Tatiana and Alexander by Paullina Simons
“Tania,” he whispers, “promise you won’t forget me when I die.”
“You won’t die, soldier,” she says. “You won’t die. Live! Live on, breathe on, claw onto life, and do not let go. Promise you will live for me, and I promise you, when you’re done, I will be waiting for you.” She is sobbing. “Whenever you’re done, Alexander, I will be here, waiting for you.”
Such brave words near their death in the moonless Lazarevo.
Life showed itself in small things. In the dockhand sailor who stood near the gangplank of the ferry she boarded each morning, who smiled and said good morning, offered her a cup of coffee, a cigarette, and then sat with her on deck for the thirteen-minute ride. In Benjamin, the second baseman, who ran into her when he was trying to catch a foul ball, knocked her over, and then lay almost directly on top of her, not getting up for a few moments. Enough moments for Edward, the catcher, to come over and say, all right, break it up here, this is a softball game, not Ricardo’s. In Vikki putting lipstick on Tatiana’s face every morning before leaving for work, and kissing her on the cheek, and Tatiana wiping the lipstick off as she left the house.
In the one morning Tatiana not wiping the lipstick off.
And in the one Friday night not saying no to Ricardo’s.
Life showed itself in the stockbroker in his suit in the coffee shop on Church and Wall Street sitting next to Tatiana and Vikki, laughing at their conversation.
In the father of a family Tatiana helped get into the country coming to see her at Ellis and asking her to marry his oldest son, who was a bricklayer and could support her well. The father brought the lad by so Tatiana could take a look for herself. He was a tall, strong, smiling boy of about eighteen, and he looked at Tatiana with the sweet expression of a long-term crush. Tatiana had coffee with him in the Ellis dining room, telling him she was flattered but couldn’t marry him.
Life showed itself in the lunch she had with Edward twice a week.
In the construction workers and the Con Edison workers downtown and the smiling hot dog man who had sold her a Coke and a hot dog.
Tatiana spent all day on the ships, inspecting the new post-war refugees, shepherding them onto the ferry to Ellis, or else at Ellis examining them in the medical rooms. In the afternoons, she went to NYU hospital, walking through all the beds, looking at every male face. If he were going to come, he would come into one of those two places—Ellis or NYU. But the war had ended four months ago. So far only a million troops had been sent back home, a good 300,000 through New York. How many times could Tatiana ask the wounded, where did you fight? Where were you stationed? In Europe? Did you meet any Soviet officers in the POW camps? Did any Soviet soldiers speak English to you? Tatiana met every boat that came in through the Port of New York, looking into the countless faces of the escapees from Europe. How many times could she hear from American soldiers about the horrors they saw in Nazi Germany? How many stories of what happened to Soviet prisoners in German camps? How many accounts of the numbers dead? Of the hundreds of thousands dead, of the millions dead? No plasma, no penicillin could have saved the Soviet men as they were starved by the Germans. How long could she hear the same thing over and over?
And then at night, she collected Anthony from Isabella’s and she and Vikki had dinner there and chatted about books and movies and the latest fashion trend. And then they went home and put Anthony to bed. And then they would sit on the couch and read, or talk. And the next day it would begin again.
And then another week would begin.
And another.
And another.
Every month she went with Anthony to visit Esther and Rosa. They had no news.
Every month she called Sam Gulotta. He had no news.
New York’s new construction was happening at a rate seven times the rest of the country’s. The refugees to Ellis stopped being refugees and became immigrants once more. The veterans left NYU except for the long-term ward. Every week, she checked her post office box. But no one wrote to her. She waited for him against all reason, and danced on Saturday night, and went to the movies on Friday night, and cooked dinner and played softball in Central Park, and read books in English, and went out with Vikki and loved her boy, and through it all, she looked at every man’s face that came her way, at every man’s back, hoping for his face, for his back. If he could have come to her, he would have. He didn’t.
