“It’s in three wings, two of them we closed, but the operational one is half full.” He spat. “They break the rules all the time. Disobey, don’t come to roll call, or even worse, constantly try to escape. You’d think they’d learn.”
There was only one way into the prison wing and one way out, and it was guarded by a man in a chair with his machine gun propped up against the wall. He was playing cards with himself.
“How has it been today, Corporal Perdov?”
“Quiet today,” the corporal said, standing up briefly in salute. He smiled at Tatiana. She did not smile back.
The prison was a long corridor, floor covered with sawdust and cells on each side. They went through the first five cells.
“How many prisoners are you keeping this way?” Tatiana asked.
“About thirty,” Karolich replied.
In the sixth cell, the man had fainted and Tatiana put smelling salts under his nose to revive him. Karolich had left to open cell number seven. Cell number six revived. Tatiana gave him a drink of water and walked out into the corridor.
From inside cell number seven, she heard Karolich say in a mocking voice, “How is my favorite prisoner doing this morning?”
“Fuck you,” came the reply.
Her knees buckled.
Tatiana stepped from the corridor into the doorway. The cell was long and narrow with a step down divider, and on the straw beneath the tiny window that shed no light on the floor, twenty feet in front of her, lay Alexander.
The moments of silence fell through the cell. They fell onto her face and her shoulders. Her breath taken away, her burning stopped, her heart stopped too, she stood and looked at the bearded, thin man in manacles, in dark slacks and a blood-drenched white shirt. She dropped her nurse’s bag, and her hand went over her mouth stifling a racking sob.
“Oh, I know. This is our very worst, Nurse,” said Karolich. “We’re not proud of this one, but there is just nothing we can do with him.”
When the door opened and light streamed in, Alexander had been sleeping. Rather, he thought he had been sleeping. His eyes were closed, and he had been dreaming. He had not eaten in two days: he hated his food left on the floor for him as if he were a dog. He was planning on eating soon.
Alexander was furious with himself. The last escape had been so close to being successful. The orderly, bringing some medical supplies into the infirmary, was dressed in civilian clothes, and as usual was coming freely in and out of the camp, waving to the sentries, who would wave back and without a second glance open the gate for him. What could be easier? Alexander had been in the infirmary for the previous three weeks with broken ribs. He knocked out the orderly, took his clothes, shoved him in a closet, and walked up to the gatehouse, waving to the guards. And one of them came down and opened the gate for him. Never even looked at Alexander.
He waved a thanks, a goodbye and started walking.
Why did Karolich have to come out of the green casino just on the left, why at that very moment? He looked through the gate, saw Alexander’s back and screamed for the sentries.
Now, three days later, bloodied and worn out, he had been dreaming of swimming and of the sun and of cool water on his body. He dreamed of being clean, of not being thirsty. He dreamed of summer. It was so dark in the cell. He dreamed of finding a corner of order in the infinite chaos that his world had shown him. He dreamed of…
…And through the small bars he heard voices and then the door lock turn and the door open. Squinting, Alexander saw Karolich walk in. That Karolich! How he enjoyed flaunting Alexander’s failure to Alexander. They had their usual exchange, and then a shadow of a small nurse appeared in the doorway. For a moment, just a single moment, coming out of a dream as he was, the small shape of the nurse looked almost like…but it was hard to see, and, besides, hadn’t he been hallucinating her enough? He couldn’t get far enough from his delusions of her.
But then she gasped, and he heard her voice, and while the hair was different, the voice belonged only to her, and he heard it so clearly. He tried to see her face, he peered, he tried to sit up, to move away from the wall, but he could do nothing. She took one step forward. God, it looked like Tatiana! He shook his head, he thought he was delirious again, the visions of her in the woods in her polka dot bathing suit with her loveless eyes chasing him through every night, through every day. He raised his arms as far as his chains would permit, raised them in supplication: vision, comfort me this time, don’t afflict me again.
