Tatiana and Alexander (41 page)

Knowing what was at stake, could he have lowered his head and walked by her, if he had known what he would lose for the hour of rapture, for the minute of bliss?

How he loved to touch her. And she would sit quietly, with her legs not too close together, so that anytime he wanted to, he could: and he did.
Anytime.
Yes, he said, it was what a soldier on furlough wanted.
Anytime wasn’t often enough. He would touch her with his fingers as she sat quietly on the bench, and then he would touch her with his mouth as she sat less quietly on the bench, there was no other time for him but now, there was no later, there was only insanity now.

I will make you insane, her memory screamed at her near the winter window sill as Tatiana smelled the brine of eternity. On the outside you will walk and smile as if indeed you are a normal woman, but on the inside you will twist and burn on the stake, I will never free you, you will never be free.

Colditz, January 1945

PERHAPS THEY WERE RIGHT
in what they said about Colditz. There was no escape. And there was no work, either. There was nothing for the men to do except sleep and play cards and go for two walks a day. They got up at seven for roll call, and turned off their lights every evening at ten. In between there were three meals and two walks.

Colditz was the sprawling fifteenth-century fortress castle in northern Saxony, in the triangle between three great German cities: Leipzig, Dresden, and Chemnitz. Colditz stood on a steep hill above the river Mulde. And it wasn’t just a hill. Colditz was surrounded by moats on the south and vertical drops on the east and leg-buckling precipices on the north and west. Colditz was built out of the rocky hill. When the mountain ended, the castle began.

The castle was extremely well run by high-minded, well-organized Germans who took their jobs very seriously and would not be corrupted, as Alexander learned from the five Soviet officers already residing in their small, cold, single stone cell with four bunks.

Colditz had a sick ward and a chapel, it had a delousing shed, two canteens, a movie theater, even a dentist. And that was just for the prisoners. As if it were their permanent residence, the German guards lived and ate very well. The commandant of Colditz had a quarter of the castle all to himself.

The most notorious escapees in all the other POW camps in Germany were brought to Colditz, where the sentries with machine guns stood every fifteen meters, on level ground, on raised catwalks and in round towers, and watched them twenty-four hours a day. Floodlights covered the castle at night. There was only one way in and one way out, over a moat bridge that led to the German garrison and the commandant’s quarters.

There must have been two sentries for every one of the 150 prisoners; it certainly felt like it. Alexander spent thirty-one January days
watching the sentries as they went out for their walks in the large inner courtyard, cobbled with gray stones that reminded him slightly of Pavlov barracks in Leningrad. He wondered whatever happened to Colonel Stepanov.

For thirty-one days he watched the guards in the canteen, in the showers, in the courtyard. Twice a week for an hour—with good behavior only—the prisoners were allowed, in small clusters of twelve, to take walks on the outer terrace facing west. It was an enclosed stone space, and below it over a parapet was a grassy, completely enclosed garden, but the prisoners weren’t permitted there. Alexander, always on his best behavior, went out to the terrace for his two walks a week and watched the men who were watching him. He even watched them changing guard out of the window of his room. His bunk was next to the window, on the third floor over the sick ward, facing west. He liked that he was facing west. Something hopeful about it. Below him was the long and narrow terrace, and below that the long and narrow garden.

Colditz certainly looked impenetrable.

But how did Tania do it? How did she make it to Finland, with Dimitri dead and Sayers fatally wounded? He wished he knew, but he knew one thing—somehow she ended up in Finland. So there must be a way out of this place, too. He just couldn’t see it.

Pasha and Ouspensky were a lot less optimistic. They had no interest in watching the guards. Alexander wanted to talk to the British POWs in the courtyard, but he had no interest in explaining his flawless English to Pasha or Ouspensky. There were no Americans in sight, only British and French officers, one Polish officer and the five Soviets with whom they shared their cell.

The one Polish officer was General Bor-Komarovsky. Alexander and he got talking in the canteen. Komarovsky had taken over the Polish Underground Resistance to Hitler and to the Soviets in 1942. When he was caught he went straight to Colditz, to ensure his permanent incarceration. And though he was very willing to tell Alexander stories of previous escape attempts out of the castle, and even gave Alexander his old relief maps of the area, in Russian, Komarovsky told Alexander that he could forget about escaping from here. Even those who had gotten outside the fortress walls were all caught within days. “Which goes to show you,” Komarovsky said, “that what I’ve always believed is especially true of a place like Colditz. Despite the most meticulous planning and organization, there is no successful way out of any difficult situation without the hand of God.”

