Once in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy
And in a flash of gold heels on the hard pavement
Now see I
That warmth’s the very stuff of poesy
Oh, God, make small
The old, star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me, and in comfort lie.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
New York, October 1944
EDWARD LUDLOW CAME THROUGHthe double doors of the hospital quarters in Ellis Island and pulled Tatiana by her hand out into the hall. “Tatiana, is it true what I saw?”
“I don’t know. What you see?”
He was pale from anxiety.
“What?”
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“Is it true? I saw the NYU Red Cross roster for the nurses about to be sent to Europe, and the name Jane Barrington was on it. Tell me it’s a different Jane Barrington, just a coincidence.”
Tatiana was quiet.
“No. Please. No.”
“Edward—”
He took her hands. “Have you talked to anyone about this?”
“No, of course not.”
“What are you thinking? The Americans are in Europe. Hitler is getting squeezed on both fronts. The war is coming to an end soon. There is no reason to go.”
“The POW camps are in desperate need of medicine and food and packages and care.”
“Tatiana, they have care. From other nurses.”
“If they have care, how come army asking for Red Cross volunteers?”
“Yes, forother volunteers. Not for you.”
When she did not reply, Edward pressed her. “God, Tatiana,” he said in a shocked voice, “what are you planning to do with Anthony?”
“I wanted to leave him with his great-aunt in Massachusetts, but I think she won’t be able to run after small boy.” Tatiana saw the expression in Edward’s eyes. She took her hands away. “Esther say I could leave him with her. She says her housekeeper Rosa could help look after the baby, but I do not think that’s good idea.”
“You don’tthink ?”
Tatiana did not reply to the sarcasm in his voice but instead said, “I thought I would leave him with Isabella—”
“Isabella? A complete stranger!”
“Not complete stranger. She offered…”
“Tania, she doesn’t know what I know. She doesn’t even know what you know. But I know things even you don’t know. Tell me the truth, are you going because you are planning to look for your husband?”
Tatiana did not reply.
“Oh, Tatiana,” said Edward with a shake of his head. “Oh, Tatiana. You told me he was dead.”
“Edward, what you worried about?”
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He wiped his brow, stepping away from her slightly in his confusion and anxiety. “Tania,” he said, his low voice trembling. “Heinrich Himmler has taken control of the German POW camps this fall. The first thing he did was to refuse any packages or letters to be passed on to the American POWs or to have the camps inspected by the IRC. Himmler assured us the Allied forces are getting fair treatment, all but the Soviets. Right now, the Red Cross does not have permission to examine the German POW camps.
Which only speaks to their desperation. They know the war is so close to being lost, they don’t even care anymore about the fate of their own prisoners. They cared last year, the year before, but not now.
I’m sure the ban on the Red Cross will be lifted, but even so, how many prisoner camps do you think there are, two? Do you know how many? Hundreds! And dozens more Italian, French, English, American camps. How many prisoners do you think that is? Hundreds of thousands would be a conservative estimate.”
“Himmler will change his mind. They did this before in 1943, and then quickly changed when they realize their prisoners are going to be treated bad, too.”
“Yes, before, when they thought they were winning the war! Since the Normandy landings, they know their days are numbered. They don’t care anymore about their stranded men. You know how I know?
Because since 1943, they have not asked the Red Cross to inspect the American POW facilities here in the United States.”
“Why should they? They know Americans treat German prisoners good.”
“No, it’s because they know the war is lost.”
“Himmler will change his mind,” Tatiana said stubbornly. “Red Cross will inspect those camps.”
“Hundreds of thousands of prisoners in hundreds of camps. At a week per camp, that’s two hundred weeks, not allowing time for travel between them. Four years. What are you even thinking?”
Tatiana did not reply. She had not thought that far ahead.
“Tatiana,” Edward said. “Please don’t go.”
Edward seemed to be taking it personally. Tatiana didn’t know what to say.
“Tatiana, what about your son?”
“Isabella will take care of him.”
“Forever? Will she take care of him when his mother is found dead from disease or battle wounds?”
“Edward, I not go to Europe to die.”
“No? You won’t be able to help it. Germany is about to become the front. Poland is in Soviet hands.
What if the Soviets have been looking for you? What if you go to Poland, and are discovered by the Soviet authorities? Jane Barrington, Tatiana Metanova, what do you think they will do with you? If you go to Germany, to Poland, to Yugoslavia, to Czechoslovakia, to Hungary, you are going there to die.
One way or another, you are not coming back.”
That’s not true, she wanted to say. But she knew the Soviets were looking for her. She knew the risks.
They were enormous. And Alexander? He was minuscule. Her plan was a bad one, she knew.
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Alexander had had Luga—a place—to go to. He had had Molotov, had her concrete evacuation, had a place, a name, had Lazarevo to go to. She had his death certificate. With his death certificate clutched and crumpled in her hands, she was going to travel to every POW camp open for inspection and look for him, and if he wasn’t there, she would somehow make her way back to Leningrad and find Colonel Stepanov and ask him about Alexander, and if he didn’t know, she would ask Generals Voroshilov and Mekhlis; she would go to Moscow and ask Stalin himself if she had to.
