Tatiana and Alexander

  Alexander took a step toward them. He was a head taller than the tallest. They looked like thugs in their drab gray winter coats. On top of the coats they had small blue stripes, the symbol of the NKVD—the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs—the way the Red Cross was a symbol of international empathy. “Let me understand what you’re asking me,” he said quietly but not that quietly.

  “So it’s easier for you,” the first man stammered. “You’re wounded, no? It must be hard for you to carry all your gear—”

  “This isn’t all my gear. These are just my few personal things. Let’s go,” Alexander said loudly, moving out from the side of the bed, pushing them out of his way. “Now, comrades. We’re wasting time.” It was not an even fight. He was an officer, a major. He couldn’t see their rank in their shoulder bars or demeanor. They had no authority until they were out of the building and took his away from him. This police liked to do its work in private, in the dark. They did not like to be overheard by barely sleeping nurses, by barely sleeping soldiers. This police liked it to seem as if everything was just as it should be. A wounded man was being taken in the middle of the night across the lake to get a promotion. What was so out of the ordinary about that? But they had to leave his gun with him to continue with the pretense. As if they could have taken it away.

  As they were walking out, Alexander noticed that the two beds next to him were empty. The soldier with the breathing difficulties and another had gone. He shook his head. “Are they going to get promoted, too?” he asked dryly.

  “No questions, just go,” said one of the men. “Quickly.”

  Alexander had slight trouble walking quickly.

  As he made his way through the corridor, he wondered where Tatiana was sleeping. Was it behind one of those doors? Was she there now, somewhere? Still so close. He took a deep breath, almost as if he were smelling for her.

  The armored truck was waiting outside behind the building. It was parked next to Dr. Sayers’s Red Cross jeep. Alexander recognized the white and red emblem in the dark. As they got closer to their truck, a silhouette hobbled out from the shadows. It was Dimitri. He was hunched over his casted arm, and his face was a black pulp with a swollen protuberance instead of a nose—earlier courtesy of Alexander.

  He stood for a moment and said nothing. Then, “Going somewhere, Major Belov?” His hissing voice placed special emphasis on Belov. It sounded like Beloffffff.

  “Don’t come close to me, Dimitri,” Alexander said.

  Dimitri, as if heeding the advice, took a step back, then opened his mouth and laughed silently. “You can’t hurt me anymore, Alexander.”

  “Nor you me.”

  “Oh, believe me,” said Dimitri in a smooth sweet-sour voice, “I can still hurt you.” And right before Alexander was pushed into the NKVD truck by the militia men, Dimitri threw his head back as if in studied delirium and wagged a shaking finger at Alexander, baring the yellow teeth under his bloodied nose and narrowing his slit eyes.

  Alexander turned his head, squared his shoulders, and without even looking in Dimitri’s direction as he jumped into the truck, said very loudly and clearly and with as much satisfaction as he could get his voice to muster, “Oh, fuck you.”

  “Get in the truck and shut up,” barked one of the NKVD men to Alexander, and to Dimitri: “Go back to your ward, it’s past curfew. What are you doing skulking around here?”

  In the back of the truck, Alexander saw his two shivering ward mates. He hadn’t expected two other people, two Red Army soldiers, to be in the truck with him. He had thought it would be just him and the NKVD men. No one to risk or sacrifice except them and himself. Now what?

  One of the NKVD men grabbed his ruck. Alexander yanked it away. The man did not let go. “It looks as if it’s hard for you to carry it,” he said, struggling. “I’ll take it and give it back to you on the other side.”

  Shaking his head, Alexander said, “No, I’ll keep it.” He wrenched it from the man.

  “Belov—”

  “Sergeant!” said Alexander loudly. “You’re talking to an officer. Major Belov to you. Leave my belongings alone. Now, let’s start driving. We’ve got a long way ahead of us.” Smiling to himself, he turned away, dismissing the man. His back didn’t hurt as badly as he had imagined: he was able to walk, jump up, talk, bend, sit down on the floor of the truck. But his weakness upset him.

