t listen to me about the important things …”
“Those aren’t the important things,” Tatiana says, kneeling in front of him and taking hold of his hands. “If the NKVD come for me, I will know you are gone and I will be happy to stand against the wall.” She squeezes his hands. “I will go to the wall as your wife and never regret a second I spent with you. So let me have this here with you. Let me smell you once more, taste you once more, kiss you once more,” she says. “Now play my game with me, sorrowful as it is to lie down together in wintry Leningrad. Play the miracle with me—to lie down with you at all. Tell me what to do and I will do it.”
Alexander pulls on her hand. “Come here.” He opens his arms. “Sit on top of me.”
She obeys.
“Now take your hands and place them on my face.”
She obeys.
“Put your lips on my eyes.”
She obeys.
“Kiss my forehead.”
She obeys.
“Kiss my lips.”
She obeys. And obeys.
“Tania …”
“Shh.”
“Can’t you see I’m breaking?”
“Ah,” she says. “You’re still in one piece then.”
She sat and watched the dockhand when it was sunny and she sat and watched him when it rained. Or when it was foggy, which is what it was nearly every morning at eight o’clock.
This morning was none of the above. This morning was cold. The pier smelled of fresh water and of fish. The seagulls screeched overhead, a man’s voice shouted.
Where is my brother to help me, my sister, my mother? Pasha, help me, hide in the woods where I know I can find you. Dasha, look what’s happened. Do you even see? Mama, Mama. I want my mother. Where is my family to ask things of me, to weigh on me, to intrude on me, to never let me be silent or alone, where are they to help me through this? Deda, what do I do? I don’t know what to do.
This morning the dockhand did not go over to see his friend at the next pier for a smoke and a coffee. Instead, he walked across the road and sat next to her on the bench.
This surprised her. But she said nothing, she just wrapped her white nurse’s coat tighter around herself, and fixed the kerchief covering her hair.
In Swedish he said to her, “My name is Sven. What’s your name?”
After a longish pause, she replied. “Tatiana. I don’t speak Swedish.”
In English he said to her, “Do you want a cigarette?”
“No,” she replied, also in English. She thought of telling him she spoke little English. She was sure he didn’t speak Russian.
He asked her if he could get her a coffee, or something warm to throw over her shoulders. No and no. She did not look at him.
Sven was silent a moment. “You want to get on my barge, don’t you?” he asked. “Come. I will take you.” He took her by her arm. Tatiana didn’t move. “I can see you have left something behind,” he said, pulling on her gently. “Go and retrieve it.” Tatiana did not move.
“Take my cigarette, take my coffee, or get on my barge. I won’t even turn away. You don’t have to sneak past me. I would have let you on the first time you came. All you had to do was ask. You want to go to Helsinki? Fine. I know you’re not Finnish.” Sven paused. “But you are very pregnant. Two months ago it would have been easier for you. But you need to go back or go forward. How long do you plan to sit here and watch my back?”
Tatiana stared into the Baltic Sea. “If I knew, would I be sitting here?”
“Don’t sit here anymore. Come,” said the longshoreman.
She shook her head.
“Where is your husband? Where is the father of your baby?”
“Dead in the Soviet Union,” Tatiana breathed out.
“Ah, you’re from the Soviet Union.” He nodded. “You’ve escaped somehow? Well, you’re here, so stay. Stay in Sweden. Go to the consulate, get yourself refugee protection. We have hundreds of people getting through from Denmark. Go to the consulate.”
Tatiana shook her head.
“You’re going to have that baby soon,” Sven said. “Go back, or move forward.”
Tatiana’s hands went around her belly. Her eyes glazed over.
The dockhand patted her gently and stood up. “What will it be? You want to go back to the Soviet Union? Why?”
Tatiana did not reply. How to tell him her soul had been left there?
“If you go back, what happens to you?”
“I die most likely,” she barely whispered.
“If you go forward, what happens to you?”
“I live most likely.”
He clapped his hands. “What kind of a choice is that? You must go forward.”
“Yes,” said Tatiana, “but how do I live like this? Look at me. You think, if I could, I wouldn’t?”
“So you’re here in the Stockholm purgatory, watching me move my paper day in and day out, watching me smoke, watching me. What are you going to do? Sit with your baby on the bench? Is that what you want?”
Tatiana was silent.
The first time she laid eyes on him she was sitting on a bench, eating ice cream.
“Go forward.”
“I don’t have it in me.”
He nodded. “You have it. It’s just covered up. For you it’s winter.” He smiled. “Don’t worry. Summer’s here. The ice will melt.”
Tatiana struggled up from the bench. Walking away, she said in Russian, “It’s not the ice anymore, my seagoing philosopher. It’s the pyre.”
BOOK ONE (#ulink_2f73c448-d316-5bd1-8db3-77c2bfa01176)
The Second America (#ulink_2f73c448-d316-5bd1-8db3-77c2bfa01176)
… Hold your head up all the more
This tide
And every tide
Because he was the son you bore
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide
Rudyard Kipling
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_b30a4887-7165-5a46-87e3-ec6f9e753df6)
In Morozovo Hospital, March 13, 1943
IN THE DARK EVENING, in a small fishing village that had been turned into Red Army headquarters for the Neva operation of the Leningrad front, a wounded man lay in a military hospital waiting for death.
For a long time he lay with his arms crossed, not moving until the lights went out and the critical ward grew tired and quiet.
Soon they would be coming for him.
He was a young man just twenty-three, ravaged by war. Months of lying wounded in bed threw a pallor on his face. He was unshaven, and his black hair was cropped close to his scalp. His eyes, the color of toffee, were blanks as he stared into the far distance. Alexander Belov looked grim but he was not a cruel man, and he looked resigned but he was not a cold man.
Months earlier on the ice during the Battle of Leningrad, Alexander had run out for his lieutenant Anatoly Marazov, who lay on the river Neva with a bullet in his throat. Alexander ran out to the hopeless Anatoly, and so did a doctor with no sense—an International Red Cross doctor from Boston named Matthew Sayers, who fell through the ice, and whom Alexander had to pull out and drag across the river to the armored truck for cover. The Germans were trying to blow up the truck from the air, and in their attempts they blew up Alexander instead.
It was Tatiana who had pulled him back from the four horsemen who came for him, counting his good and bad works on their black-gloved fingers. Tatiana, whom he had told, “Leave Leningrad and go back to Lazarevo instantly.” Lazarevo, deep at the foot of the Ural Mountains, a small fishing village buried in the pine woods, nestled on the shores of the Kama River, Lazarevo, where for an instant in time she could have been safe.
But she was like the doctor: she had no sense. No, she said to him. She was not going. And she said no to the four horsemen, shaking her fist at them. It’s too early for you to claim him. And then defiantly: I won’t let you take him. I will do everything in my power to keep you from taking him.
And she did. With her own blood, she had kept them from Alexander. She poured her blood inside him, she drained her arteries and filled his veins, and he was saved.
Alexander may have owed Tatiana his life but Dr. Sayers owed Alexander his, and he was going to take Alexander and Tatiana to Helsinki, from where they would make their way to the United States. With Tatiana’s help they concocted a plan, and for months Alexander lay in the hospital while his back healed and carved figures and cradles and spears out of wood and imagined driving through America with her, their hurt all vanished, just the two of them, singing to the radio.
He had lived on the fleeting wings of hope. It was such a translucent hope. He knew it even as he drowned in it. It was the hope of a man surrounded by the enemy, who, as he makes his last run to safety, his back turned, prays he will have a chance to dive into a pit of life before the enemy reloads, before they send the heavy artillery out. He hears their guns, he hears their shouts behind him, but still he runs, hoping for a reprieve from the whistle of the shell. Dive into hope, or die in despair. Dive into the River Kama.
Alexander’s fate was sealed. He wondered how long ago it had been sealed, but he did not want an answer to that question.
Since he left his small room in Boston back in December 1930, that’s how long.
Alexander could not leave Russia. But one small thread of hope still dangled in front of him. One small flicker of the waning candle.
To get Tatiana out of the Soviet Union, Alexander Belov grit his teeth and closed his eyes. He clenched his fists and backed away from her; he pushed her away, he let her go.
There was only one thing left for him to do in his old life, and that was to stand up and salute the doctor who could save his wife. For now there was nothing to do but wait.
Deciding he did not wish to be taken out of bed in his hospital clothes, Alexander asked the night shift nurse to bring him his Class A major’s uniform and his officer dress cap. He shaved with his knife and a bit of water by the side of his bed, dressed and then sat in the chair, arms folded. When they came for him, as he knew they would, he wanted to go with as much dignity as the lackeys for the NKVD would allow. He heard loud snoring from the man in the bed next to him, hidden from view by the isolation tent.
Tonight—what was Alexander’s reality? What was it that determined Alexander’s consciousness? And more important, what would happen to him in an hour or two when everything Alexander had ever been would come into question? When the secret police chairman General Mekhlis would lift his beady, lard-encrusted eyes and say to him, “Tell us who you are, Major,” what would be Alexander’s answer?
Was he Tatiana’s husband?
Yes.
“Don’t cry, honey.”
“Don’t come, yet. Please. Don’t. Not yet.”
“Tania, I have to go.” He told Colonel Stepanov he was going to be back for Sunday night roll call and he could not be late.
“Please. Not yet.”
“Tania, I’ll get another weekend leave—” He is panting. “After the Battle of Leningrad. I’ll come back here. But now …”
“Don’t, Shura, please don’t.”
“You’re holding me so tight. Release your legs.”
“No. Stop moving. Please. Just …”
“It’s nearly six, babe. I have to go.”
“Shura, darling, please … don’t go.”
“Don’t come, don’t go. What can I do?”
“Stay right here. Inside me. Forever inside me. Not yet, not yet.”
“Shh, Tania, shh.”
And five minutes later, he is bolting out the door. “I’ve got to run, no, don’t walk me to the barracks. I don’t want you walking by yourself at night. You still have the pistol I gave you? Stay here. Don’t watch me walk down the corridor. Just—come here.” He envelops her in his coat, hugging her into himself, kissing her hair, her lips. “Be a good girl, Tania,” he says. “And don’t say goodbye.”
She salutes him. “I’ll see you, the captain of my heart,” says Tatiana, her tears having fallen down her face from Friday till Sunday.
Was he a soldier in the Red Army?
Yes.
Was he the man who had entrusted his life to Dimitri Chernenko, a worthless demon disguised as a friend?
Yes, again.
But once, Alexander had been an American, a Barrington. He spoke like an American. He laughed like an American. He played summer games like an American, and swam like one and took his life for granted like one. He had friends he thought he was going to have for life, and once there were forests of Massachusetts that Alexander called home, and a child’s bag where he hid his small treasures—the shells and the eroded glass bits he had found on Nantucket Sound, the wrapper from one of the cotton candies, bits of twine and string, a photograph of his friend Teddy.
Once there was a time he had a mother, her tanned, made-up, large-eyed familiar face laughing into his memory.
And when the moon was blue and the sky black and the stars beaming down their light on him, for a stitch in eternity Alexander had found what he thought was going to elude him all of his Soviet life.
Once.
Alexander Barrington was coming to an end. Well, he wasn’t going to go quietly.
He put on his three military valor medals and his medal of the Order of the Red Star for driving a tank across the barely frozen lake, he put on his cap, sat in the chair by his bed and waited.
Alexander knew how the NKVD came for people like him. They needed to cause as little commotion as possible. They came in the middle of the night, or they came in a crowded train station while you were on your way to a Crimean resort. They came in a fish market, they came through a neighbor who wanted you to come into his room for just a sec. They asked to sit next to you in the canteen where you were having your pelmeni. They hemmed and hawed their way through a store and asked you to join them in the special order department. They sat next to you on a bench in the park. They were always polite and quiet and smartly dressed. The car that would pull up to the curb to take you to the Big House and the concealed pistols they carried were nowhere in sight. One woman, who had been arrested in the middle of a crowd, started to scream loudly and climbed a lamppost and continued carrying on so that even the normally indifferent passers-by stopped and stared; she made the NKVD work impossible. They had to leave her alone, and she, instead of disappearing somewhere to the middle of the country, went home to sleep, and they came for her in the night.
For Alexander they had previously come one afternoon after school. He was with a friend, and two men came up to him and told him he had forgotten about his meeting with his history teacher, could he possibly step back in for a moment and speak to him? He knew right away, he smelled their lies on them. Not budging, he grabbed his friend’s arm and shook his head. His friend left—precipitously—knowing when he wasn’t wanted. Alexander remained alone with the two men, reviewing his options. When he saw the black car slowly pull up to the curb, he knew his options were narrowing. He wondered if they would shoot him in the back in broad daylight while there were other people around. He decided they wouldn’t and took off. They gave chase, but they were in their thirties, not seventeen. Alexander lost them in a few minutes, side-stepped into an alley, hid and made his way to a market near St. Nicholas church. After buying a bit of bread, he was afraid to go home. He thought they would go there next to look for him. Alexander spent the night outdoors.
The next morning he went to school, thinking he would be safe in the classroom. The principal himself brought a note to Alexander, saying he was needed in the office.
As soon as he left the room, he was grabbed and quietly taken outside and placed inside the car already waiting at the curb.
In the Big House he was beaten and then transferred to the Kresty prison where he awaited the resolution of his fate. He had few illusions.
But however they came for him tonight, Alexander knew they would not want to make a ruckus in the middle of a military hospital critical ward. The charade, the pretense they were using—of taking him across to Volkhov to be promoted to lieutenant colonel—would serve the apparatchiks well until they got him alone. Alexander’s goal was to make sure he did not get to Volkhov, where the facilities for his “trial” and execution were well set up. Here in Morozovo, among the inexperienced and bumbling, he had a much better chance of living.
He knew that Article 58 of the Soviet Criminal Code of 1928 didn’t even specify him as a political prisoner. If he was accused of crimes against the state, then he was a criminal, and would be sentenced accordingly. The code, in fourteen sections, defined his offences only in the most general terms. He didn’t need to be an American, he didn’t need to be a refugee from Soviet justice, he didn’t need to be a foreign provocateur. He didn’t need to be a spy or a flag waver. He didn’t even need to commit a crime. Intention was just as criminal and equally punishable. Intention to betray was as severely looked upon as betrayal itself. The Soviet government prided itself on this clear sign of superiority to the Western constitutions, which senselessly waited for the criminal act before meting out punishment.
All actual or intended action aimed at weakening either the Soviet state or the Soviet military strength was punishable by death. And not just action. Inaction, too, was counter-revolutionary.
And as for Tatiana … Alexander knew that one way or another, the Soviet Union would have shortened her life. Long ago Alexander had planned to run to America—leaving her behind, the wife of a Red Army deserter. Or Alexander was going to die at the front—leaving her widowed and alone in the Soviet Union. Or his friend Dimitri was going to point out Alexander to the NKVD, Stalin’s secret police, as indeed he had done—leaving her as Alexander Barrington’s sole survivor, the Russian wife of an American “spy” and a class enemy of the people. These were the choking choices of Alexander and the unlucky girl who became his wife.
When Mekhlis asks me who I am, am I going to salute him and say, I am Alexander Barrington and not look back?
Could he do that? Not look back?
He didn’t think he could do that.
Arriving in Moscow, 1930
Eleven-year-old Alexander felt nauseated. “What is that smell, Mom?” he asked, as the three of them entered a small, cold room. It was dark, and he couldn’t see well. When his father turned on the light, it wasn’t much better. The bulb was dim and yellow. Alexander breathed through his mouth and asked his mother again. His mother did not reply. She took off her prim hat and her coat, and then when she realized it was too cold in the room, she put her coat back on and lit a cigarette.
Alexander’s father walked around with a manly gait, touching the old dresser, the wooden table, the dusty window coverings, and said, “This is not bad. This will be great. Alexander, you have your own room, and your mother and I will stay here. Come, I’ll show you your room.”
Alexander followed him. “But the smell, Dad …”
“Don’t worry.” Harold smiled. “You know your mother will clean. Besides, it’s nothing. Just … many people living close together.” He squeezed Alexander’s hand. “It’s the smell of communism, son.”
It had been late at night when they were finally brought to their residential hotel. They had arrived in Moscow at dawn that morning after a sixteen-hour train ride from Prague. Before Prague they had traveled twenty hours by train from Paris, where they had spent two days waiting either for papers or permission or a train, Alexander wasn’t sure. He liked Paris, though. The adults were fretting, and he ignored them as much as possible. He was busy reading his favorite book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Whenever he wanted to tune out the adults, he opened Tom Sawyer and felt better. Then of course, his mother afterward would try to explain what had just gone on between her and his father, and Alexander wished he had a way to tell her to follow Dad’s lead and not say anything.
He didn’t need her explanations.
Except now. Now he needed an explanation. “Dad, the smell of communism? What the hell is that?”
“Alexander!” his father exclaimed. “What did your mother teach you? Don’t talk like that. Where do you even pick up that stuff? Your mother and I don’t use that kind of language.”
Alexander didn’t like to disagree with his father, but he wanted to remind him that every time he and his mother argued they used that kind of language—and worse. His father was always under the impression that just because the fighting didn’t concern Alexander, Alexander couldn’t hear it. As if his parents weren’t in the next room, or right next door, or even right in front of him. In Barrington, Alexander had never heard anything. His parents’ bedroom was at the opposite end of the hallway upstairs, there were rooms and doors in between, and he had never heard a thing. It was as it should be.
“Dad,” he tried again. “Please. What is that smell?”
Uncomfortable, his father replied, “That’s just the toilets, Alexander.”
Looking around his bedroom, Alexander asked where they were.
“Outside in the hall.” Harold smiled. “Look on the bright side—you won’t have to go far in the middle of the night.”
Alexander put down his backpack and took off his coat. He didn’t care how cold he was. He wasn’t sleeping in his coat. “Dad,” he said, breathing through his mouth, wanting to retch. “Don’t you know I never get up in the middle of the night? I’m a deep sleeper.”
There was a small cot with a thin wool blanket. After Harold left the room, Alexander went to the open window. It was December, well below freezing. Looking down onto the street from the second floor, Alexander noticed five people lying on the ground in one of the doorways. He left the window open. The fresh cold air would clear out the room.
Going out into the hall, he was going to use the toilet but couldn’t. He went outside instead. Coming back, he undressed and climbed into bed. The day had been long and he was asleep in seconds, but not before he wondered if capitalism had a smell also.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_8574b475-d5aa-5e78-b73b-c53cd3ccc983)
Arriving at Ellis Island, 1943
TATIANA STUMBLED OUT OF bed and walked to the window. It was morning, and the nurse was going to bring the baby soon for a feed. She pushed the white curtains away. Opening the latch, she tried to lift the window, but it was stuck, the white paint having sealed the frame to the wall. She tugged on it. It popped open and she pulled it up, leaning her head outside. It was a warm morning that smelled like salt water.
Salt water. She breathed in deeply, and then she smiled. She liked that smell. It was unlike the smells that were familiar to her.
The seagulls cutting the air with their screeching were familiar.
The view was not familiar.
New York harbor in the foggy dawn was a misty glass-like expanse of greenish sea, and off in the distance she saw tall buildings, and to the right, through the pervading fog, a statue lifted its right arm in a flame salute.
With fascinated eyes, Tatiana sat by the window and stared at the buildings across the water. They were so tall! And so beautiful, and there were so many of them crowding the skyline, spires, flattops jutting out, proclaiming the mortal man to the immortal skies. The winding birds, the calmness of the water, the vastness of the buildings, and the glass harbor itself emptying out into the Atlantic.
Then the fog lifted and the sun came up into her eyes, and she had to turn away. The harbor became less glassy as ferries and tugboats, all manner of lighters and freighters, and even some yachts, started crisscrossing the bay, sounding their whistles and horns in such cacophonous delight that Tatiana thought about closing the window. She didn’t.
Tatiana had always wanted to see an ocean. She had seen the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea and she had seen many lakes—one Lake Ladoga too many—but never an ocean, and the Atlantic was an ocean on which Alexander once sailed when he was a little boy, watching fireworks on the Fourth of July. Wasn’t it Fourth of July soon? Maybe Tatiana could see some fireworks. She would have to ask Brenda, her nurse, who was a bit of a cow, and conveyed all her information rather gruffly, the bottom part of her face—and all of her heart—covered by a mouthpiece to protect against Tatiana.
“Yes,” Brenda said. “There will be fireworks. Fourth of July is in two days. They’re not going to be like in the days before the war, but there will be some. But don’t you go worrying about fireworks. You’ve been in America less than a week and you’re asking about fireworks? You’ve got a child to protect against an infectious disease. Have you been outside for a walk today? You know the doctor told you you’ve got to take walks in the fresh air, and keep your mouth covered in case you cough on your baby, and not lift him because that will tire you out—have you been outside? And what about breakfast?” Brenda always talked too fast, Tatiana thought, almost deliberately so that Tatiana wouldn’t understand.
Even Brenda couldn’t ruin breakfast—eggs and ham and tomatoes and milky coffee (dehydrated milk or no). Tatiana ate and drank sitting on her bed. She had to admit that the sheets, the softness of the mattress and the pillows, and the thick woolen blanket were comforts like bread—crucial.
“Can I have my son now? I need to feed him.” Her breasts were full.
Brenda slammed the window shut. “Don’t open the window anymore,” she said. “Your child will catch cold.”
“Summer air will make him catch cold?”
“Yes, moist, wet summer air will.”
“But you just said me to go outside for walk—”
“Outside air is outside air, inside air is inside air,” Brenda said.
“He has not caught my TB,” Tatiana said, coughing loudly for effect. “Bring me my baby, please.”
After Brenda brought the baby and Tatiana fed him, she went to open the window again and then perched herself up on the window sill, cradling the infant in her arms. “Look, Anthony,” whispered Tatiana in her native Russian. “Do you see? Do you see the water? It is pretty, right? And across the harbor there is a big city with people and streets, and parks. Anthony, as soon as I am better, we will take one of those loud ferry boats and walk on the streets of New York. Would you like that?” Stroking her infant son’s face, Tatiana stared across the water.
“Your father would,” she whispered.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_3077b7c7-a9c0-5933-8c7a-e41c4a3db1ee)
Morozovo, 1943
MATTHEW SAYERS APPEARED BY Alexander’s bed at around one in the morning and stated the obvious. “You’re still here.” He paused. “Maybe they won’t take you.”
Dr. Sayers was an American and an eternal optimist.
Alexander shook his head. “Did you put my Hero of the Soviet Union medal in her backpack?” was all he said.
The doctor nodded.
“Hidden, as I told you?”
“As hidden as I could.”
Now it was Alexander’s turn to nod.
Sayers brought from his pocket a syringe, a vial, and a small medicine bottle. “You’ll need this.”
“I need tobacco more. Have you got any of that?”
Sayers took out a box full of cigarettes. “Already rolled.”
“They’ll do.”
Sayers showed Alexander a small vial of colorless liquid. “I’m giving you ten grains of morphine solution. Don’t take it all at once.”
“Why would I take it at all? I’ve been off it for weeks.”
“You might need it, who knows? Take a quarter of a grain. Half a grain at most. Ten grains is enough to kill two grown men. Have you ever seen this administered?”
“Yes,” said Alexander, Tania springing up in his mind, syringe in her hands.
“Good. Since you can’t start an IV, in the stomach is best. Here are some sulfa drugs, to make sure infection does not recur. A small container of carbolic acid; use it to sterilize your wound if all the other drugs are gone. And a roll of bandages. You’ll need to change the dressing daily.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
They fell silent.
“Do you have your grenades?”
Alexander nodded. “One in my bag, one in my boot.”
“Weapon?”
He patted his holster.
“They’ll take it from you.”
“They’ll have to. I’m not surrendering it.”
Dr. Sayers shook Alexander’s hand.
“You remember what I told you?” Alexander asked. “Whatever happens to me, you’ll take this”—he took off his officer cap, handing it to the doctor—“and you will write me a death certificate and you will tell her that you saw me dead on the lake and then pushed me into an ice hole, and that’s why there is no body. Clear?”
Sayers nodded. “I’ll do what I have to,” he said. “I don’t want to do it.”
“I know.”
They were grim.
“Major … what if I do find you dead on the ice?”
“You will write me a death certificate and you will bury me in Lake Ladoga. Make a sign of the cross on me before you push me in.” He shuddered slightly. “Don’t forget to give her my cap.”
“That guy, Dimitri Chernenko, is always around my truck,” Sayers said.
“Yes. He won’t let you leave without him. Guaranteed. You must take him.”
“I don’t want to take him.”
“You want to save her, don’t you? If he doesn’t come, she has no chance. So stop thinking about the things you can’t change. Just watch out for him. Trust him with nothing.”
“What do I do with him in Helsinki?”
Here Alexander allowed himself a small smile. “I’m not the one to be advising you on that one. Just—don’t do anything to endanger you or Tania.”
“Of course not.”
Alexander spoke. “You must be very careful, nonchalant, casual, brave. Leave with her as soon as you can. You’ve already told Stepanov you’re headed back?” Colonel Mikhail Stepanov was Alexander’s commander.
“I told him I’m headed back to Finland. He asked me to bring … your wife back to Leningrad. He said it would be easier for her if she left Morozovo.”
Alexander nodded. “I already spoke to him. I asked him to let her leave with you. You’ll be taking her with his approval. Good. It’ll be easier for you to leave the base.”
