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“One more word, Ouspensky, and with my bare hands—”
“Understood.”
They walked, Alexander carrying Pasha all the gray morning. Alexander lowered him, gave him a drink of rain, raised him, carried him all the gray afternoon. Lowered him, gave him a drink of whisky, stuffed a piece of bread into his mouth, raised him, carried him.
Somewhere on a dirt road in south-east Saxony, Pasha felt heavier and heavier. Alexander thought he was getting tired. It was the end of the day. They broke camp, sat by the fire. Alexander went ice fishing in the pond by the woods. Caught one perch, cooked it in water. He made Pasha drink the fish broth with some diluted sulfa powder, and then he and Ouspensky divided the fish and ate it, head and all.
Ouspensky slept. Alexander smoked. And sat holding the ice rag against Pasha’s burning head. Then Pasha was cold, and Alexander covered him up with two trench coats, and took the coat from Ouspensky for Pasha.
No one spoke anymore, not even to mouth the words.
Next morning, Pasha, his eyes swollen with fever, shook his head, as if to say, leave me. And Alexander shook his, and lifted Pasha and carried him. There was no sun, it was February in central Germany. The slate sky was meters above their heads. Alexander knew they couldn’t stop and ask for help—they spoke no German without Pasha. He also knew that the Saxony police had no doubt been notified about three escapees and was looking for precisely three men, masquerading as Germans yet not speaking a word of German.
They couldn’t get too far with a sick Pasha. He had to get better. They found a small barn and waited out the cold morning covered by hay. Sitting, listening to Pasha’s breaking-up breathing, watching Pasha’s struggle and his inflamed face was too much for Alexander. He got up. “We have to go. We have to keep moving.”
“Can I have a word with you?” Ouspensky said.
“Absolutely not,” said Alexander.
“Outside the barn, for a moment.”
“I said no.”
Ouspensky glanced at Pasha, whose eyes were closed. He seemed unconscious.
“Captain, he is getting worse.”
“All right, Dr. Ouspensky, thank you, that will be all.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to continue. We just need to find a Red Cross convoy.”
“There weren’t any Red Cross personnel in Colditz or Catowice. What makes you think there will be some here?”
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“Maybe Red Cross. Maybe Americans.”
“Have the Americans gotten this far?”
“Ouspensky, like you, I’ve been in prison these last four months. How the fuck should I know how far the Americans have gotten? I think probably yes, they’re here somewhere. Didn’t you hear war planes headed to Dresden?”
“Captain—”
“Not another word about this, Lieutenant. Let’s go.”
“Go where? He needs help.”
“And we have to get him help. Help isn’t going to come to us in a barn.”
He picked up Pasha and flung him on his back. Pasha could not hold on.
Alexander barely saw the road in front of him. It took all his effort to continue walking. Every hour he stopped and gave Pasha a drink, and pressed a cold rag against Pasha’s head, and wrapped him tighter in two coats, and walked on again, without his own coat.
Ouspensky walked by his side.
Alexander heard Ouspensky’s voice. “Captain,” he called. “Captain.”
“What?” He did not look sideways, as if he could. He continued walking. Ouspensky came up in front, crossed Alexander’s path, made him stop. “What, Lieutenant?”
Ouspensky placed his hand on Alexander. “Captain. I’m sorry. He is dead.”
Alexander moved him aside with his hand. “Get out of my way.”
“He is dead, Captain. Please, let’s not do this any longer.”
“Ouspensky!” He took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “He is not dead. He is unconscious. Now, we have only a few hours of daylight left. Let’s not waste it by standing in the middle of the road.”
“He is dead, Captain,” whispered Ouspensky. “Look for yourself.”
“No,” said Alexander. “He cannot die. It’s impossible. Leave me alone. Either walk with me, or walk the other way, but leave me alone.”
And he continued to walk with Pasha limp on his back, for another half-hour, another hour, and then Alexander slowed down on the unpaved empty road, stopped by a lone bare tree, and lowered Pasha to the ground. Pasha was no longer hot, and he was no longer struggling for breath. He was white and cold and his eyes were open.
“No, Pasha,” whispered Alexander. “No.” He felt Pasha’s head. He closed Pasha’s eyes. For a few moments he stood over Pasha, and then he sank to the ground. Wrapping him tightly with the trench
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coat, Alexander took Pasha’s body into his arms and, cradling him from the cold, closed his own eyes.
For the rest of the night Alexander sat on an empty road, his back against the tree, not moving, not opening his eyes, not speaking, holding Tatiana’s brother in his arms.
If Ouspensky spoke to him, he did not hear. If he slept, he did not feel it, not the cold air, nor the hard ground, nor the rough bark of the tree against his back, against his head.
When morning broke, and gray close light rose over Saxony, Alexander opened his eyes. Ouspensky was sleeping on his side, wrapped in his trench coat next to them. Pasha’s body was rigid, very cold.
