Tatiana and Alexander (51 page)

How many traditions, celebrations. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Labor, Columbus, Independence, and birthdays birthdays birthdays, every one, even mine, the cursed mine, the twisted mine, the suffering mine, the gold mine. Celebrations, food, sunshine, warmth. From dawn to dusk I fill my life with life.

With all the things he wanted for me.

My foundation is buried underneath the building, tall with windows and high with rafters; the foundation covered by trees and shrubs, pansies in the winter, tulips in the spring and my heart is covered too, healed, concealed. Sometimes I run my hand over my chest and in the running of the hand over my heart, the nerves send a small sharp shudder through my body to my brain, a shudder slightly longer than a breath, a long breath. In, out, hold. Breathe out:

Alexander.

Forgive me for leaving you to the dogs of war, for being so quickly willing to believe in your death. I was slow to love, but quick to abandon you.

Where is he? Where is the splendid horseman, my gold ring and my chain, my black bag and my brightest day?

And here Tatiana was, sitting by the bay, wanting her life to begin, to end, but she was not ended, and she was not begun.

The truth was, she was nowhere.

This stage, how long did it last? And would there ever come a time when she wasn’t in a stage anymore? When she was just in life?

Before finding Alexander’s
Hero of the Soviet Union
medal? No.

After finding Alexander’s
Hero of the Soviet Union
medal? No.

After Paul Markey, no.

And never again after Orbeli.

The soul was at war.

She wanted one word from him? Here it was.

I am trying to send you to a place where you will be safe. Don’t despair, he was saying, and have faith.

But what to do now? Something had to be done, must be done, but what?

Whatever she did, wherever she went, it meant leaving behind her son. Was that not folly? Was it not lunacy? Was it not madness?

It was all those things.

To go and leave her son behind? What would Alexander say if he were to find out she had left his son to go traipsing through the world looking for him among its horror stores?

Tatiana sat motionless and smelled the air, smelled the water, smelled the sky, tried to find Perseus in the sky and couldn’t, tried to find the full moon in the sky and couldn’t. It was late and the moon was under cloud cover.

Her baby boy needed his mother.

Did he need his mother more than Alexander needed his wife?

And was that the choice?

Was the choice between the father and the son?

Was she abandoning one for the other?

She had to entertain the possibility she would not be back. Was that the life she was prepared to give her child?

All she had to do was stay where she was, go on as she was.

But there was no Tatiana here. Tatiana remained with Alexander. Her arms were around him in Lake Ladoga, where she lay down with him every night. Her arms were holding him bleeding out into the Lake Ladoga ice. She could have let go of him then, could have given him to God; God was certainly calling for him.

But she didn’t.

And because she didn’t, she was here in America, sitting on the ledge of the rest of her life. It certainly felt that way, that seminal moment where she knew that whatever her decision, her life would take either one course or it would take another.

One way the path was plain and vivid.

And the other was black and fraught with doubt.

To stay was to accept the good.

To go was to embrace the unknowable.

To stay was to make his sacrifice not be in vain.

To go was to go into death.

Could she accept life without him?

Could she imagine life without him? Maybe not now, but could she imagine herself in ten years’ time, in twenty years’ time, in fifty years’ time? Could she imagine herself being seventy and without him, married to Edward, having Edward’s children, sitting with Edward at the long table?

That Bronze Horseman would pursue her into her grave. She felt it. Into her eternity, clambering behind her in the night and in the day, in every hour of sorrow, in every minute of weakness, in darkness, in light, through all of America he would be rattling at her heels, the way he had been relentlessly rattling at her through the past eleven hundred days, through the past eleven hundred nights, right into her maddening dust. How much longer for Tatiana’s life?

How much longer for the Bronze Horseman?

Orbeli—was that not proof that wherever he was, in his own blackest night, Alexander was calling for her?

And if she believed that he was alive and did not try to find him, she would be turning her back on him.

What did that say for her?

