Tatiana and Alexander. Paullina Simons

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СКАЧАТЬ get Tatiana out of the Soviet Union, Alexander Belov grit his teeth and closed his eyes. He clenched his fists and backed away from her; he pushed her away, he let her go.

      There was only one thing left for him to do in his old life, and that was to stand up and salute the doctor who could save his wife. For now there was nothing to do but wait.

      Deciding he did not wish to be taken out of bed in his hospital clothes, Alexander asked the night shift nurse to bring him his Class A major’s uniform and his officer dress cap. He shaved with his knife and a bit of water by the side of his bed, dressed and then sat in the chair, arms folded. When they came for him, as he knew they would, he wanted to go with as much dignity as the lackeys for the NKVD would allow. He heard loud snoring from the man in the bed next to him, hidden from view by the isolation tent.

      Tonight—what was Alexander’s reality? What was it that determined Alexander’s consciousness? And more important, what would happen to him in an hour or two when everything Alexander had ever been would come into question? When the secret police chairman General Mekhlis would lift his beady, lard-encrusted eyes and say to him, “Tell us who you are, Major,” what would be Alexander’s answer?

      Was he Tatiana’s husband?

      Yes.

      “Don’t cry, honey.”

      “Don’t come, yet. Please. Don’t. Not yet.”

       “Tania, I have to go.” He told Colonel Stepanov he was going to be back for Sunday night roll call and he could not be late.

      “Please. Not yet.”

       “Tania, I’ll get another weekend leave—” He is panting. “After the Battle of Leningrad. I’ll come back here. But now …”

       “Don’t, Shura, please don’t.”

       “You’re holding me so tight. Release your legs.”

       “No. Stop moving. Please. Just …”

       “It’s nearly six, babe. I have to go.”

       “Shura, darling, please … don’t go.”

       “Don’t come, don’t go. What can I do?”

       “Stay right here. Inside me. Forever inside me. Not yet, not yet.”

       “Shh, Tania, shh.”

       And five minutes later, he is bolting out the door. “I’ve got to run, no, don’t walk me to the barracks. I don’t want you walking by yourself at night. You still have the pistol I gave you? Stay here. Don’t watch me walk down the corridor. Just—come here.” He envelops her in his coat, hugging her into himself, kissing her hair, her lips. “Be a good girl, Tania,” he says. “And don’t say goodbye.”

       She salutes him. “I’ll see you, the captain of my heart,” says Tatiana, her tears having fallen down her face from Friday till Sunday.

      Was he a soldier in the Red Army?

      Yes.

      Was he the man who had entrusted his life to Dimitri Chernenko, a worthless demon disguised as a friend?

      Yes, again.

      But once, Alexander had been an American, a Barrington. He spoke like an American. He laughed like an American. He played summer games like an American, and swam like one and took his life for granted like one. He had friends he thought he was going to have for life, and once there were forests of Massachusetts that Alexander called home, and a child’s bag where he hid his small treasures—the shells and the eroded glass bits he had found on Nantucket Sound, the wrapper from one of the cotton candies, bits of twine and string, a photograph of his friend Teddy.

      Once there was a time he had a mother, her tanned, made-up, large-eyed familiar face laughing into his memory.

      And when the moon was blue and the sky black and the stars beaming down their light on him, for a stitch in eternity Alexander had found what he thought was going to elude him all of his Soviet life.

      Once.

      Alexander Barrington was coming to an end. Well, he wasn’t going to go quietly.

      He put on his three military valor medals and his medal of the Order of the Red Star for driving a tank across the barely frozen lake, he put on his cap, sat in the chair by his bed and waited.

      Alexander knew how the NKVD came for people like him. They needed to cause as little commotion as possible. They came in the middle of the night, or they came in a crowded train station while you were on your way to a Crimean resort. They came in a fish market, they came through a neighbor who wanted you to come into his room for just a sec. They asked to sit next to you in the canteen where you were having your pelmeni. They hemmed and hawed their way through a store and asked you to join them in the special order department. They sat next to you on a bench in the park. They were always polite and quiet and smartly dressed. The car that would pull up to the curb to take you to the Big House and the concealed pistols they carried were nowhere in sight. One woman, who had been arrested in the middle of a crowd, started to scream loudly and climbed a lamppost and continued carrying on so that even the normally indifferent passers-by stopped and stared; she made the NKVD work impossible. They had to leave her alone, and she, instead of disappearing somewhere to the middle of the country, went home to sleep, and they came for her in the night.

      For Alexander they had previously come one afternoon after school. He was with a friend, and two men came up to him and told him he had forgotten about his meeting with his history teacher, could he possibly step back in for a moment and speak to him? He knew right away, he smelled their lies on them. Not budging, he grabbed his friend’s arm and shook his head. His friend left—precipitously—knowing when he wasn’t wanted. Alexander remained alone with the two men, reviewing his options. When he saw the black car slowly pull up to the curb, he knew his options were narrowing. He wondered if they would shoot him in the back in broad daylight while there were other people around. He decided they wouldn’t and took off. They gave chase, but they were in their thirties, not seventeen. Alexander lost them in a few minutes, side-stepped into an alley, hid and made his way to a market near St. Nicholas church. After buying a bit of bread, he was afraid to go home. He thought they would go there next to look for him. Alexander spent the night outdoors.

       The next morning he went to school, thinking he would be safe in the classroom. The principal himself brought a note to Alexander, saying he was needed in the office.

       As soon as he left the room, he was grabbed and quietly taken outside and placed inside the car already waiting at the curb.

       In the Big House he was beaten and then transferred to the Kresty prison where he awaited the resolution of his fate. He had few illusions.

      But however they came for him tonight, Alexander knew they would not want to make a ruckus in the middle of a military hospital critical ward. The charade, the pretense they were using—of taking him across to Volkhov to be promoted to lieutenant colonel—would serve the apparatchiks well until they got him alone. Alexander’s goal was to make sure he did not СКАЧАТЬ