Tatiana and Alexander

  “Hey,” she said brightly, reaching across the table and taking his hand. “Mildred Pierce is hailed as the next masterpiece. Want to go and see it?”

  “Sure. When?”

  “How about Friday evening? Come over after work. I’ll make you dinner, and then we’ll go.”

  Edward paused. “You want me to come over in the evening?” he asked slowly.

  “Please.”

  Edward looked at her hand on his, then at her. “Something is terribly wrong. What is it? Have you found out you only have five days to live?”

  “No,” she said. “I found out I have seventy years to live.”

  The next day, she was in the examination room at Ellis, filling out papers on one of the Polish refugees, when another nurse walked in and whispered, “There is someone outside to see you.”

  Tatiana didn’t look up from the application for residency. “Who?”

  “Never saw him before. Says he’s from the State Department.”

  Tatiana looked up immediately.

  Outside in the corridor, Sam Gulotta stood, dressed in a suit, waiting for her.

  “Hello, Tatiana,” he said. “How are you? Did you have a happy New Year?”

  “I’m good, yes, and you?” she replied, and then couldn’t say anything else, but reached out slowly, hoping Sam wouldn’t notice, to get hold of the wall behind her.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to call.”

  Very carefully, she shrugged. She didn’t want him to notice she was shaking. “I didn’t want to bother you anymore. You have been so patient with me over the years…”

  Sam looked up and down the hall. “Is there somewhere we can go and talk?”

  They went outside and sat on the benches by the swings where Anthony used to play.

  “I was hoping you’d call me,” Sam said.

  “What’s happened?” she said. “Are they still looking for me?”

  He shook his head. Tatiana’s white fingers bored into the sides of the bench. She was grateful for the cold that allowed her teeth an excuse to chatter.

  “What?” she whispered. “You have information for me? He is dead?”

  “I have something, yes. I have an inquiry on his file. As always, it went to the wrong department—Global Affairs, who forwarded it to Population, Refugees and Migration Bureau. They said it wasn’t their jurisdiction, and sent it to the Department of Justice to EOIR, Executive Office for Immigration Review.” Sam shook his head. “Someone should explain to them the polar difference between immigration and emigration—”

  “Sam,” was all Tatiana said.

  “Oh, yes. I just wanted to explain the bureaucracy of our government. Everything moves in geological time. Let me tell you what the inquiry is: it’s very short. An Allied American soldier, PFC Paul Markey of the 273rd Infantry Division contacted the State Department—last summer, no less—asking if they had any information about an American named Alexander Barrington.”

  Tatiana swayed and sank into the bench.

  For a very long time she remained mute.

  “Tania?”

  “Yes?” In a voice that wasn’t hers. “Sam, who is Private Markey?”

  “Private First Class Paul Markey of Des Moines, Iowa. Twenty-one years old, three years in the armed forces. I called his home last week. Spoke to his mother.” Sam lowered his head. “He was returned from Europe and discharged from duty last summer, I guess that’s when he made the inquiry. I’m afraid there is bad news about him. In October he took his own life.”

  Tatiana sucked in her breath. Blinked. “Sam, no, I’m sorry for him, but…I mean, who is Paul Markey? Where was he?”

  “I know little about him except his inquiry, which he made verbally by phone.”

  “Who did he speak to at PRM?”

  “A woman by the name of Linda Clark.”

  “Should we go talk to her?”

  “I already have. She is the one who got me the notes of that conversation.”

  Tatiana held her breath.

  “Paul Markey told her that when his regiment liberated Colditz Castle—a fortress used as an Oflag during the war—when the Americans liberated Colditz on April 16, 1945, among the hundreds of Allied officers, there were a few Soviet officers, half a dozen, maybe. One of them approached Markey in surprisingly good clean English, asking for his help. He said he was an American named Alexander Barrington, and asked if Markey could check out his story and help him.”

  Tatiana started to cry. Her shoulders shook and the tears ran between her fingers with which she covered her face. Sam’s hand was on her back, patting her gently.

  A few minutes went by. Tatiana calmed down. “I knew he lied to me. I just knew,” she whispered. “I could feel it in my bones, I had no proof, but I knew.”

  “What about the death certificate?”

  “Fake, all fake.” She sucked in a pained groan. “Just to make me leave Soviet Union.”

  “How did he end up in Colditz all the way from Leningrad?”

  “Like I already tell you. He was put in penal battalion. When Soviet army pushed Germans out of Soviet Union, he went with his battalion. Obviously he ended up in POW camp, this Colditz.”

  “Do you want me to tell you the rest of what Markey told Clark?”

  “Yes,” she said with a short sob. “What happened to the liberated men?”

  “Everybody but the Soviets went home. Markey told Clark that the morning after liberation, on April 17, a Soviet convoy came into Colditz and took the handful of Soviet officers away, including that man.”

  “Took them where?”

  “Markey did not know. He told Linda Clark that he returned to the United States in the summer and made the call out of curiosity. In October, Consular Affairs called his home in Iowa to tell him that indeed Alexander Barrington had been born in the United States but had been residing in the Soviet Union since 1930. Three days after that Markey took his own life, his mother told me.”