“Tania, please don’t go,” Edward repeated.
She blinked. “What is Orbeli?”
“Orbeli? You already asked me that. How should I know? I don’t know. What does Orbeli have to do with anything?”
“He said, ‘Remember Orbeli’ to me last time I saw him. Maybe Orbeli is place somewhere in Europe where I supposed to meet him.”
“Before you leave your child to go to the front, shouldn’t you find out what Orbeli is?”
“I tried,” she said. “I couldn’t find out: no one knows.”
“Oh, Tania. It’s most likely nothing.”
Edward’s anxiety ate at Tatiana’s insides. How to justify it? “My son will be fine,” she said feebly.
“Without a father, without a mother?”
“Isabella is wonderful woman.”
“Isabella is a stranger, a sixty-year-old stranger! Isabella is not his mother. When she is dead, what do you think will happen to Anthony?”
“Vikki take care of him.”
Edward laughed joylessly. “Vikki can’t take care of tying the bow on her blouse. Vikki can’t come in on time, can’t tell time. Vikki beats not to your son, not even to you, or her grandparents, but to herself. I pray Vikki never has children of her own. Vikki doesn’t help you take care of Anthony now. What makes you think she will take care of him when her only emotional link with him—you—is gone? How long do you think she will keep that up?” Edward took a deep breath. “And do you know where they will send him when he is an
orphan? The city home for boys. Maybe before you travel to Europe to kill yourself, you should take a look at one of those places to see where your fifteen-month-old son will end up.”
Tatiana paled.
“You haven’t thought this through,” said Edward. “I know that. Because if you had, you wouldn’t do it. I know that for a fact. Do you know how I know?”
“How?” she asked faintly.
“I know,” Edward said, taking her hands, “because I’ve seen what you do for the people who come
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through the golden door. I know because you, Tatiana, always do the right thing.”
She made no reply.
“He already lost a father,” Edward said. “Don’t let your son lose a mother, too. You’re the only thing he has in this world that connects him to himself and to the past and to his destiny. Once he loses you, he will be an unmoored ship for the rest of his life. That’s what you will do to him. That will be your legacy to him.”
Tatiana was mute. She felt suddenly and acutely cold. Edward squeezed her hands. “Tania,” he said.
“Not for Vikki, not for me, not for the veterans upstairs, or for the immigrants at Ellis, but for your son—don’t go.”
Tatiana didn’t know what to do. But the seeds of doubt were formidable and growing. She called Sam Gulotta, who told her he had heard nothing about Alexander, and confirmed for her the dire situation in the German POW and concentration camps, and the fate of the Soviet prisoners incarcerated there. The more Tatiana thought about it, the crazier the plan sounded even to herself and the more guilt she felt about her child.
She asked everybody she could about Orbeli. She asked all the German soldiers and all the Italian soldiers, and the nurses, and the refugees, and then Tatiana went to the New York Public Library, but even there, amid the research books, the microfilm, the magazines, the periodicals, the atlases, the maps, the reference indices, she could not find a mention of an Orbeli.
The very fact of its obscurity made her think less of it, not more. The pointlessness of it diminished it in her eyes instead of magnifying it. It wasn’t a forest or a village, or the name of a fortress, or the name of a general. More and more it seemed a meaningless remark, less to do with her or Alexander than with perhaps a small unrelated thing he had wished to convey to her, like a joke or an anecdote to be promptly forgotten when larger things overtook it. It wasn’t a message, it was an aside, and then he was in the lake, and it should have been forgotten. It wasn’t forgotten because what followed expanded it out of proportion, not because Orbeli deserved expanding.
But the medal, the medal? TheHero of the Soviet Union medal? How did that end up in her backpack?
But finally Tatiana had an explanation for that also. When Dr. Sayers first told her about Alexander, perhaps he had neglected to tell her that he had taken the medal off a dying man’s neck instead of burying him in the lake with it, and then larger events had overtaken it, he had meant to tell her he put it into her backpack in a tiny secret compartment so she would find it someday but not right away, but he was dying and forgot.
She did not go back.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Poland, November 1944
ALEXANDER SLEPT, SITTING UPagainst the tree with Pasha’s head on his lap. At dawn Pasha’s throat swelling subsided. He put his finger over the opening in the plastic tube and took a few gasping breaths through his mouth. Alexander, encouraged, used some medical tape he carried to tape around the tube, to close up the opening as much as possible. He refused to take out the plastic pipe, worrying that if Pasha needed it again, he wouldn’t be able to reproduce his work. Pasha placed his index finger over the opening in the tubing and croaked, “Tape it up, I can’t speak with it open.”
Alexander taped the end shut and watched for a few minutes as Pasha spluttered and struggled to take deep breaths.
“Alexander, listen,” he finally whispered, weakly and faintly. “I have an idea. Carry me on your back out of this no-man’s land to the defense line. I’m still wearing a German uniform, aren’t I?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll save yourself by my German uniform. If you want to save him”—he pointed to Ouspensky and breathed hard—“have him carry one of the German wounded. Do we have any, or are they all dead?”