Maybe she could close that dark window that led to night and not listen for him anymore. Perhaps she could even convince herself that Alexander would forgive her for her turned back, for her indifferent heart.

Ask yourself these three questions, Tatiana, and you will know who you are.

What do you hope for?

What do you believe in?

But most important, what do you love?

She climbed back inside, closed the window and went to lie in bed next to her son.

“Vikki, I have to talk to you,” Tatiana said the next morning as they were standing in the kitchen eating croissants and drinking coffee before they rushed off to work.

“Can it wait till tonight? We’re late already. Anthony needs to be in playgroup.”

Tatiana took Vikki’s hand. Vikki’s mouth was covered with croissant crumbs. She looked very endearing and skinny and dark-haired standing at the counter, her mouth full, looking down at Tatiana with exasperated affection. Tatiana hugged her. “I love you so much,” she said. “Now, sit down. I have to talk to you.”

Vikki sat down.

“Vik, you know that I work at Ellis, and I volunteer for Red Cross, and I walk through the veterans’ hospitals, and I look through every refugee boat that comes into New York. You know I call Sam Gulotta in Washington every month, and that I got in touch with Esther that first time, all for only one reason?”

“What izh that weason?” Vikki said, chewing.

“To find out what happened to Alexander.”

“Oh.”

“But I haven’t been able to find out anything.”

Vikki patted Tatiana’s hand.

“It’s time for me to do more.”

Vikki smiled. “More than Iowa?”

“Now I need your help.”

“Oh, no.” Vikki rolled her eyes. “Where are we going now?”

“I would like nothing more than for you to come with me,” said Tatiana. “But I need you for even bigger things.”

“What things? And where are
you
going?”

“I’m going to find Alexander.”

A small piece of croissant fell out of Vikki’s mouth. “Go find Alexander where?” she said disbelievingly.

“I will start in Germany. Then I go to Poland, then Soviet Union.”

“You’re going to go
where
?”

“Listen…”

Vikki threw her arms down in front of her, flat on the table. Several times she banged her forehead on the tabletop, and flailed her head from side to side.

“Vikki, stop.”

“Okay, this one is the best one yet. I don’t think you’re going to top this one. Massachusetts was good, Iowa was better, Arizona was best, but this one, this one is out of the park.”

“I wait until you finished.”

“What are you talking about?” Vikki said, finally swallowing her food and banging the table with her fist. “I know you’re just joking. No one goes to Germany.”

“International Red Cross goes. I’m going.”

“The Red Cross doesn’t go!”

“It does. And I’m going with it.”

“You can’t go! Anthony and I can’t come with you if you go with the Red Cross to occupied territories!”

“I know. I don’t want Anthony and you to come with me. I want him to stay here where he is safe…”

Vikki’s mouth fell open. This time it was empty.

“I want him to stay here with
you
.” She took Vikki’s hands. “With you,” she repeated. “Because you love my boy, and he loves you, because you will take care of him, as if he were your own, take care of him for me and his father.”

“Tania,” Vikki whispered hoarsely. “You’re crazy, you can’t go.”

Tatiana squeezed Vikki’s hands. “Vik, listen to me. When I thought he was dead, I was dead. I have been resurrected by Paul Markey and by
Josif Orbeli. My husband needs me. He is calling for me, trust me when I tell you he needs my help. Paul Markey saw him
alive
in April last year all way in Saxony, Germany, when he was supposed to be dead in Lake Ladoga, Leningrad, thousand kilometers away. Edward talked me out of going in 1944 because he said I had nothing. And he was right. This time I have something. And I’m going. I just need you to look after my son. Your Grammy and Grampa will help you.” Tatiana paused. “No matter what happens.”

Helplessly, Vikki shook her head.

“I can’t live out my ice cream life here and leave him to rot away his Soviet life there. You do understand how impossible that is, don’t you?”

Vikki continued to shake her head.

“He needs me, Vikki. What kind of wife would I be if I did not help him? I help complete strangers at Ellis. What kind of wife does not help her own husband?”