Tania got out of the Soviet Union, Alexander wanted to say. I rest my case.

At night on his top bunk, he thought of her arms. He thought of trying to find her…Where would she be? If she were still waiting for him, where would she be so he could find her? Helsinki? Stockholm? London? America? Where in America, Boston, New York? Somewhere warm, perhaps? San Francisco? The City of Angels? When she left Russia with Dr. Matthew Sayers, he was going to take her to New York. Though the doctor had died, perhaps Tatiana headed there as planned. He would start there.

He hated these blind alleys of his imagination, but he liked to picture what her face might look like when she saw him, what her body might look like as it trembled, what her tears might taste like, how she would walk to him, maybe run to him.

What about their child, how old was it now? One and a half. A boy, a girl? If a girl, maybe she was blonde like her mother. If a boy, maybe he was dark-haired like his once dark, now hairless father. My child, what is it like to hold a small child, to lift it up in the air?

He would get himself into a self-defeating frenzy thinking of her hands on him, and of his own on her.

When she had first left him, the aching for her in his body was unabated, through windy March and wet April, and dry May and warm June. June was the worst. The aching was so intense that sometimes he thought that he would not be able to continue another day, another minute of such want, of such need.

Then a year passed and another. And little by little the aching was numbed, but the want, the need—there was no escape from that.

Sometimes he thought of the girl in Poland, blowzy Faith, who offered him everything and to whom he gave a chocolate. Would he be as strong now if a Faith walked through these parts? He didn’t think so.

In Colditz, there was no escape, not from the thoughts, not from the fear, not from the throbbing. Not from the realization that it had now been many months, many years, and how long could one faithful wife wait for her dead husband? Even his Tatiana, the brightest star in the sky. How long could she wait before she moved on?

Please, no more. No more thoughts. No more desire. No more love.

Please. No more anything.

How long could she wait before she put her blonde hair down, and walked out of work, and saw another face that made her smile?

He turned his own face to the window. He had to get out of Colditz, at whatever the cost.

“Comrades, look here,” he said to Pasha and Ouspensky, when they were out on the terrace one freezing February afternoon. “I want you to see something.” Without motioning he pointed to the two sentries one on each side of the rectangular terrace, seven meters wide by twenty meters long.

Then he walked them casually across the terrace to the stone parapet and casually looked over the ledge while lighting a cigarette. Pasha and Ouspensky also looked over the ledge. “What are we looking at?” said Pasha.

In the walking garden far below, same shape as the terrace but twice as wide, two sentries with machine guns stood at opposite sides, one in an elevated pagoda, one on a raised catwalk.

“Yes?” said Ouspensky. “Four guards. Day and night. And the garden is over a vertical drop. Let’s go.” He turned.

Alexander grabbed his arm. “Wait, and listen.”

“Oh no,” said Ouspensky.

Pasha leaned forward. “Let him go, Captain,” he said. “We don’t need him. Go to hell, Ouspensky, and good riddance.”

Ouspensky stayed.

Alexander, without pointing, said, “There are two guards down in the garden during the day, and two up here on the terrace. But at night the two guards here are relieved until morning because there is not much point in looking right at the floodlights. The guards here are replaced by one additional sentry in the garden below for a total of three. The third sentry watches the barbed wire fence over the fifty-foot—” Alexander coughed—“sixteen-meter precipice that leads to the bottom of the hill and to freedom.” He paused. “At midnight, two things happen. One is the changing of the guard. The other is the turning of the floodlights to light this terrace and the castle. I’ve been watching it all out of our window at night. The guards walk off their posts, and new ones come to take their place.”

“We’re familiar with what changing of the guard means, Captain,” said Ouspensky. “What are you proposing?”

Alexander turned away from the precipice and toward the castle.
He continued to smoke leisurely. “I propose,” he said, “that when the guard is changing and the floodlights aren’t on, we jump out of our window carrying a long rope, run across this terrace, jump down right here into the garden below, run to the barbed wire, cut it, and then descend on ropes the sixteen meters down to the ground to make our escape.”

Pasha and Ouspensky were quiet. Ouspensky said, “How much rope would we need?”

“Ninety meters in all.”

“Oh, can we just pick that up at the canteen? Or should we ask housekeeping?”

“We will make it out of bed linen.”

“That’s a lot of bed linen.”

“Pasha has been making friends with Anna from housekeeping.” Alexander smiled. “You can get us extra sheets, can’t you?”

“Wait, wait,” said Pasha. “We have to jump out of our window, nine meters above concrete…”

“Yes.”

