Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(108)

On the train to New York, Vikki stared out the window.

"What's wrong, Vik?"

"Nothing. I was just thinking," said Vikki, "that when I first met you, except for that faded scar on your face, you seemed like the least complicated person I had ever met."

Staring at her boy, Tatiana put her hand on Vikki's leg. "I'm not complicated," she said. "I just need to find out what happened to my husband."

"You told me and Edward he was dead."

Tatiana stared out the window as the train whizzed through the wet summer Massachusetts countryside.

Have you been looking for me? she had once asked him, and he replied, All my life.

She said nothing further as she put her head back on the seat and, stroking Anthony's head, shut her eyes until they were in Grand Central Station.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

In the Mountains of Holy Cross, October 1944 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

DEEP IN THE DENSEthick forest of the mountains, a hundred kilometers and six weeks past the bridge to Holy Cross, Alexander and his men were under fire for three hours one cold autumn afternoon.

They lived in the woods and slept in the woods, setting up their canvas tents when the fighting stopped, or wrapping themselves in their trench coats on the ground when it didn't. They built fires, but food in the forest was more scarce than they would have liked. The rabbits scurried at the sound of a battalion of men. Neither the streams nor the fish were plentiful. But when there were streams, they at least managed to wash. The season for blueberries had passed, and they were all sick of mushrooms. Undercooked, the mushrooms gave Alexander's men terrible stomach upsets and he finally had to forbid their use. The telephone wire frequently broke on the uneven terrain, and the army supplies did not last between reinforcements. Alexander had to make his own soap out of lard and ashes. But his soldiers cared nothing for staying clean, for keeping off lice. They were aware of, but indifferent to, the symbiotic relationship between lice and typhus. The men wanted to eat the lard, and soap be damned. The gunpowder, the mud, the blood remained on their faces and bodies for weeks. Everyone had trench foot: they just could never get dry.

They were a battalion by themselves in the woods, making their way up the mountains to get to the other side, but the Germans took positions atop the mountains, as they had in Sinyavino and Pulkovo and they only needed a few men to ward off Alexander's many.

But at least before they had been making arduous progress. Suddenly they were stopped by the Germans at the foothills and they had not been able to penetrate the Nazi defense despite twice receiving reinforcements of men and ammunition. There had been no further reinforcements in eight days. In between bursts of fire from morning until night, German voices echoed through the woods. Not just above them, but to the left and right of them. Alexander began to suspect that the Germans had less of a defenseline than an encirclement. Alexander's troops had not moved a meter in the forest, and once again night was an hour away.

Alexander had to break the impasse or this forest was going to be his death. It had already been Verenkov's death. The poor bastard couldn't see the enemy, he fired blindly, but couldn't move out of the way of anything. Fortune had carried him alive to these woods and stopped here. Alexander and Ouspensky buried him in the hole ripped by the grenade that had taken him and left his helmet hanging on a stick rising out of the ground.

"Who the f*ck is that?" Alexander suddenly asked when the gunfire ceased. "I swear to God, I can hear Russian. Am I hallucinating, Ouspensky? Listen."

"I hear the paper-ripping sound of the Maschinengewehr 43." That was the German sub-machine-gun.

"Yes, that, but listen. They're about to load another belt in, and you will hear someone barking commands in Russian. I swear to God it's Russian."

Ouspensky looked at Alexander with sympathy. "You miss Russia, Captain?"

"Oh, f*ck," Alexander said. "I'm telling you it's Russian!"

"You think we're shooting at Russian men?"

"I don't know. Is that ridiculous? How would they have gotten here?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Hmm. Sir, have you heard of the Vlasovites?"

"The Vlasovites?"

"The Soviet POWs or partisans who have switched sides."

"Yes, I've heard of the Vlasovites," Alexander snapped. He did not want to be having this discussion with Ouspensky while he was trying to save his men. Ouspensky had absolutely no sense of urgency about anything. He was sitting behind a tree, reloading his Shpagin, setting up the shells in neat rows to load into Alexander's mortar, as peaceful as if he were at a Crimean resort.

Of course Alexander had heard about the Vlasovites. In the primordial morass that had become the partisan war on the Germans, the Vlasovites--led by the eponymous Russian general, Andrei Vlasov--were the Russian soldiers who, when taken prisoner by the Germans, switched to the German side and fought their Red Army brothers in arms--ostensibly fighting for a free Russia. Having organized his Anti-Stalinist Russian Liberation Movement and having found no support from Hitler, Vlasov had long been under German house arrest, but many Russians continued to fight under his name in German-led brigades.

"It can't be the Vlasovites," Ouspensky said.