Alexander shook his head and blinked, and blinked again. I’m imagining her, he thought. I’ve imagined her for so long, what she looks like, what she sounds like. She is an apparition, like my father, my mother; I will blink and she too will be gone—as always. He blinked and blinked again. Blinked away the long shadow of life without her, and she was standing in front of him, and her eyes shined and her lips were bright.
And then he heard Karolich say something to her, and it was then that Alexander knew that the bastard Karolich could not be imagining her, too.
They stared speechlessly at each other and in their eyes were minutes and hours, months and years, continental drifts and ocean divides. In their eyes was pain and there was vast regret.
The scythe of grief fell evenly upon their stricken faces.
She tripped on the step and nearly fell. Dropping to her knees by his side, she did what she did not think she would do again in this lifetime.
Tatiana touched Alexander.
He had dried blood on his hair and face, and he was shackled. He looked at her and did not speak.
“Nurse Barrington, we don’t treat them all this way, but he has proven himself to be incorrigible and beyond rehabilitating.”
“Lieutenant Karolich,” she croaked. “Lieutenant,” she repeated, but lower, her body trembling so badly that she thought Karolich would not only notice but become alarmed. But he noticed nothing. It was dim in the cell; the only light came from the corridor. “I think I left my nurse’s bag in cell number six. Could you get it for me, please?”
As soon as his back was turned, Tatiana whispered, “Shura,” in a barely audible voice.
Alexander groaned.
Tatiana touched his trembling arm, moved closer, and just as Karolich was coming back, she placed both hands on Alexander’s face.
“How is he?” Karolich said. “Here is your bag. You’ve got quite a few tubes of toothpaste in there. Why do you carry toothpaste in your nurse’s bag?”
“It’s not toothpaste,” she said, with extreme effort taking her hands away. “It’s morphine.” Could she continue to speak normally, sitting so close to Alexander, unable to lay her hands on him? No, not unable. “What’s happened to him?” she asked as she put her hands on Alexander’s chest. His heart was pummeling into her palms. Sitting beside him, tears trickling down her face, she said, “He’s got a head wound that has not been treated. We will need to get some water and soap, and a razor. I will clean him and bandage him. Let me give him a drink first. Can you hand me my flask, please?”
Motionlessly, Alexander continued to lie against the wall, his eyes on Tatiana, who could barely look at him as she brought the flask to his lips. He tilted his head back and drank. Her fingers were shaking and she dropped the flask.
The lieutenant noticed. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Is this too much for you, seeing them like this? You don’t seem cut out for this kind of work. You seem kind of…fragile.”
Without responding, Tatiana said, “Lieutenant, would you please get me a large bucket of preferably warm water for the head wound, some soap, some strong shampoo, and one of my medical kits from the truck?”
“Yes, but come outside. You can’t stay here by yourself with the prisoner. You know what happened to you yesterday. It’s not safe.”
“He’s in shackles. I’ll be fine. Go ahead. But hurry. We have many more to do.” Her hand was on Alexander.
As soon as Karolich was around the corner, Tatiana pressed her foreh
ead to Alexander’s head. “God, it can’t be,” she whispered in Russian. “It can’t be you.”
She felt his body shudder.
Tatiana was bent over him. Alexander’s eyes were closed.
They remained that way, not moving and not speaking.
A groan left her. She couldn’t find a single word, a single word when she had thought books, when she had screamed and wept and railed against the unjust fate, when she had grieved and in her sorrow been so angry, when she had grieved and in her sorrow been so lost. Now she pressed her face into his bloodied black head and couldn’t find a word. Groans, yes. Wretched cries, yes. Not much silence, but no actual words.
On her knees by his side, through her barely moving lips, Tatiana whispered, “Oh, Shura…” She put her shaking hands to her face and cried.
“Tania, come on, now.”
Doubled over, she took deep breaths, covering her face, hiding it from him in his blood-stained shirt in an effort to get calm.
“How have you been, Tania?” Alexander asked in a rupturing voice.