“Stepanov told me it’s policy for soldiers to get transported to the Volkhov side for promotions. Was that duplicity? I can’t understand anymore what’s truth and what’s a lie.”
“Welcome to my world.”
“Does he know what’s happening with you?”
“He is the one who told me what’s about to happen to me. They have to take me across the lake. They don’t have a stockade here,” Alexander explained. “But he will tell my wife what I have told her—I’m getting promoted. When the truck blows up, it will be even easier for the NKVD to go along with the official story—they don’t like to explain arrests of their commanding officers. It’s so much easier to say I’ve died.”
“But they do have a stockade here in Morozovo.” Sayers lowered his voice. “I didn’t know it was the stockade. I was asked to go check on two soldiers who were dying of dysentery. They were in a tiny room in the basement of the abandoned school. It was a bomb shelter, divided into tiny cells. I thought they had been quarantined.” Sayers glanced at Alexander. “I couldn’t even help them. I don’t know why they didn’t just let them die, they asked for me so late.”
“They asked for you just in time. This way they died under doctor’s care. An International Red Cross doctor’s care. It’s so legitimate.”
Breathing hard, Dr. Sayers asked, “Are you afraid?”
“For her,” said Alexander, glancing at the doctor. “You?”
“Ridiculously.”
Alexander nodded and leaned back against the chair. “Just tell me one thing, Doctor. Is my wound healed enough for me to go and fight?”
“No.”
“Is it going to open again?”
“No, but it might get infected. Don’t forget to take the sulfa drugs.”
“I won’t.”
Before Dr. Sayers walked away, he said quietly to Alexander, “Don’t worry about Tania. She’ll be all right. She’ll be with me. I won’t let her out of my sight until New York. And she’ll be all right then.”
Faintly nodding, Alexander said, “She’ll be as good as she can be. Offer her some chocolate.”
“You think that’ll do it?”
“Offer it to her,” Alexander repeated. “She won’t want it the first five times you ask. But she will take it the sixth.”
Before Dr. Sayers disappeared through the doors of the ward, he turned around. The two men stared at each other for a short moment, and then Alexander saluted him.
Living in Moscow, 1930
When they were first met at the train station, even before heading to their hotel they were escorted to a restaurant where they ate and drank all evening. Alexander delighted in the fact that his father was right—life seemed to be turning out just fine. The food was passable and there was plenty of it. The bread was not fresh, however, and, oddly, neither was the chicken. The butter was kept at room temperature, so was the water, but the black tea was sweet and hot, and his father even let Alexander have a sip of vodka as they all raised their crystal shot glasses, their boisterous voices yelling, “Na zdorovye!” or “Cheers!” His mother said, “Harold! Don’t give the child vodka, are you out of your mind?” She herself was not a drinker, and so she barely pressed the glass to her lips. Alexander drank his vodka out of curiosity, hated it instantly, his throat burning for what seemed like hours. His mother teased him. When it stopped burning, he fell asleep at the table.
Then came the hotel.
Then came the toilets.
The hotel was fetid and dark. Dark wallpaper, dark floors, floors that in places—including Alexander’s room—were not exactly at right angles with the walls. Alexander always thought they needed to be, but what did he know? Maybe the feats of Soviet revolutionary engineering and building construction had not made their mark on America yet. The way his father talked about the Soviet hope, Alexander would not have been surprised to learn that the wheel had not been invented before the Glorious October Revolution of 1917.
The bedspreads on their beds were dark, the upholstery on their couches was dark, the curtains were dark brown, in the kitchen the wood-burning stove was black, and the three cabinets were dark wood. In the adjacent rooms down the dark, badly lit hall lived three brothers from Georgia by the Black Sea, all curly dark-haired, dark-skinned and dark-eyed. They immediately embraced Alexander as one of their own, even though his skin was fair and his hair was straight. They called him Sasha, their little Georgian boy, and made him eat liquid yogurt called kefir, which Alexander did not just hate but loathe.
There were many Russian foods that—much to his misfortune—he discovered he loathed. Anything bathed in onions and vinegar he could not share the same table with.
Most of the Russian food placed before them by the other well-meaning compatriots of the hotel was bathed in onions and vinegar.
Except for the Russian-speaking Georgian brothers, the rest of the people on their floor did not speak much Russian at all. There were thirty other people living on the second floor of Hotel Derzhava, which meant “fortress” in Russian; thirty other people who came to the Soviet Union largely for the same reasons the Barringtons did. There was a communist family from Italy, who had been thrown out of Rome in the late twenties, and the Soviet Union took them in as their own. Harold and Alexander thought that was an honorable deed.
There was a family from Belgium, and two from England. The British families Alexander liked most because they spoke something resembling the English he knew. But Harold didn’t like Alexander continuing to speak English, nor did he like the British families very much, nor the Italians, nor really anyone on that floor. Every chance he got, Harold tried to dissuade Alexander from associating with the Tarantella sisters, or with Simon Lowell, the chap from Liverpool, England. Harold Barrington wanted his son to make friends with Soviet girls and boys. He wanted Alexander to be immersed in the Moscow culture and to learn Russian, and Alexander, wanting to please his father, did.
Harold had no problem finding employment in Moscow. During his life in America he, who didn’t have to work, had dabbled in everything, and though he could do few things expertly, he did many things well, and what he didn’t know he learned quickly. In Moscow the authorities placed him in a printing plant for Pravda, the Soviet newspaper, for ten hours a day cranking the mimeograph machine. He came home every night with his fingers ink-stained so dark blue they looked black. He could not wash the ink off.
He could have also been a roofer, but there wasn’t much new construction in Moscow—“not yet,” Harold would say, “but very very soon.” He could have been a road builder, but there wasn’t much road building or repairing in Moscow—“not yet, but very very soon.”
Alexander’s mother followed his father’s cues; she endured everything—except the shabbiness of the facilities. Alexander teased her (“Dad, do you approve of Mom’s scrubbing out the smell of the proletariat? Mom, Dad doesn’t approve, stop cleaning.”), but Jane would nonetheless spend an hour scrubbing the communal bathtub before she could get in it. She would clean the toilet every day after work—before she made dinner. Alexander and his father waited for their food.
“Alexander, I hope you wash your hands every time you leave that bathroom—”
“Mom, I’m not a child,” said Alexander. “I know to wash my hands.” He would take a long sniff. “Oh, l’eau de communism. So pungent, so strong, so—”
“Stop it. And in school, too. Wash your hands everywhere.”
“Yes, Mom.”
Shrugging, she said, “You know, no matter how bad things smell around here they’re not as bad as down the hall. Have you smelled Marta’s room?”
“How could you not? The new Soviet order is especially strong in there.”
“Do you know why it’s so bad? She and her two sons live in there. Oh, the filth, the stench.”
“I didn’t know she had two sons.”
“Oh, yes. They came from Leningrad to visit her last month and stayed for good.”
Alexander grinned. “Are you saying they’re stinking up the place?”
“Not them,” Jane replied with a repugnant sneer. “The whores they bring with them from the Leningrad rail station. Every other night they have a new harlot in there with them. And they do stink up the place.”
“Mom, you’re so judgmental. Not everyone is able to buy Chanel perfume as they pass through Paris. Maybe you should offer the whores some—for French cleansing.” Alexander was pleased at his own joke.
“I’m going to tell your father on you.”
Father, who was right there, said, “Maybe if you stop talking to our eleven-year-old son about whores, all would be well.”
“Alexander, darling, Merry Christmas Eve.” Having changed the subject, Jane smiled wistfully. “Dad doesn’t like us to remember the meaningless rituals—”
“It’s not that I don’t like to,” interjected Harold. “I just want them placed in their proper perspective—past and gone and unnecessary.”
“And I agree with him completely,” Jane calmly continued, “but it does get you in the chest once in a while, doesn’t it?”
“Particularly today,” said Alexander.
“Yes. Well, that’s all right. We had a nice dinner. You’ll get a present on New Year’s like all the other Soviet boys.” She paused. “Not from Father Christmas, from us.” Another pause. “You don’t believe in Santa Claus anymore, do you, son?”
“No, Mom,” Alexander said slowly, not looking at his mother.
“Since when?”
“Since just now,” he replied, standing up and gathering the plates off the table.
Jane Barrington found work lending books at a university library but after a few months was transferred to the reference section, then to the maps, then to serving lunch in the university cafeteria. Every night, after cleaning the toilets, she cooked a Russian dinner for her family, once in a while lamenting the lack of mozzarella cheese, the absence of olive oil to make good spaghetti sauce, or of fresh basil, but Harold and Alexander didn’t care. They ate the cabbage and the sausage and the potatoes and the mushrooms, and black bread rubbed with salt, and Harold requested that Jane learn how to make a thick beef borscht in the tradition of good Russian women.
Alexander was asleep when his mother’s shouting woke him. He reluctantly got out of his bed and came into the hall. His mother in her white nightgown was yelling obscenities at one of Marta’s sons, who was skulking down the hall not turning around. In her hands, Jane held a pot.
“What’s going on?” said Alexander. Harold had not gotten up.
“There I was, going to the bathroom, and I thought, let me go get a drink of water. It’s the middle of the night, mind you, what could be the problem with that? And what did I find in the kitchen but that hound, that filthy animal, with his disgusting paw in my borscht, digging out the meat and eating it! My meat! My borscht! Right out of the pot! Filth!” she called down the hall. “Filth and slime! No respect for people’s property!”
Alexander stood and listened to his mother, who kept on for a few more minutes and then, with angry relish, threw the entire pot of recently cooked soup into the sink. “To think that I would eat anything after that animal’s hands were in it,” she said.
Alexander went back to bed.
The next morning Jane was still talking about it. And the next afternoon, when Alexander came home from school. And the next dinner—which was not delicious borscht but something meatless and stewed that he did not like. Alexander realized he preferred meat to no meat. Meat filled him up like few other things did. His growing body confounded him, but he needed to feed it. Chicken, beef, pork. Fish if there was some. He didn’t care much for an all vegetable dinner.
Harold said to Jane, “Calm down. You’re really getting yourself worked up.”
“How could I not? Let me ask you, do you think that scum washed his hands after he pawed the whore from the train station that was with fifty other filthy scum just like him?”
“You threw the soup out. Why such a fuss?” said Harold.
Alexander tried to keep a serious face. He and his father exchanged a look. When his father didn’t speak, Alexander cleared his throat and said, “Mom, um, may I point out that this is not very socialist of you. Marta’s son has every right to your soup. Just as you have every right to his whore. Not that you would want her, of course. But you would be entitled to her. As you are to his butter. Would you like some of his butter? I’ll go and get some for you.”
Harold and Jane stared at Alexander cheerlessly.
“Alexander, have you lost your mind? Why would I want anything that belongs to that man?”
“That’s my point, Mom. Nothing belongs to him. It’s yours. And nothing belongs to you, either. It’s his. He had every right to rummage in your borscht. That’s what you’ve been teaching me. That’s what the Moscow school teaches me. We are all better for it. That’s why we live like this. To prosper in each other’s prosperity. To rejoice and reap benefit from each other’s accomplishment. Personally, I don’t know why you made so little borscht. Do you know that Nastia down the hall hasn’t had meat in her borscht since last year?” Brightly Alexander looked at his parents.
His mother said, “What in the name of the Lord has gotten into you?”
Alexander finished his cabbagy, oniony dinner and said to his father, “Hey, when’s the next Party meeting? I can’t wait to go.”
“You know what? I think no more meetings for you, son,” said Jane.
“Just the opposite,” said Harold, ruffling Alexander’s hair. “I think he needs more of them.”
Alexander smiled.
They had arrived in Moscow in the winter, and after three months they realized that to get the goods they needed, the white or rye flour, or electric bulbs, they had to go to the private sellers, to the speculators who loitered around railroad stations selling fruit and ham out of their furlined coat pockets. There were few of them and their prices were exorbitant. Harold objected to it all, eating the small rationed black bread portions, and borscht without meat, and potatoes without butter but with plenty of linseed oil—previously thought to be good only for making paint and linoleum and for oiling wood. “We have no money to give away to private traders,” he would say. “We can live one winter without fruit. Next winter there will be fruit. Besides, we don’t have any extra money. Where is this money to buy from speculators coming from?” Jane would not reply, Alexander would shrug because he did not know, but in the dark after Harold was asleep, Jane would creep into his room and whisper to him to go the next day and buy himself oranges so the scurvy wouldn’t get him, and ham so dystrophy wouldn’t get him, or some rare and dubiously fresh milk. “Hear me, Alexander? I’m putting American dollars in your school bag, in the inner pocket, all right?”
“All right, Mom. Where is this American money coming from?”
“Never mind that, son. I brought a little extra, just in case.” She would creep to him and in the dark her mouth would find his forehead. “Things are not expected to be good overnight. Do you know what’s going on in our America? The Depression. Poverty, unemployment, things are difficult all over; these are difficult times. But we are living according to our principles. We are building a new state not on exploitation but on camaraderie and mutual benefit.”
“With a few extra American dollars?” Alexander would whisper.
“With a few extra American dollars,” Jane would agree, gathering his head into her arms. “Don’t tell your father, though. Your father would get very upset. He’d feel as if I’d betrayed him. So don’t tell him.”
“I won’t.”
The following winter, Alexander was twelve and there was still no fresh fruit in Moscow. It was still bitterly cold, and the only difference between the winter of 1931 and the winter of 1930 was that the speculators near the railroads had vanished. They had all been given ten years in Siberia for counter-revolutionary anti-proletarian activity.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_1e44a7f7-9753-5dad-8cbf-4365accd6af2)
Living on Ellis Island, 1943
TATIANA TRIED TO READ to improve her English while she got better. In the small but well-stocked Ellis library, she found many books in English donated by nurses, by doctors, by other benefactors. The library even had some books in Russian: Mayakovsky, Gorky, Tolstoy. Tatiana read in her room, but reading in English could not keep her attention and when her attention wandered, images of rivers and ice and blood mixed with images of bombing, planes, mortars, and ice holes, and knitting, and sewing, and motionless mothers on sofas with their body bags in their hands and famished frozen sisters on piles of dead bodies and brothers who vanished on exploding trains and fathers who burned down to ashes and grandfathers with infected lungs and grandmothers dying of grief. White camouflage, pools of blood, wet matted black hair, an officer’s cap strewn to the side, lying on the ice, images all so visceral she would have to stagger down the hall and throw up in the shared bathroom and afterwards force herself into learning better and better English that sufficiently commanded her attention so that her mind did not wander and go where the heart could not help but wander, meander into the emptiness in the middle of her chest, a black void that felt so much like fear that when she closed her eyes, her whole body choked on it.
She would lift a sleeping Anthony out of his bassinet and lay him on her chest for comfort, for closeness. But no matter how good Anthony smelled, and how silky his black hair felt against her lips, she could not keep her mind from wandering. If anything …
But she liked to smell him. She liked to undress him if it was sufficiently warm, and feel his chubby pink soft body. She liked to smell his hair and his neck and his milky baby breath. She liked to turn him over and touch his back and his legs and his long feet, and smell the back of his neck. Contentedly he slept and did not wake up, not even with all the prodding and caressing.
“Does this child ever wake up?” asked Dr. Edward Ludlow on one of his rounds.
In slow English Tatiana replied, “Think him as lion. He sleeps twenty hours in day and wakes up in night to hunt.”
Edward smiled. “You must be getting better. You’re making a joke.”
She smiled wanly. Dr. Ludlow was a thin, graceful man of fluid motion. He did not raise his voice, he did not jerk his hands. He was soothing in his eyes, in his speech, in his movements. He had a good bedside manner, a must for a fine doctor. He was in his mid-thirties, Tatiana guessed, and carried himself so upright that she suspected he might have been a military man once. She felt that she could trust him. He had serious eyes.
Dr. Ludlow had delivered Anthony when she had arrived in the Port of New York and gone into labor, a month early. He now came every day to check on her, even though Brenda said that normally he worked at Ellis only a couple of days a week.
Glancing at his watch, Edward said, “It’s almost lunchtime. Why don’t we take a walk if you’re up to it, and eat in the cafeteria? Put on your robe and we’ll go.”
“No, no.” She didn’t like to leave her room. “What about TB?”
He waved her off. “Put on your face mask and walk down the hall.”
Reluctantly she went. They had lunch at one of the narrow rectangular tables lining the large open room with high windows.
“It’s not great,” Edward said, looking at his meal. “I get a little beef. Here, have some of mine.” He cut half of his chipped beef with gravy and put it on her plate.
“Thank you, but look at all food I have,” said Tatiana. “I have white bread. I have margarine. I have potatoes and rice and corn. There is so much food.”
In the dark room she sits and in front of her is a plate and on the plate lies a black hunk of bread the size of a deck of cards. The bread has sawdust in it, and cardboard. She takes a knife and a fork, and cuts it slowly into four pieces. She eats one, chews it deliberately, pushes it with difficulty through her dry throat, eats another and another and finally the last one. She lingers especially on the last one. She knows after this piece is gone there will be no more food until tomorrow morning. She wishes she could be strong enough to save half of the bread until dinner, but she isn’t, she can’t. When she looks up from her plate, her sister, Dasha, is staring at her. Her plate is long empty.
“I wish Alexander was coming back,” says Dasha. “He might have food for us.”
I wish Alexander was coming back, thinks Tatiana.
She shuddered; her potato fell to the floor. She bent and picked it up, dusted it off, and ate it without saying a word.
Edward stared at her, his fork full of beef suspended between the plate and his mouth.
“There is sugar and tea and coffee and condensed milk,” Tatiana tremulously continued. “There is apples and oranges.”
“There’s hardly any chicken, there’s practically no beef, there’s only very little milk and there’s no butter,” Edward said. “The wounded need all the butter we have and we don’t have any, you know they’d get better faster if they had some but they don’t.”
“Maybe they do not want to get better faster. Maybe they like it here,” Tatiana said, and found Edward studying her again. She thought of something. “Edward, you say you have milk?”
“Not much, but yes, regular milk, not condensed.”
“Bring me some milk and a large vat, and long wooden spoon. Maybe ten liters of milk, twenty. The more the better. Tomorrow we will have butter.”
Edward said, “What does milk have to do with butter?”
Now it was Tatiana’s turn to study Edward, who smiled and said, “I’m a doctor, not a farmer. Eat, eat. You need it. And you’re right. Despite everything, there is still plenty.”
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_1331f3f3-0418-592a-9111-d9c10fe6cb88)
Morozovo, 1943
THEY CAME FOR HIM a few hours into the night. Alexander, sleeping in the chair, was roughly shaken awake by four men in suits, motioning him to stand.
Slowly he stood.
“You’re going to Volkhov to get promoted. Hurry. There is no time to waste. We’ve got to get across the lake before it gets light. The Germans bomb Ladoga constantly.” The sallow man who was speaking in hushed tones was obviously in charge. The other three never opened their mouths.
Alexander picked up his rucksack.
“Leave that here,” said the man.
“Well, I’m a soldier. I always take my ruck with me if it’s all the same to you.”
“Have you got your sidearm?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s have that.”
Alexander took a step toward them. He was a head taller than the tallest. They looked like thugs in their drab gray winter coats. On top of the coats they had small blue stripes, the symbol of the NKVD—the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs—the way the Red Cross was a symbol of international empathy. “Let me understand what you’re asking me,” he said quietly but not that quietly.
“So it’s easier for you,” the first man stammered. “You’re wounded, no? It must be hard for you to carry all your gear—”
“This isn’t all my gear. These are just my few personal things. Let’s go,” Alexander said loudly, moving out from the side of the bed, pushing them out of his way. “Now, comrades. We’re wasting time.” It was not an even fight. He was an officer, a major. He couldn’t see their rank in their shoulder bars or demeanor. They had no authority until they were out of the building and took his away from him. This police liked to do its work in private, in the dark. They did not like to be overheard by barely sleeping nurses, by barely sleeping soldiers. This police liked it to seem as if everything was just as it should be. A wounded man was being taken in the middle of the night across the lake to get a promotion. What was so out of the ordinary about that? But they had to leave his gun with him to continue with the pretense. As if they could have taken it away.
As they were walking out, Alexander noticed that the two beds next to him were empty. The soldier with the breathing difficulties and another had gone. He shook his head. “Are they going to get promoted, too?” he asked dryly.
“No questions, just go,” said one of the men. “Quickly.”
Alexander had slight trouble walking quickly.
As he made his way through the corridor, he wondered where Tatiana was sleeping. Was it behind one of those doors? Was she there now, somewhere? Still so close. He took a deep breath, almost as if he were smelling for her.
The armored truck was waiting outside behind the building. It was parked next to Dr. Sayers’s Red Cross jeep. Alexander recognized the white and red emblem in the dark. As they got closer to their truck, a silhouette hobbled out from the shadows. It was Dimitri. He was hunched over his casted arm, and his face was a black pulp with a swollen protuberance instead of a nose—earlier courtesy of Alexander.
He stood for a moment and said nothing. Then, “Going somewhere, Major Belov?” His hissing voice placed special emphasis on Belov. It sounded like Beloffffff.
“Don’t come close to me, Dimitri,” Alexander said.
Dimitri, as if heeding the advice, took a step back, then opened his mouth and laughed silently. “You can’t hurt me anymore, Alexander.”
“Nor you me.”
“Oh, believe me,” said Dimitri in a smooth sweet-sour voice, “I can still hurt you.” And right before Alexander was pushed into the NKVD truck by the militia men, Dimitri threw his head back as if in studied delirium and wagged a shaking finger at Alexander, baring the yellow teeth under his bloodied nose and narrowing his slit eyes.
Alexander turned his head, squared his shoulders, and without even looking in Dimitri’s direction as he jumped into the truck, said very loudly and clearly and with as much satisfaction as he could get his voice to muster, “Oh, fuck you.”
“Get in the truck and shut up,” barked one of the NKVD men to Alexander, and to Dimitri: “Go back to your ward, it’s past curfew. What are you doing skulking around here?”
In the back of the truck, Alexander saw his two shivering ward mates. He hadn’t expected two other people, two Red Army soldiers, to be in the truck with him. He had thought it would be just him and the NKVD men. No one to risk or sacrifice except them and himself. Now what?
One of the NKVD men grabbed his ruck. Alexander yanked it away. The man did not let go. “It looks as if it’s hard for you to carry it,” he said, struggling. “I’ll take it and give it back to you on the other side.”
Shaking his head, Alexander said, “No, I’ll keep it.” He wrenched it from the man.
“Belov—”
“Sergeant!” said Alexander loudly. “You’re talking to an officer. Major Belov to you. Leave my belongings alone. Now, let’s start driving. We’ve got a long way ahead of us.” Smiling to himself, he turned away, dismissing the man. His back didn’t hurt as badly as he had imagined: he was able to walk, jump up, talk, bend, sit down on the floor of the truck. But his weakness upset him.
The truck’s idling motor revved up and they began driving away—from the hospital, from Morozovo, from Tatiana. Alexander took a deep breath and turned to the two men sitting in front of him.
“Who the fuck are you?” he said. The words were gruff but the tone was resigned. He looked them over briefly. It was dark, he could barely make out their features. They were huddled against the wall of the truck, the smaller one wore glasses, the larger one sat, body wrapped in his coat, head wrapped in a bandage, and only his eyes, nose, and mouth showed. His eyes were bright and alert, discernible even in the dark, even at night. Bright perhaps wasn’t quite the right word. Mischievous. You couldn’t say the same about the smaller man’s eyes. They were lackluster.
“Who are you?” Alexander repeated.
“Lieutenant Nikolai Ouspensky. This is Corporal Boris Maikov. We were wounded in Operation Spark, on January fifteenth, over on the Volkhov side—we were housed in a field tent until we—”
“Stop,” Alexander said, putting his hand out. Before he continued with them he wanted to shake their hands. He wanted to feel what they were made of. Ouspensky was all right—his handshake was steady and friendly and unafraid. His hand was strong. Not frail Maikov’s.
Alexander sat back against the truck and felt for the grenade in his boots. Damn it. He could hear Ouspensky’s rattling breathing. Ouspensky was the one Tania had moved next to Alexander and put a tent around, the one with only one lung, the one who could not hear or speak. Yet here he was sitting, breathing on his own, hearing, speaking.
“Listen, both of you,” said Alexander. “Summon your strength. You’re going to need it.”
“For getting a medal?” Maikov said suspiciously.
“You’re going to be getting a posthumous medal if you don’t get hold of yourself and stop shaking,” said Alexander.
“How do you know I’m shaking?”
“I can hear your boots knocking together,” Alexander replied. “Quiet, soldier.”
Maikov turned to Ouspensky. “I told you, Lieutenant, this didn’t seem right, to be woken in the middle of the night—”
“And I told you to shut up,” said Alexander.
There was a bit of dull blue light coming in from the narrow window in the front of the truck.
“Lieutenant,” Alexander said to Ouspensky, “can you stand up? I need you to stand up and block the view from the window.”
“Last time I heard that, my quartermate was getting some blow,” said Ouspensky with a smile.
“Well, rest assured, no one is getting blow here,” Alexander said. “Stand up.”
Ouspensky obeyed. “Tell us the truth. Are we getting promoted?”
“How should I know?” Once Nikolai blocked the small window, Alexander took off his boot and pulled out one of the grenades. It was dark enough that neither Maikov nor Ouspensky saw what he was doing.
