The previous dawn, Alexander had climbed up behind the bushes on the slopes that led to the railroad and watched his men become fodder for the German bombs. With a pair of field binoculars he observed where the three German bombs came from. They were a good two kilometers away. He needed the 160-millimeter mortar. Nothing else would reach.
Of course the commissar’s office didn’t want to give it to him. The desk sergeant said the penal battalion was not entitled to one, and the order to requisition one had to come from Alexander’s commanding officer, who was Muraviev and who with a flat snicker refused.
“I’ve lost a hundred and ninety-two men in seven days. Do we have enough convicts to repair this road?”
“Orders are orders, Belov! The mortar is going to be needed by the company storming Sinyavino Heights next week.”
“Your men intend to carry a three-ton weapon up a mountain, Colonel?”
Muraviev ordered Alexander out of his tent.
Alexander had had enough. He called one of his sergeants, Melkov. In the evening, Melkov, who tolerated vodka best in the battalion, got the armament guard good and drunk, so drunk in fact that the guard—when he fell asleep in his chair—did not hear Alexander and Ouspensky open the creaky door of the wooden weapons facility and wheel the mortar out. They had to wheel it a kilometer in the dark. Meanwhile Melkov, taking his assignment very seriously, sat by the armaments guard and every fifteen minutes poured more vodka down his throat.
Right before five a.m., seven of Alexander’s men used themselves as bait on the railroad.
Through his binoculars, Alexander watched the origination point of the first bomb from the hills arch its whistling way into the tracks. His men ran, escaping unharmed. It took both Alexander and Ouspensky to load the detonation explosive chemical rocket bomb into the breech. “Now just remember, Nikolai,” said Alexander as he pointed the cannon to the hills. “We only have two bombs. Two chances to blow up the Fritzes. We need to return this damn thing in twenty minutes before the changing of the guard at six.”
“You don’t think req will notice the two biggest bombs gone?”
Alexander watched the blue morning hill through the binoculars. “After we blast the fucking Germans, I really don’t care if anyone notices the missing bombs. I bet they won’t notice. Who do you think keeps an inventory of this stuff? The drunk guard? Melkov is taking care of him. He is also taking thirty sub-machine guns for our men.”
Ouspensky laughed.
“Don’t laugh,” said Alexander. “You’ll disturb the delicate balance of the charge. Ready?” He lit the fuse.
The fuse burned for two seconds, there was recoil straight down into the ground, which rumbled as though it were an earthquake fault line, and the first bomb whistled out of the barrel, in an arc through the air. It flew a kilometer and a half; Alexander watched it fall into the trees and burst. By the time it reached its target, the second bomb was already on its way. Alexander didn’t even look to see where the second one landed. He had already begun to dismantle the mortar. Leaving Ouspensky in charge of the remaining men, he wheeled the heavy artillery back to the requisition house and managed to attach the lock and throw the keys back to the unconscious guard at two minutes to six. “Well done,” he said to Melkov as they hurriedly walked back to their tents for morning inspection.
“Thank you, sir,” said Melkov. “It was my pleasure.”
“I can see that,” Alexander said, smiling. “Don’t let me catch you drinking so much again. Or you’re going straight to the brig.”
The requisition guard remained unconscious for another four hours and was summarily taken off guard duty for gross dereliction. “It’s a good thing for you, Corporal, that nothing was missing!” Muraviev hollered.
The guard’s punishment consisted of serving a week under Alexander’s railroad repair command. Alexander said, “You’re lucky the Germans have been quiet the past two days, otherwise you’d be going to your death, Corporal.”
While the Germans were regrouping, Alexander’s men fixed the railroad tracks unharmed, and five trains with food and medical supplies made it through to Leningrad.
After that the Germans resumed shelling the Soviet soldiers, but not for long because Muraviev gave Alexander the mortar. Having exposed the German position and after a few more mortar attacks on the Sinyavino area, a battalion of the 67th Army stormed the hills, leaving Alexander’s men down below on artillery support.
The battalion did not return, but the Germans stopped shooting at the railroad for good.
In the fall of 1943, the 67th Army ordered Alexander’s penal battalion—shrunk to two minimal companies, 144 men in total—across the river Neva south to Pulkovo, to the last holdout of the German blockade ring around Leningrad. This time, Alexander received some artillery—heavy machine guns, mortars, anti-tank bombs, and a case of grenades. Each of his men had a light machine gun and plenty of ammunition. At Pulkovo, for twelve days in September 1943, Alexander’s 7th battalion, with two others and a motorized company, bombarded the Germans. They even had some airpower helping them, two Shtukareviches. It was all to no avail.
The leaves fell off the trees. Sergeant Melkov was killed. It got cold, another winter came, the fourteenth winter since the Barringtons came to the Soviet Union. Alexander continued to push his way up the hill day after bloodied bitter day. He received new men—200 of them. The eastern side of the hill was liberated from the Germans in December 1943.
Up on a Pulkovo hill, Alexander could look north and see in the distance the few twinkling lights of Leningrad. And in the near distance during a clear winter day, he could see the smokestacks of the Kirov factory, which continued to produce arms for the city. If he looked through his binoculars, he would be able to see the Kirov wall, in front of which he could see himself standing day after day, week after week with his cap in his hands, waiting for Tatiana to run out of the factory doors.
