Tatiana and Alexander (38 page)

They ran into the fire.

Alexander breathed through the wet towel tied around his head as
they ran through the burning woods. Ouspensky held his breath for as long as he could, breathing through his trench coat sodden with rain. But Pasha pummeled right through it. Brave, thought Alexander. Brave and foolish. Somehow they got through the flames. In this case, their wet clothes were to their advantage: they refused to catch fire. And the men’s hair had all been shaved, it wasn’t flailing in the flames. One of the prisoners wasn’t lucky: a branch fell on him and he lost consciousness. One of the other Germans slung him on his back and continued forward.

With the fire behind them, Alexander took one look at Pasha and saw that he was more foolish than brave. Pasha was pale. He slowed down, then stopped. They were still amid the smoke.

Alexander stopped running. “What’s the matter?” he said, taking the rag away from his mouth and immediately choking and coughing.

“I don’t know,” Pasha croaked, holding on to his throat.

“Open your mouth.”

Pasha did, but it didn’t help. He suddenly went down like a felled tree, and the sounds coming from him were those of a man who was choking on food or a bullet; they were the sounds of a man who could not breathe.

Alexander put his own wet towel against Pasha’s nose and mouth. It wasn’t helping, and he himself was gagging. The open flames had been better than the enemy smoke in the oppressive forest. Ouspensky was pulling on his arm. The rest of the German men were up ahead already, held together by Demko’s—the last remaining foot soldier’s—machine gun. They were dozens of meters ahead, but Alexander couldn’t get through the bush and could not leave Pasha. Couldn’t move forward, couldn’t move back.

Something had to be done. Pasha was hacking, wheezing, gasping for the breath that wouldn’t come. Alexander grabbed Pasha, threw him over his shoulders, took the rag from him to cover his own mouth and ran. Ouspensky ran with him.

How much time had Alexander lost carrying Pasha? Thirty seconds? One minute? It was hard to tell. Judging by the man’s stifling inability to draw in a breath, it was too long. Soon it would be too late. He called for Ouspensky when the air was slightly clearer.

“Where’s the medic?” Alexander panted.

“Medic’s dead. Remember? We took his helmet.”

Alexander could barely remember.

“Didn’t he have an assistant?”

“Assistant died seven days ago.”

Carefully Alexander moved Pasha off his back, and sat down holding him in his arms. Ouspensky glanced at them. “What’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t know. He wasn’t hit, he didn’t swallow anything.” Just in case, Alexander elongated Pasha’s neck to be in a straight line with the rest of his body, and stuck his fingers into Pasha’s mouth, feeling around for any obstructions. There weren’t any, but deeper near the esophagus, he felt around for the opening to the trachea and there wasn’t one. The throat felt pulpy and thickened. Quickly Alexander kneeled over Pasha, held his nose shut and blew quick breaths into Pasha’s throat. Nothing. He breathed long breaths into Pasha’s throat. Still nothing. He felt for the opening in the mouth again. There wasn’t any. Alexander became frightened. “What the hell is happening?” he muttered. “What’s wrong with him?”

“I’ve seen it before,” Ouspensky said. “Back at Sinyavino. Seen a number of men die from smoke inhalation. Their throat swells;
completely
closes up. By the time the swelling goes down, they’re dead.” He took a wet breath from his coast. “He’s finished,” said Ouspensky. “He can’t breathe, there is nothing you can do for him.”

Alexander could swear there was satisfaction in Ouspensky’s voice. He didn’t have the time to respond to it. He lay Pasha on the ground, flat on his back, and placed the rolled-up bloody towel under his neck, with his head slightly tilted backward to expose his throat. Rummaging through his rucksack, Alexander found his pen. Thank God it was broken. For some reason the ink didn’t drip down to the nib. Thank God for Soviet manufacturing. Dismantling the pen, he put aside the hollow barrell and then took out his knife.

“What are you going to do, Captain?” said Ouspensky, pointing to the knife in Alexander’s hand. “Are you going to cut his throat?”

“Yes,” said Alexander. “Now shut up and stop talking to me.”

Ouspensky kneeled down. “I was being facetious.”