“A sane wife?” whispered Vikki.

“A not very good wife,” said Tatiana.

That same day she took the train to Washington.

Sam Gulotta motioned three people out of his office and shut the door.

“Sam, how are you? I need your help,” she said.

“Tatiana, I’m tired of hearing that. Look, you think I don’t understand? You think I don’t know? Why do you think I’ve been helping you all these years? You think if there were some way I could bring my Carol back, I wouldn’t do it? I would, I would sacrifice everything to have her back. And so I’ve bent over backwards for you. I did everything I could for you. But I can’t help you anymore.”

“Yes, you can,” she said calmly. “I need you to get me passport for Alexander.”

“How can I get him a passport?” Sam yelled. “On the basis of what?”

“He is American citizen and to come back he needs passport.”

“Come back from where? How many times do I have to tell you…”

“Not one more time. Your own State Department says he has not lost his citizenship.”

“They say nothing of the kind.”

“Oh yes, they do. Doesn’t the federal code for dual nationals read, and I quote”—she took out a piece of paper and brought it to her nose—“‘The law requires that the U.S. national must apply for the foreign citizenship
voluntarily
.’” She put special emphasis on
voluntarily
and then, just in case Sam didn’t get it, she repeated it. “Voluntarily.”

Then she sat with a satisfied expression on her face.

“Why are you looking at me like the cat that ate the canary?”

“I say for third time—voluntarily.”

“I heard you the first time.”

“I quote more.” Paper to nose again. “‘He must apply for foreign citizenship by free choice and with the intention of giving up U.S. citizenship.’”

Sam rubbed his eyes. “The code
might
say that. What is your point?”

“Military conscription in Soviet Union for boys sixteen years of age is
compulsory
!” Just in case he didn’t get it, Tatiana repeated it. “Compulsory.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, what is this, kindergarten? I got it the first time you said it to me.”

“Voluntary. Compulsory. Do you see, two words have polar, opposite meanings?”

“I see, thank you for defining English words to me, Tania.”

“That’s what I’m saying. He did not give up his citizenship by free choice, he did not surrender it voluntary…ly. He was
forced
to join Red Army at sixteen.”

“You told me he enrolled in an officers’ program at eighteen. That sounds voluntary to me.”

“Yes, but sixteen comes before eighteen. At sixteen he was already forced to conscript and made to believe he had no right to America.” She paused. “And he does. And I need you to help him.”

Sam stared blinklessly at Tatiana. At last he said, “Do you know something about his whereabouts I don’t know?”

“I know nothing. I wish you could help me with that. But I know that one way or another he is going to need passport.”

“Passport? Tania! The Soviets have him. Do you understand? Why can’t you accept that he is more lost now than ever, without a doubt in the clutches of the Soviet machine that threw millions of their boys at the Germans?”

Tatiana said nothing. Her lower lip quivered slightly.

“And I can’t issue a passport without a photo. Without a regulation black-and-white, face only, nothing-covering-the-head photo. I suppose you have one of those?”

“I don’t have one of those.”

“Then I can’t help you.”

She stood up. “He is American citizen and he is behind Iron Curtain. He needs
you
.”

Sam stood up, too. “The Soviets are refusing to give us information on our MIAs. How do you suppose they will give us information on a man they’ve been hunting for the last ten years?”

“One way,” she said, “or another. I go now. I will wire you when I need you.”

“Of course you will.”

Eastern Germany, March 1946

TATIANA WENT TO GERMANY
on faith.

She was partnered with a short nurse named Penny—shorter than Tatiana!—and a doctor just out of residency named Martin Flanagan. Penny was a bubbly, heavy, funny gal. Martin was medium height, medium weight, medium paunch under his dress shirts, and excruciatingly serious. Martin was losing what thin hair he was born with, which Tatiana thought might have contributed to his humorlessness. Still, she thought Martin was all right until the day before they were leaving when he told her she was putting too much gauze in the medical kits.