He didn’t need to stand on the Pulkovo crest to see it.
New Year’s Eve, 1943, Alexander spent in front of a fire near his officer’s tent with his three first lieutenants, three second lieutenants, and three sergeants. He drank vodka with Ouspensky by his side. Everyone seemed optimistic about 1944. The Germans were on the way out of Russia. After the summer of 1943, after Sinyavino, after the Battle of Kursk, after the liberation of Kiev in November and Crimea just a few weeks ago, Alexander knew that 1944 was going to be the last year the Germans would be on Soviet soil. His mission was to proceed westward with his penal battalion, to push the Germans back into Germany—at all costs, at whatever the cost.
That was Alexander’s New Year resolution—to make his way west. His only hope lay there.
He allowed himself another drink. Someone, already drunk, told a bad Stalin joke. Someone cried for his wife. Alexander was almost certain it wasn’t him. On the outside he tried to be fashioned of concrete. Ouspensky clinked a glass of vodka with him and finished off the bottle.
“Why can’t we get furlough like other soldiers?” Ouspensky complained, drunk, sentimental, disheveled. “Why can’t we go home for a day on New Year’s?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Lieutenant, but we’re fighting a war. Tomorrow we sleep away the hangover and on Tuesday we’re in battle again. The German blockade around Leningrad will be lifted completely this month. The Nazis will leave our city and it will be because of your efforts.”
“I don’t care about the fucking Nazis. I want to see my wife,” said Ouspensky. “You’ve got nowhere to go—that’s why you want to push the Germans out of Russia.”
“I’ve got somewhere to go,” said Alexander slowly.
Studying him carefully, Ouspensky asked, “You have a family?”
“Not around here, no.”
For some reason this made Ouspensky only more glum.
“Look on the bright side, Nikolai,” said Alexander. “We’re not among the enemy, right?”
Ouspensky said nothing.
Alexand
er continued. “We drank a whole bottle of vodka in a few hours. We had ham, some smoked herring, some pickles, and even some fresh black bread. We told jokes, we laughed, we smoked. Think how much worse it could be.” Alexander wasn’t going to let his mind go down the corridors of its own torture chambers.
“I don’t know about you, Captain, but I’ve got a wife and two small boys I haven’t seen in ten months. Last time I saw them was right before I got shot. My wife thinks I’m dead. I can tell my letters aren’t getting to her. She is not replying to them.” Ouspensky paused and wavered like a sapling.
Alexander said nothing. I have a wife and a child I’ve never seen. What’s happened to her, to the baby? Have they made it anywhere? Are they safe? How can I live not knowing if she’s all right?
I can’t.
I can’t live not knowing if she is all right.
Thou shall not be afraid for the terror by night…nor for the arrow that flieth by day…
Ouspensky drank straight from a newly opened bottle. “Ah,” he said, waving his hand. “Hell with it. Life is so fucking hard.”
Alexander took the vodka bottle from Ouspensky and drank from it himself. “Compared to what?” he asked, taking a smoke, inhaling the acrid fumes into his constricted throat.
“Tania, let’s get drunk.”
“Why, what for?”
“Let’s smoke, get drunk, celebrate your birthday, our wedding, and be really rowdy.” He raises his eyebrows.
“You’re a goose. My birthday was a week ago.” She smiles. “We celebrated already. You married me. Remember?”
He grabs her off the pine needle ground.
She throws her arms around him. “All right, all right, I’ll drink a little vodka with you.”
“Not a little. An unconscionable amount. We’ll raise our cups…” He pours for the two of them near the fire in the clearing. She is kneeling on the blanket, expectantly. He kneels in front of her. “And we’ll drink to our wonderful life.”
Tatiana raises her cup. “All right, Shura. Let’s drink to our wonderful life.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
New York, June 1944
THE ROOM IS STARK white. The curtains, white, barely move. The window is closed. There is no wind. There is no draft. There is no pink and lucid air.
I sit on the floor of my stark white room. The beige door closed. The silver lock latched. There is rust on the hinges that creak as they swing.
Open and shut.
In front of me I hold my black bag, and in this bag, he lives. His beige cap, his black-and-white photo with his white teeth and caramel eyes.
On the gray-tile floor I sit, but outside, not an hour away, lies Bear Mountain. And the trees on the mountain are sepia and cinnabar, colored with copper and sunset. Like his copper eyes and sunset lips. In Sheep Meadow I can play baseball with my cream wooden bat. Like he played when he was a boy…
Scout.
I can make a noose knot like he taught me.
I can climb a green tree.
I can swing under the silver moon in the sinking water under the plum sky.
Through my window just beyond the red, white and blue of the American flag, beyond the Golden Door and the Coral Gothic of Ellis gleams the lazurite bay that leads to the living sea, to the wailing ocean.
My colors run from moon to sun, from rust to sky. The oceans divide us as we fail, as we fall into the whiteout of my once and future life. The whiteout of sky and fog and mist and ice. The ice is cracked and bleeding. You’re underneath it. And I am, too.
