They could not speak. To be in Alexander’s arms, to smell him, to hear his breathing, his voice again…
Shh, shh,he was still whispering and holding her, pulling off her hat, her hairnet, her hairpins, letting her black hair fall down.
His hands were in it. His eyes were closed. Perhaps he was imagining her hair was not black but blonde
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again.
The way Alexander was touching her now, she could tell that he was blind and had not yet learned to see—he was holding her in that impossible choke that had to do not quite with love or passion, but somehow with both and with neither. The embrace wasn’t an alloy, it was a conflagration of anguish and bitter relief and fear.
Tatiana could tell Alexander would like to have spoken more, but he couldn’t, and so he sat on the hay with his legs open, while she kneeled in front of him, folded into his arms, and every once in a while from his shuddering body would come aShh, shh …
Not for her. Not for Tatiana. For himself.
Continuing to hold her, Alexander lowered her onto the straw. His trembling limbs surrounded her.
Tatiana was barely breathing, her own body convulsing. To rage, to quell—
They didn’t know what to do—to undress? To stay clothed? She couldn’t move, nor want to. His lips were on her neck, her clavicles, he was clawing at her, ripping open her tunic, baring her breasts to his desperate gasping mouth. She wanted to whisper his name, to moan maybe. Tears kept trickling down her temples.
He removed from himself and her only what was necessary. He didn’t so much enter her as break her open. Her mouth remained in a mute screaming O, her hands clutched him, not close enough, and through the whisper of grief, through the cry of desire, Tatiana felt that Alexander, in his complete abandon, was making love to her as if he were being pulled from the cross to which he was still attached by nails.
His gripping her, his ferocious, unremitting movement was so intense that Tatiana felt consciousness yield to—
Oh my God, Shura, please…she mouthed inaudibly.
But it could not be any other way.
Violent release came for Alexander at the expense of Tatiana’s momentary lapse of reason, as she cried out, her pleas carrying through the barn, to the basin, to the river, to the sky.
He remained on top of her without moving, without pulling away. His body was shaking. He couldn’t be any closer. She held him closer still…And then…
Shh, shh.
That wasn’t Alexander.
That was Tatiana.
They both fell asleep.
Still they hadn’t spoken.
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She woke up to find him inside her again.
And night, though lengthened by gods, wasn’t long enough.
She spread the trench coat on the hay. He took the clothes off her. In the unmuted darkness, Tatiana cried and cried out, stretched out on the rack of his famine.
Time and again she was imprisoned and released—barely, just for breath; time and again she burned for Alexander, in thehands of Alexander, and cried out again,Oh, Shura …endlessly, endlessly.
During brief respite, he continued to lie with his limbs over her, and again she was crying.
He whispered, “Tatia, what’s a man to think when every time he makes love to his wife, she cries?”
“That he is his wife’s only family,” said Tatiana, crying. “That he is her whole life.”
“As she is his,” he said. “You don’t see him crying.” Tatiana could not see his face—it was buried in her breasts.
There was no night.
There was only twilight; the sky turned blue then lavender, then pink again within minutes that weren’t long enough.
The night was not long enough.
Not long enough for the floor in Mathew Sayers’s office, for Lisiy Nos, for the swamps of Finland, not long enough for Stockholm.
Not long enough for the punishment cell in Morozovo, for the ten grains of morphine in Slonko, for the drive across Europe with Nikolai Ouspensky.
Not long enough for the river Vistula.
And nothing was long enough for the forests and mountains of Holy Cross.
“Don’t tell me another word.” Tatiana’s voice was defeated. “I don’t have the strength to hear it.”
“I don’t have the strength to tell it.”
After Tatiana heard about Pasha, she could not talk or look at Alexander, as she lay supine, her legs drawn up to her chest, while he lay behind her whispering, “I’m sorry, Tania. I’m sorry.”
Just a gasp from a bereft Tatiana.
“I was dying in 1944 before I found him,” said Alexander. “You can’t imagine what stormed inside me as I pushed my penal battalion across every fucking river in Poland.”
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“Alexander, what I would have given for a penal battalion.”
He kissed the soft flesh between her shoulder blades.
She rolled into a tighter coil, seeking to return to the place she had once shared with her brother.
Alexander didn’t even bother uncoiling her to return to the place he shared with her.
Alexander was not so much sleeping as unconscious, while Tatiana was propped up on her elbow, tracing the scars on his body. She didn’t want to wake him but she couldn’t stop touching him. He had marks on his body that defied her understanding. How could a body bear all this yet live, thinner than before, less whole than before, raggedly tearing apart at the seams, yet live?
Her hand cupped him softly, then ran down to his shins, and up again to his arms, where it stayed, caressing him, while Tatiana stared at his sleeping face.