He crawled to the back of the truck and sat with his back against the doors. There were only two NKVD men in the front cabin. They were young, they had no experience, and no one wanted to cross the lake: the danger of German fire was ever-present and unwelcome. The driver’s lack of experience broadcast itself in his inability to drive the truck faster than twenty kilometers an hour. Alexander knew that if the Germans were monitoring Soviet army activity from their positions in Sinyavino, the truck’s leisurely speed would not escape their reconnaissance agents. He could walk across the ice faster.
“Major, are you getting promoted?” asked Ouspensky.
“That’s what they told me, and they let me keep my gun. Until I hear otherwise, I’m optimistic.”
“They didn’t let you keep your gun. I saw. I heard. They just didn’t have the strength to take it from you.”
“I’m a critically injured man,” Alexander said, taking out a cigarette. “They could have taken it from me if they wanted to.” He lit up.
“Have you got another one?” said Ouspensky. “I haven’t smoked in three months.” He looked Alexander over. “Nor seen anyone but my nurses.” He paused. “I’ve heard your voice, though.”
“You don’t want to smoke,” Alexander said. “From what I understand, you have no lungs.”
“I have one lung, and my nurse has been keeping me artificially sick so I don’t get sent back to the front. That’s what she did for me.”
“Did she?” asked Alexander, trying not to close his eyes at the image of Nikolai’s nurse—the small, clear-eyed bright sunny morning of a girl, the crisp Lazarevo morning of a sweet blonde girl.
“She brought in ice and made me breathe the cold fumes to get my lungs rattling and working. I wish she would have done a little more for me.”
Alexander handed him a cigarette. He wanted Nikolai to stop talking. He did not think Ouspensky would be particularly pleased to discover that Tatiana had saved him only long enough to be now sent into Mekhlis’s clutches.
Taking out his Tokarev pistol, Alexander got up, pointed at the back door and fired, blowing out the padlock. Maikov squealed. The truck slowed down. There was obviously some confusion in the driver’s cabin as to the source of the noise. Now down on the floor, Ouspensky was no longer blocking the window. Alexander had seconds before the truck stopped. Flinging the doors open, he pulled the pin out of the grenade, pulled himself above the roof of the creeping vehicle and threw the grenade forward. It landed a few meters in front of the truck’s path; seconds later there was a shattering explosion. He had just enough time to hear Maikov bleat, “What is that—” when he was thrown from the truck onto the ice. The pain he felt in the unhealed wound in his back was so jolting he thought his scars were tearing apart a millimeter at a time.
The truck jerked and began to rumble to a sliding stop. It skidded, teetered and fell sideways onto the ice, crunching to a halt at the ice hole made by Alexander’s grenade. The hole was smaller than the truck, but the truck was heavier than the broken ice. The ice cracked and the hole became wider.
Alexander got up and ran limping to the back doors, motioning for the two men to crawl to him. “What was that?” Maikov cried. He had bumped his head and his nose was bleeding.
“Jump out of the truck!” Alexander yelled.
Ouspensky and Maikov did as he commanded—just in time, as the front end of the truck slowly sank beneath the surface of the Ladoga. The drivers must have been knocked unconscious by the impact against the glass and ice. They were making no attempts to get out.
“Major, what the hell—”
“Shut up. The Germans will begin shooting at the truck in three or four minutes.” Alexander had no intention of actually dying on the ice. Before he saw Ouspensky and Maikov, he had had a small hope he might be alone, and would, after blowing up the truck with the NKVD men in it, make his way back to the Morozovo shores and into the woods. All of his hopes seemed to have this one common denominator nowadays: short-fucking-lived.
“You want to stay here and observe the efficient German army in action, or you want to come with me?”
“What about the drivers?” asked Ouspensky.
“What about them? They are NKVD men. Where do you think those drivers were taking you at dawn?”
Maikov tried to stand up. Before he could say another word, Alexander pulled him down onto the ice.
They weren’t far from the shore, maybe two kilometers. It was predawn. The cabin of the truck was submerged and cracking a larger hole in the ice, large enough soon for the whole truck to fit through.
“Pardon me, Major,” Ouspensky said, “but you’re talking out of your ass. I’ve never done anything wrong in my entire military career. They haven’t come for me.”
“No,” Alexander said. “They’ve come for me.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
The truck was disappearing into the water.
Ouspensky stared at the ice, at the shivering, dumbfounded and bleeding Maikov, at Alexander, and laughed. “Major, perhaps you could tell us your plans for what the three of us are going to do alone on the open ice once the truck sinks?”
“Don’t worry,” said Alexander with a heavy sigh. “I guarantee you, we won’t be alone for long.” He nodded in the direction of the distant Morozovo shore and took out his two pistols. The headlights of a light army vehicle were getting closer. The jeep stopped fifty meters from them, and out of it jumped five men with five machine guns all pointing at Alexander. “Stand up! Stand up on the ice!”
Ouspensky and Maikov stood instantly, hands in the air, but Alexander didn’t like to take orders from inferior officers. He would not stand up and with good reason. He heard the whistling sound of a shell and put his hands over his head.
When he looked, two of the NKVD men were lying face down, while the other three were crawling to Alexander, rifles aimed at him, hissing, stay down, stay down. Maybe the Germans will kill them before I have a chance to, Alexander thought. He tried to make out the shore. Where was Sayers? The NKVD jeep was stationary, providing a convenient practice target for the Germans. When the NKVD men got very close, Alexander suggested to them that maybe they should get back inside their vehicle and return to Morozovo with all deliberate speed.
“No!” one of them yelled. “We have to get you across to Volkhov!”
Another shell whistled by, this one falling twenty meters from the jeep—the only transport they had to get either to Volkhov or back to Morozovo. Once the Germans hit their jeep, the cluster of men would last several unprotected seconds on the open lake against German artillery.
On his stomach, Alexander stared at the NKVD men on their stomachs. “You want to drive to Volkhov under German fire? Let’s go.”
The men looked at the armored truck that had carried Alexander. It had nearly gone below the surface of the water. Alexander watched with amusement as self-preservation battled it out with orders.
“Let’s go back,” said one of the NKVD. “We will return to Morozovo and await further instructions. We can always get him to Volkhov tomorrow.”
“I think that’s wise,” said Alexander.
Ouspensky was watching Alexander with amazement. Alexander ignored him. “Come on, all of you. On three. Run to your jeep before it’s blown up.” Aside from wanting to keep alive, Alexander wanted to remain dry. His life wasn’t worth much to him wet. He knew that whether he was in Volkhov or Morozovo he would get dry clothes when donkeys flew. The wet clothes would remain on his body until after they’d given him pneumonia and killed him, and still they’d be wet on his corpse in the March damp.
All six men crawled to the jeep. The three NKVD troops ordered the men to get into the back. Both Ouspensky and Maikov glanced at Alexander with considerable anxiety.
“Just get in.”
Two of the NKVD men got into the back with them. Ouspensky and Maikov breathed out in relief.
Alexander took out a cigarette and passed one to Nikolai and to white-faced Maikov who refused.
“Why did you do that?” whispered Ouspensky to Alexander.
“I’ll tell you,” said Alexander. “I did it because I just didn’t feel like getting promoted.”
Back on shore, the jeep proceeded to headquarters, passing a medical truck heading for the river. Alexander spotted Dr. Sayers in the passenger seat. Alexander managed a smile as he smoked, though he noticed the tips of his fingers trembling. It was going as well as could be expected. The scene on the lake genuinely looked like the aftermath of a German onslaught. Dead men on the ice, one truck down. Sayers would write out the death certificate, sign it, and it would be as if Alexander had never existed. The NKVD would be grateful—they preferred making their arrested parties invisible anyway—and by the time Stepanov learned of what had really happened, and that Alexander was still alive, Tatiana and Sayers would be long gone. Stepanov would not have to lie to Tatiana. Lacking any actual information, he himself would believe that Alexander, with Ouspensky and Maikov, had perished on the lake.
He ran a hand over his capless head and closed his eyes, quickly opening them again. The bleak Russian landscape was better than what was behind his closed lids.
Everybody won. The NKVD would not have to answer questions from the International Red Cross, the Red Army would pretend to mourn a number of downed and drowned men, while Mekhlis still had his paws on Alexander. Had they wanted to kill him, they would have killed him instantly. Those were not their orders. He knew why. The cat wanted to play with the mouse before he ripped the mouse to pieces.
It was eight in the morning by the time they got back to Morozovo, and since the base was coming to life and since they had to be hidden until they could be safely transported to unsafety, Alexander, Ouspensky and Maikov were thrown into the stockade in the basement of the old school. The stockade was a concrete cell just over a meter wide and less than two meters long. The militia ordered the three soldiers to lie flat on the floor and not move.
The cell was too short for Alexander; there was not enough room to lie down on the floor. As soon as the guards left, the three men crouched on the ground, drawing their knees up to their chests. Alexander’s wound was throbbing. Sitting on the cold cement wasn’t helping.
Ouspensky kept on at him. Alexander said, “What do you want? Stop asking. This way when you’re questioned you won’t have to lie.”
“Why would we be questioned?”
“You’ve been arrested. Isn’t that clear?”
Maikov was looking into his hands. “Oh, no,” he said. “I’ve got a wife, a mother, two small children. What’s going to happen?”
“You?” said Nikolai. “Who are you? I’ve got a wife and two sons. Two small sons. I think my mother is still alive, too.”
Maikov didn’t reply, but both he and Ouspensky turned to stare at Alexander. Maikov lowered his gaze. Ouspensky didn’t.
“All right,” said Ouspensky. “What did you do?”
“Lieutenant!” Alexander pulled rank whenever and wherever necessary. “I’ve heard enough from you.”
Ouspensky remained undaunted. “You don’t look like a religious zealot.”
Alexander was silent.
“Or a Jew. Or a skank.” Ouspensky looked him over. “Are you a kulak? A member of the Political Red Cross? A closet philosopher? A socialist? A historian? Are you an agricultural spoiler? An industrial wrecker? An anti-Soviet agitator?”
“I’m a Tatar drayman,” said Alexander.
“You will get ten years for that. Where is your dray? My wife would find it very useful for hauling onions from nearby fields. Are you telling me we were arrested because we had the fucking bad luck to be bedded next to you?”
Maikov emitted a whimper that bordered on a wail. “But we know nothing! We did nothing!”
“Oh?” said Alexander. “Tell that to the group of musicians and a small audience that used to gather in the early thirties for an evening of piano without clearing it first with the housing council. To help defray the costs of the wine, they would collect a few kopecks from each person. When they were all arrested for anti-Soviet agitation, the money they had collected was deemed to have gone to prop up the nearly extinct bourgeoisie. The musicians and the audience all got from three to ten years.” Alexander paused. “Well, not all. Only those who confessed to their crimes. Those who refused to confess were shot.”
Ouspensky and Maikov stared at him. “And you know this how?”
Alexander shrugged. “Because I, being fourteen, escaped through the window before they had a chance to catch me.”
They heard someone coming and fell quiet. Alexander stood up, and as the door was opened, Alexander said to Maikov, “Corporal, imagine your old life is gone. Imagine they’ve taken from you all they can and there is nothing left—”
“Come, Belov, let’s go!” shouted a stout man with a single-shot Nagant rifle.
“It’s the only way you will make it,” Alexander said, stepping out of the cell and hearing the door slam closed behind him.
He sat in a small room in the abandoned school, in a school chair, in front of a table that was in front of a blackboard. He thought at any minute the schoolmaster was going to come in with a textbook and proceed with the lesson on the evils of imperialism.
Instead two men came in. There were now four people in the room, Alexander in the chair, a guard at the back of the class and two men behind the teacher’s table. One man was bald and very thin with a long, thoughtful nose. He introduced himself kindly as Riduard Morozov. “Not the Morozov of this town?” asked Alexander.
Morozov smiled thinly. “No.”
The other man was extremely heavy, extremely bald and had a round bulbous nose with broken capillaries. He looked like a heavy drinker. He introduced himself—somewhat less kindly—as Mitterand, which Alexander found almost humorous since Mitterand was the leader of the tiny French “Resistance movement in Nazi-occupied France.
Morozov began. “Do you know why you’re here, Major Belov?” he asked, smiling warmly, speaking in polite, friendly tones. They were having a conversation. In a moment Mitterand was going to offer Alexander some tea, maybe a shot of vodka to calm him. Alexander thought of it as a joke, but oddly, the bottle of vodka actually did materialize from behind a desk, along with three shot glasses. Morozov poured.
“Yes,” Alexander said brightly. “I was told yesterday I’m getting promoted. I’m going to be lieutenant colonel. And no, thank you,” he said to the drink being offered to him.
“Are you refusing our hospitality, Comrade Belov?”
“I am Major Belov,” Alexander said, standing up and raising his voice to the man in front of him. “Do you have a rank?” He waited. The man said nothing. “I didn’t think so. You’re not wearing a uniform. If you had a uniform to wear, you would be wearing it. Now, I will not have your drink. I will not sit down until you tell me what you want with me. I will be glad to cooperate in whatever way I can, comrades,” he added, “but don’t sit there and insult me by pretending we’re the best of friends. What’s going on?”
“You’re under arrest.”
“Ah. So no promotion then? It only took you since four this morning. Ten hours. You have not told me what you want with me. I don’t know if you know yourselves. Why don’t you go and find someone who can actually tell me? In the meantime, take me back to my cell and stop wasting my time.”
“Major!” That was Morozov. The voice was less kind. The vodka, however, had been drunk by both men. Alexander smiled. If he kept them in the classroom drinking, they’d be leading him to the Soviet-Finnish border themselves, talking to him in soft English. They called him major. Alexander understood the psychology of rank extremely well. In the army there was only one rule—you never spoke rudely to your superiors. The pecking order was precisely established. “Major,” Morozov repeated. “Stay right here.”
Alexander returned to his chair.
Mitterand spoke to the young guard by the door; Alexander didn’t hear the individual words. He understood the essence. This was not only out of Morozov’s hands, this was out of his league. A bigger fish was needed to deal with Alexander. And soon the fish would be coming. But first they were going to try to break him.
“Put your hands behind your back, Major,” said Morozov.
Alexander threw his cigarette on the floor, twisted his foot over it, and stood up.
They relieved him of his sidearm and his knife and pillaged through his rucksack. Having found bandages and pens and her white dress—nothing worth removing—they decided to take Alexander’s medals off his chest, and they also tipped his shoulder bars and they told him he was not a major anymore and had no right to his title. They still hadn’t told him the charges against him, nor had they asked him any questions.
He asked for his ruck. They laughed. Almost helplessly, he glanced at it once, in their hands, knowing Tatiana’s dress was there. Just one more thing to be trampled on, to be left behind.
Alexander was taken to a solitary concrete cell with no window, no Ouspensky, no Maikov. He had no bench, he had no bed, and he had no blanket. He was alone, and his only sources of oxygen came from the guards opening the door, or from opening the sliding steel reinforced window on the door, or from the peephole they peered at him through, or from the small hole in the ceiling that was probably used for poison gas.
They left him his watch, and because they didn’t search his person they did not find the drugs in his boots. He had a feeling the drugs were not safe. But where to put them? Slipping off the boots, he took the syringe, the morphine vial and the small sulfa pills and stuffed them in the pocket of his BVDs. They would have to search more thoroughly than they usually did to find them there.
Bending reminded him of his sharply throbbing back, which, as the day wore on, felt as if it were swelling and expanding. He debated giving himself a morphine shot, then decided against it. He didn’t want to numb himself to what was about to come. He did chew one of the sulfa tablets, bitter and acidic, without crushing it, without asking for water. He just put it into his mouth and chewed it, shuddering with the swallow. Alexander sat quietly on the floor, realizing they couldn’t see him because it was so dark in the cell, and closed his eyes. Or maybe they had remained open; it was hard to tell. It didn’t matter in the end. He sat and waited. Had the day gone? Had it been one day? He wanted a smoke. He remained motionless. Had Sayers and Tatiana left? Had Tania allowed herself to be convinced, to be goaded, to be comforted? Had she taken her things and got into Sayers’s truck? Had they fled Morozovo? What Alexander wouldn’t give for a word. He was very afraid that Dr. Sayers would break down, not convince her, and she would still be here. He tried to feel for her up close, sensing nothing but the cold. If she were still in Morozovo, he knew that once they started interrogating him for real and once they knew of her, he would be finished. He couldn’t breathe thinking of her still so close. He needed to stall the NKVD for a little while longer until he knew for sure she was out. The sooner she left, the sooner he could give himself over to the state.
She seemed very close. He could almost reach for his ruck and feel for her dress, and see her, white dress with red roses, hair long and flowing, teeth gleaming. She was very close. He didn’t have to touch the dress. He didn’t need comfort. She needed comfort. She needed him so much, how was she going to get through this without him?
How was she going to get through losing him without him?
Alexander needed to think about something else.
Soon he didn’t have to.
“Idiot!” he heard from the outside. “How do you plan to observe the prisoner if he has no light? He could have killed himself in there for all you know. Stupid moron!”
The door opened and a man walked in with a kerosene lamp. “You need to be illuminated at all times,” said the man. It was Mitterand.
“When is someone going to tell me what’s going on around here?” said Alexander.
“You are not to question us!” Mitterand shouted. “You are not a major anymore. You are nothing. You will sit and wait until we are ready for you.”
That seemed to be the sole purpose of Mitterand’s visit—to yell at Alexander. After Mitterand left, the guard brought Alexander some water and three-quarters of a kilo of bread. Alexander ate the bread, drank the water, and then felt around the floor for a drain hole. He did not want to be illuminated. He also did not want to compete for oxygen with a kerosene lamp. Opening the bottom of the lamp, he poured the kerosene down the drain, leaving just a little left at the bottom that burned out in ten minutes. The guard opened the door and shouted, “Why is the lamp out?”
“Ran out of kerosene,” Alexander said pleasantly. “Have you got more?”
The guard did not have more.
“That’s too bad,” Alexander said.
He slept in the darkness, in a sitting position, in the corner, with his head leaning against the wall. When he woke up it was still pitch black. He didn’t know for sure he had woken up. He dreamed he had opened his eyes, and it was black. He dreamed of Tatiana, and when he woke up, he thought of Tatiana. Dreams and reality were mingled. Alexander didn’t know where the nightmare ended and real life began. He dreamed he closed his eyes and slept.
He felt disconnected from himself, from Morozovo—from the hospital, from his life—and he felt strangely comforted in his detachment. He was cold. That attached him back to his cramped and uncomfortable body. He preferred it the other way. The wound in his back was merciless. He grit his teeth and blinked away the darkness.
Harold and Jane Barrington, 1933
Hitler had become the Chancellor of Germany. President Von Hindenburg had “stepped down.” Alexander felt an inexplicable stirring in the air of something ominous he could not quite put his finger on. He had long stopped hoping for more food, for new shoes, for a warmer winter coat. But in the summer he didn’t need a coat. The Barringtons were spending July at their dacha in Krasnaya Polyana and that was good. They rented two rooms from a Lithuanian widow and her drunken son.
One afternoon, after a picnic of hard-boiled eggs and tomatoes and a little bologna, and vodka for his mother (“Mom, since when do you drink vodka?”), Alexander was lying in the hammock reading when he heard someone behind him in the woods. When he languidly turned his head, he saw his mother and father. They were near the clearing by the lake, throwing pebbles into the water, chatting softly. Alexander was not used to his parents talking quietly, so strident had their relationship become with their conflicting needs and anxieties. Normally he would have looked back into his book. But this quiet chatter, this convivial closeness—he didn’t know what to make of it. Harold took the pebbles out of Jane’s hands and brought her to stand close to him. One of his hands was around her waist. He was holding her other hand. And then he kissed her and they began to dance. They waltzed slowly in the clearing, and Alexander heard his father singing—singing!
As they continued to waltz, their bodies spinning in a conjugal embrace, and as Alexander watched his mother and father in a moment they had never had before in front of him and would never have again, he was filled with a happiness and longing he could neither define nor express.
They drew away from one another, looked at him, and smiled.
Uncertainly he smiled back, embarrassed but unable to look away.
They came over to his hammock. His father’s arm was still around his mother.
“It’s our anniversary today, Alexander.”
“Your father is singing the anniversary song to me,” said Jane. “We danced to that song the day we were wed thirty-one years ago. I was nineteen.” She smiled at Harold.
“Are you going to stay in the hammock, son? Read for a while?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good,” said Harold, taking Jane by the hand and heading with her toward the house.
Alexander looked into his book, but after an hour of turning the pages, he could not see or remember a single word of what he had just read.
Winter came too soon. And during the winter on Thursday evenings after dinner Harold would take Alexander by the hand and walk with him in the cold to Arbat—the Moscow street vendors’ mall of musicians and writers and poets and troubadours and old ladies selling chachkas from the days of the Tsar. Near Arbat, in a small, smoke-filled two-room apartment, a group of foreigners and Soviet men, all devout communists, would meet for two hours from eight to ten to drink, smoke and discuss how to make communism work better in the Soviet Union, how to make the classless society arrive faster at their doorstep, a society in which there was no need for the state, for police, for an army because all grounds for conflict had been removed.
“Marx said the only conflict is economic conflict between classes. Once it’s gone, the need for police would be gone. Citizens, what are we waiting for? Is it taking longer than we anticipated?” That was Harold.
Even Alexander chipped in, remembering something he had read: “‘While the state exists, there can be no freedom. When there will be freedom, there will be no state.’” Harold smiled approvingly at his son quoting Lenin.
At the meetings Alexander made friends with sixty-seven-year-old Slavan, a withered, gray man who seemed to have wrinkles even on his scalp, but his eyes were small blue alert stars, and his mouth was always fixed in a sardonic smile. He said little, but Alexander liked the look of his ironic expression and the bit of warmth that came from him whenever he looked Alexander’s way.
After two years of meetings, Harold and fifteen others were called into the Party regional headquarters or Obkom—Oblastnyi Kommitet—and asked if the focus of their future meetings could perhaps be something other than how to make communism work better in Russia since that implied it wasn’t working quite so well. After hearing about it from his father, Alexander asked how the Party knew what a group of fifteen drunk men talked about once a week on Thursdays in a city of five million people. Harold said, himself quoting Lenin, “‘It is true that liberty is precious. So precious that it must be rationed.’ They obviously have ways of finding out what we talk about. Perhaps it’s that Slavan. I’d stop talking to him if I were you.”
“It’s not him, Dad.”
After that the group still met on Thursdays, but now they read aloud from Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? or from Rosa Luxembourg’s pamphlets, or from Marx’s Communist Manifesto.
Harold often brought up the approval of American communist supporters to show that Soviet communism was slowly being embraced internationally and that it was all just a matter of time. “Look what Isadora Duncan said about Lenin before she died,” Harold would say and quote: “‘Others loved themselves, money, theories, power. Lenin loved his fellow men … Lenin was God, as Christ was God, because God is love, and Christ and Lenin were all love.’”
Alexander smiled approvingly at his father.
During one full night, many hours of it, fifteen men, except for a silent and smiling Slavan, tried to explain to a fourteen-year-old Alexander the meaning of “value subtraction.” How an item—say shoes—could cost less after it was made than the sum total value of its labor and material parts. “What don’t you understand?” yelled a frustrated communist who was an engineer by day.
“The part of how you make money selling shoes.”
“Who said anything about making money? Haven’t you read the Communist Manifesto?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you remember what Marx said? The difference between what the factory pays the worker to make the shoes and what the shoes actually cost is capitalist theft and exploitation of the proletariat. That’s what communism is trying to eradicate. Have you not been paying attention?”
“I have, but value subtraction is not just eliminating profit,” Alexander said. “Value subtraction means it’s actually costing more to make the shoes than the shoes can be sold for. Who is going to pay the difference?”
“The state.”
“Where is the state going to find the money?”
“The state will temporarily pay the workers less to make the shoes.”
Alexander was quiet. “So in a period of flagrant worldwide inflation, the Soviet Union is going to pay the workers less? How much less?”
“Less, that’s all.”
“And how are we going to buy the shoes?”
“Temporarily we’re not. We’ll have to wear last year’s shoes. Until the state gets on its feet.” The engineer smiled.
“Good one,” Alexander said calmly. “The state got on its feet enough to cover the cost of Lenin’s Rolls Royce, didn’t it?”
“What does Lenin’s Rolls Royce have to do with what we’re talking about?” screamed the engineer. Slavan laughed. “The Soviet Union will be fine,” the engineer continued. “It is in its infancy stages. It will borrow money from abroad if it has to.”
“With all due respect, citizen, no country in the world will lend money to the Soviet Union again,” said Alexander. “It repudiated all of its foreign debt in 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution. They will not see any foreign money for a long time to come. The world banks are closed to the Soviet Union.”
“We have to be patient. Changes will not happen overnight. And you need to have a more positive attitude. Harold, what have you been teaching your son?”
Harold didn’t reply, but on the way home he said, “What’s gotten into you, Alexander?”
“Nothing.” Alexander wanted to take his father’s hand, like always, but suddenly thought he was too old. He walked alongside him, and then took it anyway. “For some reason, the economics are not working. This revolutionary state is built foremost on economics, and the state has figured out everything except how to pay the labor force. The workers feel less and less like proletariat than like the state-owned factories and machines. We’ve been here over three years. We just finished the first of the Five-Year Plans. And we have so little food, and nothing in the stores, and—” He wanted to say, and people keep disappearing, but he kept his mouth shut.