  The truck’s idling motor revved up and they began driving away—from the hospital, from Morozovo, from Tatiana. Alexander took a deep breath and turned to the two men sitting in front of him.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he said. The words were gruff but the tone was resigned. He looked them over briefly. It was dark, he could barely make out their features. They were huddled against the wall of the truck, the smaller one wore glasses, the larger one sat, body wrapped in his coat, head wrapped in a bandage, and only his eyes, nose, and mouth showed. His eyes were bright and alert, discernible even in the dark, even at night. Bright perhaps wasn’t quite the right word. Mischievous. You couldn’t say the same about the smaller man’s eyes. They were lackluster.

  “Who are you?” Alexander repeated.

  “Lieutenant Nikolai Ouspensky. This is Corporal Boris Maikov. We were wounded in Operation Spark, on January fifteenth, over on the Volkhov side—we were housed in a field tent until we—”

  “Stop,” Alexander said, putting his hand out. Before he continued with them he wanted to shake their hands. He wanted to feel what they were made of. Ouspensky was all right—his handshake was steady and friendly and unafraid. His hand was strong. Not frail Maikov’s.

  Alexander sat back against the truck and felt for the grenade in his boots. Damn it. He could hear Ouspensky’s rattling breathing. Ouspensky was the one Tania had moved next to Alexander and put a tent around, the one with only one lung, the one who could not hear or speak. Yet here he was sitting, breathing on his own, hearing, speaking.

  “Listen, both of you,” said Alexander. “Summon your strength. You’re going to need it.”

  “For getting a medal?” Maikov said suspiciously.

  “You’re going to be getting a posthumous medal if you don’t get hold of yourself and stop shaking,” said Alexander.

  “How do you know I’m shaking?”

  “I can hear your boots knocking together,” Alexander replied. “Quiet, soldier.”

  Maikov turned to Ouspensky. “I told you, Lieutenant, this didn’t seem right, to be woken in the middle of the night—”

  “And I told you to shut up,” said Alexander.

  There was a bit of dull blue light coming in from the narrow window in the front of the truck.

  “Lieutenant,” Alexander said to Ouspensky, “can you stand up? I need you to stand up and block the view from the window.”

  “Last time I heard that, my quartermate was getting some blow,” said Ouspensky with a smile.

  “Well, rest assured, no one is getting blow here,” Alexander said. “Stand up.”

  Ouspensky obeyed. “Tell us the truth. Are we getting promoted?”

  “How should I know?” Once Nikolai blocked the small window, Alexander took off his boot and pulled out one of the grenades. It was dark enough that neither Maikov nor Ouspensky saw what he was doing.

  He crawled to the back of the truck and sat with his back against the doors. There were only two NKVD men in the front cabin. They were young, they had no experience, and no one wanted to cross the lake: the danger of German fire was ever-present and unwelcome. The driver’s lack of experience broadcast itself in his inability to drive the truck faster than twenty kilometers an hour. Alexander knew that if the Germans were monitoring Soviet army activity from their positions in Sinyavino, the truck’s leisurely speed would not escape their reconnaissance agents. He could walk across the ice faster.

  “Major, are you getting promoted?” asked Ouspensky.

  “That’s what they told me, and they let me keep my gun. Until I hear otherwise, I’m optimi
stic.”

  “They didn’t let you keep your gun. I saw. I heard. They just didn’t have the strength to take it from you.”

  “I’m a critically injured man,” Alexander said, taking out a cigarette. “They could have taken it from me if they wanted to.” He lit up.

  “Have you got another one?” said Ouspensky. “I haven’t smoked in three months.” He looked Alexander over. “Nor seen anyone but my nurses.” He paused. “I’ve heard your voice, though.”

  “You don’t want to smoke,” Alexander said. “From what I understand, you have no lungs.”

  “I have one lung, and my nurse has been keeping me artificially sick so I don’t get sent back to the front. That’s what she did for me.”

  “Did she?” asked Alexander, trying not to close his eyes at the image of Nikolai’s nurse—the small, clear-eyed bright sunny morning of a girl, the crisp Lazarevo morning of a sweet blonde girl.

  “She brought in ice and made me breathe the cold fumes to get my lungs rattling and working. I wish she would have done a little more for me.”