“Is there such thing as too many medical supplies?” she said.

“Yes. Our instructions say one gauze, one adhesive tape, and you’re putting in two of each.”

“So?”

“That’s not what we’re supposed to do, Nurse Barrington.”

Slowly she pulled out the second gauze, but as soon as he turned his back, she threw another three in the cardboard box. Penny saw and suppressed a giggle. “Don’t get under his skin. He is very meticulous about how things are supposed to be done.”

“He obviously doesn’t have enough to worry about,” said Tatiana. What would Martin think when she colored her hair and put on makeup? What would he think when she called him Martin? She found out the next morning when she said, “Ready to sail, Martin?”

He coughed and said, “Dr. Flanagan will be fine, Nurse Barrington.”

The hair and makeup he did not comment on. Tatiana had colored her hair black that morning, after she said goodbye to Anthony. She didn’t want him to see his mother looking like a different person, and so she took him to playgroup as usual and hugged him as usual and said in as calm a voice as possible, “Anthony, now you remember what we been talking about, right? Mama has to go on business trip for Red Cross, but I’m going to be back as soon as I can, and we’ll go somewhere fun for our vacation, all right?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Where did you say you wanted to go?”

“Florida.”

“That sounds great. We go there.”

He didn’t say anything, just kept his hand on her neck.

“You’re going to be all right with Vikki. You know how much she loves to take care of you. She make you eat donuts and ice cream every day.”

“Yes, Mama.”

She watched him walk through the classroom doors, his backpack on his back, and then went after him. “Anthony, Anthony!”

He turned around.

“Just one more hug for your mommy, honey.”

Vikki took the day off to help with the hair color and to see her off. Tatiana wanted to dye her hair and put on makeup because she didn’t want to be accidentally recognized. It took them three hours to dye Tatiana’s very long hair. “Remember, this is the toughest part. After this, you just do touch-ups at the crown, every five, six weeks. You think you’ll be back by then, maybe?”

“I don’t know.” She didn’t think so. “You better give me enough color for several touch-ups.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know. Give me enough for a dozen.”

Vikki put mascara on Tatiana, some liquid black eyeliner, some cake makeup to cover up her freckles, and some rouge. “I can’t believe this is what you go through every day,” said Tatiana.

“I can’t believe this is what it takes to get you to wear makeup. A suicide mission to the war zone.”

“Not suicide. And how am I going to apply it without you? Easy, easy on the lipstick!” Lipstick made her mouth too full and conspicuous—not the effect Tatiana was going for. She glanced at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t recognizable even to herself. “Well, what do you think?”

Vikki leaned over and kissed the corner of Tatiana’s mouth. “You’re completely incognita.”

But Martin—Dr. Flanagan—said nothing when they met at the docks that morning, though he did clear his throat and look the other way. Penny was stunned, however. “You have the most beautiful blonde hair, and you went and colored it black?” she said incredulously, her own hair a short thin brown.

In a solemn tone, Tatiana said, “I don’t think people take me seriously. I color my hair black, I put on a little makeup, maybe they take me seriously.”

“Dr. Flanagan,” said Penny, “do you take Tatiana seriously?”

“Very seriously,” replied Martin.

It was all the girls could do to keep from laughing.

Vikki, who went with Tatiana to the docks, would not let go of her for some minutes. “Please come back,” she whispered.

Tatiana did not respond.

Martin and Penny stared. “Italians are so emotional,” Tatiana said, walking up the plank with them and turning around to wave to Vikki.