If he could have found a way to escape, he would have. He didn’t. If he were alive, she would have heard from him.
She hadn’t.
“This is just the beginning of your life, Tatiana,” he says to her. “After three hundred million years, you’ll still be standing, too.”
“Yes,” she whispers. “But not with you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Motherland, 1945
THE TRAIN WAS STOPPED, once, twice, fifteen times along the way, the way to where? Alexander told Ouspensky they would know when it was their turn. But they didn’t. They changed trains always in the middle of the night. Alexander felt as though he were hallucinating when he rattled his chains across the tracks, up the metal steps. He couldn’t wait to lie down on the wooden shelf and close his eyes.
Alexander’s train pushed east on the tracks. The train car shook the bodies of the chained men headed from war back to the Motherland, while Alexander and Nikolai ate thin gruel out of one bowl that spilled each time the train lurched.
Over the plains and the forests and over the Elbe, the train continued.
Alexander covered his face with the crook of his arm. The Kama was covered in ice. Through the night in front of him was her laughing, freckled face.
Through the mountains the train sped, past the pines and the moss and the stone treasure caves.
Days and days and nights and nights, a cycle of the moon, and still they were not done.
They had gruel for breakfast, for dinner.
It got cold inside the train car at night. The northern German plateau lay vast around them.
He slept.
He dreamed of her.
She wakes up screaming, and sits up in bed pushing away something in front of her. Alexander, murky from sleep, sits up slightly behind her. “Tania,” he says and gets hold of one of her arms. With astonishing strength, she rips herself away from him in defined fear and fury and without even turning around, with the back of her clenched fist, punches him square in the face. He is unprepared and has no time to move. His nose opens up like a dam. He is less sleepy. Concerned for her, he grabs her by the arms, this time much tighter, and says in his loudest, deepest voice, “Tania!” All the while the blood streams from his nose down his mouth and chin and chest. It is the middle of the night, and the bright blue moon outside illuminates just enough of the cabin to see her bare silhouette panting in front of him, and to see black drops falling on the white sheet.
Tania comes to, breathes and starts to shake. He figures it is safe to let go of her arms.
“Oh, Shura,” she says, “you wouldn’t believe the dream I just had,” and then turns to him and gasps. “Dear God, what happened to you?”
Alexander sits and holds the bridge of his nose.
Tatiana jumps over him, jumps from the bed, runs to get a towel, climbs back up and sits against the wall, pulling him to her. “Come here,” she said, “come here, quick.” She cradles his head against her knees, keeping him slightly elevated as she holds his nose with the towel.
“Dis is great,” Alexander says, “but I can’t breede.” He gets up for a moment, spits out blood, and lies back down on her, lifting the towel slightly away from his mouth.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Tania whispers. “I didn’t mean to—but you won’t believe the dream I had.”
“I had better beed caught with adother womad,” Alexander says.
“Worse,” she replies. “You were alive, but motionless, lying in front of me, and you were being fed to me piece by piece. They—”
“Who’s they?”
He looks up at her. “You were eating me alive?” he asks.
She gulps.
Alexander raises his eyebrows.
“A chunk of your side”—she touches him below his right rib—“was missing.”
“How do you know I was alive?”
“Only your eyes were moving, blinking, pleading with me to help you.” She closes her eyes. “Oh, God…”
“So you were helping me by punching your captors?”
She nods, looking down at him with misty eyes. “What did I do?” she whispers.
“Break my nose, I think,” he says casually.
Tania starts to cry.
“I’m joking,” he says, reaching for her. “I’m joking, Tatia. It’s just a nosebleed. It’ll stop in a minute.”
Alexander catches her remorseful expression. Remnants of the dream are lodged in her squared jaw, in the tense bones of her face.
“I’m all right,” he says. He turns his head and kisses her breast next to him and then presses his cheek against her as she holds him to her, squeezing the bridge of his nose with one hand and stroking his hair with the other.
