Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(113)

"Who are you? Tell me."

"Tellyou ? Who the f*ck areyou ? What are you, my brother in arms? I won't tell you shit. You better kill me now because in a minute I'll yell my rallying cry and my men will charge. They'll die charging but you'll lose what pathetic troops you got left. You won't get a word out of me."

"You're in the back of my camp. You're a kilometer and a half away from your own troops. Scream all you want. Scream like a woman. No one will hear you. What is your name?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Andrei Kolonchak, I told you."

"Your last name is a combination of Alexander Kolchak, the leader of the White Army during the Russian Civil War and the woman partisan Kolontai?"

"That's correct."

"Why did your aide call you Captain Metanov then?"

The man blinked. For just one moment, he glanced away from Alexander, but that one moment was enough. Alexander caught that one glance away square in the chest. Recoiling back from the man, he couldn't look at him when he said, "Captain Pavel Metanov?"

There was silence from under the tree. There was silence from Alexander. Looking at his rifle, at his hands, at the moss, at his boots, at the stones, Alexander took one deep breath, one shallow breath, one aching breath and said, "...PashaMetanov?"

When he looked up, the man was staring at him with the perplexed, stunned, emotional face of someone who had heard an English voice in China, who had traveled a thousand miles and saw one white face, one black face, one recognizable, familiar face. As if an imprint of childhood were snapped with a black-and-white camera and it caught the smiling face of a young boy and of a soldier near death sitting roped to a tree, all at once and more.

"I don't understand," the man said faintly. "Whoare you?"

"I," said Alexander, and his voice broke; he couldn't continue. I...I...I scream to the deaf sky.

But it's not deaf. Look at what's in front of me.

Alexander stared at the man by the tree with a mixture of sadness, confusion, and disbelief. "I'm Alexander Belov," he finally managed to utter. "In 1942 I married a girl named Tatiana Metanova--" However much it hurt Alexander to say her name, it must have hurt the man at the tree even more to hear it. He flinched, coiled up, bent his shaking head. "No, stop. It can't be. Take your weapon. Shoot me."

Alexander put down his Shpagin and inched his way to the man. "Pasha, oh my God, what the f*ck have you been thinking? What are you doing?"

"Forget me," said the man named Pasha Metanov. "You're married to Tania? She's all right then?"

"She's gone," said Alexander.

"She died?" He gasped.

"I don't think so." Alexander lowered his voice. "Gone from the Soviet Union."

"I don't understand. Gone where?"

"Pasha..."

"We got time. We got nothing but time. Tell me." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"She escaped through Finland." Alexander spoke in a whisper. "I don't know if she made it, if she's safe, if she's free. I know nothing. They arrested me, put me in charge of this penal battalion."

"What about...my"--Pasha's voice faltered--"family?"

Alexander shook his head.

"Did anyone make it?"

"No one," Alexander breathed out.

The warrior fought his words. "My mother?"

"Leningrad took them all."

Pasha was speechless for a few terrible moments, and then he cried.

Alexander's head was lowered so far, the chin was on his chest.

An unconsoled Pasha said, "Why? You could've killed me, and I would have never known. I would have been all right. I thought they had evacuated, were safe. I thought they were in Molotov. I had comfort thinking of them alive. Why did you spare me? Can't you see I have no interest in being spared? Would I have joined the other side if I thought for a moment my life was worth saving? Who asked you to come along and save me?"

"No one," said Alexander. "I didn't ask you to come along either. I was ready to throw the grenade into your tent. You would've been dead, your troops annihilated by morning. Instead, I heard someone calling you by your rightful name. Why did I have to hear that? Ask yourself." He paused. "Can I release you?"

"Yes," said Pasha. "And I will tear out your heart with my bare hands."

"If only I f*cking had one," said Alexander, getting up off the ground, and replacing the gag on Pasha's mouth with a heavy hand.

Morning broke and with it came anger. Alexander didn't understand as he watched Pasha sitting sullenly gagged and bound. He wished he had leisure to worry about it. At the moment it was raining, as if all other iniquities were not enough. They came to the mountains of Holy Cross to die, and now they were going to die wet.

Alexander offered Pasha some food. Pasha refused. A cigarette? Also a no.

"What about a bullet?"

Pasha wouldn't even look at Alexander.

The enemy was quiet this morning. Alexander wasn't surprised, and he knew Pasha wasn't either. The commander of their unit had gone. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html