“Shine a light on his throat and hold it steady. That’s your job. Also hold this plastic tube and this twine. When I tell you, give the tube to me. Understood?”

They got ready. Alexander took a deep breath. He knew he had no time. He looked at his fingers. They were steady.

Feeling down Pasha’s throat, Alexander found his protruding Adam’s apple, felt a little lower and found the skin stretching over the tracheal cavity. Alexander knew there was nothing but skin protecting
the tracheal lumen right under Pasha’s Adam’s apple. If he was very careful, he could make a small incision and stick the tube into Pasha’s throat to allow him to breathe. But just a small incision. He had never done it. His hands weren’t meant for delicate work, not like Tania’s. “Here goes,” he whispered, held his breath, and lowered his knife to Pasha’s throat. Ouspensky’s hands were shaking, judging by the shaking of the flashlight. “Lieutenant, for fuck’s sake, hold still.”

Ouspensky tried. “Have you ever done this before, Captain?”

“No. Seen it done, though.”

“With success?”

“Not much success,” said Alexander. He’d seen two medics do it twice. Both soldiers didn’t make it. One was cut too deep, and the fragile trachea was sheared in half by a knife that was too heavy. The other never opened his eyes again. Breathed, just never opened his eyes.

Very slowly, Alexander cut two centimeters of Pasha’s skin. It was resistant to the knife. Then the skin bled, making it hard to see how far he was cutting. He needed a scalpel, but all he had was the army knife he shaved with and killed with. He cut a little deeper, a little deeper, and then put the knife between his teeth and opened up the skin with his fingers, exposing a bit of cartilage on both sides of the membrane. Holding the skin open, Alexander made a small cut in the membrane below the Adam’s apple, and suddenly there was a sucking sound in Pasha’s throat as air from the outside was vacuumed in. Alexander continued to hold it open with his fingers, letting the lungs fill with air and force the air out through the opening in the throat. It wasn’t as efficient as using the upper airways such as the nose and mouth, but it would do.

“The pen, Lieutenant.”

Ouspensky handed it over.

Alexander stuck the short plastic barrell halfway into the hole, taking care in his expediency not to ram it against the back of the trachea.

Alexander let himself draw a breath. “We did all right, Pasha,” he said. “Ouspensky, the twine.” He tied one end of the barrell to the rope, the other around Pasha’s neck, so the pen would hold steady and not slip out.

“How long before the swelling goes down?” Alexander asked.

“How should I know?” replied Ouspensky. “All the men I’ve seen with their throats closed up died before the swelling went down. So I don’t know.”

Pasha was lying in Alexander’s arms, erratically, sporadically, ecstatically breathing through the dirty plastic tube while Alexander watched
his mud-covered struggling face, thinking that the whole war had been reduced to waiting for death while Pasha’s life piped through the inkless barrell of a broken Soviet pen.

One minute Grinkov, Marazov, Verenkov without his glasses, Telikov, Yermenko, one minute Dasha, and one minute Alexander, too. One minute he was alive, and the next minute he was lying on the ice on Lake Ladoga bleeding out, his icy clothes entombing him. One minute, alive, the next face down, helmet down, in his white coat, lying on the ice, bleeding out.

But in less time than it took to draw a breath, Alexander had been loved. In one deep breath, in one agonized blink, he had been so beloved.

“Pasha, can you hear me?” asked Alexander. “Blink if you can hear me.”

Pasha blinked.

Tightening his mouth, taking shallow breaths, Alexander remembered a poem,
The Fantasia of a Fallen Gentleman on a Cold Bitter Night
:

New York, October 1944

EDWARD LUDLOW CAME THROUGH
the double doors of the hospital quarters in Ellis Island and pulled Tatiana by her hand out into the hall. “Tatiana, is it true what I saw?”

“I don’t know. What you see?”

He was pale from anxiety.

“What?”

“Is it true? I saw the NYU Red Cross roster for the nurses about to be sent to Europe, and the name Jane Barrington was on it. Tell me it’s a different Jane Barrington, just a coincidence.”

Tatiana was quiet.

“No. Please. No.”

“Edward—”

He took her hands. “Have you talked to anyone about this?”

“No, of course not.”

