Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel

by Paullina Simons

  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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Poland, November 1944

  ALEXANDER SLEPT, SITTING UP against the tree with Pasha’s head on his lap. At dawn Pasha’s throat swelling subsided. He put his finger over the opening in the plastic tube and took a few gasping breaths through his mouth. Alexander, encouraged, used some medical tape he carried to tape around the tube, to close up the opening as much as possible. He refused to take out the plastic pipe, worrying that if Pasha needed it again, he wouldn’t be able to reproduce his work. Pasha placed his index finger over the opening in the tubing and croaked, “Tape it up, I can’t speak with it open.”

  Alexander taped the end shut and watched for a few minutes as Pasha spluttered and struggled to take deep breaths.

  “Alexander, listen,” he finally whispered, weakly and faintly. “I have an idea. Carry me on your back out of this no-man’s land to the defense line. I’m still wearing a German uniform, aren’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll save yourself by my German uniform. If you want to save him”—he pointed to Ouspensky and breathed hard—“have him carry one of the German wounded. Do we have any, or are they all dead?”

  “I think we have a concussed German.”

  “Perfect.” Breath. “Surrender to them carrying their own wounded. You will save your life.”

  “The other three can walk.”

  “Good. Remain in charge though, don’t let the prisoners talk for you. When you get to the defense line, say Schießbsen Sie nicht. Don’t shoot.”

  “Is that all I have to say?” said Alexander. “Why didn’t we say that back in 1941? Or even 1939, for that matter?” He smiled. Pasha breathed.

  “What are you two conspiring to do there?” said Ouspensky, overhearing. “You’re not planning to surrender, are you?”

  Alexander said nothing.

  “Captain, you know we can’t surrender.”

  “Can’t retreat, either.”

  “We’re not retreating. We’re staying put. We’ll wait for reinforcements to come.”

  Pasha and Alexander exchanged a look. “We are surrendering, Ouspensky. I have a wounded man. He needs to be treated immediately.”

  “Well, I’m not doing it. They’ll kill us,” said Ouspensky, “and then our own army will disown us.”

  “Who says we’re ever going back to our army?” said Pasha, struggling up with Alexander’s help.

  “Oh, you’re a fine one to talk. Certainly you, a dead man walking, have nothing to lose and nowhere to go, but the rest of us have families at home.”

  “I have no family,” said Alexander. “But Ouspensky is right.”

  Ouspensky smiled with satisfaction at Pasha.

  Alexander said, “Stay here, Nikolai. Wait for the Red Army to get to you.”

  The smile was wiped off Ouspensky’s face. “Captain! You have a family. I thought you said you had a wife? And he”—pointing derisively to Pasha—“has a sister?”

  Alexander and Pasha said nothing.

  “Why don’t you two care about her? She’ll be sent to Bolshevik Island in Archangelsk because of your surrender.” No one returned from Bolshevik Island.

  Ignoring Ouspensky, Pasha glanced at Alexander. “Ready?” he said.

  Alexander nodded, motioning for the four German prisoners. One was delirious. One had a superficial but very bloody and gloriously conspicuous head wound.

  Ouspensky was barely able to get out a breath. He was wheezing like Pasha. “Is this what it’s coming down to? You, Captain Belov, rode for fifteen hundred kilometers, you barreled through divisions and regiments, through minefields and death camps, through every river and every mountain, all so you could surrender to the Germans?” He was so incredulous he was hyperventilating.

  “Yes,” Alexander said, his own voice shaking. That is exactly why. “I’m done. Now, either you come with us or you stay here.”

  “I’m staying here,” said Ouspensky.

  Alexander saluted him.

  “It’s him,” Ouspensky spat out. “Before him, you were an honorable man. You found him, and since he sold his soul to the devil and lived, you decided why not you, too.”

  Alexander was watching Ouspensky. “Why are you taking this so personally, Lieutenant? What does this have to do with you?”

  “For some reason,” said Pasha, “everything.”

  “Oh, fuck you! No one is talking to you. Why don’t you breathe through your pen and shut the fuck up. You’d be blessedly rotting already if it weren’t for him!”

  “Ouspensky!” Alexander said. “You’re out of line. Commander Metanov is a rank above you.”

  “I don’t respect his rank. I don’t recognize his Satan rank,” snapped Ouspensky. “Go ahead, Captain, what are you waiting for? Go! Leave your live men behind.”

  Corporal Demko said timidly, “He’s not leaving me. I’m going with him.”

  Ouspensky widened his eyes. “I’m the only one you’re leaving behind?”

  “Looks like it,” said Pasha with a smile.

  Ouspensky went for him. Alexander stepped between them just in time. Pasha, brave but foolish, could not have fought even a one-lunged Ouspensky. Breathing took all of Pasha’s effort.

  “What is it with you two?” Alexander said, pushing Pasha away. “Pasha…”

  “I don’t trust him, Alexander. I don’t trust him at all.”

  “Oh, you’re a fine one to talk,” Ouspensky snapped.

