Tatiana and Alexander

by Paullina Simons

  “Prego, don’t interrupt. When I met you, you were on your way to marry my Aunt Sophia.”

  “Don’t tell me! I know. Tell her!”

  A little more bread was going to keep her mouth nice and occupied. She could eat and they could talk and a good time would be had by all.

  “My mother’s younger sister,” elaborated Isabella. “Travis and I met in a small town in Italy. Near Florence. You know where Florence is?”

  “Yes,” Tatiana said. “My husband’s mother was from Italy.”

  “I was sent by my mother to meet Travis at the train station. Because he never could have found his way. We lived deep in the valley between the mountains. I was sent to meet him and bring him to my Aunt Sophia who was waiting.”

  Vikki said, “Grammy, with your help, he never found his way.”

  “Be quiet, child. It was ten kilometers—about six miles—back to my house. By the time we had walked two kilometers I knew I could not live a day without him. We had stopped at a local tavern for some wine. I never drank. I was too young, just sixteen, but Travis offered me some of his. We drank from the same chalice…” She had stopped serving, smiled and turned to Travis who was eating lasagna and pretending not to pay any attention.

  “We didn’t know what to do,” continued Isabella. “My aunt was twenty-seven, and so was Travis. They were going to be married, there was no way out. We sat in that tavern in the hills near Florence and we didn’t know what to do. So you know what we did?” Isabella poked Travis, who dropped his fork and groused. “We didn’t come home. We just said, let’s go to Rome, we’ll write to the family from there. Instead of Rome, we took a train to Naples, and then a boat from Naples to Ellis Island. We came here in 1902. With nothing but each other.”

  Tatiana had stopped eating and was watching Isabella and Travis. “Did your aunt forgive you?”

  “Nobody forgave me,” said Isabella.

  “Her mother doesn’t write to her to this day,” said Travis, his mouth full.

  “Well, she’s dead, Travis, she can hardly write to me now.”

  “Alexander, how long have you loved my sister?” asks a starved and dying Dasha.

  “Never. I never loved her,” replies Alexander. “I love you. You know what we have.”

  “You said when you get furlough in the summer you would come to Lazarevo and we would get married,” says Dasha, coughing.

  “Yes. I will come to Lazarevo on furlough, and we will get married,” says Alexander to Tatiana’s sister, Dasha.

  Tatiana deeply lowered her head, kneading and pinching her stiffened fingers.

  “We had two daughters in America,” continued Isabella. “Travis wanted a son, but God decided otherwise.” She sighed. “We tried for a boy. I had three miscarriages.” Isabella looked longingly at Anthony, so longingly in fact that Tatiana wanted to get hold of her son again, as if desire somehow equaled possession.

  “In 1923, our oldest daughter Annabella had Gelsomina—”

  “And called me Viktoria,” pointed out Vikki.

  “What does she know?” Isabella said dismissively. “What kind of an Italian name is Viktoria? Gelsomina, now that’s a beautiful Italian name, fitting for a beautiful girl like you. Our youngest, Francesca, lives in Darien, Connecticut. She comes once a month. She’s married to a nice man, no children yet.”

  “Grammy, Aunt Francesca is thirty-seven. No one has children at thirty-seven,” declared Vikki.

  “We were meant to have a son,” said Isabella mournfully.

  “No, we weren’t,” said Travis. “If we were meant to have a son, we would have had a son. Now give the boy back to his rightful mother and eat, woman.”

  “Tania, who takes care of him while you work?” asked Isabella, with regret handing Anthony to Tatiana, who took him gratefully.

  “I take him with me, or he sleeps, or refugee or soldier looks after him.”

  “Well, that’s not very good,” Isabella said. “If you want, I can take care of him for you.”

  “Thank you,” Tatiana said. “But I don’t think…”

  “I could come to Ellis and pick him up for you. And then I could bring him back for you.”

  “Isabella!” exclaimed Travis.

  Tatiana smiled at Isabella. “I think about your question, all right?” she said. “And you two are very lucky you have each other. That is wonderful story.”

  “You’re lucky to have your boy,” said Isabella.

  “Yes,” said Tatiana.

  “Where is your family?”

