Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(148)

"Yes, in twenty-five years."

"I mean free of you," said Ouspensky, trying to turn from Alexander. "When I won't be chained with you, bunked with you, assisting you."

"Hey, why are you so pessimistic? I heard the Kolyma camps are co-ed. Maybe you can pick yourself a Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

little camp wife."

They sat down together on the shelves. Alexander lay down instantly and closed his eyes. Ouspensky grumbled that he was uncomfortable and had no room next to a man as large as Alexander. The train lurched forward and he fell off the shelf.

"What's wrong with you?" Alexander said, extending his hand to help him up. Ouspensky did not take it.

"I shouldn't have listened to you. I shouldn't have surrendered, I should have minded my own business, and I'd be a free man."

"Ouspensky, have you not been paying attention? Refugees, forced labor workers, people who lived in Poland, in Romania, all the way in Bavaria! From Italy, from France, from Denmark, from Norway. They're all being sent back, all under the same conditions. What makes you think you, of all of them, would be a free man?"

Ouspensky didn't reply. "Twenty-five years! You got twenty five-years, too, don't you even give a shit anymore?"

"Oh, Nikolai." Alexander sighed. "No. Not anymore. I'm twenty-six years old. They've been sentencing me to prison terms in Siberia since I was seventeen." Had he served out his first one in Vladivostok, he'd be nearly done by now.

"Exactly! You, you. Christ, it's all about you. My whole life since the cursed day bad f*cking luck had me in a bed next to you in Morozovo has been all about you. Why should I get twenty-five f*cking years just because some damn nurse put me in the adjacent bed?" He railed and rattled his chains. The other prisoners, trying to sleep, told him in no uncertain terms to "Shut the f*ck up."

"That damn nurse," said Alexander quietly, "was my wife." He paused. "And so you see, dear Nikolai, how inexorably your fate is linked with mine."

For many minutes Ouspensky didn't speak.

"Did not know that," he said at last. "But of course. Nurse Metanova. That's where I heard her name before. I couldn't figure out why Pasha's last name sounded so familiar." He fell quiet. "Where is she now?"

"I don't know," said Alexander.

"Does she ever write you?"

"You know I get no letters. And I write no letters. I have one plastic pen that doesn't work."

"But I mean, there she was, in the hospital, and then suddenly she was gone. Did she go back to her family?"

"No, they're dead."

"Your family?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Dead, also."

"So where is she?" he exclaimed in a high-pitched voice.

"What is this, Ouspensky? An interrogation?"

Ouspensky fell silent.

"Nikolai?"

Ouspensky did not reply.

Alexander closed his eyes.

"They promised me," Ouspensky whispered. "They swore to me,swore that I would be all right."

"Who did?" Alexander didn't open his eyes.

Ouspensky did not reply.

Alexander opened his eyes. "Who did?" He sat up straight. Ouspensky backed away slightly but not far enough, chained as he was to Alexander.

"Nobody, nobody," he mumbled, and then, with a surreptitious glance at Alexander, he shrugged.

"Oh, it's as old as the sea," he said, trying to sound casual. "They came to me in 1943, soon after they arrested us, and told me I had two choices--I could be executed by firing squad for crimes committed under Article 58. That was my first choice. I thought about it and asked what my second choice was. They told me," he continued, in the deliberate and flat tone of a man who doesn't care much about anything, "that you were a dangerous criminal, but that you were needed for the war effort. However, they suspected you of heinous crimes against the state, but because ours was the kind of society that abided by laws of the constitution and wanted to preserve your rights--they would spare your life long enough for you to hang yourself."

That's why Ouspensky had never left his side. "And did they ask you to be my noose, Ouspensky?" asked Alexander, gripping his leg irons.

Ouspensky didn't reply.

"Oh, Nikolai," Alexander said in a dead voice.

"Wait--"

"Don't tell me anymore."

"Listen--"

"No!' Alexander shouted, throwing himself on Ouspensky. Grabbing him by the scruff of his neck, helpless and irate, Alexander smashed his head against the wall of the train. "Don't tell me anymore."

Red and panting, Ouspensky, who did nothing to free himself, whispered hoarsely, "Listen to me--" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Again Alexander smashed Nikolai's head against the wall.

Someone said, "Keep it down over there," but feebly. No one wanted to get involved. One less man was one more hunk of bread for someone else.

Ouspensky was choking. His nose was bleeding from the trauma to the back of his head. He did not fight back.