“Well, what do you think is going on in America?” Harold asked. “Thirty per cent unemployment, Alexander. You think it’s better there? The whole world is suffering. Look at Germany: such extraordinary inflation. Now this man Adolf Hitler is promising the Germans the end of all their troubles. Maybe he will succeed. The Germans certainly hope so. Well, Comrades Lenin and Stalin promised the same thing to the Soviet Union. What did Stalin call Russia? The second America, right? We have to believe, and we have to follow, and soon it will be better. You’ll see.”
“I know, Dad. You may be right. Still, I know that the state has to pay its people somehow. How much less can they pay you? We already can’t afford meat and milk, not that there is any, even if we could. And will they pay you less until—what? They’ll realize they need more money, not less, to run the government, and your labor is their largest variable cost. What are they going to do? Reduce your salary every year until—until what?”
“What are you afraid of?” Harold said, squeezing Alexander’s reluctant hand. “When you get big, you will have meaningful work. You still want to be an architect? You will. You will have a career.”
“I’m afraid,” said Alexander, extricating himself from his father, “that it’s just a matter of time before I am, before we all become nothing more than fixed capital.”
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_4e86abac-4595-5638-9443-d8947e266d23)
Edward and Vikki, 1943
TATIANA WAS SITTING BY the window, holding her two-week-old baby with one hand and a book with the other. Her eyes were closed, and then she heard a breath, and instantly opened her eyes.
Edward Ludlow was standing a few feet away from her with an expression of curiosity and concern. She could understand. She had been very silent since her baby was born. She did not think that was so unusual. Many people who came here, leaving their life behind, must have been silent, as if the enormity of what was behind and what was ahead was just dawning on them in their small white rooms as they stared at the robes of Lady Liberty. “I was worried about you dropping the baby,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you …”
She showed him how tightly she was holding Anthony. “Don’t worry.”
“What are you reading?”
She looked at her book. “I’m not reading, just … sitting.” It was The Bronze Horseman and Other Poems by Aleksandr Pushkin.
“Are you all right? It’s the middle of the afternoon. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
She rubbed her eyes. The baby was still sleeping. “This child not sleep at night, only day.”
“Much like his mother.”
“Mother on his schedule.” She smiled. “Everything all right?”
“Yes, yes,” said Dr. Ludlow hurriedly. “I wanted to let you know that an INS worker is here to talk to you.”
“What he want?”
“What does he want? He wants to give you a chance to stay in the United States.”
“I thought because my son … because he was born on American ground …”
“American soil,” Dr. Ludlow corrected her gently. “The Attorney General needs to look at your case personally.” He paused. “We don’t have many stowaways coming to the United States during war, you have to understand. Especially from the Soviet Union. It’s unusual.”
Tatiana said, “Does he feel is safe to come here? Did you say him I have TB?”
“I told him. He’ll be wearing a mask. How are you feeling, by the way? Any blood in the cough?”
“None. And fever is gone. I feel better.”
“You’ve been going out a bit?”
“Yes, salty air is good.”
“Yes.” He stared at her solemnly. She stared solemnly back. “The salt air is good.” He cleared his throat and continued. “The nurses are all amazed your boy hasn’t caught TB.”
“Explain to them, Edward,” said Tatiana, “that if ten thousand people come to see me every day for whole year and I had TB every day for whole year, only ten to sixteen people contract disease from me.” She paused. “It’s not so contagious as people think. So send in INS man if he thinks he strong enough. But tell him odds. And tell him I don’t speak so good English.”
Smiling, Edward said her English was just fine and asked if she wanted him to stay.
“No. No, thank you.”
The INS man, Tom, talked to her for fifteen minutes to see if she spoke rudimentary English. Tatiana spoke rudimentary English. He asked about her skills. She told him she was a nurse, and that she could also sew and cook.
“Well, there is certainly a shortage of nurses during the war,” he said.
“Yes, much of it here at Ellis,” said Tatiana. She thought of Brenda being in the wrong profession.
“We don’t get many cases like you.”
She made no reply.
“You want to stay in the United States?”
“Of course.”
“You think you could get a job, to help in the war effort?”
“Of course.”
“Not be a public charge? That’s very important to us in time of war. You understand? The attorney general comes under scrutiny every time he lets a person like you slip through his fingers. The country is in turmoil. We must make sure you stay productive, and that you have allegiance to this country, not your old country.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “As soon as my TB goes and they let me work, I will get job. I will be nurse, or seamstress, or cook. I will be all three, if need to. I will do what I have to after I am good again.”
As if suddenly remembering she had TB, Tom stood up and went to the door, tightening the mask around his mouth. “Where will you live?” he said in a muffled voice.
“I want to stay here.”
“After you get better, you’ll have to get an apartment.”
“Yes. Do not worry.”
He nodded, writing something down in his book. “And the name you want to go by? I saw on the documents you brought with you that you got out of the Soviet Union as a Red Cross nurse named Jane Barrington.”
“Yes.”
“How fake are those documents?”
“I do not understand what you mean.”
Tom fell silent. “Who is Jane Barrington?”
Now Tatiana was silent. “My husband’s mother,” she said at last.
Tom sighed. “Barrington? Not very Russian.”
“My husband was American.” She lowered her gaze.
Tom opened the door. “Is that the name you want to use to get your permanent residency card?”
“Yes.”
“No Russian name for you?”
She thought about it.
Tom came closer to her. “Sometimes refugees who come here like to cling to a little bit of their past. Maybe they leave just the first name the same. Change the last name. Think about it.”
“Not me,” she replied. “Change all. I don’t want to—how you put it? Cling to anything.”
He wrote something down in his book. “Jane Barrington it is, then.”
When he left, Tatiana opened her Bronze Horseman book as she sat once more by the window, looking out onto the New York harbor and the Statue of Liberty. She touched the picture of Alexander she had kept in there; without looking at it she touched his face and his uniformed body, and she whispered small short words in Russian to comfort herself this time, not Alexander, not his child, but herself. Shura, Shura, Shura, whispered Jane Barrington, once known as Tatiana Metanova.
Tatiana’s days consisted of feeding Anthony and changing Anthony and washing Anthony’s few nightgowns and cloth diapers in the bathroom sink and going on short, fragrant walks outside the hospital and sitting on benches with Anthony wrapped in blankets in her arms. Brenda brought her breakfast to her room. Tatiana ate lunch and dinner in her room. Unless Anthony was sleeping, Tatiana had him in her arms. She looked at only two things: the New York harbor and her son. But whatever comfort she received from holding her baby was dissipated from being alone day in and day out. Brenda and Dr. Ludlow called it convalescing. Tatiana called it solitary confinement.
One morning at the end of July, tired of herself, of sitting in her room, Tatiana decided to take a walk down the corridor while Anthony was sleeping.
She heard groans from the corridor and followed the groans into a ward filled with wounded men. Brenda was on duty—the only one on duty—looking less than pleased with her lot and showing the wounded men exactly how she felt. Grumbling, curt, displeasingly surly, she was washing out a wound on a soldier’s leg despite repeated and loud pleas from the soldier to either do it more gently or to shoot him.
Tatiana walked over and asked Brenda if she needed help, to which Brenda replied that she certainly didn’t need a sick girl making her prisoners sicker, and could Tatiana immediately go back to her room. Not moving, Tatiana stood, stared at Brenda, stared at the raw hole in the soldier’s thigh, at the soldier’s eyes, and said, “Let me bandage leg, let me help you. Look, I have mask over my nose and mouth. You got four men screaming for you on other side of hospital. One just lose a tooth in his morning coffee. One have raging fever. One is oozing blood through his ear.”
Brenda let go of the bucket and the soldier’s leg and left, though Tatiana could see that for a moment Brenda had struggled with what actually gave her more displeasure: taking care of the soldiers or letting Tatiana have her way.
Tatiana finished washing out the wound; the soldier never peeped, looking soothed and asleep; either asleep or dead, Tatiana concluded as she bandaged his leg, still without motion from him, and moved on.
She disinfected an arm wound and a head wound, started an IV, and administered morphine, wishing for a bit of morphine for herself to dull her inner aching, at the same time thinking how lucky the German submarine men were to have had the luck to be brought to American shores for imprisonment and convalescence.
Suddenly Brenda appeared and, as if surprised that Tatiana was still in the ward, asked her to immediately go back to her room before she infected all her patients with TB, sounding almost as if she cared what happened to the patients.
As Tatiana was heading back, out in the corridor by the water fountain, she saw a tall, slim girl in a nurse’s uniform standing and crying. Long-haired and long-legged, she was quite beautiful; if you didn’t look at her mascara-streaked, tear-streaked, swollen eyes and cheeks. Tatiana needed a drink of water, and so with great discomfort she proceeded past the girl, stopping just half a foot away from her to get to the fountain. The girl sobbed loudly. Tatiana put her hand on the girl’s elbow and said, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” the girl sobbed.
“Oh.”
The girl continued to cry. She held a slightly moist cigarette in her hands. “If you only knew how freakishly miserable I am at the moment.”
“Can I do anything?”
The girl looked out of her wet hands at Tatiana. “Who are you?”
“You can call me Tania.”
“Aren’t you the TB stowaway?”
“I am better now,” Tatiana said quietly.
“You’re not Tania. I processed your documents myself. Tom gave them to me. You’re Jane Barrington. Oh, what do I care? My life is in shambles and we’re talking about your name. I wish I had your problems.”
Trying quickly to find the words to say something comforting in English, Tatiana said, “It could be worse.”
“That’s where you’re so wrong, missy. It’s as bad as can be. Nothing worse can happen. Nothing.”
Tatiana noticed the wedding band on the girl’s finger, and her sympathy flowed. “I am sorry.” She paused. “Is it about your husband?”
Without looking away from her hands, the girl nodded.
“It is terrible thing,” said Tatiana. “I know. This war …”
The girl nodded. “It’s the pits.”
“Your husband … he is not coming back?”
“Isn’t coming back?” the girl exclaimed. “That’s the whole point! He is very much coming back. Very much so. Next week.”
Tatiana took a puzzled step away.
“Where are you going? You look like you’re ready to fall down. It’s not your fault he is coming back. Don’t look so upset. I guess worse things have happened to girls at war, I just don’t know of any. You want to go grab a coffee? Want a cigarette?”
Tatiana paused. “I have coffee with you.”
They sat down in the long dining room at one of the rectangular tables. Tatiana sat across from the girl who introduced herself as Viktoria Sabatella (“But call me Vikki.”), shook Tatiana’s hand vigorously and said, “You here with your parents? I haven’t seen any immigrants come this way in months. The boats are not bringing them in. So few—what? You’re sick?”
“I am better now,” said Tatiana. “I am here with myself.” She paused. “With my son.”
“Get out!” Viktoria slammed her coffee cup on the table. “You don’t have a son.”
“He almost month old.”
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“God, they start early where you’re from. Where are you from?”
“Soviet Union.”
“Wow. How’d you get this baby anyway? You have a husband?”
Tatiana opened her mouth, but Vikki went on as if the question had not been asked. Before she drew her next breath, she told Tatiana that she herself had never known her father (“Dead, or gone, all the same”) and barely knew her mother (“Had me too young”) who was in San Francisco, living with two men (“Not in the same apartment”) and pretending to be either sick (“Yes, mentally”) or dying (“From all that passion”). Vikki had been raised by her maternal grandparents (“They love Mumsy but they don’t approve of her”) and was living with them still (“Less fun than you might think”). She had originally wanted to be a journalist, then a manicurist (“In both professions you work with your hands; I thought it was a natural progression”) and finally decided (“Was forced to, more like it,”) to go into nursing when the European war looked like it would suck the United States into it. Tatiana was listening quietly and attentively when Vikki suddenly looked at her and said, “Got a husband?”
“Once.”
“Yeah?” Vikki sighed. “Once. Would that I had a husband once—”
At that moment their conversation was interrupted by a painfully angular, very tall, immaculately dressed woman in a white brim hat, walking briskly through the dining hall, swinging her white purse and yelling, “Vikki! I’m talking to you! Vikki! Have you seen him?”
Vikki sighed and rolled her eyes at Tatiana. “No, Mrs. Ludlow. I haven’t seen him today. I think he is still cross-town at NYU. He is here on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.”
“Afternoons? He’s not at NYU! And how do you know his schedule so well?”
“I’ve worked with him for two years.”
“Well, I’ve been married to him for eight and I still don’t know where the hell he is.” She came up to the table and towered over the two girls. She eyed Tatiana suspiciously. “Who are you?”
Tatiana pulled up her cloth mask from her neck to her mouth. Vikki stepped in. “She is from the Soviet Union. She barely speaks English.”
“Well, she should learn, shouldn’t she, if she expects to earn her keep in this country. We’re at war, we have no business supporting wards.” And swinging her purse, nearly hitting Tatiana on the head, the woman swept from the dining room.
“Who she?” asked Tatiana.
Vikki waved her hand. “Never mind her. The less you know about her, the better. That’s Dr. Ludlow’s crazy wife. She storms in here once a week looking for her husband.”
“Why she keep losing him?”
Vikki laughed. “The question I think should be why does Dr. Ludlow let himself be lost so often.”
“All right, why?”
Vikki waved Tatiana off. Tatiana understood. Vikki did not want to be talking about Dr. Ludlow. With a small smile, Tatiana appraised Vikki. Now that she had stopped crying, Tatiana could see that Vikki was a striking girl, a proper girl who was pretty and knew it and did everything to make sure everyone knew it. Her hair was shiny and long and swept over her face and shoulders, her eyes were outlined in black eyeliner and runny mascara, and her full lips had traces of bright red lipstick. Her white uniform was tight on her long-limbed figure and came just a touch too high above the knee. Tatiana wondered how the wounded men responded to so much … Vikki.
“Vikki, why you cry? You not love your husband?”
“Oh, I love him, all right. I love him.” She sighed. “I just wish I could love him from five thousand miles away.” Lowering her voice, she continued. “This is really not a good time for him to come back.”
“For husband to come back to his wife?” When was not a good time for that?
“I wasn’t expecting him.” She started to cry again, into her coffee. Tatiana moved the cup away slightly so Vikki could finish the coffee later if she wanted to.
“When were you …?” What was the word? Expecting?
“At Christmas!”
“Oh. Why he coming home so soon?”
“Can you believe it? He was shot down over the Pacific.”
Tatiana stared.
“Oh, he’s fine,” Viktoria said dismissively. “It’s a scrape. A little superficial shoulder wound. He flew the plane ninety miles after he was shot. How bad could it be?”
Tatiana stood from the table. “I think I go feed my son.”
“Yes, but Chris is going to be miserable.”
“Who is Chris?”
“Dr. Pandolfi. You haven’t met him? He comes here with Dr. Ludlow.”
Chris Pandolfi. That’s right. “Oh, I met him.” Dr. Pandolfi was the doctor who had come aboard the ship she was on and decided he was not going to help to deliver her baby on U.S… . soil. He wanted to send her back to the Soviet Union, broken amniotic waters, TB and all. It was Edward Ludlow who had said no and made Dr. Pandolfi help get Tatiana to the hospital on Ellis Island. Tatiana patted Vikki on the shoulder. She wasn’t sure Chris Pandolfi was such a great catch. “You be fine, Viktoria. Maybe stay away from Dr. Pandolfi. Your husband is coming home. You are so lucky.”
Viktoria got up and followed Tatiana down the hall to her room. “Call me Vikki,” she said. “Can I call you Jane?”
“Who?”
“Isn’t your name Jane?”
“You call me Tania.”
“Why would I call you Tania when your name is Jane?”
“Tania my name. Jane just on documents.” She saw Vikki’s uninterested and confused face. “Call me what you like.”
“When are you getting out?”
“Getting out?”
“Out of Ellis.”
Tatiana thought about it. “I do not think I am getting out,” she said. “I have nowhere to go.”
Vikki followed Tatiana into her room and glanced at her son sleeping in his bassinet. “He’s kind of little,” she said absent-mindedly, touching Tatiana’s blonde hair. “His father was dark-haired?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s it like being a mother?”
“It’s—”
“Well, when you’re all better, I want you to come home with me. Meet Grammy and Grampa. They love little babies. They keep wanting me to have one.” Vikki shook her head. “God help me.” She glanced again at Anthony. “He’s sort of cute. Too bad his father has never seen him.”
“Yes.”
The boy was so helpless. He couldn’t move, or turn his head, or hold his head. He was so difficult to dress—his floppy arms and head defying Tatiana’s awkward mothering skills—that some days she kept him naked just in a cloth diaper, swaddled underneath the blankets. She had no clothes for him except for the few nightgowns Edward had brought for her. It was summer and warm and he didn’t need much, thank goodness, for the head would not fit in the nightgown hole, the arms refused to go into the long sleeves. Bathing him was even harder, if that were possible. His bellybutton had not healed completely, so she washed his body with a cloth, and that was not too bad, but washing his hair was outside her expertise. He couldn’t do anything, he could not help her in any way, he could not lift his arms or stay still when she needed him still or be propped up. His head bobbed backward, his body slipped out of her grasp, his legs dangled precariously above a sink. She lived in fear that she would drop him, that he would slither out of her arms and onto the black-and-white tile floor. Her feelings about his absolute dependence on her fluctuated from intense anxiety over his future to an almost suffocating tenderness. Somehow, and maybe that was how nature intended it, his need for her made her stronger.
And she needed to be made stronger. Too often when he was asleep and safe, Tatiana herself felt that her own bobbing head, her own dangling arms and legs, her fragile body would slip on the sill and plummet down to the concrete ground below.
And so to draw sustenance from him, she would uncover him, unwrap him and touch him. She would lift him from his bed and place him on her chest, where he would sleep, head on her heart. He was long, his limbs were long, and as she caressed him, she imagined looking at another boy through the eyes of his mother, a baby boy, long like Anthony, dark like him, soft like him, touched by his mother, bathed, nursed, caressed by his new mother who had waited her whole life to have this one boy.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_2784f06f-ee39-5f40-877c-1527b80f4c63)
The Interrogation, 1943
HE HEARD VOICES OUTSIDE, and the door opened.
“Alexander Belov?”
Alexander was going to say yes but for some reason thought of the Romanovs shot in a small basement room in the middle of the night. Was it the middle of the night? The same night? The next night? He decided to say nothing.
“Come. Now.”
He followed the guard to a small room upstairs, this one not a classroom. It was an old storage area, maybe a nurses’ station.
He was told to sit in the chair. Then he was told to stand up. Then to sit back down again. It was still dark outside. He couldn’t figure out what the time was. When he asked, he was met with a “Shut up!” He decided not to ask again. After a few moments, two men entered the room. One of them was the fat Mitterand, one of them was a man he did not know.
The man shined a bright light into Alexander’s face. He closed his eyes.
“Open your eyes, Major!”
Fat Mitterand said softly, “Vladimir, now now. We can do this another way.”
He liked that they were calling him major. So they still couldn’t get a colonel to interrogate him. As he had suspected, they didn’t have anyone to deal with him here in Morozovo. What they needed to do was get him to Volkhov where things would be different for him, but they didn’t want to risk any more of their men for a drive across the river. They had already failed once. Eventually he would go in a barge, but the ice would have to melt first. He could spend another month in the Morozovo cell. Could he take another minute in it?
Mitterand said, “Major Belov, I am here to inform you that you are under arrest for high treason. We have irrefutable documents accusing you of espionage and treason to your mother country. What say you to these charges?”
“They’re baseless and unfounded,” said Alexander. “Anything else?”
“You are accused of being a foreign spy!”
“Not true.”
“We are told you have been living under a false identity,” said Mitterand.
“Not true, the identity is my own,” said Alexander.
“In front of us we have a few words we would like you to sign, to the effect that we have informed you of your rights under the Criminal Code of 1928, Article 58.”
“I am not signing a single thing,” said Alexander.
“The man next to you in the hospital told us that he thought he heard you speaking English to the Red Cross doctor who came to visit you every day. Is that true?”
“It is not.”
“Why did the doctor come to visit you?”
“I don’t know if you are aware of why soldiers go to the critical ward of a hospital, but I was wounded in action. Maybe you should talk to my superiors. Major Orlov—”
“Orlov is dead!” snapped Mitterand.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Alexander, momentarily flinching. Orlov was a good commanding officer. He was no Mikhail Stepanov, but then who was?
“Major, you stand accused of joining the army under an assumed name. You stand accused of being an American named Alexander Barrington. You stand accused of escaping while en route to a corrective camp in Vladivostok after having been convicted of anti-Soviet agitation and espionage.”
“All bald-faced lies,” said Alexander. “Where is my accuser? I’d like to meet him.” What night was it? Was it at least the next night? Had Tania and Sayers gotten out? He knew that if they had, they would have taken Dimitri with them, and then it would be very difficult for the NKVD to maintain that there was an accuser when the accuser himself disappeared like one of Stalin’s Politburo cabinet ministers. “I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do,” said Alexander with a helpful smile. “Probably more so. Where is he?”
“You are not to ask questions of us!” Mitterand yelled. “We will ask the questions.” Trouble was, they had no more questions. Rather, they had the same question over and over again: “Are you an American named Alexander Barrington?”
“No,” would reply the American named Alexander Barrington. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Alexander could not tell how long this continued. They shined a flashlight into his face; he closed his eyes. They ordered him to stand up, which Alexander took as an opportunity to stretch his legs. He stood gleefully for what seemed like an hour, and regretted being told to sit back down. He didn’t know it was precisely an hour but to keep himself occupied during the repetitive questioning, he started counting the seconds it took for each round to be completed from “Are you an American named Alexander Barrington?” to “No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
It took seven seconds. Twelve if he drew out his response, if he tapped his feet together, if he rolled his eyes, or if he sighed heavily. Once he started to yawn and could not stop for thirty seconds. That made the time go faster.
They asked the question 147 times. Mitterand had to take a drink six times to continue. Finally he passed the reins to Vladimir, who needed less to drink and fared much better, even asking Alexander if he wanted a drink. Alexander politely declined, grateful for the diversion. He knew he must never accept anything they offered him. That was their invitation into his graces.
Still not diverting enough. One hundred and forty-seven times later Vladimir said, with naked frustration in his voice and on his face, “Guard, take him back to his cell.” And then he added, “We will make you confess, Major. We know the accusations against you are true and we will do all it takes to make you confess.”
Usually, when the Party apparatchiks interrogated prisoners with the intention of convicting them as soon as possible and sending them to a forced labor camp, everyone knew the charade being played. The interrogators knew the charges were bogus, and the stunned and dazed prisoners knew the charges were bogus, but in the end, the alternatives presented to them were too stark for them to continue to deny the obvious fallacies. Tell us, you-who-have-lived-next-door-to-an-anti-proletarian-revolutionary, that you are in collusion with him, or it will be twenty-five years in Magadan for you. If you confess you will get only ten. That was the choice and the prisoners confessed—to save themselves, or to save their families, or because they were beaten, degraded, broken-down, paralyzed from thought by the barrage of lies. But Alexander wondered if this was the first time since these sham interrogations began decades ago that the prisoner was accused of the actual truth—that he indeed was Alexander Barrington—and the interrogators for the first time were armed with truth, and truth stood in front of them, truth that Alexander had to deny, truth that Alexander had to bury under a barrage of lies if he were to live. He thought about pointing this out to Mitterand and Vladimir but he didn’t think they would either understand or appreciate the grim irony.
After he was taken back to his cell, two guards came in and, with their two rifles pointed at him, ordered Alexander to undress. “So we can launder your uniform,” they said. He undressed down to his BVDs. They asked him to remove his watch and boots and socks. Alexander was unhappy about the socks, for the floor in his cell was numbingly cold. “You need my boots?”
“We will polish them.”
Alexander was grateful for the foresight that had made him move Dr. Sayers’ drugs from his boots to his BVDs.
Reluctantly he handed over the boots, which they snatched from him and left without a word.
After the door had closed and he was left alone, Alexander picked up the kerosene lamp and held it close to his body to warm himself up. He didn’t care about losing oxygen any longer.
The guard saw and yelled not to touch the lamp. Alexander did not put the lamp down. The guard came in and took the lamp out, leaving Alexander cold and in darkness again.
His back wound, though having been bandaged thoroughly by Tatiana, was throbbing. The dressing was wrapped around his stomach. He wished he could wrap his whole body in the white bandage.
He needed as little of his body touching the cold as possible. Alexander stood in the middle of his cell, so that only his feet were on the icy floor. He stood and imagined warmth.
His hands were behind his head, they were behind his back, they were in front of his chest.
He imagined …
Tania standing in front of him, her head on his bare chest, listening for his heart, and then lifting her gaze at him and smiling. She was standing tiptoed on his feet holding on to his arms, as she reached up with her neck extended and lifted her head to him.
Warmth.
There was no morning and no night. There was no brightness and no light. He had nothing to measure time with. The images of her were constant, he could not measure how long he had been thinking of her. He tried counting and found himself swaying from exhaustion. He needed to sleep.
Sleep or cold? Sleep or cold?
Sleep.
He huddled in the corner and shook uncontrollably, trying to stave off misery. Was it the following day, the following night?
The following day from what? The following night from what?
They’re going to starve me to death. They’re going to thirst me to death. Then they will beat me to death. But first my feet will freeze and then my legs and then my insides, they will all turn to ice. And my blood, too, and my heart, and I will forget.
