The Bridge to Holy Cross

  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.”

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  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

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  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 tireless 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

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  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.

  “Whatwas his rank?”

  “He was a major, once. Demoted to captain.”

  “Captain, how are your ribs? Do you think they’re broken?” asked Tatiana.

  “I’m not a doctor,” said Alexander. “I don’t know. Perhaps.”

  Unbuttoning his shirt, she slowly ran her hands from his throat down to his ribs, whispering, “What hurts, what hurts?”

  He did not answer. He said nothing, nor did he open his eyes.

  His body was unclean and black and blue. She thought his ribs were broken, but when she touched them he did not flinch. That could just be Alexander—he didn’t flinch when she cleaned his head, either—but decided to leave the matter.

  She moved down to his leg irons, detached them, and washed his feet in soapy water. His ankles felt pulpy. The skin on them felt eaten away and raw. It was hard to see in the dark.

  Karolich continued to sit. He even lit a smoke, sat coolly and enjoyed it.

  “Would you like a smoke, Nurse Barrington? These cigarettes are very good.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant, but I don’t smoke. Perhaps your prisoner would like one?”

  Karolich laughed and shoved Alexander’s hip with his boot. “Prisoners in camp jail do not get cigarette privileges, do they, Belov?” He took a deep drag and blew the smoke into Alexander’s face.

  Tatiana got up. “Lieutenant, stop provoking the prisoner in front of me. We’re finished here. Let’s go.”

  Alexander emitted a despondent sound.

  Tatiana collected her things. Karolich locked Alexander’s wrists and ankles to the manacles once again.

  “How long has it been since this prisoner was fed?” she asked.

  “We feed him,” Karolich replied gruffly. “More than he deserves.”

  “How does he eat? Do you take the irons off him?
”

  “The irons never come off him. We put the food in front of him, and he crawls to it and bends his face and eats it off the ground.”

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  “He didn’t eat his food. Do you see the state of him? Is this his old plate? He didn’t eat it, but the rats did. You have rats here, Lieutenant, because you leave the food on the ground for days, and they know where to come for their supper. You do know that rats carry the plague, don’t you? The International Red Cross is here to ensure that exactly these kinds of abuses do not happen. Now, let’s get the old straw out and sweep some clean straw under him.”

  After they had done so, Karolich picked up the plate off the ground. “He’ll be brought fresh food later,”

  he said brusquely.

  She glanced at Alexander, who lay with his eyes closed, his hands clenched in shackles at his stomach.

  She wanted to tell him she would be back, but she didn’t want Karolich to hear her quivering voice.

  “Don’t go,” he said, without opening his eyes.

  “We’ll come back later to see how you are,” Tatiana said weakly, and was grateful that his hands were manacled because she knew he would not have let her go had he been able to move them.

  Tatiana was blinded for a moment by the gray daylight. She stopped cold to get her bearings, and when Karolich asked if she wanted to get some lunch, she said, no, thank you, because she had to count how many supplies they still had left. She told him to go on ahead, that she would soon follow.

  The camp prison was located just to the right of the gatehouse and just to the right of her parked Red Cross jeep. The two guards stood sentry above it on the roof. One of them waved to her. She opened the jeep and looked inside. The truck was a quarter full of supplies, there was another bushel of apples and some food parcels left. She knew she had only minutes to think. She stood quietly, and then loaded up the handtruck with sixty medical kits and walked by herself to the nearest barracks. The fact that she could think of entering a barracks by herself, a woman amid 266 men, only spoke of her desperation, but she was not a fool. Her nurse’s bag hung on the handtruck handle and her P-38 was tucked into the front of her pants where everyone could see it.

  She handed out one medical kit per bed, told them as she passed them that she would be back with the doctor, quickly ran back to get more kits, and more, and more, rushing, rushing. When she got back to the commandant’s house everyone else was finishing lunch. After downing a glass of water, she went to change her clothes, retouched her makeup and then took Penny and Martin aside and said, “Listen, I think we should return to Berlin to get more kits. We have none left, and we’re running out of bandages and penicillin. We’ll go back tonight and return here tomorrow.”

  “We just got here and you want to leave already? She is so fickle, Martin, isn’t she?” Penny said with a twinkle.

  “Fickle is the least of what she is,” Martin said. “I told you we shouldn’t have come to a place like this without proper support.”

  Tatiana patted him on the shoulder. “You were so right, Dr. Flanagan,” she said. “But we did get through five thousand people between yesterday and today, and that’s quite an achievement.”

  They agreed to leave at eight in the evening, though Martin expressed reservations about driving on unfamiliar roads at night. While Penny and Martin went with Karolich through the German civilian barracks that Tatiana had just been through, she said that she was going to finish inspecting the rest of the

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  jailed men. When Karolich said he would come with her, Tatiana said, “Nurse Davenport and Dr.

  Flanagan need you more. The jailed men are the safest, you know that. After all, they can’t touch me, and I’ll have Corporal Perdov with me.”

  Reluctantly, Karolich left with Martin and Penny, and Tatiana ran to the commandant’s kitchen and got them to prepare a hot lunch of sausage, potatoes, squash, bread with butter, and oranges. “I haven’t eaten and I’m starved,” she said gamely. There was a carafe of water, and a large glass of vodka that she poured herself.