“Good, good.” She clasped his chained hands.
“What about—” He broke off. “What about…the baby?”
“Yes. We have a son.”
“A son.” Alexander breathed out. “What did you name him?”
“Anthony Alexander. Anthony.”
His eyes filled up and he turned his head away.
Tatiana stared at him, her mouth opening and closing. “Is it really you?” she whispered. “Tell me, before I break down, tell me it’s you.”
“Before?” he said.
He was more gaunt than she had ever seen him, even during the worst of the Leningrad blockade. “Alexander…” she whispered. Blink. The cheek was unshaven. Foam on his cheeks. And she held the mirror between her breasts. Blink. She ran her fingers over his beard, his lips. He kissed her fingers. “Tatiana…” he whispered. “Tania…”
“What happened to you? You were arrested, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Let me guess. You knew you were going to be arrested—” She stopped. “Somehow, I don’t know how, you knew you were going to be arrested and you faked your own death to get me out of Russia. Sayers helped you.”
“Sayers helped me. I didn’t fake my own death. I thought it was imminent. I didn’t want you to stay behind and watch me die. I knew you wouldn’t leave any other way.”
They spoke quickly, afraid any minute Karolich was going to return.
“Stepanov helped you?”
“Yes.”
“He’s in Berlin.”
“I know. He came to see me a few months back.”
“How did you get Sayers…? I don’t care.” She couldn’t sit away from him, or move away. She couldn’t even breathe away. “You think that’s what I wanted? To leave you behind?”
Shaking his head, he said, “I knew you didn’t.”
“I would’ve never left.”
“I knew that.” He paused. “Too well.”
She stopped touching him. “You and your impossible ego,” she said. “Leningrad, Morozovo, Lazarevo. You always thought you knew what was best.”
“Ah,” he said. “So there was a Lazarevo?”
“What?” she said, momentarily puzzled. “I told you I would have waited for you, and I would have.”
“Like you told me you would not leave Lazarevo? You would have lived there without me,” said Alexander. “I’ve been sentenced to twenty-five years’ hard labor.”
She flinched.
“Tania, why aren’t you looking at me?” he asked haltingly. “Why are you looking down at your lap?”
“Because I’m afraid,” she whispered. “I’m so afraid.”
“Me, too,” Alexander said. “Please lift your eyes. I need your eyes on me.”
She lifted her eyes. Tears were rolling down her cheeks.
They fell mute. She was bending under the weight of her heart.
“Thank you,” she whispered, “for keeping yourself alive, soldier.”
“You’re welcome,” he whispered back.
There was the sound of the outside door opening and closing. Moving away, Tatiana quickly wiped her face. Her mascara was running. Alexander closed his eyes.
Karolich walked into the cell with a pail and gauze.
“Lieutenant, let’s begin, but I need you to unlock him. His wrists and ankles are raw from the iron. I need to clean them and bandage them or they will get infected if they haven’t already.”
Karolich took out his key and brought his machine gun into his hands. “You don’t know this one, Nurse Barrington. I wouldn’t have much sympathy for him, if I were you.”
“I have sympathy for all the afflicted,” she replied.
“This is all his own doing.”
Tatiana could see that Karolich’s genial manner changed when he was around Alexander. He was cold and rough as he unlocked the shackles and dropped them noiselessly to the straw. “Why do you use irons here?” she asked. “Why don’t you use leather restraints? They do what you need but are easier for the prisoner.”
Karolich laughed. “Nurse, you obviously have not been paying attention. We don’t use the irons, the Germans used the irons. This is what they’ve left behind for us. Besides, this one would gnaw through the leather in three hours.”
She sighed. “We should at least change the straw when we’re done.”
Karolich shrugged, then sat back against the wall, on clean straw, his legs stretched out comfortably, and took the machine gun into his hands. “One wrong move, Belov, and you know what’s going to happen?”
Alexander said nothing.
Tatiana kneeled by Alexander. “Come on,” she said. “Let me clean you, all right?”