  “Since the moment I laid eyes on him,” Pasha continued, “I’ve had a feeling about him.” He panted and fell quiet.

  Alexander took Pasha slightly aside. “He’s all right,” Alexander whispered. “He’s been by my side this whole time. Like Borov was for you.”

  “Right by your side,” Pasha echoed.

  “Yes. Let’s just take him and go before we make so much noise here the Germans will ready for another battle.”

  Pasha said nothing. Alexander bent Pasha’s head back and adjusted the tape on his throat. “You’ve got to stop talking, we’ve got to get you to a medic and get this sewn up. So just shut up for the time being. Let me handle it.”

  He walked back to Ouspensky. “Nikolai, you may not respect his rank, but you have no choice but to respect mine. I cannot leave you in the woods by yourself. I might as well shoot you. I’m ordering you to lay down your arms and to surrender with the rest of us.” He lowered his voice. “It’s for your own good.”

  “Oh, just fucking fine,
” said Ouspensky. “I’ll go. I’m doing it under protest, I tell you.”

  “You’ve been in this whole war under protest. Name me one thing you’ve done of your own volition.”

  Ouspensky said nothing.

  “Pasha over there thinks you are not fit to live with pigs, Lieutenant.”

  “But you defended me, sir. You told him I was.”

  “Exactly. You have been my good friend, Nikolai. I cannot leave you behind. Now come.”

  The men laid down their weapons.

  Walking behind the two able-bodied, limping Germans, Alexander carried Pasha on his back, Ouspensky carried the head-wounded German on his, and Demko the concussed. In this manner, single file, they moved through the woods, through the felled trees and the trench holes, through the pillboxes and the bushes. Unarmed, Alexander slowly walked to the German defense line that stretched for maybe half a kilometer. He knew he couldn’t talk them out of shooting him no matter how much he said Schießben Sie nicht. Instead, he walked a kilometer to the flank.

  He was stopped by a cry from the woods. “Halt! Bleiben Sie stehen. Kommen Sie nicht naheres!”

  Alexander made out two sentries with machine guns. He stopped and did not go any farther just as instructed. “Schießben Sie nicht, schießben Sie nicht,” he shouted back.

  Pasha whispered into his ear, “Tell them you’ve got wounded Germans with you. ‘Wir haben verwundetes Deutsch mit uns.’”

  Alexander called out, “Wir haben—”

  “Verwundetes—”

  “Verwundetes Deutsch mit uns.”

  There was silence from the German side, as if they were conferring.

  Alexander raised his bloodied, once-white towel. “Wir übergeben!” We surrender.

  “Very good,” said Pasha. “So they taught you how to say it, just forbid you to do it.”

  “I learned in Poland,” Alexander replied, waving his flag. “Verwundetes Deutsch!” he called out again. “Wir übergeben!”

  The Germans took the four of them prisoner. They took Pasha and the other Germans to the medic’s tent, sewed up Pasha’s throat, gave him antibiotics. Then Alexander was interrogated, why had he taken German prisoners when it was against Soviet policy? They had also questioned the German soldiers, and from them learned that Pasha—taken care of like a German—was not German. They promptly relieved Pasha of his German uniform and rank, put him into prisoner clothes, and when he was better, transported him, Alexander, and Ouspensky to an Oflag internment camp in Catowice, Poland. Corporal Demko, being an enlisted man, was sent to a Stalag elsewhere.

  Alexander knew that the Germans spared their lives only because he came to them bearing not weapons but wounded German men. The Germans thought the Soviets were worse than animals for letting their own soldiers perish of wounds on the battlefield. Alexander, Ouspensky and Demko were spared because they acted like human beings and not like Soviets.

  Pasha had told Alexander the Germans had two kinds of POW camps, and he was right. This one was divided into two parts—one for the Allied prisoners, one for the Soviets. In the Allied camps, the prisoners were treated according to the rules of war. The text of the 1929 Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners was proudly displayed in those camps. In the Soviet camps, separated from the Allies by barbed wire, the prisoners were treated according to the rules of Stalin. They weren’t given medical attention, they weren’t given food beyond bread and water. They were interrogated and beaten and tortured and finally left to die. The other Soviet prisoners were forced to dig graves for their fallen comrades.

  Alexander didn’t care how he was treated. He was near Germany, a few kilometers from the Oder river, and he was with Pasha. He waited patiently for the Red Cross nurses to come through the camps and was surprised and slightly disheartened when they did not. There were soldiers sick and dying even on the Allied side. Yet even for the French and the English there was no Red Cross. No one would give him a clear answer as to why, not even the major who interrogated him, not even the guards who manned his barracks. Pasha said something must have happened to make the Germans forbid the Red Cross access through their camps.

  “Yes, they’re losing the war,” said Ouspensky. “That’s bound to make anyone less agreeable to the rules.”

  “No one was talking to you,” snapped Pasha.

  “Oh, God, the both of you!” exclaimed Alexander.

  “Lieutenant,” said Pasha to Ouspensky, “why can’t you leave us alone for just a moment? Why are you always at our side?”