Tamara and Her Stories, 1935
There was an old babushka named Tamara who had lived for twenty years on their floor. Her door was always open and sometimes after school Alexander would stop in and talk to her. He noticed that old people loved the company of young people. It gave them an opportunity to impart their life experience to the young. Tamara, sitting in her uncomfortable wooden chair near the window one afternoon, was telling Alexander that her husband was arrested for religious reasons in 1928 and given ten years—
“Wait, Tamara, Mikhailovna, ten years where?”
“Forced labor camp, of course. Siberia. Where else?”
“They convicted him and sent him there to work?”
“To prison …”
“To work for free?”
“Oh, Alexander, you’re interrupting, and I need to tell you something.”
He fell quiet.
“The prostitutes near Arbat were arrested in 1930 and not only were they back on the street months later but had also been reunited with their families in the old cities they used to frequent. But my husband, and the band of religious men, will not be allowed to return, certainly not to Moscow.”
“Only three more years,” Alexander said slowly. “Three more years of forced labor.”
Tamara shook her head and lowered her voice. “I received a telegram from the Kolyma authorities in 1932—without right of correspondence, it said. You know what that means, don’t you?”
Alexander didn’t want even to hazard a guess.
“It means he is no longer alive to correspond with,” said Tamara, her voice shaking and her head lowering.
She told him how, from the church down the block, three priests were arrested and given seven years for not putting away the tools of capitalism, which in their case was the organized and personal and unrepentant belief in Jesus Christ.
“Also forced labor camp?”
“Oh, Alexander!”
He stopped. She continued. “But the funny thing is—have you noticed the hotel down the street that had the harlots right outside a few months ago?”
“Hmm.” Alexander noticed.
“Well, have you noticed how they all disappeared?”
“Hmm.” Alexander noticed that too.
“They were taken away. For disturbing the peace, for disrupting the public good—”
“And for not putting away the tools of capitalism,” Alexander said dryly, and Tamara laughed and touched his head.
“That’s right, my boy. That’s right. And do you know how long they had been given in that forced labor camp that you care so much about? Three years. So just remember—Jesus Christ, seven, prostitutes, three.”
“All right,” said Jane, coming into the room, taking her son by the hand and leading him out. Before she left, she turned around and said in an accusatory tone to Tamara, but addressed to Alexander, “Can we not be learning about prostitutes from toothless old women?”
“Who would you like me to learn about prostitutes from, Mom?” he asked.
“Son, your mother wanted me to talk to you about something.” Harold cleared his throat. Alexander crimped his lips together and sat quietly. His father looked so uncomfortable that Alexander had to sit on his hands to keep himself from laughing. His mother was pretending to clean something in another part of the room. Harold glared in Jane’s direction.
“Dad?” said Alexander in his deepest voice. His voice had broken a few months ago, and he really liked the way his new self sounded. Very grown-up. He also had shot up, growing more than eight inches in the course of the last six months, but he couldn’t seem to put any flesh on his bones. There just wasn’t enough of … anything. “Dad, do you want to go for a walk and talk about it?”
“No!” said Jane. “I can’t hear a thing. Talk here.”
Nodding, Alexander said, “All right, Dad, talk here.” He scrunched up his face and tried to look serious. It wouldn’t have mattered if he were sitting cross-eyed and sticking his tongue out. Harold was not looking at Alexander.
“Son,” said Harold. “You’re getting to be at that age where you’re, well, I’m sure, you’re—and also you’re—you’re a fine boy, and good-looking, I want to help, and soon, or maybe already—and I’m sure that you’re—”
Jane tutted in the background. Harold fell quiet.
Alexander sat for a few seconds, then got up, slapped his father on the back and said, “Thanks, Dad. That was helpful.”
He went into his room, and Harold didn’t follow him. Alexander heard his parents bickering next door, and in a minute there was a knock. It was his mother. “Can I talk to you?”
Alexander trying to keep a composed face, said, “Mom, really, I think Dad said all there was to say, I don’t know if there’s anything to add—”
She sat down on his bed while he sat in the chair near the window. He was going to be sixteen in May. He liked summer. Maybe they would get a room at a dacha in Krasnaya Polyana again like they did last year.
“Alexander, what your father didn’t mention—”
“Was there something Dad didn’t mention?”
“Son …”
“Please—go ahead.”
“I’m not going to give you a lesson in girls—”
“Thank goodness for that.”
“Listen to me, the only thing I want you to do is remember this—” She paused.
He waited.
“Martha told me one of her derelict sons has had his horn removed!” she whispered. “Removed, Alexander, and do you know why?”
“I’m not sure I want to.”
“Because he got frenchified! Do you know what that is?”
“I think—”
“And her other son’s got French pigs all over his body. It’s the most revolting thing!”
“Yes, it—”
“The French curse! The French crown! Syphilis! Lenin died from it eating up his brain,” she whispered. “No one talks about it, but it’s true all the same. Is that what you want for yourself?”
“Hmm …” said Alexander. “No?”
“Well, it’s all over the place. Your father and I knew a man who lost his whole nose because of it.”
“Personally, I’d rather lose the nose than—”
“Alexander!”
“Sorry.”
“This is very serious, son. I have done all I can to raise you a good, clean boy, but look where we are living, and soon you’ll be out on your own.”
“How soon you think?”
“What do you think is going to happen when you don’t know where the harlot you’re with has been?” Jane asked resolutely. “Son, when you grow up, I don’t want you to be a saint or a eunuch. I just want you to be careful. I want you to protect what’s yours at all times. You must be clean, you must be vigilant, and you must also remember that without protection, you will get a girl up the stick, and then what? You’re going to marry someone you don’t love because you weren’t careful?”
Alexander stared at his mother. “Up the stick?” he said.
“She’ll tell you it’s yours and you’ll never know for sure, all you’ll know is that you’re married, and your horn is falling off!”
“Mother,” said Alexander. “Really, you must stop.”
“Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“How can I not?”
“Your father was supposed to explain to you.”
“He did. I think he did very well.”
Jane got up. “Will you just once stop with your joking around?”
“Yes, Mom. Thanks for coming in. I’m glad we had this chat.”
“Do you have any questions?”
“Absolutely none.”
The Changing of the Hotel’s Name, 1935
One frostbitten late January Thursday, Alexander asked his father as they headed out to their Party meeting, “Dad, why is our hotel’s name changing again? It’s the third time in six months.”
“Surely not the third time.”
“Yes, Dad.” They walked side by side down the street. They weren’t touching. “When we first moved in, it was the Derzhava. Then the Kamenev Hotel. Then the Zinoviev Hotel. Now it’s the Kirov Hotel. Why? And who is this Kirov chap?”
“He was the Leningrad Party Chief,” said Harold.
At their meeting, the old man Slavan laughed raucously after he heard Alexander’s question repeated. He beckoned Alexander to him, patted him on the head and said, “Don’t worry, son, now that’s it’s Kirov, Kirov it will stay.”
“All right, enough now,” Harold said, trying to pull his son away. But Alexander wanted to hear. He pulled away from his father.
“Why, Slavan Ivanovich?”
Slavan said, “Because Kirov is dead.” He nodded. “Assassinated in Leningrad last month. Now there’s a manhunt on.”
“Oh, they didn’t catch his killer?”
“They caught him, all right.” The old man smirked. “But what about all the others?”
“What others?” Alexander lowered his voice.
“All the conspirators,” said the old man. “They have to die, too.”
“It was a conspiracy?”
“Well, of course. Otherwise how can we have a manhunt?”
Harold called sharply for Alexander, and later on, when they were walking home, he said, “Son, why are you so friendly with Slavan? What kinds of things has that man been telling you?”
“He is a fascinating man,” Alexander said. “Did you know he’s been to Akatui? For five years.” Akatui was the Tsarist Siberian hard labor prison. “He said they gave him a white shirt, and in the summer he worked only eight hours and in the winter six, and his shirt never got dirty, and he got a kilo of white bread a day, plus meat. He said they were the best years of his life.”
“Unenviable,” grumbled Harold. “Listen, I don’t want you talking to him so much. Sit by us.”
“Hmm,” said Alexander. “You all smoke too much. It burns my eyes.”
“I’ll blow my smoke the other way. But Slavan is a troublemaker. Stay away from him, do you hear?” He paused. “He is not going to last long.”
“Last long where?”
Two weeks later, Slavan disappeared from the meetings.
Alexander missed the nice old man and his stories.
“Dad, people keep disappearing from our floor. That lady Tamara is gone.”
“Never liked her,” put in Jane, sipping her vodka. “I think she is sick in the hospital. She was old, Alexander.”
“Mom, two young men in suits are living in her room. Are they going to share that room with Tamara when she returns from the hospital?”
“I know nothing about that,” said Jane firmly, and just as firmly poured herself another drink.
“The Italians have left. Mom, did you know the Italians have left?”
“Who?” said Harold loudly. “Who is disappearing? The Frascas have not disappeared. They are on vacation.”
“Dad, it’s winter. Vacation where?”
“The Crimea. In some resort near Krasnodar. Dzhugba, I think. They’re coming back in two months.”
“Oh? What about the van Dorens? Where have they gone? Also the Crimea? Someone new is living in their room, too. A Russian family. I thought this was a floor only for foreigners?”
“They moved to a different building in Moscow,” said Harold, picking at his food. “The Obkom is just trying to integrate the foreigners into Soviet society.”
Alexander put down his fork. “Did you say moved? Moved where? Because Nikita is sleeping in our bathroom.”
“Who is Nikita?”
“Dad, you haven’t noticed that there is a man in the bathtub?”
“What man?”
“Nikita.”
“Oh. How long has he been there?”
Alexander exchanged a blank look with his mother. “Three months.”
“He’s been in the bathtub for three months? Why?”
“Because there is not a single room for him to rent in all of Moscow. He came here from Novosibirsk.”
“Never seen him,” Harold said in a voice that implied that since he had never seen Nikita, Nikita must not exist. “What does he do when I want to have a bath?”
Jane said, “Oh, he leaves for a half-hour. I give him a shot of vodka. He goes for a walk.”
“Mom,” said Alexander, eating cheerfully, “his wife is coming to join him in March. He begged me to talk to everybody on the floor to ask if we could have our baths earlier in the evening, to let them have a bit of—”
“All right, you two, you’re having me on,” said Harold.
Alexander and his mother exchanged a look, and then Alexander said, “Dad, go check it out. And when you come back, you tell me where the van Dorens could have moved to in Moscow.”
When Harold came back, he shrugged and said, “That man is a hobo. He is no good.”
“That man,” said Alexander, looking at his mother’s vodka glass, “is the head engineer for the Baltic fleet.”
A month later, in February 1935, Alexander came home from school and heard his mother and father fighting—again. He heard his name shouted out once, twice.
His mother was upset for Alexander. But he was fine. He spoke Russian fluently. He sang and drank beer and played hockey on the ice in Gorky Park with his friends. He was all right. Why was she upset? He wanted to go in and tell her he was fine, but he never liked to interrupt his parents’ fights.
Suddenly he heard something being thrown, and then someone being hit. He ran into his parents’ room and saw his mother on the floor, her cheek red, his father bending over her. Alexander ran to his father and shoved him in the back. “What are you doing, Dad?” he yelled. He kneeled down next to his mother.
She half sat up and glared at Harold. “Fine thing you’re showing your son,” she said. “You brought him to the Soviet Union for this, to show him how to treat a woman? His wife, perhaps?”
“Shut up,” said Harold, clenching his fists.
“Dad!” Alexander jumped to his feet. “Stop!”
“Your father has abandoned us, Alexander.”
“I’m not abandoning you!”
Squaring off, Alexander pushed his father in the chest.
Harold shoved Alexander and then hit him open-handed across the face. Jane gasped. Alexander swayed but did not fall. Harold went to strike him again, but this time Alexander moved away. Jane grabbed Harold’s legs, yanked, and sent him down on his back. “Don’t you dare touch him!” she yelled.
Harold was on the floor, Jane, too; only Alexander was standing. They couldn’t look at one another; everyone was panting. Alexander wiped his bleeding lip.
“Harold,” Jane said, still on her knees. “Look at us! We’re being destroyed by this fucking country.” She was crying. “Let’s go home, let’s start over.”
“Are you crazy?” hissed Harold, looking from Alexander to Jane. “Do you even know what you’re saying?”
“I do.”
“Have you forgotten that we gave up our U.S. citizenship? Have you forgotten that at the moment you and I are citizens of no country; that we’re waiting for our Soviet citizenship to come through? You think America is going to want us back? Why, they practically kicked us out. And how do you think the Soviet authorities are going to feel once they find out we’re turning our backs on them, too?”
“I don’t care what the Soviet authorities think.”
“God, you are so naïve!”
“Is that what I am? What does that make you? Did you know it was going to be like this and brought us here anyway? Brought your son here?”
He stared at her with disappointment. “We didn’t come for the good life. The good life we could have had in America.”
“You’re right. And we had it. We’ll make do with what we have here, but Harold, Alexander is not meant to be here. At least send him back home.”
“What?” Harold could not find his voice to say it above a whisper.
“Yes.” She was helped off the floor by Alexander as she stood in front of Harold. “He is fifteen. Send him back home!”
“Mom!” said Alexander.
“Don’t let him die in this country—can’t you see? Alexander sees it. I see it. Why can’t you?”
“Alexander doesn’t see it. Do you, son?”
Alexander was silent. He did not want to side against his father.
“You see?” Jane exclaimed triumphantly. “Please, Harold. Soon it will be too late.”
“You’re talking rubbish. Too late for what?”
“Too late for Alexander,” Jane said brokenly, pale with despair. “For him, forget your pride for just one second. Before he has to register for the Red Army when he turns sixteen in May, before tragedy befalls us all, while he is still a U.S. citizen, send him back. He has not relinquished his rights to the United States of America. I will stay with you, I will live out my life with you—but—”
“No!” Harold exclaimed in an aghast voice. “Things didn’t turn out the way I had hoped, look, I’m sor—”
“Don’t be sorry for me, you bastard. Don’t be sorry for me—I lay down in this bed with you. I knew what I was doing. Be sorry for your son. What do you think will happen to him?”
Jane turned away from Harold.
Alexander turned away from his parents. He went to the window and looked outside. It was February and night.
Behind him, he heard his mother and father.
“Janie, come on, it’ll be all right. You’ll see. Alexander will be better off here eventually. Communism is the future of the world, you know this as well as I do. The wider the chasm between the rich and the poor in the world, the more essential communism is going to become. America is a lost cause. Who else is going to care about the common man, who else will protect his rights but the communist? We’re just living through the toughest part. But I have no doubt—communism is the future.”
“God!” Jane exclaimed. “When will you ever stop?”
“Can’t stop now,” he said. “We’re going to see this through to the end.”
“That’s right,” Jane said. “Marx himself wrote that capitalism produces above all its own gravediggers. Do you think that perhaps he wasn’t talking about capitalism?”
“Absolutely,” agreed Harold, while Alexander looked the other way. “The communists hate to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions. The fall of capitalism is inevitable. The fall of selfishness, greed, individuality, personal attainment.”
“The fall of prosperity, comfort, humane living conditions, privacy, liberty,” said Jane, spitting the words out, as Alexander doggedly stared out the window. “The second America, Harold. The second fucking America.”
Without turning back, Alexander saw his father’s angry face and his mother’s despairing one, and he saw the gray room with the falling plaster, and the broken lock held together by tape, and he smelled the washroom from ten meters away, and he was silent.
Before the Soviet Union, the only world that had made sense to him was America, where his father could get up on the pulpit and preach the overthrow of the U.S. government, and the police that protected that government would come and remove his father from the pulpit and put him into a Boston cell to sleep off his insurrectionist zeal, and then in the next day or two they would let him out so he could recommence with renewed fervor preaching to the curious the lamentable deficiencies of 1920s America. And according to Harold there were plenty, though he himself admitted to Alexander that he could not for the life of him understand the immigrants who poured into New York and Boston, who lived in deplorable conditions working for pennies and put generations of Americans to shame because they lived in deplorable conditions and worked for pennies with such joy—a joy that was diminished only by the inability to bring more of their family members to the United States to live in deplorable conditions and work for pennies.
Harold Barrington could preach revolution in America and that made perfect sense to Alexander, because he read John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and John Stuart Mill told him that liberty didn’t mean doing what you damn well pleased, it meant saying what you damn well pleased. His father was upholding Mill in the greatest tradition of American democracy; what was so wrong with that?
What didn’t make sense to him when he had arrived in Moscow was Moscow. As the years passed, Moscow made only less and less sense to him; the privation, the senselessness, the discomfort encroached upon his youthful spirit. He had stopped holding his father’s hand on the way to Thursday meetings; what he keenly felt absent from his own hand, however, was an orange in the winter.
Hailing Russia as the “second America,” Comrade Stalin proclaimed that in a few years the Soviet Union would have as many railroads, as many paved roads, as many single family houses, as the United States. He said that America had not industrialized as fast as the USSR was industrializing because capitalism made progress chaotic, whereas socialism spearheaded progress on all fronts. The U.S. was suffering thirty-five per cent unemployment, unlike the Soviet Union which had near full employment. The Soviets were all working—proof of their superiority—while the Americans were succumbing to the welfare state because there were no jobs. That was clear, nothing confusing about that. Then why was the sense of malaise so pervasive?
But Alexander’s feelings of confusion and malaise were peripheral. What wasn’t peripheral was youth. And he was young, even in Moscow.
He turned back to his mother, handing her a napkin to wipe her face while wiping his own with his sleeve. Before walking out and leaving them to their misery, Alexander said to his father, “Don’t listen to her. I will not go to America alone. My future is here, for better or worse.” He came a little closer. “But don’t hit my mother again.” Alexander was already several inches taller than Harold. “If you hit her again, you’ll have to deal with me.”
A week later Harold was removed from his job as a printer because as the new laws would have it, foreigners were no longer allowed to operate printing machinery, no matter how proficient they were and how loyal to the Soviet state. Apparently there was too much opportunity for sabotage, for printing false papers, false affidavits, false documents, false news information, and for disseminating lies to subvert the Soviet cause. Many foreigners had been caught doing just that and then distributing their malicious propaganda to hard-working Soviet citizens. So no more printing for Harold.
He was redeployed to a tool-making factory, melting metal into screw-drivers and ratchets.
That job lasted a few weeks. Apparently it also wasn’t safe. Foreigners had been caught making knives and weapons for themselves instead of tools for the Soviet state.
He was then employed as a shoemaker, which amused Alexander (“Dad, what do you know about making shoes?”).
That job lasted only a few days. “What? Shoe-making isn’t safe either?” Alexander asked.
Apparently it wasn’t. Foreigners had been known to make galoshes and mountain boots for good Soviet citizens to escape through marshes and through mountains.
A somber Harold came home one April evening in 1935 and instead of cooking (it was Harold who cooked dinner for his family now), sat down heavily at the table and said that a Party Obkom man had come to see him at the school where he was working as a floor sweeper and asked him to find a new place to live. “They want us to find our own rooms. Be a little more independent.” He shrugged. “It’s only right. We’ve had it relatively easy the last four years. We need to give something back to the state.” He paused and lit a cigarette.
Alexander saw his father glance at him furtively. He coughed and said, “Well, Nikita has disappeared. Maybe we can take his bathtub.”
There was no room for the Barringtons in all of Moscow. After a month of looking, Harold came home from work and said, “Listen, the Obkom man came to see me again. We can’t stay here. We have to move.”
“By when?” Jane exclaimed.
“Two days from now. They want us out.”
“But we have nowhere to go!”
Harold sighed. “They offered me a transfer to Leningrad. There is more work—an industrial plant, a carpentry plant, an electricity plant.”
“What, no electricity plants in Moscow, Dad?”
Harold ignored Alexander. “We’ll go there. There’ll be more rooms available. You’ll see. Janie, you’ll get a job at the Leningrad public library.”
“Leningrad?” Alexander exclaimed. “Dad, I’m not leaving Moscow. I got friends here, school. Please.”
“Alexander, you’ll start a new school. Make new friends. We have no choice.”
“Yes,” Alexander said loudly. “But once we had a choice, didn’t we?”
“Alexander! You will not raise your voice to me,” Harold said. “Do you hear?”
“Loud and clear!” shouted Alexander. “I’m not going. Do you hear?”
Harold jumped up. Jane jumped up. Alexander jumped up.
Jane said, “No, stop it, stop it, you two!”
“You will not speak to me this way,” Harold said. “We are moving, and I don’t want to talk another minute about it.”
He turned to his wife and said, “Oh, and one more thing.” Sheepishly, he coughed. “They want us to change our name. To something more Russian.”
Alexander scoffed. “Why now? Why after all these years?”
“Because!” Harold shouted, losing control. “They want us to show our allegiance! You’re going to be sixteen next month. You’re going to register for the Red Army. You need a Russian name. The fewer questions, the better. We need to be Russians now. It will be easier for us.” He lowered his gaze.
“God, Dad,” Alexander exclaimed. “Will this ever stop? We can’t even keep our name anymore? It’s not enough to kick us out of our home, to move us to another city? We need to lose our name, too? What else have we got?”
“We are doing the right thing. Our name is an American name. We should have changed it long ago.”
“That’s right,” said Alexander. “The Frascas didn’t. The van Dorens didn’t. And look what happened to them. They’re on vacation. Extended vacation, right, Dad?”
Harold raised his hand to Alexander, who pushed him away. “Don’t touch me,” he said coldly.
Harold tried again. Alexander pushed him away again, but this time he didn’t let go of his father’s hands. He did not want his mother to see him lose his temper, his poor mother, who stood shaking and crying, clasping her hands at her two men, pleading, “Darlings, Harold, Alexander, I beg you, stop it, stop it.”
“Tell him to stop it!” Harold said. “You’ve raised him like this. No respect for anybody.”
His mother came over to Alexander and grabbed hold of his arms. “Please, son,” she said. “Calm down. It’ll be all right.”
“You think so, Mom? We’re moving cities, we’re changing our name just like this hotel. You call that all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “We still have each other. We still have our lives.”
“How the definition of being all right changes,” said Alexander, extricating himself from his mother and taking his coat.
“Alexander, don’t walk out that door,” said Harold. “I forbid you to walk out that door.”
Alexander turned to his father, looked him in the eye, and said, “Go ahead and stop me.”
He left and did not come back home for two days. And then they packed up and left the Kirov Hotel.
His mother was drunk and unable to help carry the suitcases to the train.
When did Alexander first begin to feel, to know, to sense that something was desperately wrong with his mother? That was the point: something wasn’t desperately wrong with her all at once. At first she had been slightly not herself, and it wasn’t for Alexander to say what was the matter with his adult parent. His father could have seen, but his father had no eyes. Alexander knew his father was the kind of man who simply could not keep the personal and the global in his head at the same time. But whether Harold was aware and plainly ignored it, or whether he was actually oblivious, didn’t matter, and it didn’t change the simple fact that Jane Barrington gradually, without fanfare, without much to-do, much introduction and much warning permanently ceased to be the person she once was and became the person she wasn’t.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_aa1bf484-1eec-5f6d-9f21-d831210f2f51)
Ellis Island, 1943
EDWARD CAME IN TO check on Tatiana in the middle of August. She’d been in America seven weeks. She was sitting in her usual place by the window, with a naked and diapered Anthony on her lap, tickling him between his toes. She had been feeling much better, her breathing was deep, she was almost not coughing. She had not seen blood in her cough for a month. The New York air was doing her good.
Edward took the stethoscope from her chest. “Listen, you are doing much better. I think I’m going to have to discharge you.”
Tatiana said nothing.
“Do you have anywhere to go?” Edward paused. “You will need to get a job.”
“Edward,” said Tatiana, “I like it here.”
“Well, I know. But you’re all better.”
“I was thinking, maybe I work here? You need more nurse.”
“You want to work at Ellis?”
“Very much.”
Edward talked to the chief surgeon at the Public Health Department, who came in to talk to Tatiana, informing her that she would have to be put on something called a three-month probation to see if she could keep up with the work, if she had the necessary skills. He told her that she would not be employed by Ellis Island but by the PHD and as such would sometimes have to pull duty at the New York University hospital downtown if they had a shortage of nurses there. Tatiana agreed, but asked if she could live at Ellis, “maybe work as night nurse?” The surgeon was not keen. “Why would you want to? You could get yourself an apartment right across the bay. Our citizens don’t live here.”
Tatiana explained as best she could that she hoped some of the detained refugees at Ellis could look after her son while he was still small, and though she wanted to work, she had no one to leave him with and to make matters easier for everyone she could stay in her current convalescent room.
“But it’s so small!”
“One room just right for me.”
Tatiana asked Vikki to buy her a uniform and shoes. “You know you only get two pairs of shoes?” said Vikki. “War rationing. You want one of them to be nurse’s shoes?”
“I want my only pair to be nurse’s shoes,” said Tatiana. “What I need more shoes for?”
“What if you wanted to go dancing?” asked Vikki.
“Go where?”
“Dancing! You know, do a little lindy hop, a little jitterbug? What if you wanted to look nice? Your husband isn’t coming back, is he?”
“No,” said Tatiana, “my husband isn’t coming back.”
“Well, you definitely need nice new shoes if you’re going to be a widow.”
Tatiana shook her head. “I need nurse’s shoes and white uniform, and I need to stay at Ellis, and I not need nothing else.”
