Tatiana and Alexander

Slonko walked in, leaving the door open behind him. The guard remained just outside. Slonko stood a good twenty centimeters below the ceiling of the cell. He ordered Alexander to stand. Alexander reluctantly stood, bent at the knees, his own head five or six centimeters above the ceiling of the cage. Because of that, his slightly forward-leaning form looked ready to spring, though his head was bent in a way that may have seemed to Slonko like subservience.

  “Well, well. Your wife Tatiana is quite an interesting woman,” said Slonko. “I just finished with her.” He rubbed his hands together. “Quite interesting indeed.”

  Alexander glanced at the open door. Where was the guard? He reached into the inside pocket of his BVDs and Slonko yelled, “What are you doing?” But he wasn’t armed. He did not pull out a weapon.

  “I’m getting my penicillin shot,” Alexander said. “I was wounded.” He smiled. “I need to take my medicine. I’m not the man I used to be in January, comrade.”

  “That’s good to know,” Slonko replied. “Are you the man you used to be in 1936?”

  “Yes, I am still that man,” said Alexander.

  “While you’re fixing yourself up, let me tell you what your wife told us about you—”

  “Before you continue,” interrupted Alexander, opening the vial of morphine and not even looking at Slonko, “I have read that there are some countries in the world where it is against the law to force a wife to give information about her husband. Amazing, isn’t it?” He dipped the needle into the vial and then slowly drew the morphine solution up into the hollow barrel.

  “Oh, we didn’t force her,” Slonko smiled. “She gave it up quite willingly.” He smiled again. “And it’s not the only thing—”

  “Comrade!” Alexander yelled, taking a small step forward. “I am warning you. Do not continue.” He was a half-meter away from Slonko. He could put his hands on Slonko’s shoulders in a fraternal gesture if such a gesture were called for at this time. It wasn’t.

  “No?”

  “No,” said Alexander. “Trust me with this, Comrade Slonko. You are inciting the wrong man.”

  “Oh, why is that?” Slonko asked warmly. “Because you won’t be incited?”

  “Quite the opposite,” replied Alexander. “Because I will be.”

  Slonko fell quiet.

  Alexander fell quiet.

  “Well, aren’t you going to shoot yourself full of penicillin, Major?”

  “When you leave, yes.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  Alexander shook his head without stepping back to the wall. “Stick to the business at hand. Have you gotten me a tribunal in front of a military command? I’m sure you will be welcome to sit in on the proceedings, to hear an innocent man acquit himself in your country.”

  “In your country, Major,” Slonko corrected Alexander.

  “In my country,” agreed Alexander, not moving any part of his body. The cell was barely two meters long, a meter wide. He waited. He knew that Slonko did not have a tribunal set up. He had not been given the authority for anything—for a tribunal, for an execution, for a thorough investigation. He wanted a confession out of Alexander while no one else gave a damn. For all Alexander knew, since the star witness was lying dead in the snow, Mekhlis himself could have already said to Slonko, free Belov. We can’t afford to lose good men, we have no information on his espionage except from a dead deserter, and Stalin did not issue an order for Belov’s death, which is the only order I will listen to. At the same time, Slonko was not giving up. Why?

  Slonko could not touch him. Alexander would pass a man like Slonko on the street and not acknowledge him. That’s how far the proletariat had come. A man like Slonko, a Party pig all his life, had no power over a man like Alexander, his prey for seven years.

  That was so right in Alexander’s world, yet obviously so wrong in Slonko’s.

  Alexander waited. After a few moments, he said, “Why don’t you leave, comrade, and come back when you’ve got something more. Bring me before the generals. Or bring me my release order.”

  “Major, you will never be free again,” said Slonko. “I have recommended that you will never be free.”

  “When I die I will be.”

  “I will not allow your death. Your mother has died. Your father has died. I want you to live the life they planned for you, the life they brought you here for. They both thought so much of you, Alexander Barrington. They both told me so. Do you think you have fulfilled their dreams?”

  “I don’t know about them, but I have fulfilled my own mother and father’s dreams, yes. They were simple farmers. I have gone far in the Red Army. They would be proud of me.”

