Paullina Simons - Tatiana and Alexander

Alexander didn’t like to disagree with his father, but he wanted to remind him that every time he and his mother argued they used that kind of language—and worse. His father was always under the impression that just because the fighting didn’t concern Alexander, Alexander couldn’t hear it. As if his parents weren’t in the next room, or right next door, or even right in front of him. In Barrington, Alexander had never heard anything. His parents’ bedroom was at the opposite end of the hallway upstairs, there were rooms and doors in between, and he had never heard a thing. It was as it should be.

“Dad,” he tried again. “Please. What is that smell?”

Uncomfortable, his father replied, “That’s just the toilets, Alexander.”

Looking around his bedroom, Alexander asked where they were.

“Outside in the hall.” Harold smiled. “Look on the bright side—you won’t have to go far in the middle of the night.”

Alexander put down his backpack and took off his coat. He didn’t care how cold he was. He wasn’t sleeping in his coat. “Dad,” he said, breathing through his mouth, wanting to retch. “Don’t you know I never get up in the middle of the night? I’m a deep sleeper.”

There was a small cot with a thin wool blanket. After Harold left the room, Alexander went to the open window. It was December, well below freezing. Looking down onto the street from the second floor, Alexander noticed five people lying on the ground in one of the doorways. He left the window open. The fresh cold air would clear out the room.

Going out into the hall, he was going to use the toilet but couldn’t. He went outside instead. Coming back, he undressed and climbed into bed. The day had been long and he was asleep in seconds, but not before he wondered if capitalism had a smell also.

CHAPTER TWO

Arriving at Ellis Island, 1943

TATIANA STUMBLED OUT OF bed and walked to the window. It was morning, and the nurse was going to bring the baby soon for a feed. She pushed the white curtains away. Opening the latch, she tried to lift the window, but it was stuck, the white paint having sealed the frame to the wall. She tugged on it. It popped open and she pulled it up, leaning her head outside. It was a warm morning that smelled like salt water.

Salt water. She breathed in deeply, and then she smiled. She liked that smell. It was unlike the smells that were familiar to her.

The seagulls cutting the air with their screeching were familiar.

The view was not familiar.

New York harbor in the foggy dawn was a misty glass-like expanse of greenish sea, and off in the distance she saw tall buildings, and to the right, through the pervading fog, a statue lifted its right arm in a flame salute.

With fascinated eyes, Tatiana sat by the window and stared at the buildings across the water. They were so tall! And so beautiful, and there were so many of them crowding the skyline, spires, flattops jutting out, proclaiming the mortal man to the immortal skies. The winding birds, the calmness of the water, the vastness of the buildings, and the glass harbor itself emptying out into the Atlantic.

Then the fog lifted and the sun came up into her eyes, and she had to turn away. The harbor became less glassy as ferries and tugboats, all manner of lighters and freighters, and even some yachts, started crisscrossing the bay, sounding their whistles and horns in such cacophonous delight that Tatiana thought about closing the window. She didn’t.

Tatiana had always wanted to see an ocean. She had seen the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea and she had seen many lakes—one Lake Ladoga too many—but never an ocean, and the Atlantic was an ocean on which Alexander once sailed when he was a little boy, watching fireworks on the Fourth of July. Wasn’t it Fourth of July soon? Maybe Tatiana could see some fireworks. She would have to ask Brenda, her nurse, who was a bit of a cow, and conveyed all her information rather gruffly, the bottom part of her face—and all of her heart—covered by a mouthpiece to protect against Tatiana.

“Yes,” Brenda said. “There will be fireworks. Fourth of July is in two days. They’re not going to be like in the days before the war, but there will be some. But don’t you go worrying about fireworks. You’ve been in America less than a week and you’re asking about fireworks? You’ve got a child to protect against an infectious disease. Have you been outside for a walk today? You know the doctor told you you’ve got to take walks in the fresh air, and keep your mouth covered in case you cough on your baby, and not lift him because that will tire you out—have you been outside? And what about breakfast?” Brenda always talked too fast, Tatiana thought, almost deliberately so that Tatiana wouldn’t understand.

Even Brenda couldn’t ruin breakfast—eggs and ham and tomatoes and milky coffee (dehydrated milk or no). Tatiana ate and drank sitting on her bed. She had to admit that the sheets, the softness of the mattress and the pillows, and the thick woolen blanket were comforts like bread—crucial.

“Can I have my son now? I need to feed him.” Her breasts were full.

Brenda slammed the window shut. “Don’t open the window anymore,” she said. “Your child will catch cold.”

“Summer air will make him catch cold?”

“Yes, moist , wet summer air will.”

“But you just said me to go outside for walk—”

“Outside air is outside air, inside air is inside air,” Brenda said.

“He has not caught my TB,” Tatiana said, coughing loudly for effect. “Bring me my baby, please.”

After Brenda brought the baby and Tatiana fed him, she went to open the window again and then perched herself up on the window sill, cradling the infant in her arms. “Look, Anthony,” whispered Tatiana in her native Russian. “Do you see? Do you see the water? It is pretty, right? And across the harbor there is a big city with people and streets, and parks. Anthony, as soon as I am better, we will take one of those loud ferry boats and walk on the streets of New York. Would you like that?” Stroking her infant son’s face, Tatiana stared across the water.

“Your father would,” she whispered.

CHAPTER THREE

Morozovo, 1943

MATTHEW SAYERS APPEARED BY Alexander’s bed at around one in the morning and stated the obvious. “You’re still here.” He paused. “Maybe they won’t take you.”

Dr. Sayers was an American and an eternal optimist.

Alexander shook his head. “Did you put my Hero of the Soviet Union medal in her backpack?” was all he said.

The doctor nodded.

“Hidden, as I told you?”

“As hidden as I could.”

Now it was Alexander’s turn to nod.

Sayers brought from his pocket a syringe, a vial, and a small medicine bottle. “You’ll need this.”

“I need tobacco more. Have you got any of that?”

Sayers took out a box full of cigarettes. “Already rolled.”

“They’ll do.”

Sayers showed Alexander a small vial of colorless liquid. “I’m giving you ten grains of morphine solution. Don’t take it all at once.”

“Why would I take it at all? I’ve been off it for weeks.”

“You might need it, who knows? Take a quarter of a grain. Half a grain at most. Ten grains is enough to kill two grown men. Have you ever seen this administered?”

“Yes,” said Alexander, Tania springing up in his mind, syringe in her hands.

“Good. Since you can’t start an IV, in the stomach is best. Here are some sulfa drugs, to make sure infection does not recur. A small container of carbolic acid; use it to sterilize your wound if all the other drugs are gone. And a roll of bandages. You’ll need to change the dressing daily.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”