Tatiana and Alexander by Paullina Simons
As if she were leaving herself with him because he needed her more. She was saying goodbye not only to him but to herself. There you go, Alexander, Tatiana was saying, take me and go. Have it all. There will be nothing left, but I will grow something new for myself. The Tania you love will remain with you. Take her. And he did, until there was nothing left.
Her warm wet space engulfed him. He was not returning to the womb, he was giving himself back to eternity. He was closing his eyes and surrendering to the universe that loved them and believed in their youth. To the stars and the mystery moon and the River Kama rushing onward to its thousand-kilometer trek, for ten million years feeding into the Caspian Sea. Long after Tania and Shura will have returned to the earth, the river, the pines, the mountains, the imploding stars would still be here, constant and changeless over Lazarevo. They were eternal, and Alexander’s Tatiana, too…she was eternal, moaning softly against his neck, warm breath, warm breasts and lips and legs around him, surrounding him, all things to him.
Limpid morning became desert evening. He wished he could help her, but he knew what they were losing, better than she who was still an innocent. But he knew everything.
Alexander knew what was ahead.
It was tomorrow.
He was leaving.
It was tomorrow.
He had left.
It was tomorrow.
And he was without her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sam Gulotta, Washington DC, July 1944
TATIANA COULDN’T LEAVE ALEXANDER’S medal alone. Couldn’t leave Orbeli alone. She took an unprecedented day off, took Anthony with her, went to Pennsylvania Station, bought a train ticket and traveled to Washington DC where she found the United States Department of Justice on Pennsylvania Avenue. After four hours of shuffling from the Executive Office for Immigration Review to the Office of Immigration and Naturalization, to the National Central Bureau or Interpol Office, she finally found a clerk who told her she was in the wrong building and the wrong department entirely and needed to go to the Department of State on C Street. She and Anthony went to a small coffee shop where they had soup and, with their ration cards, warm bacon sandwiches. It remained a small marvel to her that delicious meat products were readily available in a country at war.
At the Department of State, Tatiana slogged from the Bureau of European Affairs to the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration and finally found the Office of Consular Affairs where she, with her tired legs and tired baby, would not move from the receptionist’s desk until she was put in touch with someone who knew something about expatriate emigration out of the United States.
That is how she met Sam Gulotta.
Sam was an athletic-looking man in his thirties with curly brown hair. Tatiana thought he looked less like an under secretary for consular affairs than a physical education teacher, and she wasn’t far wrong—he told her that he coached his son’s Junior League baseball team in the afternoons and summer camps. Fingers tapping, Sam leaned over the scuffed wooden counter messy with scattered papers and said, “Now what’s this all about?”
Tatiana took a deep breath, held the cranky Anthony to her chest and said, “Here?”
“As opposed to where? Over dinner? Yes, here.” He smiled when he said it. He wasn’t gruff, but it was five o’clock on a government Thursday.
“Mr. Gulotta, when I was in Soviet Union, I met and married a man who come to Moscow as young boy. I think he was still American citizen.”
“Really?” Gulotta said. “What are you doing in the States? And what is your name now?”
“My name is Jane Barrington,” said Tatiana, taking out her residence card and showing it to him. “I have permanent residence in United States. Soon to be citizen. But my husband…how to explain?” She took a breath and told him, beginning with Alexander and ending with the Red Cross death certificate and Dr. Sayers smuggling her out of the Soviet Union.
Gulotta listened silently and then said, “You are telling me too much, Jane Barrington.”
“I know. I need your help. I want to find out what happen to my husband,” she replied in a faint voice.
“You know what happened to him. You have the death certificate.”
How to explain the Hero of the Soviet Union medal? Gulotta would not have understood. Who could? How to explain Orbeli?
“Maybe he not dead?”
“Mrs. Barrington, you have much more information on that than I have.”
How to explain to an American the penal battalions? She tried.
“Mrs. Barrington, excuse me for interrupting,” Gulotta interrupted. “What penal battalions? What ranking officers? You have the death certificate. Your husband, whoever he was, wasn’t arrested. He drowned. He is out of my jurisdiction.”
“Mr. Gulotta, I think maybe he not drowned. I think maybe certificate was fake and he was arrested and maybe he in one of those penal battalions now.”
“Why would you think that?”
That, she could not adequately explain. She couldn’t even try. “Due to unforeheard circumstances—”
“Unforeheard?” Gulotta could not help a small smile.
“I…”
“Do you mean unforeseen?”
“Yes.” Tatiana blushed. “My English—I still learning—”
“You’re doing very well. Please continue.”
In the corner over the wide counter under the fluorescent lights, a middle-aged, overweight woman squinted grimly at Tatiana with delighted disapproval. “Mr. Gulotta,” said Tatiana. “Are you right person for me to talk to? Maybe there someone else?”
“I don’t know if I’m the right person.” He squinted at her himself over the counter. “Since I don’t know why you’re here. I could be the wrong person. But my boss has already left for the day. Tell me what you need.”
