Dogs barking.
“You did all right, Alexander.”
He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to her forehead. “Tatiana, my wife, we never had a future. We’ll live tonight for five minutes from now,” he whispered. “That’s how we always lived, you and I, and we will live like that again, one more night, in a white warm bed.”
“Be my comfort, come away with me,” said Tatiana, weeping. “Rise up and come away, my beloved.”
His hand caressed her back. “You know what saved me through my years in the battalion and in prison?” he said. “You. I thought, if you could get out of Russia, through Finland, through the war, pregnant, with a dying doctor, with nothing but yourself, I could survive this. If you could get through Leningrad, as you every single morning got up and slid down the ice on the stairs to get your family water and their daily bread, I thought, I could get through this. If you survived that I could survive this.”
“You don’t even know how badly I did the first years. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
“You had my son. I had nothing else but you, and how you walked with me through Leningrad, across the Neva and Lake Ladoga and held my open back together and clotted my wounds, and washed my burns, and healed me, and saved me. I was hungry and you fed me. I had nothing but Lazarevo.” Alexander’s voice broke. “And your immortal blood. Tatiana, you were my only life force. You have no idea how hard I tried to get to you again. I gave myself up to the enemy, to the Germans for you. I got shot at for you and beaten for you and betrayed for you and convicted for you. All I wanted was to see you again. That you came back for me, it’s everything, Tatia. Don’t you understand? The rest is nothing to me. Germany, Kolyma, Dimitri, Nikolai Ouspensky, the Soviet Union, all of it, nothing. Forget them all, let them all go. You hear?”
“I hear,” Tatiana said. We walk alone through this world, but if we’re lucky, we have a moment of belonging to something, to someone, that sustains us through a lifetime of loneliness.
For an evening minute I touched him again and grew red wings and was young again in the Summer Garden, and had hope and eternal life.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Berlin, July 1946
THE NEXT MORNING THEY woke at six. At seven, housekeeping brought breakfast and a U.S. commissioned uniform for Alexander. They laundered Tatiana’s nursing uniform.
Alexander had coffee and toast and six cigarettes. Tatiana had coffee and toast but couldn’t keep it down.
At seven fifty-five, two armed guards escorted Alexander and Tatiana to the third floor. They sat down silently in the antechamber in wooden chairs.
At eight, the doors opened and John Ravenstock came out. “Good morning, you two. Much better in clean clothes, no?”
Alexander stood up.
Ravenstock glanced at Tatiana. “Nurse Barrington, you might want to wait in your room. We’re likely to be a good few hours.”
“I will wait right here,” said Tatiana.
“Suit yourself,” Ravenstock said.
Alexander walked behind the consul. Before he disappeared inside he turned around. Tatiana was standing. She saluted him. He saluted her.
Six men sat at a long conference table, while Alexander remained standing.
John Ravenstock introduced Military Governor Mark Bishop (“We’ve met”), Phillip Fabrizzio, the U.S. ambassador, and the generals for the three branches of the U.S. armed forces stationed in Berlin—Army, Air Force, Marines.
“So?” Bishop said. “What have you got to say for yourself, Captain Belov?”
“Excuse me, Governor?”
“Do you speak English?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Because of you we have an international situation brewing here in Berlin. The Soviets are demanding, insisting, that the minute you come through our doors we surrender an Alexander Belov to the proper Soviet authorities. Your wife, however, is telling us that you are an American citizen. Indeed Ambassador Fabrizzio has read your file and things seem to be a bit murky with the nationality of a man named Alexander Barrington. And look, I don’t know what you did or didn’t do for the Soviets before they threw you in Sachsenhausen. But one thing I do know—in the last four days you killed a battalion of their men and they are demanding justice for them.”
“I find it ironic that the Soviet military command here in Berlin, or anywhere for that matter, should suddenly care about their men, when I myself buried at least two thousand of their men in Sachsenhausen during time of peace.”
“Yes, well, Sachsenhausen is a camp for convicted criminals.”
“No, sir, soldiers like me. Soldiers like you. Lieutenants, captains, majors, one colonel. Oh, and that’s not including the seven hundred German men—high-ranking officers and civilians—who have been either buried or cremated there.”
“Do you deny killing their men, Captain?”