“What are you thinking? The Americans are in Europe. Hitler is getting squeezed on both fronts. The war is coming to an end soon. There is no reason to go.”

“The POW camps are in desperate need of medicine and food and packages and care.”

“Tatiana, they have care. From other nurses.”

“If they have care, how come army asking for Red Cross volunteers?”

“Yes, for
other
volunteers. Not for you.”

When she did not reply, Edward pressed her. “God, Tatiana,” he said in a shocked voice, “what are you planning to do with Anthony?”

“I wanted to leave him with his great-aunt in Massachusetts, but I think she won’t be able to run after small boy.” Tatiana saw the expression in Edward’s eyes. She took her hands away. “Esther say I could leave him with her. She says her housekeeper Rosa could help look after the baby, but I do not think that’s good idea.”

“You don’t
think
?”

Tatiana did not reply to the sarcasm in his voice but instead said, “I thought I would leave him with Isabella—”

“Isabella? A complete stranger!”

“Not complete stranger. She offered…”

“Tania, she doesn’t know what I know. She doesn’t even know what you know. But I know things even you don’t know. Tell me the truth, are you going because you are planning to look for your husband?”

Tatiana did not reply.

“Oh, Tatiana,” said Edward with a shake of his head. “Oh, Tatiana. You told me he was dead.”

“Edward, what you worried about?”

He wiped his brow, stepping away from her slightly in his confusion and anxiety. “Tania,” he said, his low voice trembling. “Heinrich Himmler has taken control of the German POW camps this fall. The first thing he did was to refuse any packages or letters to be passed on to the American POWs or to have the camps inspected by the IRC. Himmler assured us the Allied forces are getting fair treatment, all but the Soviets. Right now, the Red Cross does not have permission to examine the German POW camps. Which only speaks to their desperation. They know the war is so close to being lost, they don’t even care anymore about the fate of their own prisoners. They cared last year, the year before, but not now. I’m sure the ban on the Red Cross will be lifted, but even so, how many prisoner camps do you think there are, two? Do you know how many? Hundreds! And dozens more Italian, French, English, American camps. How many prisoners do you think that is? Hundreds of thousands would be a conservative estimate.”

“Himmler will change his mind. They did this before in 1943, and then quickly changed when they realize their prisoners are going to be treated bad, too.”

“Yes, before, when they thought they were winning the war! Since the Normandy landings, they know their days are numbered. They don’t care anymore about their stranded men. You know how I know? Because since 1943, they have not asked the Red Cross to inspect the American POW facilities here in the United States.”

“Why should they? They know Americans treat German prisoners good.”

“No, it’s because they know the war is lost.”

“Himmler will change his mind,” Tatiana said stubbornly. “Red Cross will inspect those camps.”

“Hundreds of thousands of prisoners in hundreds of camps. At a
week per camp, that’s two hundred weeks, not allowing time for travel between them. Four years. What are you even thinking?”

Tatiana did not reply. She had not thought that far ahead.

“Tatiana,” Edward said. “Please don’t go.”

Edward seemed to be taking it personally. Tatiana didn’t know what to say.

“Tatiana, what about your son?”

“Isabella will take care of him.”

“Forever? Will she take care of him when his mother is found dead from disease or battle wounds?”

“Edward, I not go to Europe to die.”

“No? You won’t be able to help it. Germany is about to become the front. Poland is in Soviet hands. What if the Soviets have been looking for you? What if you go to Poland, and are discovered by the Soviet authorities? Jane Barrington, Tatiana Metanova, what do you think they will do with you? If you go to Germany, to Poland, to Yugoslavia, to Czechoslovakia, to Hungary, you are going there to die. One way or another, you are not coming back.”

That’s not true, she wanted to say. But she knew the Soviets were looking for her. She knew the risks. They were enormous. And Alexander? He was minuscule. Her plan was a bad one, she knew. Alexander had had Luga—a place—to go to. He had had Molotov, had her concrete evacuation, had a place, a name, had Lazarevo to go to. She had his death certificate. With his death certificate clutched and crumpled in her hands, she was going to travel to every POW camp open for inspection and look for him, and if he wasn’t there, she would somehow make her way back to Leningrad and find Colonel Stepanov and ask him about Alexander, and if he didn’t know, she would ask Generals Voroshilov and Mekhlis; she would go to Moscow and ask Stalin himself if she had to.

