Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(132)

The one Polish officer was General Bor-Komarovsky. Alexander and he got talking in the canteen. Komarovsky had taken over the Polish Underground Resistance to Hitler and to the Soviets in 1942. When he was caught he went straight to Colditz, to ensure his permanent incarceration. And though he was very willing to tell Alexander stories of previous escape attempts out of the castle, and even gave Alexander his old relief maps of the area, in Russian, Komarovsky told Alexander that he could forget about escaping from here. Even those who had gotten outside the fortress walls were all caught within days. "Which goes to show you," Komarovsky said, "that what I've always believed is especially true of a place like Colditz. Despite the most meticulous planning and organization, there is no successful way out of any difficult situation without the hand of God."

Tania got out of the Soviet Union, Alexander wanted to say. I rest my case.

At night on his top bunk, he thought of her arms. He thought of trying to find her...Where would she be? If she were still waiting for him, where would she be so he could find her? Helsinki? Stockholm? London? America? Where in America, Boston, New York? Somewhere warm, perhaps? San Francisco? The City of Angels? When she left Russia with Dr. Matthew Sayers, he was going to take her to New York. Though the doctor had died, perhaps Tatiana headed there as planned. He would start there.

He hated these blind alleys of his imagination, but he liked to picture what her face might look like when she saw him, what her body might look like as it trembled, what her tears might taste like, how she would walk to him, maybe run to him.

What about their child, how old was it now? One and a half. A boy, a girl? If a girl, maybe she was blonde like her mother. If a boy, maybe he was dark-haired like his once dark, now hairless father. My child, what is it like to hold a small child, to lift it up in the air?

He would get himself into a self-defeating frenzy thinking of her hands on him, and of his own on her.

When she had first left him, the aching for her in his body was unabated, through windy March and wet April, and dry May and warm June. June was the worst. The aching was so intense that sometimes he thought that he would not be able to continue another day, another minute of such want, of such need.

Then a year passed and another. And little by little the aching was numbed, but the want, the need--there was no escape from that.

Sometimes he thought of the girl in Poland, blowzy Faith, who offered him everything and to whom he gave a chocolate. Would he be as strong now if a Faith walked through these parts? He didn't think so.

In Colditz, there was no escape, not from the thoughts, not from the fear, not from the throbbing. Not from the realization that it had now been many months, many years, and how long could one faithful wife wait for her dead husband? Even his Tatiana, the brightest star in the sky. How long could she wait Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

before she moved on?

Please, no more. No more thoughts. No more desire. No more love.

Please. No more anything.

How long could she wait before she put her blonde hair down, and walked out of work, and saw another face that made her smile?

He turned his own face to the window. He had to get out of Colditz, at whatever the cost.

"Comrades, look here," he said to Pasha and Ouspensky, when they were out on the terrace one freezing February afternoon. "I want you to see something." Without motioning he pointed to the two sentries one on each side of the rectangular terrace, seven meters wide by twenty meters long.

Then he walked them casually across the terrace to the stone parapet and casually looked over the ledge while lighting a cigarette. Pasha and Ouspensky also looked over the ledge. "What are we looking at?" said Pasha.

In the walking garden far below, same shape as the terrace but twice as wide, two sentries with machine guns stood at opposite sides, one in an elevated pagoda, one on a raised catwalk.

"Yes?" said Ouspensky. "Four guards. Day and night. And the garden is over a vertical drop. Let's go." He turned.

Alexander grabbed his arm. "Wait, and listen."

"Oh no," said Ouspensky.

Pasha leaned forward. "Let him go, Captain," he said. "We don't need him. Go to hell, Ouspensky, and good riddance."

Ouspensky stayed.

Alexander, without pointing, said, "There are two guards down in the garden during the day, and two up here on the terrace. But at night the two guards here are relieved until morning because there is not much point in looking right at the floodlights. The guards here are replaced by one additional sentry in the garden below for a total of three. The third sentry watches the barbed wire fence over the fifty-foot--" Alexander coughed--"sixteen-meter precipice that leads to the bottom of the hill and to freedom." He paused. "At midnight, two things happen. One is the changing of the guard. The other is the turning of the floodlights to light this terrace and the castle. I've been watching it all out of our window at night. The guards walk off their posts, and new ones come to take their place."

"We're familiar with what changing of the guard means, Captain," said Ouspensky. "What are you proposing?"

Alexander turned away from the precipice and toward the castle. He continued to smoke leisurely. "I propose," he said, "that when the guard is changing and the floodlights aren't on, we jump out of our window carrying a long rope, run across this terrace, jump down right here into the garden below, run to Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html