“You were alive,” she whispers, “and pieces of you were being fed to me. Do you understand?”
“Extremely well,” Alexander says. “I’m bleeding to prove it.”
Tania kisses his head. Soon he stops bleeding. “I’ll go and wash off. Tomorrow we’ll deal with the sheets.”
“Wait—don’t go. I’ll get something to clean you with. Hop down, can you get down? We have water in the cabin. Do you want me to help? Here, hold my arm.”
“Tania,” says Alexander, holding her arm, hopping down and perching on the hearth, “I have a nosebleed. I’m not dying.”
“No, you’re going to be quite bruised tomorrow.” She wets a small towel, sits on the hearth and gently cleans the blood off his face and neck and chest. “I’m dangerous,” she murmurs. “Look what I did to you.”
“Hmm. I’ll say this—I’ve never felt you that crazed before. You were in that state. I sometimes see men in war like that when their normal strength becomes the strength of ten people.”
“I’m sorry. Come, you’re all cleaned up. Don’t have a bad dream about me, Shura, all right?”
“Where you’re lying in front of me and I’m eating you?” he asks, smiling. “That would be a terrible dream.”
“Not that one, or any other one, either. Climb up. Do you need my help?”
“I think I can manage.”
She says she will be right back and leaves, returning a minute later with the towel washed in the Kama’s cold night-time water. “Here, put this on to stop the swelling. Maybe you won’t be too black and blue tomorrow.”
He lies on his back with a wet cold towel covering his face. “I can’t sleep like this,” he says in a muffled voice.
“Who wants to sleep?” he hears her say, as she kneels between his legs. He groans through the towel. “What can I do to make it up to you?” he hears her ask.
“I can’t think of anything…”
“No?”
She purrs, her gossamer fingers stroking him, her warm mouth breathing on him. He is in her mouth, and the cold wet towel is covering his face.
The train stopped, they disembarked and were arranged in columns outside the small, war-ruined station. Alexander got his boots on; he was sure they weren’t his. They were too small for his feet. They stood groggily in the dark, illuminated hazily by one flickering floodlight. A lieutenant guard broke open a piece of paper out of the envelope and in a pretentious voice read aloud that the seventy men in front of him were accused of crimes against the state.
“Oh, no,” whispered Ouspensky.
Alexander stood impassively. He wanted to be back on the wooden shelf. And nothing surprised him anymore. “Don’t worry, Nikolai.”
“Stop talking!” the soldier yelled. “Treason, colluding with the enemy, working against Russia in the enemy’s prisoner camps, cooking for the enemy, building for the enemy, cleaning weapons for the enemy. The law is very clear against treason. You are all remanded under the provisions of Article 58, code 1B and will be incarcerated for no less than fifteen years in a series of Zone II corrective work camps ending with Kolyma. Your term begins when you will start to shovel coal into our steam train to refuel it. Coal is there by the side of the tracks. So are shovels. Your next stop will be a work camp in eastern Germany. Now, let’s move it.”
“Oh, no, not Kolyma,” said Ouspensky. “There must be some mistake.”
“I’m not finished!” yelled the guard. “Belov, Ouspensky, step forward!”
They shuffled forward a few steps, dragging the chains behind them. “You two, aside from allowing yourselves to fall into enemy hands which carries an automatic fifteen-year prison term, have also been charged with espionage and sabotage during times of war. Captain Belov, you are to be stripped of your rank and title, as you are, Lieutenant Ouspensky. Captain Belov, your term is extended to twenty-five years. Lieutenant Ouspensky, your term is extended to twenty-five years.”
Alexander stood as if the words had not been spoken to him.
Ouspensky said, “Did you hear me? There must be some kind of mistake. I’m not going away for twenty-five years, speak to the general—”
“My orders for you are clear! See?” He waved a document in front of Ouspensky’s nose.
Ouspensky shook his head. “No, you don’t understand, there’s definitely been a mistake. I have it on good authority…” He glanced at Alexander, who was looking at him with cold bemusement.