Vikki shook her head, her eyes flickering. “It’s anything else. When can you come have dinner with us? How about this Sunday? Dr. Ludlow says you’re being discharged.”
Vikki bought Tatiana a uniform that was slightly big, and shoes that were the right size, and after Edward discharged her, she continued to do what she had been doing in her white hospital gown and gray hospital robe—look after the foreign soldiers who were shipped to New York, treated, and then sent elsewhere on the continent to do POW labor duty. Many of them were German soldiers, some were Italian, some Ethiopian, one or two French. There were no Soviet soldiers.
“Oh, Tania, what am I going to do?” Vikki was in her room, sitting on the bed, while Tatiana lay in bed, breastfeeding Anthony. “Are you on a break?”
“Yes, a lunch break.” Tatiana smiled, but the irony went past Vikki’s unlistening ears.
“Who takes care of your boy while you do rounds?”
“I take him with me. I put him on empty bed while I take care of soldiers.” Brenda palpitated every time she saw it, but Tatiana didn’t like to leave him sleeping alone in the room, so she didn’t care how much Brenda palpitated. If only there had been more immigrants, someone could take care of her baby while she worked. But there were very few people coming through Ellis. Twelve in the month of July, eight in the month of August. And they all had their own children, their own problems.
“Tania! Can we talk about my situation? You know, don’t you, that my husband is home with me now.”
“I know. Wait little while,” Tatiana said. “Maybe war will take him again.”
“That’s the problem! They don’t want him. He can’t operate heavy machinery. He’s been honorably discharged. He wants us to have a baby. Can you even imagine?”
Tatiana was quiet. “Vikki, why you get married?”
“It was war! What do you mean, why did I get married? Why did you get married? He was going off to war, he asked me to marry him, I said yes. I thought, what’s the harm? It’s war. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“This,” said Tatiana.
“I didn’t think he’d be coming back so soon! I thought he’d be back for Christmas, once, twice. Maybe he’d be killed. Then I could say I had been married to a war hero.”
“Is he not war hero now?”
“It doesn’t count—he’s alive!”
“Oh.”
“Before he came back I had been going dancing every weekend, but now I can’t do anything. God!” she exclaimed. “Being married is a real drag.”
“Do you love him?”
“Sure.” Vikki shrugged. “But I love Chris, too. And two weeks ago, I met a radiologist who was nice … but it’s all over for that now.”
“You right,” Tatiana said. “Marriage very inconvenient.” She paused. “Why do you not get, what is it called?”
“A divorce?”
“Yes.”
“What are you, crazy? What kind of country do you come from? What kind of customs do you have there?”
“In my country,” said Tatiana, “we faithful to our husbands.”
“He wasn’t here! Surely I can’t be expected to be faithful to him when he is thousands of miles away, and getting up to no good in the Far East? As far as divorce … I’m too young to get divorced.”
“But not too young to be widow?” Tatiana flinched when she said it.
“No! There is an honor that comes with being a widow. I can’t be a divorcée. What am I, Wallis Simpson?”
“Who?”
“Tania, you’re doing well. Brenda tells me, albeit grudgingly”—Edward smiled—“that you are very good with the patients.” Edward and Tatiana were walking between the patient beds. Tatiana was carrying an awake and alert Anthony.
“Thank you, Edward.”
“Are you afraid your boy is going to get sick from being around sick people?”
“They not sick,” Tatiana replied. “Right, Anthony? They wounded. I bring my boy, and he makes them happy. Some of them have wives and sons back home. They touch him and they happy.”
Edward smiled. “He is a very fine boy.” Edward stroked Anthony’s dark head. Anthony paid Edward back by grinning toothlessly. “You take him outside?”
“All time.”
“Good. Babies need fresh air. And you, too.” He cleared his throat. “You know, on Sundays the doctors from NYU and PHD play softball in Sheep Meadow, in Central Park, and the nurses come to cheer us on. Would you like to come this Sunday with Anthony?”
Tatiana was too flustered to answer. They were on the stairs when they heard the clomping of high heels. “Edward?” a voice screeched from the ground floor. “Is that you?”
“Yes, sweetheart, it’s me.” Edward’s voice was calm.
“Well, thank goodness I found you. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“I’m right here, sweetheart.”
Mrs. Ludlow walked up the stairs, panting, and the three of them stopped on the landing. Tatiana held her baby closer. Disapprovingly, Edward’s wife eyed Tatiana and said, “A new nurse, Edward?”
“Nurse Barrington? Have you met Marion?”
“Yes,” said Tatiana.
“No, we never met,” declared Marion. “I never forget a face.”
“Mrs. Ludlow,” said Tatiana. “We meet every Tuesday in dining room. You ask me where Edward, and I say I don’t know.”
“We have never met,” repeated Mrs. Ludlow, with extra firmness to her voice.
Tatiana said nothing. Edward said nothing.
“Edward, can I talk to you in private? And you,” she added, glaring at Tatiana, “are too young to be carrying a child. You’re not carrying him correctly. You’re not holding his head. Where is the baby’s mother?”
“Marion, she is the baby’s mother,” said Edward.
Mrs. Ludlow was critically silent for a moment, then tutted and before anyone could say anything, she tutted again with emphasis, muttered the word “immigrants” and dragged Edward away.
Vikki stormed into the hospital ward, grabbed Tatiana by the arm and pulled her out into the corridor. “He asked me for a divorce!” Vikki whispered in an indignant and offended hiss. “Can you believe it?”
“Um—”
“I said I wasn’t giving him a divorce, it wasn’t proper, and he said he would sue me for a divorce and win because I—I don’t even know what he said—broke some covenant. Oh, I said to him, like you weren’t with Far Eastern whores while you were away from me, and you know what he said?”
“Um—”
“He said yes! But it’s different for soldiers, he said. Do you even believe it?” Vikki shook, Vikki shrugged, Vikki warded off the insulted glint in her eyes. Her mascara did not run, and her lips never lost their shine. “Fine, I said, just fine, you’re the one who is going to be sorry, and he said he was already sorry. Ugh.” She shuddered and brightened. “Hey, come for dinner on Sunday. Grammy is making Sunday lasagna.”
But Tatiana didn’t.
Come for dinner, Tania. Come to New York, Tania. Come play softball in Sheep Meadow with us, Tania. Come on the ferry ride with us, Tania, come for a car ride to Bear Mountain with us, Tania. Come, Tania, come back to us, the living.
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_cc89770d-1d18-5b11-a84c-132826022800)
With Stepanov, 1943
WHEN ALEXANDER OPENED HIS eyes—did he open them?—it was still black, still cold. He was shaking, his arms around himself. There is no shame in dying in war, in dying young, in dying in a cold cell, in saving your body from humiliation.
Once, when he was convalescing, Tatiana asked without looking at him as she was dressing his wound, did you see the light? And he replied, no, he had not seen.
It was only a partial truth.
Because he had heard …
The gallop of the red horse.
But here all the colors had run dry.
As if in a stupor, Alexander dimly heard the sliding of the metal bolt, the turning of the key. His commander, Colonel Mikhail Stepanov, came into his cell with a flashlight. Alexander was hunched in the corner.
“Ah,” said Stepanov. “So it’s true. You are alive.”
Alexander wanted to shake Stepanov’s hand, but he was too cold and his back was too sore. He did not move and said nothing.
Stepanov crouched by him. “What in the world happened to that truck? And I saw the Red Cross doctor’s death certificate for you myself. I told your wife you were dead. Your pregnant wife thinks you’re dead!”
“Everything is as it should be,” replied Alexander. “It’s good to see you, sir. Try not to inhale. There is not enough oxygen here for both of us.”
“Alexander,” said Stepanov. “You didn’t want to tell her what was happening to you?”
Alexander shook his head.
“But why the truck explosion, the death certificate?”
“I wanted her to think there was no hope for me.”
“Why?”
Alexander didn’t answer.
“Anywhere you go—I will go with you,” Tatiana says. “But if you are staying, then I’m staying, too. I’m not leaving my baby’s father in the Soviet Union.” She bends over an overwhelmed Alexander. “What did you say to me in Leningrad? What kind of a life can I build, you said, knowing I have left you to die—or to rot—in the Soviet Union? I’m quoting you back to you. Those were your words.” She smiles. “And on this one point, I will have to agree with you.” She lowers her voice. “If I left you, no matter which road I took, with ponderous clatter indeed, the Bronze Horseman would pursue me all through that long night into my own maddening dust.”
He couldn’t tell that to his commander. He didn’t know if Tatiana had left the Soviet Union.
“You want a smoke?”
“Yes,” replied Alexander. “But can’t here. Not enough oxygen for a smoke.”
Stepanov pulled Alexander up to his feet. “Stand for a few minutes,” Stepanov said. “Stretch your legs.” He looked at Alexander’s bent-sideways head. “This cell is too small for you. They didn’t expect that.”
“Oh, they did. That’s why they put me here.”
Stepanov stood with his back to the door, while Alexander stood across from him.
“What day is it, sir?” asked Alexander. “How long have I been here? Four, five days?”
“The morning of the sixteenth of March,” said Stepanov. “The morning of your third day.”
Third day! Alexander thought with shock.
Third day! Alexander thought with excitement. That would probably mean that Tania …
He didn’t continue with his thoughts. Very quietly, almost inaudibly, Stepanov leaned forward and Alexander thought he said, “Keep talking loudly, so they can hear, but listen to me so that I can laugh with you when you come back in the clover field, and I will show you how to eat clover.”
Alexander looked at Stepanov’s face, more drawn than ever, his eyes gray, his mouth turned down with sympathy and anxiety. “Sir?”
“I didn’t say anything, Major.”
Shaking off the hallucination in his head, of a meadow, of sun, of clover, Alexander repeated in a low voice, “Sir?”
“Everything’s gone to shit, Major,” whispered Stepanov. “They’re already looking for your wife, but … she seems to have disappeared. I convinced her to go back to Leningrad with Dr. Sayers, just as you asked me. I made it easy for her to leave.”
Alexander said nothing, digging his nails into the palms of his hands.
“But now she’s gone. You know who else disappeared? Dr. Sayers. He had informed me he was going back to Leningrad with your wife.”
Alexander dug his nails harder into his palms to keep himself from looking at Stepanov and from speaking.
“He was on his way to Helsinki, but he was supposed to have gone to Leningrad first!” Stepanov exclaimed. “To drop her off, to pick up his own Red Cross nurse he had left in Grechesky hospital. Listen to me, are you listening? They never reached Leningrad. Two days ago his Red Cross truck was found burned, pillaged and turned over on the Finnish-Soviet border at Lisiy Nos. There was an incident with the Finnish troops and four of our men were shot and killed. No sign of Sayers, or of Nurse Metanova.”
Alexander said nothing. He wanted to pick up his heart from the floor. But it was dark, and he couldn’t find it. He heard it roll away from him, he heard it beating, bleeding, pulsing in the corner.
Stepanov lowered his voice another notch. “And Finnish troops shot and killed, too.”
Silence from Alexander.
“And that’s not all.”
“No?” Alexander thought he said.
“No sign of Dr. Sayers. But …” Stepanov paused. “Your good friend, Dimitri Chernenko, was found shot dead in the snow.”
That was small comfort to Alexander.
But it was some comfort.
“Major, why was Chernenko at the border?”
Alexander did not answer. Where was Tatiana? All he wanted to do was ask that question. Without a truck how could they have gotten anywhere? Without a truck what were they doing—walking on foot through the marshes of Karelia?
“Major, your wife is missing. Sayers is gone, Chernenko is dead—” Stepanov hesitated. “And not just dead. But shot dead in a Finn’s uniform. He was wearing a Finnish pilot’s uniform and carrying Finnish ID papers instead of his domestic passport!”
Alexander said nothing. He had nothing to hide except the information that would cost Stepanov his life.
“Alexander!” Stepanov exclaimed in a hissing whisper. “Don’t shut me out. I’m trying to help.”
“Sir,” Alexander said, attempting to mute his fear. “I’m asking you please not to help me anymore.” He wished he had a picture of her. He wanted to touch her white dress with red roses one more time. Wanted to see her young and with him, standing newly married on the steps of the Molotov church.
The fear, the stabbing panic he felt prohibited Alexander from thinking of Tania past. That’s what he would have to learn to do: forbid himself from looking at her even in his memory.
With trembling hands he made a sign of the cross on himself. “I was all right,” he finally managed to say, “until you came here and told me my wife was missing.” He began to shiver uncontrollably.
Stepanov came closer to Alexander. He took off his own coat and gave it to him. “Here, put this around your shoulders.”
Immediately he heard a voice from the outside yell, “It’s time!”
In a whisper, Stepanov said, “Tell me the truth, did you tell your wife to leave with Sayers for Helsinki? Was that your plan all along?”
Alexander said nothing. He didn’t want Stepanov to know—one life, two, three, was enough. The individual was a million people divided by one million; Stepanov did not deserve to die because of Alexander.
“Why are you being so stubborn? Stop it! Having gotten nowhere, they’re bringing in a new man to question you. Apparently the toughest interrogator they have. He has never failed to get a signed confession. They’ve kept you here nearly naked in a cold cell, and soon they’ll come up with something else to break you; they’ll beat you, they’ll put your feet in cold water, they’ll shine a light in your face until you go mad, the interrogator will deliberately tell you things you will want to kill him for, and you need to be strong for all that. Otherwise you have no chance.”
Alexander said faintly, “Do you think she is safe?”
“No, I don’t think she is safe! Who is safe around here, Alexander?” Stepanov whispered. “You? Me? Certainly not her. They’re looking everywhere for her. In Leningrad, in Molotov, in Lazarevo. If she is in Helsinki, they’ll find out, you know that, don’t you? They’ll bring her back. They were calling the Red Cross hospital in Helsinki this morning.”
“It’s time!” someone yelled again.
“How many times in my life will I have to hear those words?” Alexander said. “I heard them for my mother, I heard them for my father, I heard them for my wife, and now I hear them for me.”
Stepanov took his coat. “The things they accuse you of—”
“Don’t ask me, sir.”
“Deny them, Alexander.”
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.
The door opened. Alexander had not been given any bread or water, or any clothes. He had no idea how long he had been left undressed in the cold cell.
A man came in who apparently did not want to stand. Behind him a guard brought in a chair and the tall, bald, unpleasant-faced man sat down and in a pleasant-sounding nasal voice said, “Do you know what I’m holding in my hands, Major?”
Alexander shook his head. There was a kerosene lamp between them.
“I’m holding all your clothes, Major. All your clothes and a wool blanket. And look, I’ve got a nice piece of pork for you, on the bone. It’s still warm. Some potatoes too, with sour cream and butter. A shot of vodka. And a nice long smoke. You can leave this damn cold place, have some food, get dressed. How would you like that?”
“I would like that,” Alexander said impassively. His voice wasn’t going to tremble for a stranger.
The man smiled. “I thought you would. I came all the way from Leningrad to talk to you. Do you think we could talk for a bit?”
“I don’t see why not,” Alexander replied. “I don’t have much else to do.”
The man laughed. “No, that’s right. Not much at all.” His non-laughing eyes studied Alexander intently.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“You, mostly, Major Belov. A couple of other things.”
“That’s fine.”
“Would you like your clothes?”
“I’m sure,” Alexander said, “that to a smart man like yourself, the answer is obvious.”
“I have another cell for you to go to. It’s warmer, bigger and has a window. Much warmer. It must be twenty-five degrees Celsius in there right now, not like this one, it’s probably no more than five Celsius in here.” The man smiled again. “Or would you like me to translate that into Fahrenheit for you, Major?”
Fahrenheit? Alexander narrowed his eyes. “That won’t be necessary.”
“Did I mention tobacco?”
“You mentioned it.”
“All these things, Major—comfort things. Would you like any of them?”
“Didn’t I answer that question?”
“You answered that question. I have one more for you.”
“Yes?”
“Are you Alexander Barrington, the son of Harold Barrington, a man who came here in December of 1930, with a beautiful wife and a good-looking eleven-year-old son?”
Alexander didn’t blink as he stood in front of the sitting interrogator. “What is your name?” he asked. “Usually you people introduce yourselves.”
“Us people?” The man smiled. “I tell you what. You answer me and I will answer you.”
“What’s your question?”
“Are you Alexander Barrington?”
“No. What is your name?”
The man shook his head.
“What?” said Alexander. “You asked me to answer your question. I did. Now you answer mine.”
“Leonid Slonko,” said the interrogator. “Does that make any difference to you?”
Alexander studied him very carefully. He had heard the name Slonko before. “Did you say you came from Leningrad to talk to me?”
“Yes.”
“You work in Leningrad?”
“Yes.”
“A long time, Comrade Slonko? They tell me you’re very good at your job. A long time in your line of work?”
“Twenty-three years.”
Alexander whistled appreciatively. “Where in Leningrad?”
“Where what?”
“Where do you work? Kresty? Or the House of Detention on Millionnaya?”
“What do you know about the House of Detention, Major?”
“I know it was built during Alexander II’s reign in 1864. Is that where you work?”
“Occasionally I interview prisoners there, yes.”
Nodding, Alexander went on. “Nice city, Leningrad. I’m still not used to it, though.”
“No? Well, why would you be?”
“That’s right, why would I? I prefer Krasnodar. It’s warmer.” Alexander smiled. “And your title, comrade?”
“I’m chief of operations,” Slonko replied.
“Not a military man, then? I didn’t think so.”
Slonko bolted up, holding Alexander’s clothes in his hands. “It just occurred to me, Major,” he said, “that we are finished here.”
“I agree,” said Alexander. “Thanks for coming by.”
Slonko departed in such an angry rush that he left the lamp and the chair. It was some time before the guard came in and took them.
Darkness again.
So debilitating. But nothing so diminishing as fear.
This time he didn’t wait long.
The door opened and two guards came in and ordered him to come with them. Alexander said, “I’m not dressed.”
“You won’t need clothes where you’re going.”
The guards were young and eager—the worst kind. He walked between them, slightly ahead of them, barefoot up the stone stairs, and down the corridor of the school, out the back way to the woods, barefoot in the March slush. Were they going to ask him to dig a hole? He felt the rifles at his back. Alexander’s feet were numb, and his body was going numb, but his chest wasn’t numb, his heart wasn’t numb, and if only his heart could stop hurting, he would be able to take it much better.
He remembered the ten-year-old Cub Scout, the American boy, the Soviet boy. The bare trees were ghostly but for a moment he was happy to smell the cold air and to see the gray sky. It’s going to be all right, he thought. If Tania is in Helsinki and remembers what I told her, then she would have convinced Sayers to leave as soon as possible. Perhaps they’ve gone already. Perhaps they’re already in Stockholm. And then nothing else matters.
“Turn around,” one of the guards said.
“Do I stop walking first?” Alexander said. His teeth chattered.
“Stop walking,” said the flustered guard, “and turn around.”
He stopped walking. He turned around.
“Alexander Belov,” said the shorter guard in the most pompous voice he could muster, “you have been found guilty of treason and espionage against our Motherland during the time of war against our country. The punishment for military treason is death, to be carried out immediately.”
Alexander stood still. He put his feet together and his hands at his side. Unblinkingly he looked at the guards. They blinked.
“Well, now what?” he asked.
“The punishment for treason is death,” the short guard repeated. He came over to Alexander, proffering a black blindfold. “Here,” he said. Alexander noticed the young man’s hands were shaking.
“How old are you, Corporal?” he asked quietly.
“Twenty-three,” replied the guard.
“Funny—me too,” said Alexander. “Just think, three days ago I was a major in the Red Army. Three days ago I had a Hero of the Soviet Union medal pinned to my chest. Amazing, isn’t it?”
The guard’s hands continued to shake as he lifted the blindfold to Alexander’s face. Alexander backed away and shook his head. “Forget it. And I’m not turning around, either.”
“I’m just following orders, Major,” said the young guard, and Alexander suddenly recognized him as one of the corporals who had been in the emplacement with him three months ago at the storming of the Neva to break the Leningrad blockade. He was the corporal Alexander had left on the anti-aircraft gun as he ran out to help Anatoly Marazov.
“Corporal … Ivanov?” Alexander said. “Well, well. I hope you do a better job shooting me than you did blowing up those fucking Luftwaffe planes that nearly killed us.”
The corporal wouldn’t even look at Alexander. “You’re going to have to look at me when you aim, Corporal,” Alexander said, standing tall and straight. “Otherwise you will miss.”
Ivanov went to stand by the other guard. “Please turn away, Major,” he said.
“No,” Alexander said, his hands at his sides, and his eyes on the two men with rifles. “Here I am. What are you afraid of? As you can see I’m nearly naked and I’m unarmed.”
He pulled himself up taller. The two guards were paralyzed. “Comrades,” said Alexander. “I will not be the one to issue you an order to lift your rifles. You’re going to have to do that on your own.”
The other corporal said, “All right, lift your rifle, Ivanov.”
They lifted their rifles. Alexander looked into the barrel of one of the guns. He blinked. O God, please look after Tania all alone in the world.
“On three,” said the corporal, as the two men cocked their rifles.
“One—”
“Two—”
Alexander looked into their faces. They were both so afraid. He looked into his own heart. He was cold, and he felt that he had unfinished business on this earth, business that couldn’t wait an eternity. Instead of seeing the trembling corporals, Alexander saw his eleven-year-old face in the mirror of his room in Boston the day he was leaving America. What kind of man have I become? he thought. Have I become the man my father wanted me to be? His mouth tightened. He didn’t know. But he knew that he had become the man he himself wanted to be. That would have to be good enough at a time like this, he thought, squaring his shoulders. He was ready for “three.”
But “three” did not come.
“Wait!” He heard a voice shout from the side. The guards put down their rifles. Slonko, dressed in a warm coat, felt hat and leather gloves, walked briskly to Alexander. “Stand down, Corporals.” Slonko threw a coat he was carrying onto Alexander’s back. “Major Belov, you’re a lucky man. General Mekhlis himself has issued a pardon on your behalf.” He put his hand on Alexander. Why did that make Alexander shudder?
“Come. Let’s go back. You need to get dressed. You’ll freeze in this weather.”
Alexander studied Slonko coldly. He had once read about Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s similar experience with Alexander II’s guards who were ready to execute him. Dostoyevsky was spared at the last minute with a show of mercy from the emperor and exiled instead. That experience of looking death in the face and then being shown mercy transformed Dostoyevsky. Alexander, on the other hand, did not have time to look so deep into his soul as to be changed even for five minutes. He thought it wasn’t mercy they were showing him but a ruse. He was calm before, and he remained calm now except for an occasional shiver from his skin to his bones. Also, unlike Dostoyevsky, he had stared death in the face too often in the last six years to have been daunted by it now.
Alexander followed Slonko back to the school building with the two corporals bringing up the rear. In a small, warm room he found his clothes and his boots and food on a table. Alexander got dressed, his body shaking. He put his feet into his socks, which had been—surprisingly—laundered, and rubbed his feet for a long time to get the blood flowing again. He saw some black spots on his toes and momentarily worried about frostbite, infection, amputation; but only momentarily because the wound in his back was on fire. Corporal Ivanov came and offered him a glass of vodka to warm his insides. Alexander drank the vodka and asked for some hot tea.
Having slowly eaten his food in the warm room and drunk his tea, Alexander felt full and sleepy. Not just sleepy, close to unconsciousness. The black spots on his feet became fainter and grayer. He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again, Slonko sat in front of him. “Your life has been saved by General Mekhlis himself,” Slonko said. “He wanted to show we are not unreasonable and that we believe in mercy.”
Alexander made no move even to nod. It required all he had to stay awake.
“How do you feel, Major Belov?” asked Slonko, getting out a bottle of vodka and two glasses. “Come, we’re both reasonable men. Let’s have a drink. We have no differences.”
Alexander acknowledged Slonko by shaking his head. “I ate, and I had my tea,” he said. “I feel as good as I possibly can.” He couldn’t keep himself upright.
“I want to talk to you for a few minutes.”
“You seem to want a lie from me, and I cannot give it to you. No matter how cold you make me.” He pretended to blink. Really he was just closing his eyes.
“Major, we spared your life.”
With great effort, Alexander opened them again. “Yes, but why? Did you spare it because you believed in my innocence?”
Slonko shrugged. “Look, it’s so simple.” He pushed a piece of paper in front of Alexander. “All you need to do is sign this document in front of you that says you understand your life has been spared. You will be sent to exile in Siberia, and you will live out your days in peace and away from the war. Would you like that?”
“I don’t know,” said Alexander. “But I’m not signing anything.”
“You have to sign, Major. You are our prisoner. You have to do as you’re told.”
“I have nothing to add to what I already told you.”
“Don’t add, just sign.”
“I’m not putting my name on anything.”
“And exactly what would your name be?” Slonko said suddenly. “Do you even know?”
“Very well,” said Alexander, his head bobbing forward.
“I can’t believe you’re making me drink by myself, Major. I find it almost rude.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t drink, Comrade Slonko. It’s so easy to fall into the abyss.”
Slonko lifted his eyes from the vodka and stared at Alexander for what seemed to be minutes. Finally he said slowly, “You know, a long time ago, I knew a woman, a very beautiful woman who used to drink.”
No reply was required of Alexander, so he made none.