Alexander got up from under Pasha, washed his own face with whisky, rinsed out his mouth with whisky, and then got his titanium trench tool and started to carve a hole in the ground. Ouspensky woke up, helped him. It took them three hours of scraping at the earth, to make a hole a meter deep. Not deep enough, but it would have to do. Alexander covered Pasha’s face with the trench coat so the earth wouldn’t fall on it. With two small branches and a piece of string, Alexander made a cross and laid it on top of Pasha’s chest, and then they lifted him and lowered him into the hole, and Alexander, his teeth grit the entire time, filled the shallow grave with fresh dirt. On a wide thick branch, he carved out the name PASHA METANOV, and the date, Feb 25, 1945, and tying it to another longer branch made another cross and staked it into the ground.
Alexander and Ouspensky stood still. Alexander saluted the grave. “The Lord is my shepherd,” he mouthed inaudibly to himself. “I shall not want. He maketh me lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me to high waters, to the valley of death…” Alexander broke off. Sinking down near his tree by the road, he lit a cigarette.
Ouspensky asked if they were going to get going.
“No,” Alexander said. “I’m going to sit here a while.”
Hours went by.
Ouspensky asked again.
“Lieutenant,” said Alexander, in a voice that was so defeated he did not recognize it as his own, “I am not walking away from him.”
“Captain!” Ouspensky exclaimed. “What about those winds of fate you said were blowing at you?”
“You must have misunderstood, Nikolai,” said Alexander, not looking up. “I said they were blowingby me.”
The next day the German police picked them up, loaded them onto an armored truck and took them back to Colditz.
Alexander was badly beaten by the German guards and taken to solitary, where he spent so long he lost track of time.
With Pasha’s death came the death of faith.
Release me, Tatiana, release me, forgive me, forget me, let me forget you. I want to be free of you, free
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of your face, free of your freedom, free of your fire, free, free, free.
The flight across the ocean was
over, and with it all the warmth of his imagination. A numbness encroached on him, freezing him from the heart out, the anesthetic of despair creeping its tentacles over his ten-dons and his arteries, over his nerves and his veins until he was stiff inside and bereft of hope and bereft of Tatiana. Finally.
But not quite.
CHAPTER THIRTY
New York, April 1945
IN APRIL THE AMERICANSand Russians swarmed over Germany, and in the first week of May, Germany unconditionally surrendered. The European war was over. In the Pacific theater, the Americans continued to suffer bloodletting even as they beat back the Japanese from every beach head, from every island.
June 23 quietly came and went. Tatiana turned twenty-one. How long did they say you would mourn before the years dulled your pain? How long before the hand of time, tick, tick, tick, relentless days and nights and months and years chipped away at the stone of sorrow inside your throat until it was no more than a pebble with smooth sides? Every time you think his name, the air can’t get past it, every time you look at his son, the air can’t get past it. Every time it’s Christmas, your birthday, his birthday, March 13, you can’t breathe for a day, another day, another year. They fly by, the years, and yet the grief remains lodged in your throat, through which everything else in your life has to pass. Everything else: happiness for yourself, affection for other people, joy at living, at comfort, at convenience, laughter at your child, food on your plate, drink at your table, every prayer, every clasping of the hands, past it, past it, past it.
In the summer of 1945, Vikki agreed to go to Arizona by train with Tatiana and Anthony. Tatiana wanted to take a vacation to celebrate her becoming a U.S. citizen.
On the way, Tatiana told Vikki they needed to make a short stop in Washington DC.
She did not go inside the State Department building this time but sat patiently on the bench on C Street under the trees while Vikki smoked and Anthony played on the grass, and Vikki finally said, “This is your idea of a short stop? We took only two weeks off.”
Tatiana watched the workers saunter out for lunch. She watched Sam Gulotta come out and walk past her bench. Tatiana did not acknowledge him. He walked another ten yards, slowed down, then stopped.
Turning around, he stared at her for a few moments, and slowly came back.
Raising her eyes to him, Tatiana said, “Hello. I don’t want to bother you.” She introduced him to Vikki.
Gulotta smiled and sat down next to her. “You’re not bothering me. It’s nice to see you. I have nothing new to tell you.”
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“Nothing at all?”
“No. Europe is becoming an awful mess.” He paused. “I know I told you that when things relaxed a bit, I could perhaps make inquiries…but I was wrong about things becoming easier. They’ve become worse than ever. Us, France, Britain, the Soviets, all in Germany, and worse—all in Berlin. One diplomatic faux pas and we’re in another world war next week.”
“I know.” She stood up. “Well, thank you.”
“Have you become an American citizen yet?”
“Yes, just.”
Gulotta said, “Do you want to go have a bite to eat? It’s lunch, we can get a sandwich.”
“I’d like to, maybe another time. But I brought you something. I made them this morning.” Tatiana took out a bag full of meatpirozhki . “Last time you said you liked them…”
“Very much, thank you.” He took the bag from her. “I would have liked lunch, too.”
Tatiana and Sam said goodbye.
Vikki pinched Tatiana very hard after Sam was out of sight. “Tania, you vixen! You strumpet! You libertine! All this time you’ve been up to this!”
“Vikki, up to nothing,” Tatiana said calmly.
“Oh yes? Is he married?”
“He was, yes.” Tatiana paused, wondering if she should tell Vikki about Sam. She decided to tell. “His wife died three years ago in plane crash carrying medical supplies to our troops in Okinawa. He is raising his two boys by himself.”