“I want you to find out what happened to my husband.”
“Is that all?” he said with irony.
“Yes,” she said without irony.
“Let me see what I can do. Would next week be soon enough for you?”
Now she understood. “Mr. Gulotta—”
He clasped his hands. “Listen to me. I don’t think I’m the right person after all. I don’t think there is a right person in this entire department—heck, in this entire government who can help you. Tell me again your husband’s name.”
“Alexander Barrington.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Were you working for State Department in 1930? That’s when he and his family emigrated.”
“No, I was still at university then. But that’s not the point.”
“I told you—”
“Oh, yes, unforeheard circumstances.”
Tatiana turned around and was about to walk away when she felt his hand on her arm. He had stepped out from the counter and was now on her side. “Don’t go yet. It’s quitting time. Why didn’t you come to me earlier in the day?”
“Mr. Gulotta, I took five A.M. train to come from New York. I have only these two days off, Thursday and Friday. I spent until now walking between State and Justice Department buildings. You first person talking to me. I was going to White House next.”
“I think our President is busy. Something about an invasion of Normandy. I hear there’s a war on.”
“Yes,” said Tatiana. “I was nurse in that war. I am still nurse in that war. Can Soviets help you? They our allies now. All you want is little information.” She squeezed her hands in a palsy around the handle bars of the baby carriage.
Sam Gulotta stared at her.
Tatiana might have given up, but Sam had good eyes. Listening, seeing, feeling eyes.
“Look up his file,” she continued. “You must have file on people who emigrate to Soviet Union? How many people can there be? Look up his file. Maybe something there. You’ll see—he was just small boy when he left America.”
Sam made a small disbelieving sound, somewhere between a chortle and a groan. “All right,
“Maybe there will be something else. Soviet Union and United States communicate, yes? Maybe you find out what happened to him. For certain.”
“How much more certain than a death certificate can I get?” Gulotta muttered, and then louder said, “all right, say I find out, by some miracle, that your husband is still alive. Then what?”
“You let me worry about then what,” said Tatiana.
Sam sighed. “Come back tomorrow morning. Come back at ten. I will try to locate his file. What year did you say his family left?”
“Nineteen thirty, December,” Tatiana said, smiling at last.
She stayed with Anthony in a small hotel on C Street near the State Department. It pleased her to get a room in a hotel. No trepidation, no refusal, no demand for papers. She wanted a room, she produced three dollars, she got a nice room with a bathroom. That simple. No one looked at her twice even after they heard the Russian accent.
The next morning she came back to Consular Affairs before nine and sat on the bench for an hour with her son on her lap, playing with his fingers, looking at a picture book. Gulotta came out at nine forty-five and motioned for her to follow him to his office. “Sit, Mrs. Barrington,” he said. In front of him lay a dossier ten inches thick. For a few moments, maybe a minute, he didn’t say anything. His hands were on the file and his eyes were on it too. Then he sighed heavily. “What relation did you say you are to Alexander Barrington?”
“His wife,” Tatiana said in a small voice.
“Jane Barrington?”
“Yes.”
“Jane Barrington was the name of Alexander’s mother.”
“I know. That’s why I took it. I’m not Alexander’s mother,” Tatiana said, glancing at him suspiciously as he studied her suspiciously. “I took her name to get out of Soviet Union.” She tried to figure out what he was worried about. “What you worried about? That I’m communist?”
“What is your real name?”
“Tatiana.”
“Tatiana what? What was your Soviet name?”
“Tatiana Metanova.”
Sam Gulotta stared at her for what seemed to her to be solemn hours. His hands, clenched around the dossier, never unclenched, not even when he said, “May I call you Tatiana?”
“Of course.”
“Did you say you got out of the Soviet Union as a Red Cross nurse?”
“Yes.”
“Well, well,” Gulotta said. “You were very lucky.”
“Yes.” She looked down into her hands.
“No more Red Cross in the Soviet Union. Verboten. Forbidden. A few months ago the U.S. State Department asked to have the Red Cross to help at the Soviet hospitals and the Soviet POW camps, and Foreign Minister Molotov himself refused. Quite amazing for you to have left.” He looked at her with renewed surprise. She wanted to look down again.
“Tatiana, let me tell you about Alexander Barrington and his parents. He left the United States with his parents in 1930. Harold and Jane Barrington sought voluntary asylum in the Soviet Union despite repeated requests from us not to do so. We could not guarantee their safety. Despite his seditionary activities on our soil, Harold Barrington was still an American citizen and we had an obligation to him and his family. Do you know how many times Harold Barrington was arrested? Thirty-two. His son had been arrested with him, according to our records, three times. Twice he spent his summer vacation in a juvenile detention center because both his parents were in jail and they preferred their son to spend his summer vacation in jail rather than with relatives—”
“What relatives?” interrupted Tatiana.
“Harold had a sister, Esther Barrington.”
Alexander had only ever mentioned his father’s sister once in passing. Gulotta’s low voice was disturbing Tatiana, as if he were measuring his words so as not to spill the really awful news behind them.