“Yes. She was something. She was very brave and suffered terribly not to have a drink in prison. When we picked her up for questioning, she was drunk. It took her several days to get sober. When she became sober, we talked for a long time. I offered her a drink, and she took it, and I offered her a piece of paper to sign and she signed it gratefully. She wanted only one thing from me—do you know what it was?”
Alexander managed to shake his head. That’s where he heard the name Slonko!
“To spare her son. That was the only thing she asked. To spare her only son—Alexander Barrington.”
“That was good of her,” said Alexander. He clenched his hands together to still them. He willed his body to remain still. He wanted to be like the chair, like the desk, like the blackboard. He didn’t want to be like the glass rattling in the March wind. Any minute now the glass was going to pop out of the frame. Like the stained glass in a church in Lazarevo.
“Let me ask you, Major,” Slonko said amiably, downing his drink and tapping the empty glass on the wooden table. “If you yourself were going to ask for one thing before you were put to death, what would it be?”
“To have a cigarette,” Alexander replied.
“Not for mercy?”
“No.”
“Do you know your father also begged me to show you mercy?”
Alexander paled.
Slonko said in English, “Your mother begged me to fuck her but I refused.” He paused, and then smiled. “At first.”
Alexander ground his teeth together. Nothing else on him moved. In Russian he said, “Are you speaking to me, comrade? Because I speak only Russian. They tried to get me to learn French in school, but I’m afraid I wasn’t very good at languages.” After that he said nothing. His mouth was dry.
“I’m going to ask you again,” said Slonko. “I’m going to ask you patiently and politely. Are you Alexander Barrington, son of Jane and Harold Barrington?”
“I will answer you patiently and politely,” said Alexander patiently and politely. “Though I have been asked this a hundred and fifty times already. I am not.”
“But Major, why would the person who told us this lie? Where would he get this information from? He couldn’t have made it up. He knew details about your life no one could have had any idea about.”
“Where is this person?” Alexander said. “I’d like to see him, I’d like to ask him if he is sure it’s me he is talking about. I for one am certain he made a mistake.”
“No, he is sure you’re Alexander Barrington.”
Alexander raised his voice. “If he is so sure, let him identify me. He is an upstanding comrade, this man you talk about? He is a proper Soviet citizen? He is not a traitor, he has not spat on his country? He served it proudly as I have? He’s been decorated, he never shied away from battle, no matter how one-sided, no matter how hard-won? This man you speak of, he is an example to us all, correct? Let me meet the paragon of new Soviet consciousness. Let him look at me, point his finger and say, “This is Alexander Barrington.” Alexander smiled. “And then we will see.”
Now it was Slonko’s turn to pale. “I came from Leningrad to talk to you like a reasonable man,” he hissed, losing some of that effacing false humility, baring his teeth, narrowing his eyes.
“And I am certainly glad to talk to you,” Alexander said, feeling his own dark eyes darken. “As always I am happy to talk to an earnest Soviet operator, who seeks the truth, who will stop at nothing to find it. And I want to help you. Bring my accuser here. Let’s clear up this matter once and for all.” Alexander stood up and took one half-menacing step in the direction of the desk. “But once we get this cleared up, I want my besmirched name back.”
“Which name would that be, Major?”
“My rightful name. Alexander Belov.”
“Do you know that you look like your mother?” Slonko said suddenly.
“My mother has long died. Of typhus. In Krasnodar. Surely your moles told you that?”
“I’m talking about your real mother. The woman who would suck off any guard to get a shot of vodka.”
Alexander did not flinch. “Interesting. But I don’t think my mother, who was a farmer’s wife, had ever seen a guard.”
Slonko spat and left.
A guard came to stand over Alexander. It was not Corporal Ivanov. All Alexander wanted to do was close his eyes and fall asleep. But every time he closed his eyes, the guard rammed the butt of the rifle under his chin with a call to wake up. Alexander had to learn to sleep with his eyes open.
The bleak sun set and the room became dark. The corporal turned on the bright light, and shined it into Alexander’s face. He became rougher with the rifle. The third time he tried to slam the barrel into Alexander’s throat, Alexander grabbed the barrel, twisted it out of the guard’s hands and turned it on him. Standing over him, he said, “All you have to do is ask me not to fall asleep. No stronger measures are required. Can you do that?”
“Give me my rifle back.”
“Answer me.”
“Yes, I can do that.”
He gave the guard the weapon back. The guard took it, and struck Alexander in the forehead with the butt of the rifle. He flinched, saw black for a moment but made no sound. The guard left the classroom and returned shortly with his replacement, Corporal Ivanov, who said, “Go ahead, Major. Close your eyes. When they come I will yell. You will open your eyes then, yes?”
“Instantly,” Alexander said in a grateful voice, closing his eyes in the most uncomfortable of chairs, which had a short back and no arms. He hoped he wouldn’t fall over.
“That’s what they do, you know,” he heard Ivanov say. “They keep you from sleeping day and night, they don’t feed you, they keep you naked, wet, cold, in darkness at day and in light at night until you break down and say white is black and black is white and sign their fucking paper.”
“Black is white,” Alexander said without opening his eyes.
“Corporal Boris Maikov signed their fucking paper,” said Ivanov. “He was shot yesterday.”
“What about the other one? Ouspensky?”
“He’s back in the infirmary. They realized he had only one lung. They’re waiting for him to die. Why waste a bullet on him?”
Alexander was too exhausted to speak. Ivanov lowered his voice another notch, and said, “Major, I heard Slonko arguing with Mitterand a few hours ago. He said to Mitterand, ‘Don’t worry. I will break him or he will die.’”
Alexander made no reply.
He heard Ivanov’s whispering. “Don’t let them break you, Major.”
Alexander didn’t answer. He was sleeping.
Leningrad, 1935
In Leningrad, the Barringtons found two small rooms next to each other in a communal apartment in a ramshackle nineteenth-century building. Alexander found a new school, unpacked his few books, his clothes, and continued being fifteen. Harold found work as a carpenter in a table-making factory. Jane stayed home and drank. Alexander stayed away from the two rooms they called home. He spent much of his time walking around Leningrad, which he liked better than Moscow. The pastel stucco buildings, the white nights, the river Neva; he found Leningrad historic and romantic with its gardens and palaces and wide boulevards and small rivers and canals criss-crossing the never-sleeping city.
At sixteen, as he was obliged to, Alexander registered for the Red Army as Alexander Barrington. That was his rebellion. He was not changing his name.
In their communal apartment they tried to keep to themselves—having so little for each other and nothing for other people—but a married couple on the second floor of their building, Svetlana and Vladimir Visselsky, made friendly approaches. They lived in one room with Vladimir’s mother, and at first were quite taken with the Barringtons and lightly envious of the two rooms they had for themselves. Vladimir was a road engineer, Svetlana worked at a local library and kept telling Jane there was a job for her there, too. Jane got a job there, but was unable to get up in the mornings to go to work.
Alexander liked Svetlana. In her late thirties, she was well-dressed, attractive, witty. Alexander liked the way she talked to him, almost as if he were an adult. He was restless during the summer of 1935. Emotionally and financially broke, his parents did not rent a dacha. The summer in the city without a way to make new friends did not appeal much to Alexander, who did nothing but walk around Leningrad by day and read by night. He got a library card where Svetlana worked, and often found himself sitting and talking to her. And, very occasionally, reading. Frequently she walked home with him.
His mother brightened a bit under Svetlana’s casual attention but soon went back to drinking in the afternoons.
Alexander spent more and more of his days at the library. When she walked home with him, Svetlana would offer him a cigarette, which he stopped refusing, or some vodka, which he continued to refuse. The vodka he could take or leave. The cigarettes he thought he could take or leave too, but he had gradually begun to look forward to their bitter taste in his mouth. The vodka altered him in ways he did not like, but the cigarettes provided a calming crutch to his adolescent frenzy.
One afternoon they had come home earlier than usual to find his mother in a stupor in her bedroom. They went to his room to sit down for a second, before Svetlana had to go back downstairs. She offered Alexander another cigarette, and as she did so, she moved closer to him on the couch. He studied her for a moment, wondering if he was misreading her intentions, and then she took the cigarette out of her mouth and put it into his, kissing him lightly on the cheek. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t bite.”
So he was not misreading her intentions.
He was sixteen and he was ready.
Her lips moved to his mouth. “Are you afraid?” she said.
“I’m not,” he said, throwing the cigarette and the lighter on the floor. “But you should be.”
They spent two hours together on the couch, and afterward Svetlana moved from the room and down the hall with the shaken walk of someone who had come into the battle thinking it was going to be an easy conquest and was now stumbling away having lost all her weapons.
Stumbling away past Harold, who was coming home from work, and who passed Svetlana in the hall with a nod and a “You don’t want to stay for dinner?”
“There is no dinner,” Svetlana replied weakly. “Your wife is still asleep.”
Alexander closed his own door and smiled.
Harold cooked dinner for himself and Alexander, who spent the rest of the evening holed up in his room pretending to read, but really just waiting for tomorrow.
Tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough.
Another afternoon of Svetlana, and another, and another.
For a month in the summer she and Alexander met in the late afternoons.
He enjoyed Svetlana. She never failed to tell him exactly what he needed to do to bring her pleasure, and he never failed to do exactly as he was told. Everything he learned about patience and perseverance, he learned from her. Combined with his own natural tendency to stay until the job was done, the result was that Svetlana left work earlier and earlier. He was flattered. His summer flew by.
On the weekends when Svetlana came over with her husband to visit the Barringtons, and she and Alexander barely acknowledged their intimacy, he found the sexual tension to be almost an end in itself.
Then Svetlana began to question the evenings he spent out.
Trouble was, now that Alexander had seen what was on the other side of the wall, all he wanted was to be on the other side of the wall, but not just with Svetlana.
He would have gladly continued with her and made time with girls his own age, but one Sunday evening as the five of them were sitting down to a dinner of potatoes and a little herring, Vladimir, Svetlana’s husband said to no one in particular, “My Svetochka, I think, needs to get a second job. The library has apparently reduced her hours to part-time.”
“But then when would she come and visit my wife?” said Harold, spooning another helping of potatoes onto his plate. They were all crowded in Alexander’s parents’ room around the small table.
“You come and visit me?” asked Jane of Svetlana. No one at the table responded for a moment. Then Jane nodded. “Of course you do. Every day. I see you in the afternoon.”
“You girls must have a great time around here,” said Vladimir. “She always comes home full of such good spirits. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was having a raucous affair.” He laughed in the tone of a man who thought the very idea of his wife’s having an affair was so absurd as to be almost delicious.
Svetlana herself threw her head back and laughed. Even Harold chuckled. Only Jane and Alexander sat stonily. For the rest of the dinner Jane said nothing to anyone but got drunker and drunker. Soon she was passed out on the couch while the rest of them cleaned up. The next day, when Alexander came home, he found his mother waiting for him in his room, somber and sober.
“I sent her away,” she said to him as he came in and threw down his bag of library books and jacket on the floor and stood in front of his mother with his arms folded.
“Okay,” he said.
“What are you doing, Alexander?” she asked quietly. He could tell she had been crying.
“I don’t know, Mom. What are you doing?”
“Alexander …”
“What are you concerned about?”
“That I’m not looking after my son,” she replied.
“You’re concerned about that?”
“I don’t want it to be too late,” she said in a small, remorseful voice. “It’s my fault, I know. Lately I haven’t been much of …” She broke off. “But whatever is happening in our family, she can’t come here anymore, not if she wants to keep this from her husband.”
“Like you’re keeping what you do in the afternoons from yours?”
“Like he cares,” retorted Jane.
“Like Vladimir cares,” retorted Alexander.
“Stop it!” she yelled. “What’s the point of this? To wake me up?”
“Mom, I know you will find this hard to believe, but it has nothing to do with you.”
“Alexander,” Jane said bitterly, “indeed I find that very hard to believe. You, the most beautiful boy in all of Russia, you’re telling me you could not have found a young school girl to parry with instead of a woman nearly my age who just happens to be my friend?”
“Who says I haven’t? And would a school girl have gotten you sober?”
“Oh, I see, so this does have something to do with me after all!” She didn’t get up off the couch while Alexander, with his arms crossed, stood in front of her. “Is this what you want to do with your life? Become a toy for bored older women?”
Alexander felt his temper rising. He grit his teeth. His mother was too upsetting for him.
“Answer me!” she said loudly. “Is this what you want?”
“What?” he said, just as loudly. “Does it seem to you as if I’ve got so many more attractive options? Which part do you find so repellent?”
Jane jumped up. “Don’t go forgetting yourself,” she said. “I am still your mother.”
“Then act like my mother!” he yelled.
“I’ve looked after you!”
“And look where it’s gotten all of us—all of us Barringtons making a life for ourselves in Leningrad while you spend half of Dad’s wages on vodka, and still that’s not enough. You’ve sold your jewelry, you’ve sold your books, your silks and your linens for vodka. What’s left, Mom? What else have you got left to sell?”
For the first time in her life, Jane raised her hand and slapped Alexander. He deserved it and knew it, but couldn’t keep himself from saying it.
“Mom, you want to offer me a solution, offer me a solution. You want to tell me what to do—after months of not speaking to me—forget it. I will not listen. You’re going to have to do better.” He paused. “Stop drinking.”
“I’m sober now.”
“Then let’s talk again tomorrow.”
But tomorrow she was drunk.
School started. Alexander busied himself with getting to know a girl named Nadia. One afternoon, Svetlana met him at the school doors. He was laughing with Nadia. Excusing himself, Alexander walked down the block with Svetlana.
“Alexander, I want to talk to you.” They walked to a small park and sat under the autumn trees. “Your mother knows, doesn’t she?”
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Listen … we needed to stop anyway.”
“Stop?” She said the word as if it had never actually occurred to her.
He looked at her with surprise.
“Not stop!” she exclaimed. “Whatever in the world for?”
“Svetlana …”
“Alexander, can’t you see?” she said, trembling and taking hold of his arm. “This is just a test for us.”
He pulled his arm away. “It’s a test I’m meant to fail. I don’t know what you could possibly be thinking. I’m in school. I’m sixteen. You’re a married thirty-nine-year-old woman. How long did you imagine this would go on?”
“When we first started,” she said hoarsely, “I imagined nothing.”
“All right.”
“But now …”
His gaze dropped. “Oh, Sveta …”
She got up off the bench. The throaty cry she emitted hurt Alexander’s lungs—as if he had breathed inside himself her miserable addiction to him. “Of course. I’m ridiculous.” She struggled with her breath. “You’re right. Of course.” She tried to smile. “Maybe one last time?” she whispered. “For old times’ sake? To say goodbye properly?”
Alexander bowed his head by way of replying.
She stumbled a step back from him, composed herself and said as steadily as she could, “Alexander, remember this as you go through your life—you have amazing gifts. Don’t squander them. Don’t give them out meaninglessly, don’t abuse them, don’t take them for granted. You are the weapon you carry with you till the day you die.”
They did not see each other again. Alexander got himself a card at a different library. Vladimir and Svetlana stopped coming over. At first Harold was curious why they no longer visited and then he forgot about them. Alexander knew his father’s inner life was too unsettled to worry about why he no longer saw people he didn’t like very much to begin with.
Fall turned into winter. 1935 turned into 1936. He and his father celebrated New Year’s by themselves. They went to a local beer bar, where his father bought him a glass of vodka and tried to talk to him. The conversation was brief and strained. Harold Barrington—in his own sober, defiant way—was oblivious to his son and his wife. The world his father lived in Alexander did not know, stopped understanding, didn’t want to understand even if he could have. He knew that his father would have liked Alexander to side with him, to understand him, to believe in him, the way he did when he was younger. But Alexander did not know how to do that anymore. The days of idealism had gone. Only life was left.
Giving Up One Room, 1936
Could it get less tolerable?
Shortly.
An undergrown man from Upravdom—the housing committee—arrived at their doorstep one dark January Saturday morning, accompanied by two people with suitcases, and waved about a piece of paper, informing the Barringtons that they were going to have to give up one of their rooms to another family. Harold didn’t have the strength to argue. Jane was too drunk to object. It was Alexander who raised his voice but only briefly. There was no point. There was no one to go to, to correct this.
“You can’t tell me this is unjust,” the smirking Upravdom member said to Alexander. “You have two nice rooms for the three of you. There are two of them, and they have no rooms at all. She is pregnant. Where is your socialist spirit, comrade soon-to-be Comsomol?” The Comsomols were young members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Alexander and Harold moved the cot and his small dresser and his few personal belongings and his bookshelf. Alexander put his cot next to the window, and the dresser and bookshelf between himself and his parents as an angry barrier. When his father wanted to know if he was upset, Alexander barked, “It’s been my dream to share a room with you at sixteen. I know you don’t want any privacy either.” They talked in English, which was more natural and more colloquial, and provided an opportunity to say the word privacy, a word that did not exist in Russian.
The next morning when Jane woke up she wanted to know what Alexander was doing in their room. It was a Sunday.
“I’m here for good,” said Alexander, and went out. He took a train to Peterhof and walked the grounds by himself, sullen and confused. 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. He was filled with a sense of despair.
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.
The End, 1936
Harold stopped bringing vodka into the house.
“Dad, you don’t think Mom will be able to get vodka any other way?”
“With what? She has no money.”
Alexander didn’t mention the thousands of American dollars his mother had been hoarding since the day they came to the Soviet Union.
“Stop talking about me as if I’m not here!” Jane shouted.
They looked at her with surprise. Afterward Jane started stealing money from Harold’s pockets and going to buy the vodka herself. Harold started keeping his money out of the house. Jane was then caught in someone else’s apartment, going through their things, already drunk on some French perfume she had found.
Alexander began to be afraid that the next natural step for his mother would be to drink her way through the money she had brought with them from America. It wouldn’t end until all the money was gone. First the Soviet rubles she had saved from her job in Moscow, then the American dollars. It would take his mother a year to buy vodka with all her dollars on the black market, but buy it she would, gone the money would be, and then what?
Without that money, Alexander was finished.
Alexander had to get his mother sober for long enough to let him hide the money in a place that was not home. He knew that if she found out he had taken it without her knowledge or permission her hysteria would not cease until Harold knew of her treachery. Once Harold knew his wife had mistrusted him from the moment they left the United States, mistrusted him even in her love and her respect, mistrusted him and his motives and his ideals and all the dreams he thought she shared with him from the very start, once he knew that, Alexander felt his father would not recover. And he didn’t want to be responsible for his father’s future, all he wanted was the money to help him be responsible for his own. That’s what his sober mother wanted, too. He knew that. Sober, she would let him hide the money. The trick was to get her sober.
Over the course of one difficult and contemptible weekend Alexander tried to dry out his mother. She, in her convulsing rage, flooded him with such obscenities and vitriol that finally even Harold said, “Oh, for God’s sake, give her a drink and tell her to shut up.”
But Alexander didn’t give her a drink. He sat by her, and he read aloud from Dickens, in English, and he read Pushkin to her, in Russian, and he read her the funniest of Zoshchenko’s anecdotes, and he fed her some soup and he fed her some bread, and gave her coffee, and put cold wet towels on her head, but still she wouldn’t stop ranting. Harold, in a quiet moment, asked Alexander, “What did she mean about you and Svetlana, what was she talking about?”
“Dad, haven’t you learned by now, you have to shut her off? You can’t listen to a word she is saying.”
“No, no, of course not,” muttered Harold thoughtfully, walking away from Alexander, though not far, because there wasn’t anywhere in the narrow room to go.
On Monday, after his father left for work, Alexander cut school and spent all day convincing his morosely, miserably sober mother that her money needed to be put in a safe place. Alexander tried to explain to her, first patiently and quietly, then impatiently and shouting, that if something, God forbid, were to happen to them, and they were arrested—
“You’re talking nonsense, Alexander. Why would they arrest us? We’re their people. We’re not living well, but then we shouldn’t be living any better than the rest of the Russians. We came here to share their fate.”
“We’re doing that gallantly,” said Alexander. “Mom, wise up. What do you think happened to the other foreigners that lived with us in Moscow?” He paused. His mother considered. “Even if I’m wrong, I’m saying it’s not going to hurt us to be a little prudent and hide the money. Now how much money is left?”
After thinking for a few moments, Jane said she did not know. She let Alexander count it. There was ten thousand dollars and four thousand rubles.
“How many dollars did you bring with you from America?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe seventeen thousand. Maybe twenty.”
“Oh, Mom.”
“What? Some of that money went to buy you oranges and milk in Moscow, or did you forget already?”
“I didn’t forget,” Alexander replied in a weary voice. How much for the oranges and milk, he wanted to know. Fifty dollars? A hundred?
Jane, smoking and watching Alexander, narrowed her eyes at him. “If I let you hide the money, will you let me have a drink, as a thank you?”
“Yes. Just one.”
“Of course. One small one is all I want. I feel much better when I’m sober, you know. But just one small drink to get me through the heebie-jeebies would help me stay sober, you know that, don’t you?”
Alexander wanted to ask his mother just how naïve she thought he was. He said nothing.
“All right,” said Jane. “Let’s get it over with. Where are you planning to hide it?”
Alexander suggested gluing the money into the back binding of a book, producing one of his mother’s good, thick-covered hardbacks to show exactly what he meant.
“If your father finds out, he will never forgive you.”
“He can add it to the list of things he won’t forgive me for. Go on, Mom. I have to get to school. After the book is ready, I’m putting it in the library.”
Jane stared at the book Alexander was proposing. It was her ancient copy of Pushkin’s The Bronze Horseman and Other Poems. “Why don’t we glue it inside the Bible we brought from home?”
“Because finding a Pushkin book in the Pushkin section of the Leningrad library is not going to alert anyone. But finding a Bible in English anywhere in the Russian library just might.” He smiled. “Don’t you think?”
Jane almost smiled back. “Alexander, I’m sorry I haven’t been well.”
He lowered his head.
“I don’t want to talk to your father about this anymore because he no longer has any patience for me, but I’m having trouble with our life.”
“We know,” Alexander said. “We’ve noticed.”
She put her arms around him. He patted her on the back. “Shh,” he said. “It’s all right.”
“This money, Alexander,” she said, looking up at him, “you think it will help you somehow?”
“I don’t know. Having it is better than not having it.”
He took the book with him, and after school went to the Leningrad public library and in the back, in the three-aisle-wide Pushkin section, found a place on a bottom shelf for his book. He put it between two scholarly-looking tomes that had not been checked out since 1927. He thought it was a good bet no one would check out his book, either. But still, it didn’t feel completely safe. He wished there were a better hiding place for it.
When Alexander came home later that evening, his mother was drunk again, showing none of the remorseful affection he had seen in her eyes earlier in the day. He ate dinner quietly with his father, while listening to the radio.
“School good?”
“Yes. It’s fine, Dad.”
“You have good friends?”
“Sure.”
“Any good friends who are girls?” His father was trying to make conversation.
“Some friends who are girls, yes.”
His father cleared his throat. “Nice Russian girls?”
Smiling, Alexander asked, “Compared with what?”
Harold smiled. “Do the nice Russian girls,” he asked carefully, “like my boy?”
Alexander shrugged. “They like me all right.”
Harold said, “I remember you and Teddy hung out with that girl, what was her name again?”
“Belinda.”
“Yes! Belinda. She was nice.”
“Dad.” Alexander laughed. “We were eight. Yes, she was nice for an eight-year-old.”
“Oh, but what a crush on you she had!”
“And what a crush on her Teddy had.”
“That about sums up all the relationships on God’s earth.”
They went out for a drink. “I miss our home in Barrington a little,” Harold admitted to Alexander. “But it’s only because I have not lived a different way long enough. Long enough to change my consciousness and make me into the person I’m supposed to be.”
“You have lived this way long enough. That’s why you miss Barrington.”
“No. You know what I think, son? I think it’s not working so well here, because it’s Russia. I think communism would work much better in America.” He smiled beseechingly at Alexander. “Don’t you agree?”
“Oh, Dad, for God’s sake.”
Harold didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Never mind. I’m going over to Leo’s for a little while. You want to come?”
The choice was, either go back home to the room with his unconscious mother or sit in a smoked-out room with his father’s communist cronies regurgitating obscure parts of Das Kapital and talking about bringing the war back home.
Alexander wanted to be with his father but alone. He went home to his mother. He wanted to be alone with somebody.
The next morning, as Harold and Alexander were getting ready for their day, Jane, still inebriated from the night before, held on to Alexander’s hand for a moment and said, “Stay behind, son, I have to talk to you.”
After Harold left, Jane said in a hurried voice, “Collect your things. Where is that book? You have to run and get it.”
“What for?”
“You and I are going to Moscow.”
“Moscow?”
“Yes. We’ll get there by nightfall. Tomorrow first thing in the morning I’ll take you to the consulate.” They’ll keep you there until they contact the State Department in Washington. And then they’ll send you home.”
“What?”
“Alexander, yes. I’ll take care of your father.”
“You can’t take care of yourself.”
“Don’t worry about me,” said Jane. “My fate is sealed. But yours is wide open. Concern yourself only with you. Your father goes to his meetings. He thinks by playing with the grown-ups he won’t be punished. But they have his number. They have mine. But you, Alexander, you have no number. I have to get you out.”
“I’m not going without you or Dad.”
“Of course you are. Your father and I will never be allowed to return. But you will do very well back home. I know it’s hard in America these days, there aren’t many jobs, but you’ll be free, you’ll have your life, so come and stop arguing. I’m your mother. I know what I’m doing.”