  As she walked through the jail door, this time she smiled at Corporal Perdov, and he smiled back.

  “Corporal, I’m here to feed cell number seven. I’ve discussed it with Lieutenant Karolich. The prisoner hasn’t eaten in three days.”

  “I can’t unchain him.”

  “It won’t be necessary. I’ll feed him.”

  “Hey,” Perdov said, looking at her tray. “Is that a glass of somethingextra special?”

  “Why, yes!” She smiled. “But I don’t think our prisoner should have that, do you?”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “Exactly. Why don’t you have the whole thing.”

  Perdov took the vodka and downed it in two gulps. Tatiana watched him amiably. “Very good,” she said. “I might come back later with his dinner, and maybe I can bring the prisoner another glass.” She winked at Perdov.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, “but don’t be so stingy next time.” And burped.

  “I’ll see what I can do. Now, can you open cell seven for me?”

  Alexander was sleeping in a sitting position.

  “I think you’re wasting your time,” Perdov said. “This one doesn’t deserve a nurse’s attention. Don’t take too long, all right?”

  Leaving the door open, he walked back to his chair and Tatiana descended the step and came to Alexander. Setting the tray on the ground, she kneeled by him and whispered, “Shura…”

  He opened his eyes. She threw her arms around him and pressed herself to him, his bandaged head cradled near her neck. She held him as tightly as she could, every once in a while whispering,

  “Shura…Shura…”

  “Tighter, Tania, hold me tighter.”

  She held him tighter. “How are the locks?”

  Alexander showed her they were open. His wrists lay in them freely. “What happened to your hair?”

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  “I colored it. Keep your hands in the manacles. Perdov can come in at any time.”

  “Are you always on a name basis with the gatekeeper? Why did you color it?”

  “Didn’t want to be recognized. Just as well. Nikolai Ouspensky is here.”

  “Be very very careful with Nikolai,” he warned. “Like Dimitri, he is the enemy. Come closer.”

  She did.

  “What happened to your freckles?” he whispered.

  “Makeup over them.”

  They kissed. They kissed as if they were young once again in the Luga woods, and it was the first summer of their life, or standing on the ledge of St. Isaac’s under the moon and the stars, they kissed as if they were in Lazarevo, raw for each other, they kissed as if she had just told him she was getting him out of Russia, bending over him in the Morozovo hospital ward. They kissed as if they had not seen each other for many years. They kissed as if they had been together for many years.

  They kissed away Orbeli and Dimitri, they kissed away war and communism, America and Russia. They kissed awayeverything , leaving behind only what remained—pale fragments of Tania and Shura.

  His hands moved out of the manacles. She pulled away instantly and shook her head. “No, no, I’m serious. He can come in at any time and then we’re sunk.”

  With great reluctance he slipped his hands back in the open iron rings. “Makeup can’t hide the scar on your cheek. Where did you get it? Finland?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it later if we have time. Now I’m going to feed you, and you are going to eat your food and listen to me.”

  “I’m not hungry. How on this God’s earth did you find me?”

  “You will eat your food because you need to be strong,” she said, bringing the spoonful of sausage and potatoes to his mouth. “And you left a short trail of yourself in this
world.”

  Contrary to his words, he ate ravenously. She didn’t speak while she watched his great hunger.

  “Shura…we have seconds, are you listening?”

  “Why is this suddenly so familiar?” he said. “Tell me another one of your plans, Tatiasha. How is our boy?”

  “Our boy is great. He’s a great, smart, beautiful boy.”

  “Where are you living?”

  “New York. We have no time. Are you listening?”

  He was chewing the bread and could only nod. “What was the name of the man who assaulted you?”

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  “I’m not telling you.”

  “You are telling me. What was his name?”

  “No.”

  “Tania! What was his name?”

  “Grammer Kerault. He is Austrian.”

  “I know him.” Alexander’s eyes were cold. “He’s always in here. Dying of stomach cancer, doesn’t care what he does.” Then they warmed as he turned his gaze on her. “How are you going to get me out of here?” he whispered.

  She bent over him. They kissed desperately. “Honey,” she whispered. “Honey, I know you’re afraid.”

  “I don’t want food, I don’t want drink, or even a smoke. Just…just sit by me for two seconds, Tania.

  Press yourself to me for two seconds to let me know I am real.”

  She pressed herself to him.

  “Where are our wedding rings?”

  She pulled the rope out from her tunic. “Until we can wear them again,” she whispered—and suddenly heaved herself away.

  Perdov stepped into the doorway. “Are you all right, Nurse? You’ve been here a while. Do you need me to help you?”

  “No, that won’t be necessary, Corporal, thank you,” Tatiana said, tucking the rings back into her tunic and giving Alexander the last bit of potato. “I’m almost finished. I’ll be just another minute.”

  “Give a holler if you need me.” He smiled and disappeared.

  “Are you here with a convoy?” Alexander asked.

  “There are three of us in one Red Cross jeep. Me, another nurse, and a doctor. We have to get you on that jeep.”

  “Tomorrow Stalin is coming for me to take me back to the Soviet Union.”