“Tatiana!”
“Vikki, I don’t have time to explain to you.”
“You’ve got two weeks. But we have thirteen million troops abroad, and as soon as we win this war, they’re all coming home through the Port of New York.”
“Oh yes? Because United States has no other coastal city?”
“That’s right. Now tell me why you have to go all the way to Washington to find a man when our beautiful New York is going to have thirteen million?”
“Not speaking to you about it.”
After spending five days at the Grand Canyon, Tatiana drove a rented car south through Arizona, headed for Tucson. Vikki, being a city girl, did not know how to drive.
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They stopped in Phoenix. “Just a dusty, one-horse village,” Vikki called it. One scorching summer evening they were sitting on a blanket on the hood of their car, looking at the sunset. The Sonoran Desert, covered with white saguaros, stretches for hundreds of miles across southeastern Arizona. Home to 298 varieties of cactus, it is the largest desert in North America, spanning much of Arizona and New Mexico. In the near distance are the foothills of the Maricopa mountains. The indigo blue sky stands in stark contrast to the brick and cream hue of the earth. Except for the flickering of an occasional jackrabbit chasing a previously motionless Gila monster, the desert is silent.
They sat on the hood of the sedan, their backs to the windshield, northwest of the Superstition Mountains. Anthony crawled on the ground, at two years old interested in only two things: getting as mucky as possible and finding a snake, not necessarily in that order.
“Anthony,” called Vikki, wiping the perspiration off her face. “Get off the ground. Do you know that snakes swallow their food whole?”
“All right, Vikki,” said Tatiana. “Enough.”
“Whole, Anthony,” Vikki repeated.
“But I big boy. I want small snake.” Anthony was verbal for a boy of two.
“You’re not a big boy. You’re a small boy.”
“Vikki.”
“What?”
Tatiana said nothing, just stared at Vikki.
“Why do you do that? You call out my name, as if that’s enough for me to know exactly what you want.
Vikki what?”
“You know what.”
“No, I’m not going to stop. Aren’t you at all concerned?”
“Not really,” said Tatiana. “Anthony, you find snake, you let me know. We take snake back to New York and cook it.”
“That’ll be a nice change from bacon. For your next birthday,” said Vikki, leaning back and taking a drink, “I’m going to buy you a book on mothering, a book on cooking, and also some ‘a’s and ‘the’s.
You don’t seem to have any.”
“Some what?”
“Never mind. But seriously though, Tania, you eat Planter’s peanuts, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Planter’s peanuts.”
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“No, I don’t like peanuts.”
“What does the ad for them read in Times Square? We passed it the other day.”
“I don’t know. I think it reads,‘Planter’s peanuts: a bag a day for more pep.’ ”
“Exactly. Very good. Now, if you had your way with that line, it would read,‘bag day for more pep.’ Do you see the difference?”
“No.” With a straight face.
“Oh, God.”
Tatiana turned away and smiled. She got out a bottle of Coke from her bag and passed it to Vikki, saying,“‘Drink Coca Cola. A pause that refreshes.’”
“Very good!” Vikki said, her eyes, her teeth gleaming at Tatiana.
Anthony did not find a snake but did become exhausted by his search efforts. He climbed onto the car, onto Tatiana?
??s lap, dusty, hands grimy, and nuzzled his head into her chest. She gave him a drink of water.
Sitting close against Vikki with Anthony cradled on her lap, Tatiana said, “Quite beautiful, no?”
“Your son?” Vikki leaned over and kissed him. “Yes. The desert’s barren.” She shrugged. “It’s nice for a change of pace. I wouldn’t want to live here, there’s nothing but cacti.”
“In spring all wildflowers bloom to life. It must be even better here in spring.”
“New York is beautiful in the spring.”
Tatiana didn’t say anything at first. Then she said, “The desert is amazing—”
“Desert is okay. Have you ever seen a steppe?”
Tatiana paused before replying. “Yes,” she said slowly. “It’s not this. The steppe is cold and bleak.
Here, yes, it’s over ninety degrees now, but in December, near Christmas, it will be seventy. The sun will be high in sky. It won’t be dark. In December, all I will wear for cover is long-sleeve shirt.”
“What do they wear in this Arizona in the winter?” Dasha asks Alexander.
“A long-sleeve shirt.”
“Now I know you’re telling me fairy tales. Tell them to Tania. I’m too old for fairy tales.”
“Tania, you believe me, don’t you?”
“Yes, Alexander.”
“Would you like to live in Arizona, the land of the small spring?”
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“Yes, Alexander.”
“So?” said Vikki. “It’s broiling here right now. We’re going to become scrambled eggs if we don’t start driving.”
Tatiana shuddered briefly, to shake off the memories. “I’m just saying. It’s nothing like steppe. I like it here.”
Shrugging, Vikki said, “But Tania, it’s the middle of nowhere.”
“I know. Fantastic, isn’t it? No people anywhere.”
“That’s fantastic?”
“A little…yes.”
“Well, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to buy this land or live here.”
Tatiana cleared her throat. “What about your friend?” she said.
“Which one?”
“Me.”