“Mom, you’re taking me to Moscow to surrender me to the Americans?”
“Yes. Your Aunt Esther will look after you until you graduate secondary school. The State Department will arrange for her to meet your ship in Boston. You’re still only sixteen, Alexander, the consulate won’t turn you away.”
Alexander had been very close to his father’s sister once. She adored him, but she had an ugly fight with Harold over Alexander’s dubious future in the Soviet Union, and they had not spoken or written since.
“Mom, two things,” he said. When I turned sixteen, I registered for the Red Army. Remember? Mandatory conscription. I became a Soviet citizen when I joined. I have a passport to prove that.”
“The consulate doesn’t have to know that.”
“It’s their business to know it. But the second thing is …” Alexander broke off. “I can’t go without saying goodbye to my father.”
“Write him a letter.”
The train ride was long. He had twelve hours to sit and think. How his mother managed those hours without a drink, he didn’t know. Her hands were shaking badly by the time they arrived at the Leningrad Station in Moscow. It was night; they were tired and hungry. They had no place to sleep. They had no food. It was a fairly mild late April, and they slept on a bench in Gorky Park. Alexander had strong bittersweet memories of himself and his friends playing ice hockey in Gorky Park.
“I need a drink, Alexander,” Jane whispered. “I need a drink to take an edge off my life. Stay here, I’ll be right back.”
“Mother,” said Alexander, putting his steady hand on her to keep her from getting up. “If you leave, I will go straight to the station and take the next train back to Leningrad.”
Deeply sighing, Jane moved closer to Alexander and motioned to her lap. “Lie down, son. Get some sleep. We have a long day tomorrow.”
Alexander put his head on his mother’s shoulder and eventually slept.
The next morning they had to wait an hour at the consulate gate until someone came to see them—only to tell them they could not come in. Jane gave her name and a letter explaining about her son. They waited restlessly for another two hours until the sentry called them over and said the consul was unable to help them. Jane pleaded to be let in for just five minutes. The sentry shook his head and said there was nothing he could do. Alexander had to restrain his mother. Eventually he led her away and returned by himself to speak to the guard. The man apologized. “I’m sorry,” he said in English. “They did look into it, if you want to know. But the file on your mother and father has been sent back to the State Department in Washington.” The man paused. “Yours, too. Since you’re Soviet citizens, you’re not under our jurisdiction anymore. There is nothing they can do.”
“What about political asylum?”
“On what grounds? Besides, you know how many Soviets come this way asking for asylum? Dozens every day. On Mondays, near a hundred. We’re here by invitation from the Soviet government. We want to maintain our ties to the Soviet community. If we started accepting their people, how long do you think they’d allow us to stay here? You’d be the last one. Just last week, we relented and let a widowed Russian father with two small children pass. The father had relatives in the United States and said he would find work. He had a useful skill, he was an electrician. But there was a diplomatic scandal. We had to give him back.” The sentry paused. “You’re not an electrician, are you?”
“No,” replied Alexander. “But I am an American citizen.”
The sentry shook his head. “You know you can’t serve two masters in the military.”
Alexander knew. He tried again. “I have relatives in America. I will live with them. And I can work. I’ll drive a cab. I will sell produce on the street corner. I will farm. I will cut down trees. Whatever I can do, I will do.”
The sentry lowered his voice. “It’s not you. It’s your father and mother. They’re just too high profile for the consulate to get involved. Made too much of a fuss when they came here. Wanted everyone to know them. Well, now everyone knows them. Your parents should have thought twice about relinquishing their U.S. citizenship. What was the hurry? They should have been sure first.”
“My father was sure,” said Alexander.
The trip back from Moscow was only as long as the trip to Moscow; why did it seem decades longer? His mother was mute. The countryside was flat bleak fields; there was still no food.
Jane cleared her throat. “I desperately wanted to have a baby. It took me ten years and four miscarriages to have you. The year you were born the worldwide flu epidemic tore through Boston, killing thousands of people, including my sister, your father’s parents and brother, and many of our close friends. Everybody we knew lost someone. I went to the doctor for a check-up because I was feeling under the weather and was terrified it might be the dreaded flu. He told me I was pregnant. I said, how can it be, we’ll fall sick, we’ve given up our family inheritance, we are broke, where are we going to live, how will we stay healthy, and the doctor looked at me and said, “The baby brings his own food.”
She took Alexander’s hand. He let her.
“You, son—you brought your own food. Harold and I both felt it. When you were born, Alexander—when you were born, it was late at night, and you came so suddenly, I didn’t even have time to go to the hospital. The doctor came, delivered you in our bed, and said that you seemed in a great hurry to get on with living. You were the biggest baby he had ever seen, and I still remember, after we told him we were naming you Anthony Alexander after your great grandfather, he lifted you, all purple and black-haired, and exclaimed, “Alexander the great!” Because you were so big, you see.” She paused. “You were such a beautiful boy,” she whispered.
Alexander took his hand away and turned to the window.
“Our hopes for you were extraordinary. I wish you could imagine the kinds of things we dreamed for you as we strolled down the Boston Pier with you in the carriage and all the old ladies stopping to gaze at the baby with hair so black and eyes so shining.”
The flat fields were rushing by.
“Ask your father—ask him—when next you can, if his dreams for you ever included this for his only son.”
“I just didn’t bring enough food, did I, Mom?” said Alexander, with hair so black and eyes so shining.
CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_eda98527-e731-5880-b70b-1824314f53fc)
The Ghosts of Ellis Island, 1943
THERE WAS SOMETHING UNDENIABLY comforting about living and working at Ellis. Tatiana’s world was so small, so insular, and so full that there was little left of her to imagine a different life, to move forward in her imagination to New York, to the real America, or backward in her memory, to Leningrad, to the real Alexander. So long as she stayed at Ellis with her infant son, lived with him in a small stone room with the large white window, slept in her single bed on her white linen, wore her one set of white clothes and sensible shoes, so long as she lived in that room with Anthony and her black backpack, she didn’t have to imagine an impossible life in America without Alexander.
Desperately trying to get away from that black backpack, she frequently longed for the noise of her family, for the chaos and the arguing, for the music of loud vodka drinkers, for the smell of incessant cigarette smokers. She wished for her impossible brother, for her sister, for her bedraggled mother, her gruff father and for her grandmother and grandfather—revered by her. She ached for them the way she used to ache for bread during the blockade. She wished for them to walk loudly down the Ellis halls with her as they did now every day, silent ghosts by her side, helpless before his screaming ghost also by her side.
During the day she carried her boy and bandaged and fed the wounded, leaving her own festering wounds until night-time when she licked them and nursed them, and remembered the pines and the fish and the river and the axe and the woods and the fire and the blueberries and the smell of cigarette smoke and the loud laughter coming from one male throat.
It was impossible to walk the stripped bare corridors of Ellis Island Three without hearing the millions of footsteps that had walked there on the black-and-white checkered floor before Tatiana. When she ventured across the short bridge to the Great Hall on Ellis Island One, the sense grew. Because unlike Ellis Three, where present life was continuing, Ellis One was deserted. All that remained in the gothic building, on the stairs, the corridors, the gray dusty rooms was the spirit of the past—of those who came before, since 1894, those who came by shiploads, seven times a day, who docked across the water at Castle Garden or who came off the planks here, right into Immigration Hall, and then trudged upstairs into the Great Registry Room clutching their bags and children, adjusting their head coverings, having left behind everything in the Old World: mothers and fathers, husbands, brothers and sisters, having either promised to send for them or having promised nothing. Five thousand a day, eighty thousand a month, eight million one year, twenty million from 1892 to 1924, without visas, without papers, without money, but with the clothes they wore and whatever useful skills they had—as carpenters, seamstresses, cooks, metalworkers, bricklayers, salesmen.
Mama would have done well here, sewing. And Papa would have fixed their water pipes, and Pasha would have fished. And Dasha would have looked after Alexander’s boy while I worked. Ironic and sad as that would have been, she would have done it.
They came with their children, for no one left the children behind—it was for the children they had come, wanting to give them the halls of America, the streets, the seasons, the New York of America. New York, right across the water, so close yet impossibly far for those who had to be cleared through immigration and medical examinations before they could step on the shores of Manhattan Island. Many had been sick like Tatiana, and worse. The combination of contagious illness, no language skills, and no work skills occasionally made the doctors and the INS officers turn the immigrants away—not a lot, handfuls a day. Older parents and their grown children could be split up. Husbands and wives could be split up.
Like I was split up. Like I am split up.
The threat of failure, the fear of return, the longing to be admitted was so strong that it remained in the walls and the floors, permeating the stone between the cracked glass windows, and all the yearning hope echoed off the walls of Ellis and into Tatiana as she walked the herringbone tile corridors with Anthony in her arms.
After the clampdown in 1924, Ellis Island stopped being the nucleus for nearly all immigration into the United States. Nonetheless, ships with immigrants arrived each day, then each week, then each month. Processing at Ellis dwindled from millions a year to thousands, to hundreds. Most people came to Port of New York with visas already in hand. Without visas, the immigrants could now be legally turned away and often were, and so fewer and fewer people risked making a life-changing, life-threatening journey only to be turned back at the port of call. But still, 748 people smuggled themselves in between crates of tomatoes in the year before the war, without papers, without money.
They were not turned away.
Just as talk was beginning to swell about closing down the largely unneeded Ellis Island, World War II broke out, and suddenly in 1939, 1940, 1941, Ellis became useful as a hospital for refugees and stowaways. Once America entered the war, it would bring the wounded and captured Germans and Italians from the Atlantic and detain them at Ellis.
That’s when Tatiana arrived.
And she felt needed. No one wanted to work at Ellis, not even Vikki, who instinctively felt that her natural and prodigious flirting skills were utterly wasted on the foreign wounded men who would be going back to their home country or to work on U.S. farms as field-hands. Vikki grudgingly pulled her duty at Ellis but she much preferred the NYU hospital, where the wounded, if they did not die first, had a hope of pleasing Vikki—the medium-term gal—in the medium-term.
Quietly the German wounded continued to be brought to Ellis Island, and continued to convalesce. The Italian men, too, who talked even as they were dying, talked in a language Tatiana did not understand; yet they spoke with a cadence, with a fervor and a fury that she did understand. They had hearty laughs and throaty cries and clutching fingers with which they would grab onto her as they were carried off the boats, as they stared into her face and muttered hopes for life, chances for survival, words of thanks. And sometimes before they died, if holding her hands wasn’t enough, and if they had nothing contagious or infectious, she brought them her boy and placed him on their chests, so that their war-beaten hands could go around his small sleeping form and they would be comforted, and their hearts would beat at peace.
She wished she could have brought Alexander his sleeping son.
Something about Ellis Island’s contained, confined nature soothed her. She could stay in her whitewashed, clean-linen room with Anthony, and she could eat three meals at the cafeteria, saving her meat rations and her butter rations. She could nurse her son, pleased by the heft of him, by the size of him, by the health and shine of him.
Edward and Vikki, one late summer afternoon, sat her down in the cafeteria, put a cup of coffee in front of her and tried to convince her to move to New York. They told her New York was booming during war, there were night clubs, there were parties, there were clothes and shoes to buy and perhaps she could rent a small apartment with a kitchen and perhaps she could have her own room, and Anthony could have another, and perhaps perhaps perhaps.
Thousands of miles away there was war. Thousands of miles away there was the River Kama, the Ural Mountains which had watched it all, seen it all, known it all. And the galaxies. They knew. They bent their midnight rays to shine through Tatiana’s window at Ellis Island, and they whispered to her, keep going. Let us weep. You live.
The echoes spoke to Tatiana, the corridors felt familiar, the white sheets, the salty smell, the back of the robes of Lady Liberty, the night air, the twinkling lights across the bay of a city of dreams. Tatiana already lived on an island of dreams, and what she needed, New York could not give her.
The fire has gone out. The clearing is dark, but on the cold blanket they remain. Alexander sits with his legs open and Tania sits between them, her back to his chest. His arms swaddle her. They are both looking up at the sky. They are mute.
“Tania,” Alexander whispers, kissing her head, “do you see the stars?”
“Of course.”
“You want to make love right here? We’ll throw the blanket off and make love and let them see us—so they will never forget.”
“Shura …” Her voice is soft and sad. “They’ve seen us. They know. Look, can you see that constellation up to the right? You see how the cluster stars at the bottom form a smile? They’re smiling at us.” She pauses. “I’ve seen them many times, looking beyond your head.”
“Yes,” Alexander says, wrapping his arms and the blanket tighter around her. “I think that constellation is in the galaxy of Perseus, the Greek hero—”
“I know who Perseus is.” She nods. “When I was a little girl, I lived inside the Greek myths.” She presses against him. “I like that Perseus is smiling at us while you make love to me.”
“Did you know that the stars in Perseus that are yellow might be close to imploding, but the stars that are blue, the biggest, the brightest—”
“And they are called novas.”
“Yes, they shine, gain in brilliance, explode, then fade. Look how many blue stars there are around the smile, Tatia.”
“I see.”
“Do you hear the stellar winds?”
“I hear rustling.”
“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 Perseus 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 wipes her face on Alexander’s arm and says, “You won’t have to call me back, soldier. I’m not ever leaving here.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#ulink_7dd413c3-a99f-5d70-a825-5e418bb7259e)
Baseball in Central Park, 1943
JULY HAD GONE BY, and August, too, and September. Seven months since she left the Soviet Union. Tatiana stayed at Ellis, not venturing once across the harbor, until finally Edward and Vikki had had enough of her, and they took her and Anthony—nearly by force—in the ferry one Saturday afternoon to see New York. Against Tatiana’s objections (“Vikki, I don’t have carriage to put Anthony.”) Vikki bought a carriage for four dollars at a second-hand shop. “It’s not for you. It’s for the baby. You can’t refuse a present for your baby.”
Tatiana didn’t refuse. She often wished her boy could have a few more clothes, a few more toys. A carriage perhaps for the walks around Ellis. In the same shop Tatiana bought Anthony two rattles and a teddy bear, though he preferred the paper bags they came in.
“Edward, what’s your wife going to say when she finds out you’re out with not one but two of your nurses, gallivanting around gay New York?” asked Vikki with a grin.
“She will scratch out the eyes of the wench who told her.”
“My mouth is shut. What about you, Tania?”
“I’m not speak English,” said Tatiana, and they laughed.
“I can’t believe this girl has never once been to New York. Tania, how do you keep from going to the Immigration Department? Don’t you need to speak to them every few weeks so they can see how you’re doing?”
Looking at Edward gratefully, Tatiana said, “Justice Department come to me.”
“But three months! Didn’t you want to go to New York and see for yourself what all the fuss is about?”
“I busy working.”
“Busy nursing,” punned Vikki, and laughed at herself. “He is a nice boy. He is not going to fit into the carriage soon. I think he is extra big for his age. All that milk.” She glanced at Tatiana’s abundant chest and coughed loudly.
“I do not know,” said Tatiana, looking at Anthony with swelling pride. “I do not know boys his age.”
“Trust me, he is gigantic. When are you going to come for dinner? How about tomorrow? I don’t want to hear it from Grammy about my divorce anymore. It’s official, you know. I’m divorced. And my grandmother every Sunday dinner says to me that no man shall ever want me again, a tainted divorced woman.” Vikki rolled her eyes.
“Vikki, but why do you have to prove her so wrong?” said Edward. Tatiana stifled a laugh.
“I have eyes but for one man. Chris Pandolfi.”
Tatiana snorted. Edward smiled. “Our Tania doesn’t much like Chris, do you, Tania?”
“Why?” asked Vikki.
“Because he calls me Nurse Buttercup. I think he make fun of me. What is this buttercup?”
Shaking his head and smiling, Edward placed his arm on Tatiana’s back and said, “Happy yellow flower,” but Vikki was already talking about how Chris was going to take her to Cape Cod for Thanksgiving weekend, and how she had found the most exquisite chiffon dress to go dancing in next Saturday.
The market in front of Battery Park was teeming with people.
Tatiana, Vikki, and Edward pushed a sleeping Anthony past the market, through Church Street and then turned down Wall Street and crossed downtown to go to South Street, through the Fulton Fish Market and then up to Chinatown and Little Italy. Edward and Vikki were exhausted. Tatiana walked on, mesmerized by the tall buildings, by the swarming crowds, everyone shouting, cheerful, hot, by the street vendors selling candlesticks, candles, old books, apples, by the musicians on street corners, playing harmonica and accordion. She walked as if her feet did not belong to her and did not touch the hard pavement. She was amazed at the potatoes and peas and cabbages spilling out of bushels onto the sidewalks, by the peaches and apples and grapes, by the horse-drawn carriages selling cottons and linens, by the cabs and cars, thousands of them, millions of them, by the double-decker buses, by the constant clang of the el on Third Avenue, on Second Avenue, amazed, open-mouthed by it all.
They stopped at a coffee house on Mulberry Street, and Vikki and Edward sank into the sidewalk chairs. Tatiana remained standing, her hand on the carriage. She was looking at the bride and groom descending the church steps into the courtyard across the street. There were many people around them. They looked happy.
“You know she’s a tiny girl and looks deceptively as if she will fall down any second, but look at her, Edward. She’s not even out of breath,” said Vikki.
“I, however, have lost several pounds. I have not walked this much since my days in the army,” said Edward.
Ah, so Edward was a military man. “Edward, you walk this much through hospital beds every day,” Tatiana said, not turning away from the couple at the church. “But your New York, it is something.”
“How does it compare to the Soviet Union?” asked Vikki.
“Favorably,” Tatiana replied.
“Someday, you’ll have to tell me about it,” said Vikki. “Oh, look, peaches! Let’s go buy some.”
“New York is always like this?” said Tatiana, trying not to sound wide-eyed.
“Oh, no. It’s only like this because of the war. Usually it’s very lively.”
Two Sundays later, Tatiana went with Anthony and Vikki to Central Park to watch Edward play softball against the health officials at PHD, including Chris Pandolfi. Edward’s wife did not come. He said she was resting.
Tatiana smiled at the passers-by and at the fruit stand sellers. The birds were joyous overhead and life bustled forward in freshwater color spurts, and she bowed her head and held her son with one hand and the peaches in the other, and said, yes, these are ripe and smell sweet. She was contemplating taking a ride with Vikki and Edward up to Bear Mountain one Sunday, when Edward had a few gallons of rationed gasoline and his wife was home resting and the leaves were changing. But this Sunday Tatiana was in Central Park, in New York, in the United States of America, holding Anthony while the sun was bright and Edward played softball, and Vikki jumped up and down at every hit and every catch, and Tatiana was not dreaming.
But where is Anthony’s mom? What’s happened to her? Tatiana wanted that girl back, the girl before June 22, 1941, the girl who sat on the bench in her French-made, Polish-bought white dress with red roses and ate ice cream on the day war started for Russia. The girl who swam with her brother, Pasha, who read away her summer days, the girl with everything in front of her. With the Red Army first lieutenant in his Sunday best Class As standing across the sunlit street in front of her. She could have not bought the ice cream, she could have gotten on the earlier bus and hurtled across town in a different direction toward a different life. Except she had to have bought the ice cream. That was who she was. And because of that ice cream now she was here.
Now, wartime New York with its bustling fervor and Vikki with her brightest laugh and Anthony with his fiercest cry, and Edward with his gentle good humor were all trying to bring that girl back. Everything that had been in front of Tatiana was behind her now. The very worst and the very best, too. She lifted her freckled face at a loud and jumping Vikki on the baseline and smiled and went to the drink stand to buy some Coca Cola for her friends. Tatiana’s long blonde hair was in a long braid, as always. She was wearing a simple blue sundress that was too big for her, too long and too wide.
Edward caught up with her and asked if he could carry Anthony for a bit. Tatiana nodded. She bent her head low so she wouldn’t see Edward carrying Alexander’s boy, so the ancient ruins would stay in Rome where they belonged, far away from an afternoon in Sheep Meadow with Vikki and Edward.
He bought the Cokes, water and some strawberries, and the three of them slowly walked back to her blanket on the grass. Tatiana didn’t speak.
“Tania,” said Edward. “Look at how he’s smiling.” He laughed. “The infant smile, nothing quite like it, is there?”
“Hmm,” said Tatiana, not looking. She knew Anthony’s toothless ear-to-ear smile. She’d seen it in action in the infirmary at Ellis. The German and Italian soldiers worshipped Anthony.
“I bought something nice for you and him. You think it’s too early for him to eat strawberries?”
“I do, yes.”
“But look—aren’t they nice? I bought too many. Have some. Maybe you can cook them up or something.”
“I can,” Tatiana said quietly, taking a long drink of water. “I can make jam, I can make jelly, I can preserve them whole in sugar, I can make pie out of them, and crumble, I can cook them and freeze them for winter. I am queen of preserving fruit.”
“Tania—how many ways are there of cooking blueberries?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I’m already surprised. What are you making me now?”
“Blueberry jam.”
“I like the skim off them.”
“Come here and have some.”
She brings the spoon to his mouth and lets him taste. He licks his lips. “I love that.”
“Hmm.” She sees the look in his eyes. “Shura, no. I have to finish this. It needs to be stirred constantly. This is for the old women for the winter.”
“Tania …”
“Shura …”
His arms go around her. “Did I mention that I’m sick to death of blueberries?”
“You’re impossible.”
CHAPTER TWELVE (#ulink_c2dceecd-eee1-52aa-a9c5-a803121b8550)
Conversations with Slonko, 1943
“MAJOR!”
Instantly, Alexander opened his eyes. He was still in the interrogation classroom, still in the wooden chair, still guarded by Ivanov. In walked Slonko with grim strides.
“Well, Major, it looks like you’re going to have to stop playing games.”
“That’ll be fine,” said Alexander. “I’m not in a playing mood.”
“Major!”
“Why is everyone shouting?” Alexander rubbed his head. His skull was cracking.
“Major, do you know a woman by the name of Tatiana Metanova?”
It was harder for Alexander to stay composed. He kept still through willpower. If I can live through this, he thought, I can live through anything. If I can live through this, I will live through anything. He wasn’t sure whether to lie, whether to tell the truth. Slonko was obviously planning something.
“Yes,” said Alexander.
“And who would she be?”
“She was one of the nurses at Morozovo hospital.”
“Was?”
“Well, I’m not there anymore, am I?” Alexander said mildly.
“Turns out she is not there either.”
That was not a question. Alexander said nothing.
“She is more than just a nurse, though, isn’t she, Major?” said Slonko, producing Alexander’s domestic passport out of his pocket. “Why, right in here, it says that she is your wife.”
“Yes,” Alexander said. His whole life in one line. He steadied himself. He knew Slonko was not done by a long shot. He needed to be ready.
“Ah. And where is she at the moment?”
“I would have to be omniscient to know that,” Alexander said.
“She is with us,” said Slonko, bending forward. “We have her in our custody.” He laughed with satisfaction. “What do you think of that, Major?”
“What do I think of that?” said Alexander, not taking his gaze away from Slonko. He folded his arms around his chest and waited. “Could I have a smoke?” he asked, and was brought one. He lit it with steady hands. Before anyone spoke again, Alexander decided Slonko was bluffing. He decided to believe Slonko was bluffing. Just yesterday, was it, Stepanov had told Alexander that Tatiana was missing and no one could find her. Stepanov said Mekhlis’s men were all in a panic. Yet there was nothing about that from Slonko in their previous two conversations. Nothing at all, as if the matter were unknown to him. Suddenly now, he had pulled Tatiana out of his hat with the proud air of a peacock. He was bluffing. Had they caught her, Alexander would have been asked about her sooner. Slonko would have certainly brought up that they were looking for her and could not find her. But there had been not a word from him about Dimitri, not a word about Sayers, and not a word about Tatiana.
Still, he was alone, and Slonko was with three guards. There was bright light shining directly into Alexander’s face, there was the feeling of weakness all over his body, of no sleep, of mental exhaustion, of an aching wound in his back, and there was his weighted-down heart. He said nothing, but the effort cost him considerable resources. How many resources did he have left? In 1936 when he was arrested he had all his resources and he had not been wounded. Why couldn’t he have met Slonko then? Alexander grit his teeth and waited for the rest.
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Полина Саймонс
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Шпионские детективы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A powerful story of grief, hope and an epic love, from the Russian-born author of internationally bestselling novels, TULLY and ROAD TO PARADISE.The world at war … two people in love.Tatiana is eighteen years old and pregnant when she miraculously escapes war-torn Leningrad to the West, believing herself to be a widow. Her husband, Major Alexander Belov, a decorated hero of the Soviet Union, has been arrested by Stalin′s infamous secret police and is awaiting imminent death as a traitor and a spy.Tatiana begins her new life in America. In wartime New York City she finds work, friends and a life beyond her dreams. However, her grief is inescapable and she keeps hearing Alexander calling out to her.Meanwhile, Alexander faces the greatest danger he′s ever known. An American trapped in Russia since adolescence, he has been serving in the Red Army and posing as a Soviet citizen to protect himself. For him, Russia′s war is not over, and both victory and defeat will mean certain death.As the Second World War moves into its spectacular close, Tatiana and Alexander are surrounded by the ghosts of their past and each other. They must struggle against destiny and despair as they find themselves in the fight of their lives. A master of the historical epic, Paullina Simons takes us on a journey across continents, time, and the entire breadth of human emotion, to create a heartrendingly beautiful love story that will live on long after the final page is turned.