  Alexander handed him a cigarette. He wanted Nikolai to stop talking. He did not think Ouspensky would be particularly pleased to discover that Tatiana had saved him only long enough to be now sent into Mekhlis’s clutches.

  Taking out his Tokarev pistol, Alexander got up, pointed at the back door and fired, blowing out the padlock. Maikov squealed. The truck slowed down. There was obviously some confusion in the driver’s cabin as to the source of the noise. Now down on the floor, Ouspensky was no longer blocking the window. Alexander had seconds before the truck stopped. Flinging the doors open, he pulled the pin out of the grenade, pulled himself above the roof of the creeping vehicle and threw the grenade forward. It landed a few meters in front of the truck’s path; seconds later there was a shattering explosion. He had just enough time to hear Maikov bleat, “What is that—” when he was thrown from the truck onto the ice. The pain he felt in the unhealed wound in his back was so jolting he thought his scars were tearing apart a millimeter at a time.

  The truck jerked and began to rumble to a sliding stop. It skidded, teetered and fell sideways onto the ice, crunching to a halt at the ice hole made by Alexander’s grenade. The hole was smaller than the truck, but the truck was heavier than the broken ice. The ice cracked and the hole became wider.

  Alexander got up and ran limping to the back doors, motioning for the two men to crawl to him. “What was that?” Maikov cried. He had bumped his head and his nose was bleeding.

  “Jump out of the truck!” Alexander yelled.

  Ouspensky and Maikov did as he commanded—just in time, as the front end of the truck slowly sank beneath the surface of the Ladoga. The drivers must have been knocked unconscious by the impact against the glass and ice. They were making no attempts to get out.

  “Major, what the hell—”

  “Shut up. The Germans will begin shooting at the truck in three or four minutes.” Alexander had no intention of actually dying on the ice. Before he saw Ouspensky and Maikov, he had had a small hope he might be alone, and would, after blowing up the truck with the NKVD men in it, make his way back to the Morozovo shores and into the woods. All of his hopes seemed to have this one common denominator nowadays: short-fucking-lived.

  “You want to stay here and observe the efficient German army in action, or you want to come with me?”

  “What about the drivers?” asked Ouspensky.

  “What about them? They are NKVD men. Where do you think those drivers were taking you at dawn?”

  Maikov tried to stand up. Before he could say another word, Alexander pulled him down onto the ice.

  They weren’t far from the shore, maybe two kilometers. It was pre-dawn. The cabin of the truck was submerged and cracking a larger hole in the ice, large enough soon for the whole truck to fit through.

  “Pardon me, Major,” Ouspensky said, “but you’re talking out of your ass. I’ve never done anything wrong in my entire military career. They haven’t come for me.”

  “No,” Alexander said. “They’ve come for me.”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  The truck was disappearing into the water.

  Ouspensky stared at the ice, at the shivering, dumbfounded and bleeding Maikov, at Alexander, and laughed. “Major, perhaps you could tell us your plans for what the three of us are going to do alone on the open ice once the truck sinks?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Alexander with a heavy sigh. “I guarantee you, we won’t be alone for long.” He nodded in the direction of the distant Morozovo shore and took out his two pistols. The headlights of a light army vehicle were getting closer. The jeep stopped fifty meters from them, and out of it jumped five men with five machine guns all pointing at Alexander. “Stand up! Stand up on the ice!”

  Ouspensky and Maikov stood instantly, hands in the air, but Alexander didn’t like to take orders from inferior officers. He would not stand up and with good reason. He heard the whistling sound of a shell and put his hands over his head.

  When he looked, two of the NKVD men were lying face down, while the other three were crawling to Alexander, rifles aimed at him, hissing, stay down, stay down. Maybe the Germans will kill them before I have a chance to, Alexander thought. He tried to make out the shore. Where was Sayers? The NKVD jeep was stationary, providing a convenient practice target for the Germans. When the NKVD men got very close, Alexander suggested to them that maybe they should get back inside their vehicle and return to Morozovo with all deliberate speed.

  “No!” one of them yelled. “We have to get you across to Volkhov!”