“All right.”
“Tip your head back. It will be easier for me to clean your hair.”
He tipped his head back.
“What happened to him, Lieutenant?” asked Tatiana, as one of her hands went around Alexander’s neck, supporting his head, his face nearly in her nurse’s uniform, nearly at her breasts, as she with a towel wiped the dried and bloodied mats out of his hair. It was as long as his beard. “I will shave and trim him, but you know you need to keep your men’s hair short, you can’t let it grow this long and not keep it clean. Not just him, all your men.”
“Why are you looking at him like that?” Karolich asked suddenly.
“Like what?” she whispered.
“I don’t even know.”
“I’m tired. I think you’re right. This has been too much for me.”
“So leave him. Let’s go to the house. We’ll have a decent lunch.” He smiled. “Yesterday you didn’t have any wine. The wine is very good.”
“No. I will finish here.” She snipped away the hair and gently cleaned Alexander’s wound. He had been cut in the skull above the ear and had bled down onto his neck and shirt. The blood had dried where it fell. How long had he been here? His face looked swollen with bloodied bruises under his eyes, below his jawline. Was he beaten? In the dark, she could make out the black of the blood and the white of his shirt, and the black of his hair, and the black of his eyes. He was long unshaven, long unwashed. Long untouched. He lay in her arms, his eyes closed, barely breathing. Only his heart thundered through his veins. He lay in her arms so still, so comforted, so hers, so relieved, so afraid, she felt it all in him, and felt it all in her, and was so desperate to bend to him, to say something to him, that through the effort she was expending to remain composed, she bit her lip so hard it bled, right onto Alexander’s face.
“Nurse, you’re bleeding on the prisoner.”
Alexander blinked, and mutely raised his eyes to Tatiana.
“It’s nothing.” Tatiana licked the blood off her mouth as she dipped her rag in cool water. “Tell me what happened to him.”
Karolich chuckled. “He’s been with us nearly a year. He was well behaved at first, worked hard, logged, was quiet, a model prisoner, a tire
less worker and was amply rewarded. We wished we had more prisoners like him. Unfortunately, since November he has been trying to escape every time we let him out of here and back into the barracks. He thinks he’s in a hotel. Comes and goes as he pleases. You’d think he would learn after seventeen failures, but you’d be wrong.”
“Fuck you,” said Alexander.
“Tsk, tsk. The man has no manners in front of a lady. Well, it doesn’t matter.” Karolich lowered his voice. “He’s not staying here.”
“No?” Tatiana was cleaning Alexander’s wrists. As she did so, she slipped two pins from her hair into his palm and squeezed it shut.
Karolich shook his head. “No. He and a thousand others are leaving for Kolyma tomorrow.” He laughed lightly and poked Alexander in the ribs with the muzzle of the machine gun. “Try to escape from there.”
“Please don’t provoke the prisoner,” said Tatiana, beginning to shave his beard. “Why isn’t he wearing prison clothes?”
“He stole these from an orderly in the infirmary. When we caught him, we threw him in here as he was. He obviously likes it here. He always wants to return.”
“Why is he bleeding, so bruised? Was he beaten?”
“Nurse, did you hear me? Seventeen times! Beaten? He’s lucky he’s alive. What if the man yesterday did what he did to you seventeen times? How many times would you take it before you said, enough already and beat him to death?”
Tatiana glanced down at Alexander. His eyes blackened.
“Nurse, you’re getting his filth all over your nice white uniform,” said Karolich with distaste. “Lay him down on the straw. He doesn’t care if he’s shaved. He is not used to this kind of treatment. Nor should he be getting it.”
She did release Alexander. His wrists were clean and dressed, his hair was cut and washed, his scalp wound cleaned and bandaged. She even had him swill his mouth out with baking soda and peroxide. Now she needed to look at the rest of him, to make sure nothing was broken.
“Does this man have a rank?”
“Not anymore,” said Karolich.
“What was his rank?”