  “What do you have to hide, Metanov?” asked Ouspensky. “Why such need to be alone all of a sudden?”

  Alexander walked away from them. They followed him. Pasha said, sighing with resignation at Ouspensky’s presence, “I think we should try to escape. What’s the point of staying here?”

  Alexander snorted mildly. “There are no floodlights and no watchtowers. I don’t think it can be called escaping, Commander,” he said, pointing out a hole five meters wide in the barbed wire fence. “I think it’s called leaving.”

  He himself did not want to run at first, hoping for the IRC to come through. But as weeks went by and the conditions in the camp deteriorated and the IRC was nowhere in sight, he concluded they had no choice. The barbed wire had been fixed. They used wire cutters, found in the engineer’s tool shed, to cut through another hole and run. The three of them were picked up four hours later by two guards from the camp who came after them in a Volkswagen Kübel. Upon their return, the commandant of the camp, Oberstleutnant Kiplinger said, “You’re crazy. Where did you think you were headed? There is nowhere to go, there is just more of this. I’ll let you off this time, but don’t do it again.” He gave Alexander a cigarette. They both lit up.

  “Where is the Red Cross, Commandant?”

  “What do you care where the Red Cross is? Like they ever come for you. No packages for the Soviet men, Captain.”

  “I know that. Just wanted to know where they were, that’s all.”

  “New decree. They’re forbidden to inspect the camps.”

  Alexander kept as clean as he could, shaved scrupulously, and made himself useful by offering to work for the commandant. Kiplinger, against the rules of the Geneva Convention and in accordance with Alexander’s wishes, gave him a saw, nails and a hammer and let him build more barrack housing for the prisoners. Ouspensky helped him, but it was too hard for him in the wet winter with only one lung.

  Pasha volunteered to work in the kitchen, and that way managed to steal enough extra food for himself and Alexander, and reluctantly for Ouspensky also.

  That was at the end of November 1944. December came and went, the camps filled up. Alexander couldn’t build the new barracks fast enough in the freezing weather. The barracks in both the Allied and the Soviet camps normally held a thousand men. Now, stretched beyond limits, they held ten thousand.

  “Lieutenant Ouspensky,” Alexander said, “I find it ironic that they should have so many Soviet men here when the law against surrender is so clear. I just can’t understand it. Can you explain that?”

  “They’re obviously renegades like you, Captain.”

  There was not enough food or water for everyone. Soldiers remained filthy and bred disease on their soiled bodies. The barbed wire came down, the camps became as one. The Germans were clearly unable to figure out what to do with 5,000 Soviet POWs. Aside from the Soviet contingent, there were Romanians, Bulgarians, Turks and Poles.

  There were no Jews anywhere.

  “Where are all the Jews?” one Frenchman asked, in broken English, and Alexander in Russian replied dryly that they were all in Majdanek, but the Frenchman and the Englishman didn’t understand and stepped away from him. Ouspensky was nearby, and Alexander did not want to arouse suspicion by talking in English.

  “Captain, how do you know there aren’t any Jews in this camp?” asked Ouspensky as they walked back to their barracks.

  “Don’t you remember getting bathed and deloused when they first
brought us here?” asked Alexander.

  “Yes. They don’t want to interrogate us filthy. They bathe and delouse us as a matter of course.”

  “Indeed they do, Lieutenant. They also, while you’re naked, as a matter of course make sure you aren’t Jewish. If you were, I guarantee you would not be here.”

  In the meantime, there were rumors of grave American losses in Hürtgen Forest near the Ardennes in Belgium and of carnage and bestial fighting and no relief or capitulation in sight.

  Each morning Alexander worked, repaired, built, supervised other prisoners, and each afternoon he repaired the barbed wire fence on the perimeter of the camp, or the windows in the broken compounds, or cleaned empty weapons, anything to keep his hands busy. For that he was fed a bit better. But it wasn’t enough. Pasha reminded Alexander of his own experience in the prisoner camp at Minsk, where the Germans, unable to figure out what to do with all those Soviets, just let them all die.

  “Well, they can’t let all the Allied POWs die.”

  “Oh, they can’t, can’t they? What are we going to do, chase them straight to hell to hold them accountable? I say we try to escape again. You repair that stupid fucking fence all the time. It’s constantly falling down.”

  “Yes, but now they have a sentry watching just me.”

  “Let’s kill him and run.”

  “It’s Catholic Christmas tomorrow. Can we not kill him on Christmas perhaps?”

  “Since when are you so religious?” asked Pasha.

  “Oh, the Captain and God go back a long way,” said Ouspensky, and both he and Pasha laughed at Alexander’s expense, which he thought was better than the enmity that existed between them all other hours of the day.

  They were given extra coal to heat their barracks rooms for Christmas. They were also given a bit of vodka. There were twenty officers in their quarters. They drank and played cards, and chess, and then got drunk enough to sing rowdy Soviet songs, “Stenka Razin” and “Katyusha,” and were all unconscious by morning.