“Tania, please don’t go,” Edward repeated.

She blinked. “What is Orbeli?”

“Orbeli? You already asked me that. How should I know? I don’t know. What does Orbeli have to do with anything?”

“He said, ‘Remember Orbeli’ to me last time I saw him. Maybe Orbeli is place somewhere in Europe where I supposed to meet him.”

“Before you leave your child to go to the front, shouldn’t you find out what Orbeli is?”

“I tried,” she said. “I couldn’t find out: no one knows.”

“Oh, Tania. It’s most likely nothing.”

Edward’s anxiety ate at Tatiana’s insides. How to justify it? “My son will be fine,” she said feebly.

“Without a father, without a mother?”

“Isabella is wonderful woman.”

“Isabella is a stranger, a sixty-year-old stranger! Isabella is not his mother. When she is dead, what do you think will happen to Anthony?”

“Vikki take care of him.”

Edward laughed joylessly. “Vikki can’t take care of tying the bow on her blouse. Vikki can’t come in on time, can’t tell time. Vikki beats not to your son, not even to you, or her grandparents, but to herself. I pray Vikki never has children of her own. Vikki doesn’t help you take care of Anthony now. What makes you think she will take care of him when her only emotional link with him—
you
—is gone? How long do you think she will keep that up?” Edward took a deep breath. “And do you know where they will send him when he is an orphan? The city home for boys. Maybe before you travel to Europe to kill yourself, you should take a look at one of those places to see where your fifteen-month-old son will end up.”

Tatiana paled.

“You haven’t thought this through,” said Edward. “I know that. Because if you had, you wouldn’t do it. I know that for a fact. Do you know how I know?”

“How?” she asked faintly.

“I know,” Edward said, taking her hands, “because I’ve seen what you do for the people who come through the golden door. I know because you, Tatiana, always do the right thing.”

She made no reply.

“He already lost a father,” Edward said. “Don’t let your son lose a mother, too. You’re the only thing he has in this world that connects him to himself and to the past and to his destiny. Once he loses you, he will be an unmoored ship for the rest of his life. That’s what you will do to him. That will be your legacy to him.”

Tatiana was mute. She felt suddenly and acutely cold. Edward squeezed her hands. “Tania,” he said. “Not for Vikki, not for me, not for the veterans upstairs, or for the immigrants at Ellis, but for your son—don’t go.”

Tatiana didn’t know what to do. But the seeds of doubt were formidable and growing. She called Sam Gulotta, who told her he had heard
nothing about Alexander, and confirmed for her the dire situation in the German POW and concentration camps, and the fate of the Soviet prisoners incarcerated there. The more Tatiana thought about it, the crazier the plan sounded even to herself and the more guilt she felt about her child.

She asked everybody she could about Orbeli. She asked all the German soldiers and all the Italian soldiers, and the nurses, and the refugees, and then Tatiana went to the New York Public Library, but even there, amid the research books, the microfilm, the magazines, the periodicals, the atlases, the maps, the reference indices, she could not find a mention of an Orbeli.

The very fact of its obscurity made her think less of it, not more. The pointlessness of it diminished it in her eyes instead of magnifying it. It wasn’t a forest or a village, or the name of a fortress, or the name of a general. More and more it seemed a meaningless remark, less to do with her or Alexander than with perhaps a small unrelated thing he had wished to convey to her, like a joke or an anecdote to be promptly forgotten when larger things overtook it. It wasn’t a message, it was an aside, and then he was in the lake, and it should have been forgotten. It wasn’t forgotten because what followed expanded it out of proportion, not because Orbeli deserved expanding.

But the medal, the medal? The
Hero of the Soviet Union
medal? How did that end up in her backpack?

But finally Tatiana had an explanation for that also. When Dr. Sayers first told her about Alexander, perhaps he had neglected to tell her that he had taken the medal off a dying man’s neck instead of burying him in the lake with it, and then larger events had overtaken it, he had meant to tell her he put it into her backpack in a tiny secret compartment so she would find it someday but not right away, but he was dying and forgot.

She did not go back.