I sit on the gray-tile floor, touching the black canvas, the metal rim of the gun, the yellowing papers of your savior book, your green crisp dollar bills.
I touch the picture of you and me newly married exploding on red wings, flying to each other on the cyclamen wings of Promethean fire.
Outside, the siren wails, the ball cracks against the bat, the baby cries, the gray ice bleeds. I remain on the floor with the black canvas bag of our surprise hope at my feet. Forever on the floor, black with the colors of my grief.
“Tania, what’s the matter?” It was Vikki, standing at the open door of Tatiana’s room. Anthony was on the floor playing with his toys. Tatiana was on the floor with her head on the tiles.
“Nothing.”
“Are you working today?”
“I’m up, I’m up.”
In a startled voice, Vikki said, “What’s the matter with you?”
“Not much,” Tatiana said. She knew she must have been a sight. Her eyes felt swollen shut. She could barely see.
“It’s eight! Have you been crying? The day hasn’t begun yet!”
“Let me get dressed. I have to make my rounds.”
“Do you want to talk?”
“Not at all. I’m fine. It’s my birthday today. I’m twenty.”
“That’s why you’re like this? Happy birthday! Why didn’t you say so? What’s so awful about your birthday?”
“I can’t believe we’re getting married on my birthday!” she says.
“This way, you’ll never forget me.”
“Who could ever forget you, Alexander?” she asks, groping gently for him.
Standing in the stained-glass light, her hair, her heart flying in the air.
Tatiana didn’t celebrate. She worked all day and played with her nearly one-year-old boy in the evening. At night, with the curtains open, the windows open, the briny air wafting through the room, Tatiana kneeled by the side of her bed, grasping the wedding rings hanging at her chest. She’d been in the United States nearly a year. On the night of her twentieth birthday, Tatiana sat on the floor of her room at Ellis after nursing Anthony and took everything out of her black backpack—for the first time since she left the Soviet Union. One by one, she took out the loaded German-issue pistol, the Bronze Horseman book, the Russian-English phrasebook, the photo of him, the wedding photos of them, his officer cap, and everything out of the pockets.
That’s when she found the Hero of the Soviet Union medal that had once belonged to Alexander.
She stared at it with incomprehension for what seemed half the night, and then she went out into the hall and looked at it under the light, to see if maybe she had made a mistake.
The sun went up, came down. It was warm. The water shimmered. And she still stared at the medal. She was dumbstruck. Was it a mistake?
As clearly as she saw the sailboats in the bay, Tatiana saw the medal hanging on the back of Alexander’s chair the last evening she saw him with Dr. Sayers by her side. Alexander had said, “I’m going to come back tomorrow afternoon a decorated lieutenant colonel,” and Tatiana had beamed and glanced at the medal hanging on the back of the chair by his hospital bed.
How did this medal end up in her backpack? She could not have taken it—it was not hers to take.
What does it mean? she whispered to herself, but was no closer to understanding; in fact was further away. The more she tried to think clearly, the more she came up against the concrete blocks her mind had put up.
But Dr. Sayers had brought her the backpack when she was on the floor in his office after she’d learned about Alexander’s truck blowing up and sinking in Lake Ladoga. Sayers brought the backpack for her before they got into his Red Cross jeep and drove to Finland.
And on that floor she still remained—in the morning and at night, between patients and shopping, between lunch and dinner, between Vikki and Edward, between Ellis and Anthony. She hopped on the ferry and remained on the floor, and on that floor was her backpack and in it was Alexander’s Hero of the Soviet Union medal.
Did Alexander give the medal to her? Could she have forgotten that?
When Dr. Sayers told her about Alexander, he gave her Alexander’s officer cap. Did the doctor give her the cap and the medal?
She did not think so.
Did Colonel Stepanov?
Not him either.
She got up off the floor, and draped the medal over her neck next to the rope that held their w
edding rings.
A day passed and then another and then another.
A German soldier saw the medal and in broken English said, “Where you get that? That’s very powerful medal. Only given to most honor soldiers. Where you get that?”
Every time Tatiana nursed her boy, every time he lay in her arms and she watched him, she could not help thinking, if Alexander was wearing that medal when he died, it would still be on his neck. Because Tatiana knew that when you went to get promoted, you went draped in your honor. You carried your flag with you.
The doctor might have given me his cap, but he wouldn’t have taken a medal off Alexander’s neck. And even if he did, the doctor would have handed the medal to me. Wouldn’t he? Here, Tania, here is your husband’s cap, and here is his medal, too. Keep it all.
No, this medal was hidden from her; it was placed in the smallest compartment in the bag, inside a secret pocket. There was nothing else in that pocket, and she never would have found it had she not taken everything out and felt through the canvas.
Why would Dr. Sayers have hidden the medal?
Why not give it to her with the cap?
Because he was afraid it would raise too many questions.
Would she have become too suspicious? But suspicious of what?
Tatiana was groping blindly for the false note. She couldn’t figure it out. She slept, worked, nursed, and in the middle of one late June night, she opened her eyes and gasped.