Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(131)

Someday, she would stand from the couch, step away from the window sill, leave the fire escape, put away the black backpack, take the rings off her neck. Someday when the music played, she would not feel him waltzing with her through the clearing under the crimson moon on their wedding night.

Oh, how we danced on the night we were wed...

Someday. But today with every breath of the past she colored her breath of the future, with every blink of her eye, Alexander bore himself deeper and deeper inside her until the whole of what they were together blinded her from seeing what else might be in the world for her.

All she thought about was what he had loved in her, what he had needed from her, what he had wanted from her.

Memory--that fiend, that cruel enemy of comfort.

There was no forgetting; worse, the bloodletting that went on every minute became more intense as time went on. It was as if his lips, his hands, his crown, his heart, the things that seemed almost normal, almost right in Lazarevo acquired a prescient, otherworldly sense; it was as if in their totality they took on a life they had not had before.

How did they fish, or sleep, or clean? How did she go to her sewing circle? She hated herself now, flagellated herself for doing anything else, how could she have tried to live a normal life in Lazarevo with him, knowing even then that time and they were as fleeting as snowflakes?

Knowing what was at stake, could he have lowered his head and walked by her, if he had known what he would lose for the hour of rapture, for the minute of bliss?

How he loved to touch her. And she would sit quietly, with her legs not too close together, so that anytime he wanted to, he could: and he did.Anytime. Yes, he said, it was what a soldier on furlough wanted. Anytime wasn't often enough. He would touch her with his fingers as she sat quietly on the bench, and then he would touch her with his mouth as she sat less quietly on the bench, there was no other time for him but now, there was no later, there was only insanity now.

I will make you insane, her memory screamed at her near the winter window sill as Tatiana smelled the brine of eternity. On the outside you will walk and smile as if indeed you are a normal woman, but on the Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

inside you will twist and burn on the stake, I will never free you, you will never be free.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Colditz, January 1945

PERHAPS THEY WERE RIGHTin what they said about Colditz. There was no escape. And there was no work, either. There was nothing for the men to do except sleep and play cards and go for two walks a day. They got up at seven for roll call, and turned off their lights every evening at ten. In between there were three meals and two walks.

Colditz was the sprawling fifteenth-century fortress castle in northern Saxony, in the triangle between three great German cities: Leipzig, Dresden, and Chemnitz. Colditz stood on a steep hill above the river Mulde. And it wasn't just a hill. Colditz was surrounded by moats on the south and vertical drops on the east and leg-buckling precipices on the north and west. Colditz was built out of the rocky hill. When the mountain ended, the castle began.

The castle was extremely well run by high-minded, well-organized Germans who took their jobs very seriously and would not be corrupted, as Alexander learned from the five Soviet officers already residing in their small, cold, single stone cell with four bunks.

Colditz had a sick ward and a chapel, it had a delousing shed, two canteens, a movie theater, even a dentist. And that was just for the prisoners. As if it were their permanent residence, the German guards lived and ate very well. The commandant of Colditz had a quarter of the castle all to himself.

The most notorious escapees in all the other POW camps in Germany were brought to Colditz, where the sentries with machine guns stood every fifteen meters, on level ground, on raised catwalks and in round towers, and watched them twenty-four hours a day. Floodlights covered the castle at night. There was only one way in and one way out, over a moat bridge that led to the German garrison and the commandant's quarters.

There must have been two sentries for every one of the 150 prisoners; it certainly felt like it. Alexander spent thirty-one January days watching the sentries as they went out for their walks in the large inner courtyard, cobbled with gray stones that reminded him slightly of Pavlov barracks in Leningrad. He wondered whatever happened to Colonel Stepanov.

For thirty-one days he watched the guards in the canteen, in the showers, in the courtyard. Twice a week for an hour--with good behavior only--the prisoners were allowed, in small clusters of twelve, to take walks on the outer terrace facing west. It was an enclosed stone space, and below it over a parapet was a grassy, completely enclosed garden, but the prisoners weren't permitted there. Alexander, always on his best behavior, went out to the terrace for his two walks a week and watched the men who were watching him. He even watched them changing guard out of the window of his room. His bunk was next to the window, on the third floor over the sick ward, facing west. He liked that he was facing west. Something hopeful about it. Below him was the long and narrow terrace, and below that the long and narrow garden.

Colditz certainly looked impenetrable. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

But how did Tania do it? How did she make it to Finland, with Dimitri dead and Sayers fatally wounded? He wished he knew, but he knew one thing--somehow she ended up in Finland. So there must be a way out of this place, too. He just couldn't see it.

Pasha and Ouspensky were a lot less optimistic. They had no interest in watching the guards. Alexander wanted to talk to the British POWs in the courtyard, but he had no interest in explaining his flawless English to Pasha or Ouspensky. There were no Americans in sight, only British and French officers, one Polish officer and the five Soviets with whom they shared their cell.