There is one moment, a moment in eternity. Before we find out the truth about one another. That simple moment is the one that propels us through life—what we felt like at the very edge of our future, standing over the abyss, before we knew for sure we loved. Before we knew for sure we loved forever. Before the dying Dasha, the dying Mama, the dying Leningrad. Before Luga. Before the divinity of Lazarevo, when the miracles you heaped upon me with your love and your body alloyed us for life. Before all that, you and I walked through the Summer Garden, and once in a while my bare arm touched your arm, and once in a while you spoke and that gave me an excuse to look up into your face, into your laughing eyes, to catch a glimpse of your mouth and I, who had never been touched, tried to imagine what it might be like to have your mouth touch me. Falling in love with you in the Summer Garden in the white nights of Leningrad is the moment that propels me through life.
He woke up, saw her. “What are you doing?” he whispered.
“Watching over you,” she whispered back.
And he closed his eyes and reached for her, taking her almost without waking, and then slept.
The next morning at dawn, the farmer came in to milk the cows. They lay silently in the loft and listened to him, and after he left, Tatiana dressed, went down the ladder and squeezed some milk for her and Alexander into a cup she carried to dispense medicine. He came with her, holding both pistols in his hands.
They drank to bursting.
“My God, you’re thinner than I’ve ever seen you,” she said. “Have some more milk. Have all of it.”
He drank. “You’re curvier than I’ve ever seen you.” He bent to her on the little stool. “Your breasts are bigger.”
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“Motherhood, I guess,” she muttered, kissing him.
“Let’s go up,” he said, his hand on her.
They went up. But before they had a chance to undress, they heard the sound of an engine outside. It was seven in the morning. Alexander looked out the small, four-pane loft window. A military truck was outside and four Red Army officers were talking to the farmer
in the clearing.
He glanced back at Tatiana.
“Who’s there?” she whispered.
“Tania, sit back against the wall but not too far. Hold the P-38 and the ammo.”
“Who’s there?”
“They’ve come for us.”
She emitted a cry, creeping to the window. “Oh, my God, there are four of them, what are we going to do, we’re trapped up here!”
“Shh. Maybe they’ll leave.” Alexander readied the machine gun, all three pistols and the Commando.
She watched them out of the corner of the window. The farmer was opening his hands, shrugging his shoulders. The soldiers were coming up too close to him, pointing to the house, the fields, and finally the barn. The farmer moved out of their way, motioning with his hand in the direction of the barn.
“The revolver, is it double action, or single action?”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Double action, I think. I’m almost sure,” she said, trying to remember. “Does it recock by itself you mean? Yes.”
Alexander lay flat with two bales in front of him, the machine gun and pistols by his right side, the Commando in his hands pointed at the ladder. Tatiana, her shaking hands full of clips, sat against the barn wall behind him.
He turned around. “Not a single sound, Tania. Stop shaking.”
Mutely she nodded. Tried to stop shaking.
The barn door opened and the farmer came in with one of the officers. Tatiana’s heart was beating so loudly that she could barely hear. The officer spoke very poor German intermingled with Russian. The farmer must have told him that no one had been through these parts, because the officer yelled in Russian,
“You’re sure of this, you’re sure?”
They went on in circles like this for a few seconds, and suddenly the officer stopped speaking and looked around. “Do you smoke?” he asked in Russian.
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“Nein, nein,”said the farmer.“Ich rauche nei in der Scheune wegen Brandgefahr.”
“Well, fire or no fire, somebody has been smoking in your fucking barn!”
Tatiana put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying out.
The officer ran out of the barn. She looked out the window. He said something to the rest of the men.
One of them turned off the engine and they all retrieved their machine guns.
“Shura,” Tatiana whispered.
“Shh. Don’t speak. Don’t even breathe.”
The farmer was still standing in the middle of his barn when the four Soviets walked in with their weapons.
“Get the fuck out of here,” one of them said to the farmer. He ran.
“Who’s here?” they called.
Tatiana held her breath.
“There’s no one here,” said one of them.
“We know you’re here, Belov,” said another. “Just come out and nobody will get hurt.”
Alexander said nothing.
“You have a wife you should think about. You want her to live, don’t you?”
Tatiana heard the quiet creaking of the ladder.
Alexander lay so still you could have walked by him and not known he was there. There was another creak.
One of the officers below said, “If you come out peacefully, your wife will get amnesty.”
Another said, “We are all heavily armed. You cannot escape. Let’s do this reasonably.”
Alexander barely even leaned over. He just tipped the Commando downward and fired a .357 bullet into the head of the man on the ladder. The man flew backward in a spasm, the other men crouched, raising their guns, but they couldn’t raise them fast enough, nor hide. Alexander aimed fired, aimed fired, aimed fired. The men didn’t have a chance to take cover, much less open fire.
He jumped up and turned to Tatiana. “Let’s go,” he said. “Can’t stay here another second. If the farmer has a telephone, he’s on it right now.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have a telephone,” Tatiana muttered.
“Can’t count on that, can we? Hurry.”
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She quickly collected their things while Alexander reloaded the revolver.
“Nice weapon, Tania,” he said. “Some recoil on it, though. What’s the muzzle velocity, do you know?”