  Tatiana said nothing at first. “The Germans blockaded Leningrad two years ago,” she said. “There was no food.” She fell silent.

  It is June 23, 1940—Tatiana and Pasha’s birthday. They’re turning sixteen and the Metanovs are celebrating at their dacha in Luga. They have borrowed a table and put it out in the brambled yard because there’s no room in the porch for seventeen people—the seven Metanovs, Papa’s sister, husband and niece, Tatiana’s Babushka Maya and the six Iglenkos. Papa brought black caviar from Leningrad and smoked sturgeon. He brought herring with potatoes and onions and Mama made hot borscht and five different types of Russian salad. Cousin Marina made a mushroom pie, Dasha made an apple pie, Tatiana’s paternal grandmother made her cream puffs, Babushka Maya painted her a picture, and Papa even brought some chocolate from the city because he knows how much Tatiana loves chocolate. Tatiana wears her white dress with red roses. It is the only nice dress she owns. Papa brought it from Poland two years earlier. It is her favorite dress.

  Everyone drinks vodka, everyone but Tatiana. They drink until they can’t hold the glass in their hands. They tell endless political Russian anecdotes and they eat to bursting. Papa plays the guitar and sings hearty Russian folk songs and everyone else joins in even though they can’t remember the words; even though they can’t carry a tune.

  “If you only knew

  Oh how dear to me,

  Are these Moscow nights…”

  “When you turn eighteen, Tania,” says Papa, “I will rent out a banquet hall in the Astoria Hotel for you and Pasha, and we’re going to have ourselves a real proper feast, not this.”

  “You didn’t have a party like that for me, Papa,” Dasha says, who turned eighteen five years earlier.

  “Times were very tough in 1935,” says Papa. “We had so little, but things are better now and they’ll be better still in two years. I’ll raise a glass to you too at the Astoria, Dasha, all right?”

  Tania wants to turn eighteen tomorrow so she can have another day like this day. The night air is warm and smells of faded lilacs and blooming cherry blossoms, the crickets are deafening and even the mosquitoes are at bay. Her brother and sister fall on top of her on the grass and they tickle her until she yells, screeches, squeals, stop it, stop it, stop it, my dress my dress, while the adults raise another shaky glass and Papa picks up the guitar again and Tatiana hears his deep inebriated voice carry through the brambles and the nettles and the white cherry trees, scratching out exiled Alexander Vertinsky’s lament for Leningrad…

  “Uncertain talk by chance brought

  Sweet and needless words

  Summer Garden, Fontanka, and Neva

  Why did you fly here oh words so fleeting?

  Here the noise is made by foreign cities

  And foreign waters lap against the shores here.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  In the Volkhov Prison, 1943

  SLONKO WAS DEAD, BUT nothing was resolved about Alexander’s fate. He was transferred to Volkhov and had to deal with a more malicious class of idiot. He found himself in a different state of mind after he learned that Tatiana had escaped the clutches of the Soviet Union. His relief was mingled with an unrelenting melancholy. Now that he knew she was irrevocably gone, he didn’t know who to rail at first, the person who interrogated him or the guard who pointed a rifle at him. But he hated himself most of all.

  She was gone—that was his doing.

  Volkhov, like Leni
ngrad and unlike Morozovo, actually had two prisons—one for criminals, one for politicals. The distinction was fine, and Alexander was being housed in the prison for criminals. They seemed to have better cells. He remembered his few days in Kresty after his arrest in 1936 before he was put on a train to Vladivostok. The cells had been small and odorous. In this prison in Volkhov the cells were bigger, had two bunks, a sink, a toilet. The cell had a steel door with a barred window, which was opened briefly to pass through his tray of food.

  There was bread and oatmeal and occasionally meat of unknown origin. There was water, tea once in a while, and Alexander received vouchers which he could trade for tobacco or vodka.

  Alexander kept his vouchers, of which he got two or three every day, and did not use them. Vodka he had no use for. Tobacco was a different story. He thirsted for tobacco. His mouth, his throat craved the burn, the smoke; his lungs craved the nicotine. But he forbade himself tobacco. His desire for nicotine slightly dulled his thirst for Tatiana; slightly numbed the aching emptiness in his body left by her absence. It had been about five months since his back was ripped open in the Battle of Leningrad; only twitching nerve endings remained around the raised, ridged scar that had managed to heal at last.