“No, sir. They were coming to kill me and my wife. I had no choice.”
“You did escape, however?”
“Yes.”
“The Commandant of the Special Camp claims you are an inveterate escapee.”
“Yes, I was not happy with the living conditions. I was voting with my feet.”
The generals exchanged looks. “You were convicted of treason, is that correct?”
“It is correct that that is what I was convicted of, yes.”
“Do you deny charges of treason?”
“Whole-heartedly.”
“They say you had deserted the Red Army when they were coming to resupply you and after meandering through the woods, you willingly surrendered yourself to the enemy and fought alongside them against your own people.”
“I did give myself up to the enemy. I had not had any reinforcements in two weeks, I was out of bullets and out of men on a defense line of forty thousand Germans. I never fought against my own people. I was in Catowice and then Colditz. But surrendering was against the law for Soviet soldiers, so I am guilty as charged.”
The generals were silent. “You are lucky to still be alive, Captain,” said General Pearson of the Marines. “We heard that out of six million Soviet prisoners of war, the Germans let five million die.”
“I am sure that figure is not inflated, General. Perhaps if Stalin had signed the Geneva Agreement, more would be alive. The English and the Americans POW weren’t all killed, were they?”
There was no answer from the generals.
“So what is your rank now?”
“I have no rank. My rank was taken away from me when I was sentenced for treason.”
“Why are the Soviets calling you Major Belov, then?” Bishop asked.
Half-smiling, Alexander shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Captain Belov, why don’t you start at the beginning, from the moment your parents left America and came to the Soviet Union, and tell us what has happened to you? That will help us greatly. We have too much conflicting information here. The NKGB has been looking for an Alexander Barrington for ten years. But they also maintain you are Alexander Belov. We don’t even know if that is one and the same man. Why don’t you tell us who you are, Captain.”
“Be glad to, sir. Request permission to sit.”
“Granted,” said Bishop. “Guard, bring this man some cigarettes, and some water.”
Alexander had been in for six hours. Tatiana thought he could have been taken away through a secret passage, but she kept hearing dim voices through the thick wood doors.
She paced, she sat—she crouched, she rocked. Her life and his floating before her eyes in the anteroom of the United States Embassy in Berlin.
They were learning to swim, and each minute did not get easier, each day did not bring new relief. Each day brought just another minute of the things they could not leave behind. Jane Barrington sitting on the train coming back to Leningrad from Moscow, holding on to her son, knowing she had failed him, crying for Alexander, wanting another drink, and Harold, in his prison cell, crying for Alexand
er, and Yuri Stepanov on his stomach in the mud in Finland, crying for Alexander, and Dasha in the truck, on the Ladoga ice, crying for Alexander, and Tatiana on her knees in the Finland marsh, screaming for Alexander, and Anthony, alone with his nightmares, crying for his father.
But there he is! With the cap in his hands, crossing the street for his white dress with red roses, there he is, every day coming to Kirov, stone upon stone, corpse upon corpse, there he is, in the Field of Mars under the lilacs with his rifle and she is barefoot next to him, and he is whirling her around on the steps of their wedding church, waltzing with her under the red moon of their wedding night, coming out of the Kama, coming at her broken and destroyed, bare, smiling, smoking, drowning Alexander. He is not gone yet. He is not vanished. Perhaps what remains of him can still be saved.
And there he is once again, standing on the river Vistula, looking out onto the rest of what’s left of his life. One path leads to death; the other to salvation. He doesn’t know which road to take, but in his eyes is the girl on the bench, and across the river is the Bridge to Holy Cross.
When Alexander was finished, the generals sat still, the ambassador sat still, the consul sat still.
“Whew, Captain Belov,” said Bishop, “that’s some life you got there. How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
Bishop whistled.
General Pearson of the United States Marines said, “You’re telling us that your wife, without knowing where you were, came to Germany bearing weapons, found the camp you were in, found your cell, found you, and orchestrated your escape out of the maximum security Special Camp Number 7?”
“Yes, sir.” Alexander paused. “Perhaps we can keep the reference to my wife out of this tribunal’s report?”
John Ravenstock was quiet. The generals were quiet. “And what would you call yourself, Captain, if your American citizenship were reinstated?”
“Anthony Alexander Barrington,” he said.