“Can you tell me what all this means?” Tatiana said. “What you saying to me?”
“Let me finish. True, their son did not rescind his U.S. citizenship, but his parents rescinded, they surrendered their passports in 1933. Then in 1936 Alexander’s mother came to the U.S. consulate asking for asylum for her son.”
“I know. That trip cost her her life.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Gulotta. “But this is where our jurisdiction over Alexander ends. By the time he escaped on his way to prison, he was already a Soviet citizen.”
“Yes.”
“In 1936, the Soviet authorities came to us asking for our help in finding Alexander Barrington. They said he was a criminal and a fugitive, and we no longer had any right to grant him safe passage should he come to us, and in fact we were bound by international treaty to turn him over to the Soviet Union.” Gulotta paused. “We were asked to immediately notify the Soviet authorities should Alexander Barrington come asking us for asylum, since he was a Soviet citizen and a political criminal who had escaped justice.”
Tatiana stood up.
“He belongs to them,” said Gulotta. “Not us. We can’t help you.”
“Thank you for your time,” Tatiana said, her voice trembling, placing her hands on the handles of Anthony’s carriage. “I sorry to bother you.”
Gulotta stood up himself. “Our relations with the Soviet Union are stabilized because we’re fighting on the same side. But the feeling of mistrust is mutual. What happens when the war is over?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “What happens when war is over?”
“Wait,” Gulotta said, coming around his desk and going to stand in front of his office door before he opened it for her.
“I go now,” she barely said. “I must get train back.”
“Wait,” he repeated, putting his hand out. “For a second, sit.”
“I don’t want to sit anymore.”
“Listen to me,” Gulotta said, motioning her to sit. She was grateful to fall into the chair. “There is one more thing…” He sat in the chair next to her. Anthony grabbed hold of his leg. Gulotta smiled. “Have you remarried?”
“Of course I haven’t,” she said faintly.
Gulotta looked at the boy.
“That’s his child,” said Tatiana.
Gulotta didn’t speak for a while. “Don’t talk about this to anyone. About Alexander Barrington. Don’t go to the Justice Department, don’t go to the INS offices in New York or Boston. Don’t go looking for his relatives.”
“Why?”
“Not today, not tomorrow, not next year. Don’t trust them. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. You don’t want them making inquiries either on his behalf or out of some misplaced affection. If I contact the Soviets asking them for information on Alexander Barrington they will be less than accommodating. If I ask them the whereabouts of a man named Alexander Belov, who is really Alexander Barrington, if he is still alive, that might only lead the Soviet authorities to him.”
“I understand that even better than you think I do,” Tatiana said, looking down at her boy and away from Gulotta.
“You said you have residency here?”
She nodded.
“Get your citizenship as soon as possible. Your boy, he’s an American citizen or—”
“He’s American.”
“That’s good. Good.” He cleared his throat. “There is one more thing…”
She said nothing.
“According to his files, last year, in March 1943, the Soviet authorities contacted the State Department about one of their citizens, a Tatiana Metanova, who was wanted for espionage, desertion, and treason, and was suspected of escaping to the West. They sent a telegraph wire asking if a Tatiana Metanova had either sought asylum in the United States or had tried to make inquiries about her husband—an Alexander Belov who is suspected of being Alexander Barrington. Tatiana Metanova apparently has not revoked her Soviet citizenship. Last year we said she had no
For the longest time, Tatiana and Sam were utterly quiet. Finally Sam asked, “Has a Tatiana Metanova tried to make inquiries about an Alexander Barrington?”
And finally Tatiana answered. “No.” It was just a breath.
Sam nodded. “I didn’t think so. There will be nothing for me to put in the file.”
“No,” said Tatiana. She felt his hand on her back, easing her up, patting her slightly.
“If you give me your address, I can write if I hear anything. But you understand—”
“I understand everything,” whispered Tatiana.
“Maybe this cursed war will end, maybe what’s going on in the Soviet Union will end, too. If things get more relaxed, we can make some inquiries. After the war might be better.”
“After which war?” asked Tatiana, without raising her eyes. “Maybe I write you myself. This way you don’t have to keep my address on record. You can always find me at Ellis Island hospital. I don’t actually have address yet. I don’t live—” She broke off. With her teeth grit and her jaw set, she could not even extend her hand to Sam Gulotta. She wanted to, she just couldn’t.
“I’d help you if I could. I’m not the enemy,” he said quietly.
“No,” she said, moving past him and out of his office. “But it turns out that I am.”
Tatiana took two weeks off work, she said for a “needed vacation.” She tried to convince Vikki to come with her, but Vikki was juggling two interns and a blind musician and couldn’t come.
“I’m not going on some surprise train trip. Where do you think you’re going?”
“Anthony wants to see Grand Canyon.”
“Anthony is one! He wants to see his mother find herself an apartment and a new husband, not necessarily in that order.”
“No. Just Grand Canyon.”
“You told me we would look for an apartment.”