  “What about your wife’s hopes, Major? Do you think you have fulfilled your wife’s?”

  “Comrade, I have already told you—do not speak to me about my wife.”

  “No? She was quite willing to talk about you. When she wasn’t—ahem—otherwise—”

  “Comrade!” Alexander stepped toward Slonko. “That will be the last time,” he said. “There will be no more.”

  “I will not leave.”

  “You will leave. You are dismissed. Come back when you’ve got something.”

  “Oh, I’m not leaving, Major,” said Slonko. “The more you want me to, the more I want to stay.”

  “I don’t doubt it. You will leave, though.” Not a flicker moved through Alexander, who stood as if he were a statue. He was barely breathing.

  “Major! I’m not the one arrested. I’m not the one whose wife has been arrested. I’m not the American.”

  “As to the last, I’m not either.”

  “You are, you are, Major. Your own wife told me so when she finished sucking my cock.”

  Alexander’s hand slammed into Slonko’s throat. Slonko didn’t even have time to breathe in his surprise. His head snapped back against the concrete wall, eyes bulging, mouth open. With his free hand, Alexander plunged a syringe filled with ten grains of morphine through Slonko’s sternum, straight into the right chamber of his heart. He pressed his palm against the thumb plate and snapped Slonko’s jaws shut. Slonko could not emit a single sound even if he wanted to.

  In English, Alexander said, “I’m surprised at you. Didn’t you know who you were dealing with?” Gritting his teeth, he squeezed Slonko’s neck, and saw the eyes first cloud, then glaze over. He whispered, “This is for my mother…and my father…and for Tatiana.”

  Convulsing, Slonko was sinking to the ground. Alexander held him up with one hand on his throat, as Slonko’s neck muscles stretched and relaxed, as his pupils dilated, and when Slonko stopped blinking, Alexander let go of his neck. The chief investigator dropped to the floor like a heap of stones. Alexander pulled out the empty syringe from Slonko’s chest, threw it down the drainpipe, came up to the door and yelled, “Guard! Guard! Something is wrong with Comrade Slonko!”

  The guard ran in, looked around the room, looked at Slonko limp on the floor and said in a confused voice, “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Alexander said calmly. “I’m not a doctor. But maybe you should get one. The comrade may have had a heart attack.”

  The guard didn’t know whether to run, to stay, to leave Alexander, to take him along. He didn’t know whether to lock the door or to leave it open. The confusion was so apparent on his frightened and pale face that Alexander, smiling kindly, said, “Leave him here, and take me with you. Don’t bother locking the cell. He is not going anywhere.”

  The guard took Alexander and they both ran up the stairs, through the school, outside, and to the commandant’s building. “I don’t even know who I should speak to,” the guard said helplessly.

  “Let’s go and talk to Colonel Stepanov. He’ll know what to do.”

  To say that Stepanov was surprised to see Alexander would have been an understatement. The guard by this time was in such a panic he was not able to speak. He mumbled something about Slonko and no noise and just doing his job, just standing right by the door, hearing n
othing. Stepanov asked him several times to calm down, but the guard was unable to follow simple orders. Finally, Stepanov had to offer the boy a drink of vodka, and turned to Alexander with a perplexed face.

  “Sir,” said Alexander, “Comrade Slonko collapsed while he was in my cell. The guard was obviously away for a few moments”—Alexander paused—“perhaps attending to some private business. He is afraid it will seem that he was derelict in his duty. Yet, I know firsthand he is a diligent and dedicated guard. There was nothing he could have done for the comrade.”

  “Oh, my God, Alexander,” said Stepanov, getting up and quickly getting dressed. “Are you telling me Slonko is dead?”

  “Sir, I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. I would recommend finding one, though. Probably soon.”

  They procured a medic who came to the cell, shuddered once, and without even listening for Slonko’s pulse pronounced the man dead. The cell had a filthy stench it had not had before. Everyone held their breath as they filed out.

  “Oh, Alexander,” said Stepanov.

  “Yes, sir,” said Alexander, “I seem to have bad fucking luck.”