Ouspensky did not speak again while they were shoveling the coal into the furnace of the train and then into storage compartments, but when they were back in their berth, he was seething in a way Alexander could not understand.
“Will the day ever come when I will be free?”
“Yes, in twenty-five years.”
“I mean free of you,” said Ouspensky, trying to turn from Alexander. “When I won’t be chained with you, bunked with you, assisting you.”
“Hey, why are you so pessimistic? I heard the Kolyma camps are co-ed. Maybe you can pick yourself a little camp wife.”
They sat down together on the shelves. Alexander lay down instantly and closed his eyes. Ouspensky grumbled that he was uncomfortable and had no room next to a man as large as Alexander. The train lurched forward and he fell off the shelf.
“What’s wrong with you?” Alexander said, extending his hand to help him up. Ouspensky did not take it.
“I shouldn’t have listened to you. I shouldn’t have surrendered, I should have minded my own business, and I’d be a free man.”
“Ouspensky, have you not been paying attention? Refugees, forced labor workers, people who lived in Poland, in Romania, all the way in Bavaria! From Italy, from France, from Denmark, from Norway. They’re all being sent back, all under the same conditions. What makes you think you, of all of them, would be a free man?”
Ouspensky didn’t reply. “Twenty-five years! You got twenty five-years, too, don’t you even give a shit anymore?”
“Oh, Nikolai.” Alexander sighed. “No. Not anymore. I’m twenty-six years old. They’ve been sentencing me to prison terms in Siberia since I was seventeen.” Had he served out his first one in Vladivostok, he’d be nearly done by now.
“Exactly! You, you. Christ, it’s all about you. My whole life since the cursed day bad fucking luck had me in a bed next to you in Morozovo has been all about you. Why should I get twenty-five fucking years just because some damn nurse put me in the adjacent bed?” He railed and rattled his chains. The other prisoners, trying to sleep, told him in no uncertain terms to “Shut the fuck up.”
“That damn nurse,” said Alexander quietly, “was my wife.” He paused. “And so you see, dear Nikolai, how inexorably your fate is linked with mine.”
&n
“Did not know that,” he said at last. “But of course. Nurse Metanova. That’s where I heard her name before. I couldn’t figure out why Pasha’s last name sounded so familiar.” He fell quiet. “Where is she now?”
“I don’t know,” said Alexander.
“Does she ever write you?”
“You know I get no letters. And I write no letters. I have one plastic pen that doesn’t work.”
“But I mean, there she was, in the hospital, and then suddenly she was gone. Did she go back to her family?”
“No, they’re dead.”
“Your family?”
“Dead, also.”
“So where is she?” he exclaimed in a high-pitched voice.
“What is this, Ouspensky? An interrogation?”
Ouspensky fell silent.
“Nikolai?”
Ouspensky did not reply.
Alexander closed his eyes.
“They promised me,” Ouspensky whispered. “They swore to me, swore that I would be all right.”
“Who did?” Alexander didn’t open his eyes.
Ouspensky did not reply.
Alexander opened his eyes. “Who did?” He sat up straight. Ouspensky backed away slightly but not far enough, chained as he was to Alexander.
“Nobody, nobody,” he mumbled, and then, with a surreptitious glance at Alexander, he shrugged.
“Oh, it’s as old as the sea,” he said, trying to sound casual. “They came to me in 1943, soon after they arrested us, and told me I had two choices—I could be executed by firing squad for crimes committed under Article 58. That was my first choice. I thought about it and asked what my second choice was. They told me,” he continued, in the deliberate and flat tone of a man who doesn’t care much about anything, “that you were a dangerous criminal, but that you were needed for the war effort. However, they suspected you of heinous crimes against the state, but because ours was the kind of society that abided by laws of the constitution and wanted to preserve your rights—they would spare your life long enough for you to hang yourself.”