“The man who sold it to me told me it was four hundred and fifty meters per second.”
Alexander whistled. “Immense power. Almost like my Shpagin. Are you ready?”
They glanced out the window to make sure no one was coming, and then descended the ladder, stepped over the dead men at the door—though not before Alexander reached into their pockets and relieved them of their Soviet cigarettes—and were out. From their truck, Alexander took one light machine gun and one ammunition belt. Tatiana asked how he was going to carry another machine gun, this one with a bipod, plus a sub-machine-gun, three sidearms, and all the ammo.
“Don’t worry about my end,” he said, throwing the metal ammunition belt around his neck. “Just worry about yours.”
“We could take their truck,” Tatiana suggested.
“Yes, good idea, we’ll drive it to the next checkpoint.”
They ran through the fields, away from the farm, into the forest.
They walked until noon.
“Can we stop?” Tatiana pleaded. They were about to cross a stream. “You must be tired. We’ll wash up, maybe have a bite to eat. Where are we, anyway?”
“Nowhere,” he said, reluctantly stopping. “Barely four miles from the farm and the Soviet army.”
“Four miles south?” she said with hope. “That would mean that we’re only about—”
“West. We’re not heading south.”
She stared at him. “What do you mean, we’re not heading south? Berlin is south.”
“Hmm. That’s where they think we’ll be going.”
“But eventually we have to go south, no?”
“Eventually, yes.”
She didn’t want to say anymore. They washed their faces and brushed their teeth. “Just don’t give me any of that morphine toothpaste,” Alexander said.
She unpacked a few things to eat. She had Spam—with a smile. And he actually smiled back, and said,
“I like it. But how do you plan to open it?”
“Ah, because it comes from America,” she said, “it has a little can opener built into the cap.”
She had some dried bread, dried apple chips. They ate, drinking water out of the stream.
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“Okay, let’s go,” he said, springing up.
“Shura,” she said, glancing up at him. “I’d like to go in the water. Wash. All right? It won’t take long.”
He sighed.
After he had smoked two or three cigarettes, he undressed and went into the water after her.
They were sitting on a log next to the stream in the canopied and secluded woods. They were both astride the log, she in front of him, with her back to him. He was wearing his skivvies. She was wearing a white tank top and underwear. They weren’t speaking.
Presently Alexander leaned down to her and, kissing her neck under her ear, whispered, “I want to see those freckles.” Tatiana purred in a soft chime, and turned her head to him. They looked at each other a moment, and then they kissed. The brush fell from his hands as they went around her neck, touching the wedding bands.
He bent her head all the way back, as his hand moved down to her breasts, to her stomach, to between her thighs. She undressed and straddled him on the log, standing against him. He cupped her breasts, and pulled her to sit on top of him, bending to her nipples.
Her soft moans echoed through the woods.
Alexander carried her to their open trench blanket. She lay on the blanket in front of him, and he kneeled in front o
f her and put his fingers on her, but only for a short while, too short a while. She was too fevered. He climbed on top of her, and she began to cry out and cry—
Suddenly Tatiana stopped moving. Stopped making a single sound except the panting which she could not control. Clutching Alexander to herself, she whispered, “Shura, oh my God, there is a man watching us.”
He stopped moving, too. “Where?” he said into her ear, not turning his head.
“Over to my—”
“Clock, Tania. Tell me where he is on the clock. I’m in the middle.”
“He’s at four thirty.”
Alexander lay very still, as still as he had lain up in the barn that morning. Tatiana emitted a puppy whimper.
“Shh,” he said without a breath. The P-38 lay on the trench blanket by his left hand. He lifted himself slightly off Tatiana and in one fluid motion, cocked the lever, turned his left hand and fired three times.
There was a cry from the woods and the sound of a body crashing into the bushes.
They both jumped up. Alexander threw on his shorts, Tatiana her underwear. He went to look, armed with his Commando and his Colt. She followed close behind, her hands on her breasts.
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A man in a Soviet uniform lay spurting blood. Two of the shots hit him, one in the shoulder, one in the neck. Alexander took away the man’s loaded pistol and went back to the clearing. Tatiana kneeled down in front of the man and pressed her hand against his neck wound.
From behind she heard Alexander’s incredulous low voice. “Tatiana, what are you doing?”
“Nothing,” she said, loosening the man’s collar. “He can’t breathe.”
With a guttural growl, Alexander grabbed her, pulled her out of the way, pointed the Colt and shot the man twice, point-blank in the head. She screamed, fell down, and in her terror tried blindly to get away from Alexander who yanked her up off the ground, still holding the Colt in his hand. She shut her eyes, struggling so hard she was on the verge of becoming hysterical.
“Tatiana! What the fuck are you doing?”
“Let go of me!”
“He can’t breathe? I fucking hope not! Certainly not anymore. Are you trying to save him or us? This is not a fucking joke, your life and mine! You can’t be bending down, making his last moments better when we’re seconds away from death!”