  No one had any idea what to do with Slonko. He had come to Alexander’s cell at two in the morning. Everyone else was soundly asleep. There was nowhere to put Alexander, who offered to sleep in Stepanov’s anteroom with the guard by his side. Stepanov agreed. “Thank you, sir,” said Alexander, lying down on the floor and putting his head down. Stepanov glanced at the trembling guard in the corner, and then back at Alexander. “What the hell is going on, Major?” he whispered, crouching by him.

  “You tell me, Colonel,” said Alexander. “What did Slonko want with me? He kept telling me they’ve brought Tatiana back from Helsinki, that she’s confessed. What was he talking about?”

  “They’re beside themselves,” Stepanov said. “They tried to find her, but she is nowhere. People don’t just disappear in the Soviet Union—”

  “Actually, sir—”

  “Not without a trace.”

  “Actually, sir—”

  “Alexander, stop being impossible.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m telling you that once the Grechesky hospital told the NKGB—”

  “The what?

  “Oh, they haven’t informed you? NKVD is gone. Now it’s the NKGB. The People’s Kommitet on Government Security. Same agency, different name. First name change since 1934.” Stepanov shrugged. “Anyway. Once the NKGB was informed that Sayers and Metanova had not made it to the Leningrad hospital, they got very suspicious. They have a turned-over truck, they have four dead Soviet troops and a handful of Finnish ones, no first aid kit in the truck, and in fact, the Red Cross symbol had been torn out of the cabin’s canvas. No one can explain it. There is no trace of either the doctor or his nurse. Yet six border stations along the way say they checked through a doctor and his nurse returning to Helsinki with a wounded Finnish pilot in a prisoner exchange. They cannot remember the nurse’s name, but they swear it was American. Well, we have the wounded Finnish pilot. He is neither Finnish, nor a pilot, and wounded is a euphemism for what he is. He is your friend Dimitri and he is ripped full of holes. That’s the situation on the ground. He’s dead, and the doctor and the nurse have vanished into thin air. So Mitterand called the Helsinki Red Cross hospital and found a doctor who doesn’t speak any Russian. It took the bumbling idiots”—Stepanov was barely whispering at this point—“it took them a whole day to find someone to talk to the doctor in English.” Stepanov smiled. “I was going to suggest you.”

  Alexander stayed impassive.

  “Anyway, they finally got someone from Volkhov to speak to the doctor in English. From what I can understand, Matthew Sayers has died.”

  “So that much was true.” Alexander sighed. “They all have such a way of mixing their lies with just enough truth that you go mad trying to uncover what’s real and what isn’t.”

  “Yes, Sayers died in Helsinki. Blood poisoning from his wounds. As for the nurse with him, the doctor said that she had gone and he hadn’t seen her for two days. He assumed she was no longer in Finland.”

  Alexander stared at Stepanov with sadness and relief. For a sick moment he actually felt regret that they hadn’t brought Tatiana back; he thought maybe he could lay his eyes on her one last time. But finally something real bobbed to the surface. “Thank you, sir,” Alexander whispered.

  Stepanov patted Alexander on the back. “Sleep now. You need your strength. Are you hungry? I have some smoked sausage and some bread.”

  “Leave it for me, but right now I sleep.”

  Stepanov disappeared into his quarters and Alexander, the heaviness from his soul having lifted like morning fog, thought before he fell asleep that indeed Tania had listened to his every word and did not remain in Helsinki. She must have gone on to Stockholm. Perhaps she was in Stockholm now. He also thought that Sayers must have done right by her to the end, because had he broken and told Tatiana the truth about Alexander’s “death,” then Tatiana would have already been back in the Soviet Union right in the clutches of the man who—Oh, Tatiana, my—

  But that was all he had.

  At least fucking Dimitri was dead.

  Fitfully, he slept.

  The Bridge over the Volga, 1936

  Alexander was asked who he was at seventeen, at the Kresty prison after he was arrested. They were indifferent about it then—they knew. They asked, they went away—for days at a time—they came back, and then they said, “Are you Alexander Barrington?”

  “I am, yes,” said Alexander, because then he did not have another answer and he thought the truth would protect him.