“I think we have a concussed German.”
“Perfect.” Breath. “Surrender to them carrying their own wounded. You will save your life.”
“The other three can walk.”
“Good. Remain in charge though, don’t let the prisoners talk for you. When you get to the defense line, saySchießbsen Sie nicht . Don’t shoot.”
“Is that all I have to say?” said Alexander. “Why didn’t we say that back in 1941? Or even 1939, for that matter?” He smiled. Pasha breathed.
“What are you two conspiring to do there?” said Ouspensky, overhearing. “You’re not planning to surrender, are you?”
Alexander said nothing.
“Captain, you know we can’t surrender.”
“Can’t retreat, either.”
“We’re not retreating. We’re staying put. We’ll wait for reinforcements to come.”
Pasha and Alexander exchanged a look. “We are surrendering, Ouspensky. I have a wounded man. He needs to be treated immediately.”
“Well, I’m not doing it. They’ll kill us,” said Ouspensky, “and then our own army will disown us.”
“Who says we’re ever going back to our army?” said Pasha, struggling up with Alexander’s help.
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“Oh, you’re a fine one to talk. Certainly you, a dead man walking, have nothing to lose and nowhere to go, but the rest of us have families at home.”
“I have no family,” said Alexander. “But Ouspensky is right.”
Ouspensky smiled with satisfaction at Pasha.
Alexander said, “Stay here, Nikolai. Wait for the Red Army to get to you.”
The smile was wiped off Ouspensky’s face. “Captain! You have a family. I thought you said you had a wife? And he”—pointing derisively to Pasha—“has a sister?”
Alexander and Pasha said nothing.
“Why don’t you two care about her? She’ll be sent to Bolshevik Island in Archangelsk because of your surrender.” No one returned from Bolshevik Island.
Ignoring Ouspensky, Pasha glanced at Alexander. “Ready?” he said.
Alexander nodded, motioning for the four German prisoners. One was delirious. One had a superficial but very bloody and gloriously conspicuous head wound.
Ouspensky was barely able to get out a breath. He was wheezing like Pasha. “Is this what it’s coming down to? You, Captain Belov, rode for fifteen hundred kilometers, you barreled through divisions and regiments, through minefields and death camps, through every river and every mountain, all so you could surrender to the Germans?” He was so incredulous he was hyperventilating.
“Yes,” Alexander said, his own voice shaking. That is exactly why. “I’m done. Now, either you come with us or you stay here.”
“I’m staying here,” said Ouspensky.
Alexander saluted him.
“It’s him,” Ouspensky spat out. “Before him, you were an honorable man. You found him, and since he sold his soul to the devil and lived, you decided why not you, too.”
Alexander was watching Ouspensky. “Why are you taking this so personally, Lieutenant? What does this have to do withyou ?”
“For some reason,” said Pasha, “everything.”
“Oh, fuck you! No one is talking to you. Why don’t you breathe through your pen and shut the fuck up.
You’d be blessedly rotting already if it weren’t for him!”
“Ouspensky!” Alexander said. “You’re out of line. Commander Metanov
is a rank above you.”
“I don’t respect his rank. I don’t recognize his Satan rank,” snapped Ouspensky. “Go ahead, Captain, what are you waiting for? Go! Leave your live men behind.”
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Corporal Demko said timidly, “He’s not leaving me. I’m going with him.”
Ouspensky widened his eyes. “I’m the only one you’re leaving behind?”
“Looks like it,” said Pasha with a smile.
Ouspensky went for him. Alexander stepped between them just in time. Pasha, brave but foolish, could not have fought even a one-lunged Ouspensky. Breathing took all of Pasha’s effort.
“What is it with you two?” Alexander said, pushing Pasha away. “Pasha…”
“I don’t trust him, Alexander. I don’t trust him at all.”
“Oh, you’re a fine one to talk,” Ouspensky snapped.
“Since the moment I laid eyes on him,” Pasha continued, “I’ve had a feeling about him.” He panted and fell quiet.
Alexander took Pasha slightly aside. “He’s all right,” Alexander whispered. “He’s been by my side this whole time. Like Borov was for you.”
“Right by your side,” Pasha echoed.
“Yes. Let’s just take him and go before we make so much noise here the Germans will ready for another battle.”
Pasha said nothing. Alexander bent Pasha’s head back and adjusted the tape on his throat. “You’ve got to stop talking, we’ve got to get you to a medic and get this sewn up. So just shut up for the time being.
Let me handle it.”
He walked back to Ouspensky. “Nikolai, you may not respect his rank, but you have no choice but to respect mine. I cannot leave you in the woods by yourself. I might as well shoot you. I’m ordering you to lay down your arms and to surrender with the rest of us.” He lowered his voice. “It’s for your own good.”
“Oh, just fucking fine,” said Ouspensky. “I’ll go. I’m doing it under protest, I tell you.”
“You’ve been in this whole war under protest. Name me one thing you’ve done of your own volition.”