  Alexander saved his tobacco vouchers and paced. He kept his uniform, he kept his boots. His sulfa drugs were long gone. The morphine had gone to Slonko. His rucksack was gone. He hadn’t seen Stepanov since the night of Slonko’s death, so he couldn’t ask what had happened to his ruck, which, though filled with many stupid and replaceable things, had one thing in it that was neither—Tania’s wedding dress. As if he could bear to look at it anyway. He could hardly bear to think of it.

  Six paces from one wall to the other, ten paces from the front door to the back window. All day, while the sun was up, Alexander ran the length of the cell, and when he could not think anymore he would count the steps. One afternoon he paced 4,572 steps. Another he paced 6,207. Between early breakfast and early lunch and late dinner, Alexander walked between his prison walls, walking out Tatiana, living out the darkness. He had no foresight and no hindsight. He could barely tell what was right in front of him. Alexander didn’t know what was ahead of him in the coming years and maybe if he had known, he would have chosen death in those gray pacing days, but because he didn’t know, he chose life.

  Finally he got his military tribunal. After a month of pacing in his cell and collecting ninety tobacco vouchers, he went before three generals, two colonels and one Stepanov. He stood before them in his uniform, wearing his visor cap—his better-looking officer’s cap having been given over to his wife.

  “Alexander Belov, we are here to decide what to do with you,” said General Mekhlis, a thin, tense man who looked like a weathered crow.

  “I’m ready,” said Alexander. It was about time. A month in one cell. Why couldn’t the Lazarevo month with Tatiana have passed as slowly?

  “Charges have been brought against you.”

  “I’m aware of the charges, sir.”

  “Charges that you are a foreigner, an American, disguised as a Red Army officer with the purpose of sabotage and subversion during the worst crisis our great country has ever faced. We are faced with our extinction at the hands of the Germans. You understand why we cannot allow foreign spies to infiltrate our ranks?”

  “I understand. I have a defense.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “All the things you just mentioned are baseless lies. They were presented to you to besmirch my character. My record in the Red Army since 1937 speaks for itself. I have been nothing but a loyal soldier, I have obeyed my superior officers, I have not shied away from any conflict. I served my country proudly against Finland and against Germany. In the Great Patriotic War, I have participated in four attempts to break the blockade on Leningrad. I was wounded twice, the second time nearly mortally. The man who accused me of foreign provocation is dead, shot by our own troops while trying to escape the Soviet Union. I will remind you that man was a private in the Red Army. He was a rear supply man for the border troops. His attempted escape constitutes nothing less than desertion and treason. Are you taking the word of a known deserter from the Red Army against the word of one of your decorated officers?”

  “Don’t tell me what to think, Major Belov,” snapped Mekhlis.

  “I wouldn’t presume to, sir. I was posing a question.” Alexander waited. The men behind the table conferred with each other briefly while Alexander stared out of the window. There was open air outside those windows. He breathed in. He had not been outside in so long.

  “Major Belov, are you in fact Alexander Barrington, son of Jane and Harold Barrington who were executed for treason in 1936 and 1937?”

  Alexander blinked; that was his only reaction. “No, sir,” he said.

  “Are you the Alexander Barrington who jumped off a train headed for corrective camps in 1936 and was presumed dead?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Have you ever heard of Alexander Barrington?”

  “Only through these charges.”

  “Are you aware that your wife, Tatiana Metanova, has disappeared and is presumed to have escaped with Private Chernenko and Dr. Sayers?”

  “No. I am aware that Dr. Sayers was not escaping and that Private Chernenko was shot dead. I am aware that my wife is missing. Comrade Slonko, however, told me before he died”—Alexander coughed once loudly for emphasis—“that she was in NKVD—NKGB, I mean—custody. He told me she had signed a confession implicating me as the man Comrade Slonko had been looking for since 1936.”

  The generals exchanged a surprised look.