The men stared at Alexander. He stood up and saluted them.
The door opened and the seven of them came out of the conference room. Alexander walked out last. He saw Tatiana struggle up from her chair, but she couldn’t stand without holding on to it, and she looked so alone and forsaken, he was afraid that she would break down in front of half a dozen strangers. Yet he wanted to say something to her, something to comfort her, and so slightly nodding his head, he said, “We are going home.”
She inhaled, and her hand covered her mouth.
And then because she was Tatiana and because she couldn’t help herself, and because he wouldn’t have it any other way, she ran to him and was in his arms, generals or no generals. She flung her arms around him, she embraced him, her wet face was in his neck.
His head was bent to her, and her feet were off the ground.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are—
Unyielding.
Barrington, Leningrad, Luga, Ladoga, Lazarevo, Ellis Island, the mountains of Holy Cross, their lost families, their lost mothers and fathers, their brothers in arms and brothers are etched on their souls and their fine faces and like the mercurial moon, like Jupiter over Maui, like the Perseus galaxy with its blue, imploding stars they remain, as the stellar wind whispers over the rivers all run red, over the oceans and the seas, murmuring through the moonsilver skies…
Tatiana…
Alexander…
But the bronze horseman is still.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful and overdue thanks:
To Larry Brantley, the voice of the Army, for the hours spent detailing for me things I could never have known.
To Tracy Brantley, his wife and my true friend, who in a very amigo-like fashion, gave me early on what I needed most by weeping in all the right places and loving Tania and Shura for all the right reasons.
To Irene Simons, my first mother-in-law, for giving me the name under which I write my books.
To Elaine Ryan, my second mother-in-law, for giving me her perfect second son.
To Radik Tikhomirov, my father’s friend for sixty years, for photocopying diaries of blockade survivors at the St. Petersburg library and sending me hundreds of pages in original Russian.
To Robert Gottlieb, a fellow Russophile, for performing miracles, and to Kim Whalen for a decade of hard work.
To Nick Sayers, my former publisher, my editor, my friend.
To Pavla Salacova who works so hard making my life easier she makes me believe she has twenty hands.
To my second and last husband Kevin—you are the bomb.
And to my father, who, a long time ago, hoped and believed and loved, and brought his family to the promised land for a free life.
About the Author
PAULLINA SIMONS is the bestselling author of the acclaimed novels Tully, Red Leaves, and Eleven Hours. Born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia, she has lived in Rome, London, and Dallas, and currently lives near New York City with her husband and four children.
www.paullinasimons.com
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Praise for Tatiana and Alexander
“This has everything a romance glutton could wish for: a bold, talented, and dashing hero, a heart-stopping love affair! It also has—thank goodness—a welcome sense of humor and discernable characters rather than ciphers.”
—Daily Mail (London)
“A story of love and hope in the grand Russian tradition; a sort of Second World War War and Peace, vast, epic, sweeping.”
—Bookseller (London)
Praise for The Bronze Horseman
“Lush in emotion and rich in detail…a complex, diverse, multi-faceted story.”
—Denver Post
“Readers will come to care about these characters and their plight and will take away a definite sense of what the siege of Leningrad actually meant on a personal level.”
—Booklist
“Emotionally compelling…a page-turner.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A love story both tender and fierce.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Recalls Dr. Zhivago.”
—People
“A heart-stopping love story.”
—Library Journal
Praise for Tully
“Reads fast, like a sudden surge of wind over the plains, and the book’s momentum builds to tornado force.”
—USA Today
“A big, ambitious book whose characters stick in the reader’s mind.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“What a lovely and resonant evocation of that first great bond between women—it’s deeply moving.”
—Anne Rivers Siddons
Also by Paullina Simons
ROAD TO PARADISE
THE GIRL IN TIMES SQUARE
THE SUMMER GARDEN
THE BRONZE HORSEMAN
ELEVEN HOURS
RED LEAVES
TULLY
Cookbook:
TATIANA’S TABLE
Credits
Cover design by Feeza Mumtaz
Cover photograph © Allan Jenkins/Trevillion Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
TATIANA AND ALEXANDER. Copyright © 2003 by Paullina Simons. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or
mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST AVON PAPERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED 2010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ePub Edition © May 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-202025-3
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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