  Tatiana was quiet, trying to compose her voice. “What kind of liberation is that?” she finally said. “Americans come in to liberate Colditz. Why didn’t the Soviets also get liberated? Why was he there even a day later?”

  Sam said nothing.

  Tatiana looked up and wiped her face. “Sam?”

  “What?”

  “I thought I was asking rhetorical question, but by your heavy silence I suspect question has answer.”

  He was silent.

  “Sam!”

  “Why do you do that? Sam what?” He sighed. “Look, this is just what I hear, I can’t confirm or deny this, but the buzz in the State Department, connected to a much larger buzz from the Defense Department, was that the liberating Americans were ordered to keep any Soviet officers or refugees in place until the Red Army came to pick them up.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “Where did this order come from?”

  “From up the ranks.”

  “How high up the ranks?”

  Sam didn’t answer for many ticking seconds. “All the way,” he finally said.

  That night, Tatiana came home and said, “Vikki, we have to take little trip.”

  Vikki fell back on the sofa. “No, God, no. Please. Every time you say the word little, it means somewhere unbelievably far. Where to, this time?”

  “Iowa. Poor Edward. I’m afraid I will have to cancel our plans.”

  “Iowa? No! I refuse. Go by yourself. I’m not going. Anthony is not going. We refuse. Do you hear me?”

  Looking out the train window, Vikki was saying to Anthony, “Look, it’s quite pretty here, so many fields. What do you think they grow on these fields, Anthony?”

  “Wheat,” he said. “Corn.”

  Vikki glanced at Tatiana, who sat pretending to be immersed in a book. “Anthony, and you know this how?”

  “That’s what Mama calls them. Wheat fields. Corn fields.”

  “Oh.”

  Tatiana smiled.

 
Des Moines was a city rising up out of those fields. It was brutally cold in Iowa in January. Vikki said she had not expected it. “Why did I think it was warm here? They keep talking about the dust bowl droughts. How can you have a drought in frigid temperatures?”

  “They don’t have droughts in wintertime, Vikki,” said Tatiana, buttoning her coat. “Come on, we’ll take a taxi.”

  “You and your taxis. Is this person expecting us?”

  “I wrote her.”

  “Did she write you back?”

  “Not really.”

  “Not really? Is there a middle ground with something like that? Did she or did she not write you?”

  “I know she was going to, but we are coming to see her so soon, she didn’t get chance to.”

  “I see. So we’re barging in uninvited on a farm widow who has just lost her son?”

  The small Markey farmhouse was on the outskirts of Des Moines. Their silo nearby was obscured by snow drifts and trees, giving the impression that it had not been used for some time. The door to the house was opened by a frail, pale woman who nonetheless smiled and said, “Tatiana? Come in. I been expecting you. I’m Mary Markey. This your son? Anthony, come with me.” Stretched out her hand. “I just made corn muffins, you can help me serve them. Do you like corn muffins?”

  Vikki and Tatiana followed them into the kitchen with Vikki whispering, “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Show up in strangers’ homes and have them invite you in as if they’ve known you all their lives?”

  The kitchen was neat and plain and old. They sat behind the wooden kitchen table and drank coffee and had corn muffins. Then Vikki took Anthony out in the snow. Mary cupped her mug of coffee and said, “Tatiana, I want to help you. Since you wrote, I been trying to remember what my boy said to me. You understand, I didn’t see him in three years, and when he came back he was all closed up. Closed up to me, to his old friends, to the world. The girl he used to see in high school married someone else. Who’d wait that long when you’re so young? So Paul would sit around here, or he’d go in the truck down to the local bar. He talked a little about opening the farm again, but with his dad gone that seemed so unlikely.” She paused. Tatiana waited. “And he seemed so detached. And then he just gone and killed hisself, too many guns around here, so I been kind of reeling from it and much of what he said to me flew my mind.”

  “I understand. I’m sorry. Anything you can recall would be helpful.”

  “I know Paul got that phone call a few days before he died. He didn’t tell me nothing, just sat here at this table for the rest of the afternoon. Refused dinner. Went out for a drink, came back, and late at night was sitting here again, or out in the back on the porch. I asked, believe me, I asked several times what the matter was. Finally he said, ‘Mom, we liberated that castle and there was a man there who said he was an American, and I didn’t believe him. I said…something smart in return. And I didn’t see him after that…and the next day, the Red Army came to get their POWs. Except that this man’s perfect English stuck in my memory. So when I came back stateside, I called Washington, just to put my mind at ease.’ He sort of made a choking sound then. He said, ‘The phone call I got this afternoon? Someone from the State Department. That man was an American once upon a time. He was an American, trapped there somehow.’ And I tried to say something comforting like, well, he was just sent back to his own country. Just like you was sent back to your own country. And Paul waved me off and said, ‘Mom, you don’t understand. Our orders—my orders—were to keep all the Soviet officers under surveillance until their army came to reclaim them.’

  “‘So?’ I said.