  “Your wife is not in our custody,” Mekhlis said slowly. “And Comrade Slonko is no longer here to defend himself. Chernenko is not here to defend himself.”

  “Of course.”

  “Major Belov, how do you explain the actions of your wife? Does it seem at all peculiar to you that she would leave you here while escaping—”

  “Wait, if I may, General. My wife was not escaping. She had come to Morozovo with Dr. Sayers at his request and with the permission of the Grechesky hospital administrator. She was under his supervision.”

  “I think that even under his supervision, your wife was not allowed to leave the Soviet Union,” said Mekhlis.

  “I’m not entirely convinced she has. I have been hearing much conflicting information.”

  “Has she been in touch with you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “That doesn’t trouble you?”

  Blink. “No, sir.”

  “Your pregnant wife has disappeared, has not contacted you and that doesn’t trouble you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “The patrol units who checked the accompanying nurse’s identification all adamantly deny that she had Soviet papers. While they cannot remember her name, they’re sure her documents were with the American Red Cross. This does not bode well for you or your wife.”

  Alexander wanted to point out that it boded better for his wife, but kept silent. “My wife is not on trial here, is she?” he asked.

  “She would be if she were here.”

  “But she is not on trial here,” Alexander repeated. “You asked me if I was Alexander Barrington, the American, and I told you I was not. I don’t know what my wife’s whereabouts have to do with the accusations against me.”

  “Where is your wife?”

  “I do not know.”

  “How long have you been married?”

  “A year this June.”

  “I hope, Major, you keep track of the men under your command better than you have kept track of your wife.”

  Blink.

  The generals studied Alexander. Stepanov’s eyes never left him.

  Mekhlis said, “Major, let me ask you something. Why would anyone accuse you of being an American if it weren’t true? The facts that Private Chernenko provided us with were too detailed to be made up.”

  “I’m not saying he made them up. I’m saying that
he is confusing me with another man.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But why would he point the finger at you, Major?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Dimitri Chernenko and I have had a difficult relationship over the years. Sometimes I thought he was jealous of me, angry at me for succeeding so far beyond him in the Red Army. Perhaps he wanted to hurt me, to sabotage my progress. He also may have had unrequited feelings for my wife. I’m fairly certain of it. Our friendship had cooled considerably in the years before his death.”

  “Major, you are exasperating the high command of the 67th Army.”

  “I’m sorry for that. But all I have is my record and my good name. I don’t want both dishonored by a dead coward.”

  “Major, what do you think will happen to you if you tell us the truth? If you are Alexander Barrington we will confer with the proper authorities in the United States. We may be able to arrange a transfer for you back to America.”

  Alexander laughed softly. “Sir, with all due respect, I’m here on charges of treason and sabotage. The only transfer that will be arranged for me will be to another world.”

  “You’re wrong, Major. We are reasonable men.”

  “Surely, if all it took was for me to say I am from America, or England, or France in order to be transferred back to the country of my choice, what would stop any of us?”

  “Mother Russia, that’s what!” exclaimed Mekhlis. “Your allegiance to your country.”

  “It is that allegiance, sir, that is stopping me from telling you I am an American.”

  Mekhlis took off his pince-nez and looked Alexander over. “Come closer to the table, Major Belov. Let me take a good look at you.”

  Alexander stepped forward until he was at the edge of the tall desk. He didn’t need to straighten up. He was already straightened. Unwaveringly he stared into Mekhlis’s face. Mekhlis stared silently back and finally said, “Major, I will ask you one more time, but before you hastily reply as you have been doing, I am going to give you thirty minutes to think about your answer. You will be taken outside, and then brought back here and asked one last time. These are the questions I am putting before you. Are you Alexander Barrington, son of Jane and Harold Barrington of the United States? Were you arrested for crimes against the Motherland in 1936 and did you escape while en route to your final destination in Vladivostok? Did you, under the false name of Alexander Belov, infiltrate the officer ranks of the Red Army in 1937 after graduating from secondary school? Did you attempt to desert the Red Army and escape through Karelia during the war with Finland in 1940, only to be stopped by Dimitri Chernenko? Have you been a double agent during your seven years in the Red Army? No, no, don’t answer. You have thirty minutes.”