Pasha tapped his foot twice on the ground. “Concrete, Alexander!”

“Hold on to the rope and run down the wall.”

“And then hold on to the rope to scale another thirteen meters down into the garden, run fourteen meters across, cut the barbed wire, and descend on another rope sixteen meters to the ground?”

“Yes, but the second rope we can attach in the dark. Won’t be any floodlights on the wall down there.”

“Yes, but the sentries will have taken their places.”

“We will have to be on the other side of the barbed wire and in the trees when they do.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Pasha. “What about the long white rope that’s hanging out of our window? You don’t think the guards will notice that, with the floodlights illuminating it so discreetly?”

“One of our bunkmates will have to brace us and then pull up the rope. Constantine will do it.”

“And he will do this why?”

“Because he has nothing better to do. Because you will give him all your cigarettes. Because you will introduce him to Anna in housekeeping.” Alexander smiled. “And because if it works, he can escape himself the following night. The barbed wire will already be cut.”

Ouspensky said, “Comrade Metanov, as usual, there is something
you have overlooked to ask the captain. What about time? How long do we have before the new guard takes his place and the floodlights come on?”

“Sixty seconds.”

Ouspensky opened his mouth and laughed. Pasha joined him. “Captain, you are always so amusing, wry, witty.”

Alexander smoked and said nothing. Pasha did a double-take, his mouth still open, still wanting to smile. “You’re not serious about this?”

“Absolutely am.”

“Comrade, he will have us on,” said Ouspensky to Pasha, “until Friday if necessary. He is a terrible prankster.”

Alexander smoked. “What would you two rather do? Spend two years digging a tunnel? We don’t have two years. I don’t know if we have six months. The British here are convinced the war will be over by the summer.”

“How do you know?” said Ouspensky.

“I can understand rudimentary English, Lieutenant,” Alexander snapped. “Unlike you, I went to school.”

“Captain, I enjoy your sense of humor, I really do. But why do we have to dig a tunnel? Why do we have to fling ourselves out of windows on sheets? Why don’t we just wait the six months for the war to be over?”

“And then, Ouspensky?”

“Then, then,” he stammered. “I don’t know what then, but let me ask you, what now? You’re throwing yourselves off a cliff, why? Where are you hoping to go?”

Pasha and Alexander both stared at Ouspensky and didn’t reply.

“As I thought,” said Ouspensky. “I’m not going.”

“Lieutenant Ouspensky,” said Pasha, “have you ever in your entire fucking miserable life said yes to anything? You know what’s going to be on your grave? ‘Nikolai Ouspensky. He said no.’”

“Both of you are such comedians,” said Ouspensky, walking away. “You are just the height of hilarity. My stomach is hurting. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

Alexander and Pasha turned back to the garden below them.

Pasha asked how they were going to get through the barbed wire.

“I’ve got the wire cutters with me from the Catowice Oflag,” said Alexander, smiling. “Komarovsky gave me his military maps of Germany. We just need to get to the border with Switzerland.”

“How many kilometers?”

“Many,” Alexander admitted. “A couple of hundred.” But fewer than from Leningrad to Helsinki, he wanted to add. Fewer than from
Helsinki to Stockholm. And certainly fewer than from Stockholm to the United States of America, which is what he and Tania had planned.

Pasha didn’t say anything. “Failure cost is high.”

“Oh, Pasha, what are
your
options? Even if you for a moment thought I might have some, which believe me I don’t, where does staying in Colditz leave
you
?”

Shrugging, Pasha said, “I didn’t say I wasn’t with you, I didn’t say I wasn’t going. I just said…”

Alexander patted him on the back. “Yes, the risk is high. But the reward is also high.”

Pasha looked up to the third-floor window of his cell, to the terrace they were standing on, down to the garden below. “How in the world do you expect us to do all this in sixty seconds?”

“We’ll have to hurry.”

They planned for another two weeks until the middle of February. They got medical supplies and canned goods and a compass. They stole sheets out of the laundry room and at night cut them in the dark and braided them together and then hid them in their ripped-apart mattresses. While helping to make rope Ouspensky kept saying he wasn’t going, but everybody in the cell knew he was. The hardest thing was to get some civilian clothes. Pasha finally managed to sweet-talk Anna into stealing them from the laundry at the German senior officers’ quarters. Their weapons had long been taken away from them, but Alexander still had his rucksack, which had a titanium trench tool, wire cutters, his empty pen, and some money. Anna even stole them some German IDs the night before their escape.