  “‘Why does an army need to reclaim them? Why don’t they just go back in mobs and crowds, of their own accord, like we did, like the English did? Our armies didn’t come to reclaim us. But the point is, that man wasn’t a Soviet.’ I didn’t understand, you know? I told him that there was nothing he could have done, and he said, ‘I don’t feel better because I’m helpless, Mother.’ And he wring his hands so, and I said, ‘Son, but what does the Soviet Union have to do with you? You’re not sending those people back.’ And he put his head down on the table and said, ‘Maybe I could have done something for just that one.’”

  Tatiana got up and came round Mary’s side of the table. She put her arms around the woman. “And he did, Mary. He did.”

  Mary nodded.

  “I’m very sorry.”

  “I’ll be all right. My other daughter lives nearby. I been alone since my husband died in ’38. I’ll be all right.” She looked up. “Do you think that man was your husband?”

  “Without a doubt,” replied Tatiana.

  On the train back, Tatiana was engrossed in the way the snow lay on the fields outside her window. Anthony was asleep. So was Vikki, Tatiana thought, but then Vikki opened one eye, then the other, and said, “So what now?”

  Tatiana didn’t answer.

  “So what now?” Vikki repeated.

  “I don’t have all answers, Vik,” replied Tatiana. “I don’t know what now.”

  But suddenly the world made a bit of sense again. Alexander was not in the lake.

  Somewhere in the world Alexander was still living. In the largest country in the world, sprawled over one sixth of the earth’s land mass, one half tundra and permafrost, one quarter steppe, one eighth coniferous forest, part desert, part arable land, with the largest lake in the world, the largest sea in the world, the largest protected border in the world, the largest socialist experiment in the world, was Alexander.

  All her small paths of faith had led her to an alive Alexander.

  And now what?

  Upon her return Tatiana immediately called Sam, but he could not find out what had happened to the Soviet prisoners from Colditz. The Soviet military wasn’t speaking, relations were icy, and though Sam had contacted two other privates who were with Markey at Colditz, they had not heard an English voice from the Soviet prisoners and Markey had not spoken to them about it.

  “Contact Soviet Department of Defense and ask what happened to Soviet officers at Colditz.”

  “What should I say? Have you got that Alexander Barrington stowed away somewhere?”

  “You’re just joking. You know you can’t mention him by name.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I’m not allowed to actually make any inquiries on his behalf.”

  “Sam, call our Defense Department.”

  “Anyone in particular at the Defense Department? Maybe Lieutenant Tom Richter?”

  “Yes, if he has answers. Ask him what happened to the Soviets at Colditz. If he doesn’t know, ask what happened to Soviet officers in Germany.”

  “Tania, you know what happened to them!”

  “I want to know where they were taken,” she said. “And there is no need to shout.”

  “Even if I did find out, what are you supposed to do with that information?”

  “Why you always worry about my part? Just do your part.”

  She didn’t reschedule her plans with Edward.

  A few days later, she called Sam again. He told her that a major general in Patton’s army said that last year the Soviets were rounding up all of what they called their nationals and keeping them in transit camps until they could transport them back to the Soviet Union.

  “How many is everyone?”

  “The major general did not say. He did not hazard a guess.”

  “Can you?”

  “Even less than him.”

  “Where are these transit camps?”

  “All over Germany.”

  Tatiana was thoughtful.

  “Tania, for certain he is in the Soviet Union by now. Liberation of Colditz was nearly ten months ago. But regardless of where he is, the Soviets aren’t giving their men back to us no matter how nicely we ask. They won’t give our men back to us! We have soldiers MIA on the Soviet side. They aren’t giving us any information at all.”

  “Alexander
is MIA,” Tatiana said.

  “No, he isn’t! The Soviets know precisely where he is!” And quieter, Sam said, “Tania, haven’t you heard the death statistics for the Soviet POWs? They’re staggering.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m still holding death certificate you placed so much faith in. You told me he was most certainly in lake.”

  “This is worse.”

  “How is this worse? We just have to find where he is.”

  “He is in the Soviet Union!”

  “Then find him in Soviet Union, Sam. He is American citizen. You have responsibility to him.”

  “Oh, Tatiana! How many times do I have to tell you? He lost his citizenship in 1936.”

  “No, he did not. Sam, I have to go. I have patients. I will talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Of course you will.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The Nuremberg Trials, February 1946

  “COME ON, LET’S GO out,” Vikki said petulantly. “What are you listening to that for? Let’s go to a movie, or a coffee bar, or for a walk.” She pounded the kitchen table. “I’m so tired of it. We’ve been listening to it for months. We’re never getting a television, I just want you to know that.”

  Tatiana had her ear to the radio as she was listening to the audio transcript of the Nuremberg trials.

  “I’m not listening just for sake of something to do,” said Tatiana, turning up the radio. “I’m listening because it’s riveting.”

  “Do you see me riveted? The war is over, they’re all guilty, they’re all to be hanged, when is enough enough? It’s been going on for months. The generals have all been convicted. These are just the lackeys. I can’t take much more.”

  “Can you go for walk?” Tatiana said without turning her head. “Go now, and stay out for two hours.”

  “You’ll be sorry if I leave for good.”

  “Yes. But not if you leave for two hours.”

  Vikki, with a harrumph, sat in the chair next to her. “No, no. I want to hear.”