Tatiana traveled in white slacks and a white tunic and a white kerchief with a red cross on it. She had gone to an army supply store and bought the best and largest canvas backpack, with many zippered pockets and an attached waterproof trench blanket/coat/tent. She packed another uniform for herself, sundries (toothbrushes for two), undergarments, and two olive drab civilian outfits—one for herself and one for a tall man. She packed the third cashmere blanket she had bought during her first Christmas in New York. She packed the P-38 gun Alexander had given her during the siege of Leningrad. She overstocked her nurse’s bag with gauze and tape, and syringes filled with penicillin, and Squibb morphine syrettes. Into another compartment in the backpack, she put a Colt Model 1911 pistol and an outrageously expensive ($200) Colt Commando, apparently the best revolver, which fired not bullets but practically bombs. She also bought a hundred eight-cartridge magazines for the pistol, a hundred .357 rounds for the revolver, three 9-millimeter clips for the P-38 and two army knives. She bought the weapons at the “world famous” Frank Lava’s. “If you want the best,” said Frank himself, “you have to get the Commando. There is simply no heavier-duty, more accurate, more ferocious revolver in the world.”

Frank raised his bushy eyebrows only once—when she asked for the box of a hundred magazines. “That’s eight hundred rounds you got there.”

“Yes, plus revolver rounds. Not enough? Should I get more?”

“Well, it depends,” he said. “What’s your objective?”

“Hmm,” said Tatiana. “Better give me another fifty for…
the
Commando.” She was doing so well with her definite articles.

She brought cigarettes.

She couldn’t lift the backpack when she was done, plain could not
lift it off the ground. She ended up borrowing a smaller canvas backpack from Vikki and putting the weapons into it. She carried the personal items on her back and the weapons bag in her hands. It was very heavy, and she wondered if perhaps she hadn’t gone a bit overboard.

From her black backpack she took out their two wedding rings, still threaded through the rope she had worn at Morozovo hospital, and slipped the rope around her neck.

When she resigned from the Department of Public Health and Edward found out, he didn’t want to talk to her. She went to say goodbye to him at Ellis, and he stared at her grimly and said, “I don’t want to speak to you.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry for that. But Edward, what else can I do?”

“Not go.”

She shook her head. “He is alive—”

“Was alive. Nearly a year ago.”

“What am I supposed to do? Leave him there?”

“This is crazy. You’re leaving your son, aren’t you?”

“Edward,” Tatiana said, taking hold of his hand and looking at him with understanding eyes. “I’m so sorry. We almost…But I’m not single. I’m not a widow. I’m married, and my husband may be alive somewhere. I have to try to find him.”

They sailed on the Cunard White Star liner, and it took them twelve days to reach Hamburg, Germany. The cargo vessel was filled with the prisoner medical kits from the United States, 100,000 of them, plus food kits and comfort parcels. The longshoremen spent half a day loading them onto large trucks to be transported to the Red Cross hospital in Hamburg and then distributed among the many Red Cross jeeps.

The white jeeps themselves were meant to be self-sufficient, to supply and feed teams of three Red Cross personnel—two nurses and a doctor, or three nurses—for a period of four weeks. The doctor was there to tend to the sick and wounded if need be, and there was certainly a need for tending: the refugees in the Displaced Persons camps they visited suffered from every malady known to man: fungus infections, eye infections, eczemas, tick bites, head lice, crab lice, cuts, burns, abrasion, open sores, hunger, diarrhea, dehydration.

In one such white jeep, Tatiana, Penny and Martin traveled to
refugee camps scattered all over northern Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands. They may have had enough food to feed themselves, but the DPs didn’t, and there were not nearly enough food parcels to distribute. Several times a day, Martin had to stop driving so they could help someone limping or walking, or lying by the side of the road. The whole of western Europe was reeling with the homeless and camps for them were springing up all over the countryside.

But one thing that was not springing up all over the countryside was Soviet refugees. Those were nowhere to be seen. And although there were plenty of soldiers, French, Italian, Moroccan, Czech, English, there were no Soviet soldiers.

Through seventeen camps and thousands and thousands of faces, Tatiana did not even come close to finding a Soviet man who had fought near Leningrad, much less to finding anyone who had ever heard of an Alexander Belov.

Thousands of faces, of pairs of hands reaching up, of foreheads she touched, desperate people infected and unwashed.