  And then they read him his sentence. There was no courtroom for Alexander in those days, no tribunal presided over by generals. There was an empty windowless concrete cell with bars for doors and a toilet bucket on the concrete floor and no privacy, and there was a naked bulb up high. They made him stand as they read to him from a piece of paper in sonorous voices. There were two men, and as if Alexander didn’t understand the first one, the second one took the paper and read it to him again.

  Alexander heard his name, loud and clear, “Alexander Barrington,” and he heard the sentence, louder and clearer: “Ten years in forced labor camp in Vladivostok for anti-Soviet agitation in Moscow in 1935 and for efforts to undermine Soviet authority and the Soviet state by calling into scurrilous and spurious question the economics lessons of the Father and Teacher.” He heard ten years; he thought he had misheard. It was a good thing they read it to him again. He almost said, where is my father, he will solve this, he will tell me what to do.

  But he didn’t say that. He knew that whatever befell him, befell his mother and father as it had befallen the seventy-eight people who had once lived at the hotel with them in Moscow, the piano group Alexander sometimes went to, the group of communists he and his father belonged to, his friend Slavan, the old Tamara.

  They asked him if he understood the charges against him; did he understand the punishment meted out to him?

  He didn’t understand. He nodded anyway.

  He was busy trying to envision the life he was meant to live. The life his father had wanted him to live. He wanted to ask his father if spending his youth fulfilling two of Stalin’s Five Year Plans for the industrialization of Soviet Russia—part of the fixed capital that Alexander understood so well because he knew precisely what was not working in the socialist state—was what Harold had wanted for Alexander. But his father wasn’t around to ask.

  Was Alexander’s destiny to mine for gold in the tundra of Siberia because the utopian state couldn’t afford to pay him?

  “Do you have any questions?”

  “Where is my mother?” asked Alexander. “I want to say goodbye to her.”

  The guards laughed. “Your mother? How the fuck should we know where your mother is? You’re leaving tomorrow morning. See if you can find her by then.”

  Laughing, they left. Standing, Alexander remained.
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  And the next day he was put on a train to Vladivostok. The scarred, knotted man next to him said, “We’re lucky they’re taking us to Vladivostok. I just came back from Perm-35. Now that is hell on earth.”

  “Oh, where is that?”

  “Near the city of Molotov. Have you heard of it? Near the Ural Mountains on the Kama River. It’s not as far as Vladivostok, but it’s much worse. No one who goes there survives.”

  “You survived.”

  “Because I served only two years, and they let me out. I exceeded my production quota for five quarters in a row. They were pleased with my capitalist productivity. They thought the proletariat in me had worked hard enough for the common man.”

  Once Alexander placed Vladivostok on a map of the Soviet Union, he knew that, though he had no money and no home, he had to escape if he were to have any chance of living. The city was in the bowels of the world, and if there was a Hades on earth, then to him Vladivostok seemed it. To travel by cattle train through the Ural Mountains, through the west Siberian plain, through the central Siberian plateau, past all of Mongolia, and around all of China to rot in an industrial cement city on a thin strip of land on the shores of the Sea of Japan. Alexander was sure there was no return from the catacomb that was Vladivostok.

  For a thousand kilometers Alexander looked out of the small porthole in the train, or out of the doors the guards sometimes left open to give the prisoners some air. He saw his chance when they were coming up to cross the River Volga. I will jump, he thought. The Volga was far down below, the wobbly rail bridge high over a precipice, maybe thirty meters high, a hundred feet by American standards. Alexander didn’t know much about the Volga; was it rocky? Was it deep? Was it fast? But he saw it was wide, and he knew it emptied a thousand kilometers south in Astrakhan into the Caspian Sea. He didn’t know if he would get another—better—chance. But he knew that if he managed to survive the Volga, he could make his way into one of the southern republics, Georgia, maybe, or Armenia, and then cross the border into Turkey. He wished he had his mother’s American dollars. After they returned from the failed trip to Moscow he had put the book back in the library and then was arrested so quickly he never had a chance to retrieve it. But even without the money, he knew escape or death were his only choices.