  Another shell whistled by, this one falling twenty meters from the jeep—the only transport they had to get either to Volkhov or back to Morozovo. Once the Germans hit their jeep, the cluster of men would last several unprotected seconds on the open lake against German artillery.

  On his stomach, Alexander stared at the NKVD men on their stomachs. “You want to drive to Volkhov under German fire? Let’s go.”

  The men looked at the armored truck that had carried Alexander. It had nearly gone below the surface of the water. Alexander watched with amusement as self-preservation battled it out with orders.

  “Let’s go back,” said one of the NKVD. “We will return to Morozovo and await further instructions. We can always get him to Volkhov tomorrow.”

  “I think that’s wise,” said Alexander.

  Ouspensky was watching Alexander with amazement. Alexander ignored him. “Come on, all of you. On three. Run to your jeep before it’s blown up.” Aside from wanting to keep alive, Alexander wanted to remain dry. His life wasn’t worth much to him wet. He knew that whether he was in Volkhov or Morozovo he would get dry clothes when donkeys flew. The wet clothes would remain on his body until after they’d given him pneumonia and killed him, and still they’d be wet on his corpse in the March damp.

  All six men crawled to the jeep. The three NKVD troops ordered the men to get into the back. Both Ouspensky and Maikov glanced at Alexander with considerable anxiety.

  “Just get in.”

  Two of the NKVD men got into the back with them. Ouspensky and Maikov breathed out in relief.

  Alexander took out a cigarette and passed one to Nikolai and to white-faced Maikov who refused.

  “Why did you do that?” whispered Ouspensky to Alexander.

  “I’ll tell you,” said Alexander. “I did it because I just didn’t feel like getting promoted.”

  Back on shore, the jeep proceeded to headquarters, passing a medical truck heading for the river. Alexander spotted Dr. Sayers in the passenger seat. Alexander managed a smile as he smoked, though he noticed the tips of his fingers trembling. It was going as well as could be expected. The scene on the lake genuinely looked like the aftermath of a German onslaught. Dead men on the ice, one truck down. Sayers would write out the death certificate, sign it, and it would be as if Alexander had never existed. The NKVD would be grateful—they preferred making their
arrested parties invisible anyway—and by the time Stepanov learned of what had really happened, and that Alexander was still alive, Tatiana and Sayers would be long gone. Stepanov would not have to lie to Tatiana. Lacking any actual information, he himself would believe that Alexander, with Ouspensky and Maikov, had perished on the lake.

  He ran a hand over his capless head and closed his eyes, quickly opening them again. The bleak Russian landscape was better than what was behind his closed lids.

  Everybody won. The NKVD would not have to answer questions from the International Red Cross, the Red Army would pretend to mourn a number of downed and drowned men, while Mekhlis still had his paws on Alexander. Had they wanted to kill him, they would have killed him instantly. Those were not their orders. He knew why. The cat wanted to play with the mouse before he ripped the mouse to pieces.

  It was eight in the morning by the time they got back to Morozovo, and since the base was coming to life and since they had to be hidden until they could be safely transported to unsafety, Alexander, Ouspensky and Maikov were thrown into the stockade in the basement of the old school. The stockade was a concrete cell just over a meter wide and less than two meters long. The militia ordered the three soldiers to lie flat on the floor and not move.

  The cell was too short for Alexander; there was not enough room to lie down on the floor. As soon as the guards left, the three men crouched on the ground, drawing their knees up to their chests. Alexander’s wound was throbbing. Sitting on the cold cement wasn’t helping.

  Ouspensky kept on at him. Alexander said, “What do you want? Stop asking. This way when you’re questioned you won’t have to lie.”

  “Why would we be questioned?”

  “You’ve been arrested. Isn’t that clear?”

  Maikov was looking into his hands. “Oh, no,” he said. “I’ve got a wife, a mother, two small children. What’s going to happen?”

  “You?” said Nikolai. “Who are you? I’ve got a wife and two sons. Two small sons. I think my mother is still alive, too.”

  Maikov didn’t reply, but both he and Ouspensky turned to stare at Alexander. Maikov lowered his gaze. Ouspensky didn’t.