He was not here, she knew it, she felt it. He was not here. She walked each discouraging day from one camp to another, without Penny or Martin. The next camp was close—seven miles—and she did not want company, nor their chatter, she wanted to march herself into a life where she could feel for him and find him. Her heart sinking, fading in her chest, she could not feel for where he was.

She withdrew from Penny and Martin, wishing instead upon a New York sunset, wishing instead upon the face of her son, now three months going on forever without his mother. Wishing idly for warm bread, for good coffee, for the happiness of sitting on a couch covered up by a cashmere blanket reading a book with Vikki a nudge away, with Anthony a room away. Her blonde roots grew out faster than she could find a private bathroom with a mirror for her touch-ups. She took to wearing her nurse’s kerchief at all times.

Three months. Since March, she had been driving the truck, handing out parcels, bandaging wounds, administering first aid, driving through destitute Europe, and every day bending to the ground in prayer as she bandaged another refugee. As she buried another refugee. Please let him be here. Another barracks, another infirmary, another military base. Be here, be here.

And yet…and yet…

The hope had not died completely.

The faith had not died completely.

Every night she went to sleep and every morning she woke up with renewed strength and looked for him.

She found another P-38 on a Ukrainian man who had died practically in her arms. She took his ruck which contained eight grenades and five eight-round clips. She crawled into the jeep and hid her new-found loot along with her weapons bag inside the hidden compartment underneath the floor, a thin, narrow hutch that held crutches and folding stretchers, or litters, and now held an arsenal of fire.

But when Tatiana finally realized that Alexander could not be where there was no trace of him, she quickly lost interest in this part of Europe and suggested they go elsewhere.

“What, you don’t think the DPs need our help, Nurse Barrington?” said Martin. They were in Antwerp, Belgium.

“No, they do, they do. But there are so many others who need our help. Let’s go to U.S. military base here and talk to base commander, Charles Moss.” They had received from the International Red Cross the names and the maps of all U.S. installations and known DP camps in Europe.

“Where do you think they need us most, Colonel Moss?” she asked the commander of the base.

“I’d say Berlin, but I wouldn’t recommend going there.”

“Why not?”

“We’re
not
going to Berlin,” confirmed Martin.

“The Soviets have rounded up the German soldiers and imprisoned them,” said Moss. “I hear the conditions there make the DP camps here seem like resorts on the Riviera. The Soviets have not allowed the Red Cross to distribute parcels in the camps, which is too bad. They could use the aid.”

“Where are these Germans held?” Tatiana wanted to know.

“Ah, in a fitting irony, they’re being held in the very concentration camps they themselves built.”

“Why wouldn’t you recommend going there?”

“Because Berlin is a ticking war bomb. There are three million people in the city that cannot be fed.”

Tatiana knew something about that.

Moss continued. “The city needs three and a half million kilos of food—a day—and Berlin produces two per cent of that.”

Tatiana knew even more about
that
.

“You figure it out. The sewers are out, the drinking pumps are out, there are no hospitals beds and almost no doctors. Dysentery, typhus, not
our little eye infections. They need water, medical attention, grain, meat, fat, sugar, potatoes.”

“Even in western zones?” asked Tatiana.

“A little better there. But you have to go to the Soviet zone to get to the concentration camps in eastern Germany. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Are the Soviets amenable?” she asked Moss.

“Yes,” he replied. “Like the Huns.”

After they left Antwerp, Tatiana said, “Dr. Flanagan, what you think? Should we head for Berlin?” The Soviets were in Berlin.

He shook his head. “Absolutely not. That wasn’t on our agenda. Our mission is clear: the Low Countries and northern Germany.”

“Yes, but Berlin needs us most. You heard the colonel. There is plenty for these parts.”

“Not plenty. Not nearly enough,” said Martin.

“Yes, but in eastern Germany, there isn’t
any
.”

Penny stepped in. “Tania is right, Martin. Let’s go to Berlin.”

Martin sniffed.

“Hey, how come you allow her to call you Martin?” asked Tatiana.