Paullina Simons - Tatiana and Alexander

Stepanov crouched by him. “What in the world happened to that truck? And I saw the Red Cross doctor’s death certificate for you myself. I told your wife you were dead. Your pregnant wife thinks you’re dead !”

“Everything is as it should be,” replied Alexander. “It’s good to see you, sir. Try not to inhale. There is not enough oxygen here for both of us.”

“Alexander,” said Stepanov. “You didn’t want to tell her what was happening to you?”

Alexander shook his head.

“But why the truck explosion, the death certificate?”

“I wanted her to think there was no hope for me.”

“Why?”

Alexander didn’t answer.

“Anywhere you go—I will go with you,” Tatiana says. “But if you are staying, then I’m staying, too. I’m not leaving my baby’s father in the Soviet Union.” She bends over an overwhelmed Alexander. “What did you say to me in Leningrad? What kind of a life can I build, you said, knowing I have left you to die—or to rot—in the Soviet Union? I’m quoting you back to you. Those were your words.” She smiles. “And on this one point, I will have to agree with you.” She lowers her voice. “If I left you, no matter which road I took, with ponderous clatter indeed, the Bronze Horseman would pursue me all through that long night into my own maddening dust.”

He couldn’t tell that to his commander. He didn’t know if Tatiana had left the Soviet Union.

“You want a smoke?”

“Yes,” replied Alexander. “But can’t here. Not enough oxygen for a smoke.”

Stepanov pulled Alexander up to his feet. “Stand for a few minutes,” Stepanov said. “Stretch your legs.” He looked at Alexander’s bent-sideways head. “This cell is too small for you. They didn’t expect that.”

“Oh, they did. That’s why they put me here.”

Stepanov stood with his back to the door, while Alexander stood across from him.

“What day is it, sir?” asked Alexander. “How long have I been here? Four, five days?”

“The morning of the sixteenth of March,” said Stepanov. “The morning of your third day.”

Third day! Alexander thought with shock.

Third day! Alexander thought with excitement. That would probably mean that Tania …

He didn’t continue with his thoughts. Very quietly, almost inaudibly, Stepanov leaned forward and Alexander thought he said, “Keep talking loudly, so they can hear, but listen to me so that I can laugh with you when you come back in the clover field, and I will show you how to eat clover.”

Alexander looked at Stepanov’s face, more drawn than ever, his eyes gray, his mouth turned down with sympathy and anxiety. “Sir?”

“I didn’t say anything, Major.”

Shaking off the hallucination in his head, of a meadow, of sun, of clover, Alexander repeated in a low voice, “Sir?”

“Everything’s gone to shit, Major,” whispered Stepanov. “They’re already looking for your wife, but … she seems to have disappeared. I convinced her to go back to Leningrad with Dr. Sayers, just as you asked me. I made it easy for her to leave.”

Alexander said nothing, digging his nails into the palms of his hands.

“But now she’s gone. You know who else disappeared? Dr. Sayers. He had informed me he was going back to Leningrad with your wife.”

Alexander dug his nails harder into his palms to keep himself from looking at Stepanov and from speaking.

“He was on his way to Helsinki, but he was supposed to have gone to Leningrad first!” Stepanov exclaimed. “To drop her off, to pick up his own Red Cross nurse he had left in Grechesky hospital. Listen to me, are you listening? They never reached Leningrad. Two days ago his Red Cross truck was found burned, pillaged and turned over on the Finnish-Soviet border at Lisiy Nos. There was an incident with the Finnish troops and four of our men were shot and killed. No sign of Sayers, or of Nurse Metanova.”

Alexander said nothing. He wanted to pick up his heart from the floor. But it was dark, and he couldn’t find it. He heard it roll away from him, he heard it beating, bleeding, pulsing in the corner.

Stepanov lowered his voice another notch. “And Finnish troops shot and killed, too.”

Silence from Alexander.

“And that’s not all.”

“No?” Alexander thought he said.

“No sign of Dr. Sayers. But …” Stepanov paused. “Your good friend, Dimitri Chernenko, was found shot dead in the snow.”

That was small comfort to Alexander.

But it was some comfort.

“Major, why was Chernenko at the border?”

Alexander did not answer. Where was Tatiana? All he wanted to do was ask that question. Without a truck how could they have gotten anywhere? Without a truck what were they doing—walking on foot through the marshes of Karelia?

“Major, your wife is missing. Sayers is gone, Chernenko is dead—” Stepanov hesitated. “And not just dead. But shot dead in a Finn’s uniform. He was wearing a Finnish pilot’s uniform and carrying Finnish ID papers instead of his domestic passport!”

Alexander said nothing. He had nothing to hide except the information that would cost Stepanov his life.

“Alexander!” Stepanov exclaimed in a hissing whisper. “Don’t shut me out. I’m trying to help.”

“Sir,” Alexander said, attempting to mute his fear. “I’m asking you please not to help me anymore.” He wished he had a picture of her. He wanted to touch her white dress with red roses one more time. Wanted to see her young and with him, standing newly married on the steps of the Molotov church.

The fear, the stabbing panic he felt prohibited Alexander from thinking of Tania past. That’s what he would have to learn to do: forbid himself from looking at her even in his memory.

With trembling hands he made a sign of the cross on himself. “I was all right,” he finally managed to say, “until you came here and told me my wife was missing.” He began to shiver uncontrollably.

Stepanov came closer to Alexander. He took off his own coat and gave it to him. “Here, put this around your shoulders.”

Immediately he heard a voice from the outside yell, “It’s time!”

In a whisper, Stepanov said, “Tell me the truth, did you tell your wife to leave with Sayers for Helsinki? Was that your plan all along?”

Alexander said nothing. He didn’t want Stepanov to know—one life, two, three, was enough. The individual was a million people divided by one million; Stepanov did not deserve to die because of Alexander.

“Why are you being so stubborn? Stop it! Having gotten nowhere, they’re bringing in a new man to question you. Apparently the toughest interrogator they have. He has never failed to get a signed confession. They’ve kept you here nearly naked in a cold cell, and soon they’ll come up with something else to break you; they’ll beat you, they’ll put your feet in cold water, they’ll shine a light in your face until you go mad, the interrogator will deliberately tell you things you will want to kill him for, and you need to be strong for all that. Otherwise you have no chance.”

Alexander said faintly, “Do you think she is safe?”

“No, I don’t think she is safe! Who is safe around here, Alexander?” Stepanov whispered. “You? Me? Certainly not her. They’re looking everywhere for her. In Leningrad, in Molotov, in Lazarevo. If she is in Helsinki, they’ll find out, you know that, don’t you? They’ll bring her back. They were calling the Red Cross hospital in Helsinki this morning.”

“It’s time!” someone yelled again.

“How many times in my life will I have to hear those words?” Alexander said. “I heard them for my mother, I heard them for my father, I heard them for my wife, and now I hear them for me.”