Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(156)

Special Camp Number 7, formerly known as Sachsenhausen, was not run by the military administration of Berlin. It fell under the USSR Government Administration of the Camps, or GULAG.

And there was something about being imprisoned in the Soviet-run Gulag that abjectly pervaded Alexander and the other five thousand Soviet men, gave them a bleak sense of terminal malaise. Many of the men had been in POW camps, they were not unfamiliar with restraints of movement and limits to activity. But even during the worst of the winters in German POW camps, the situation did not feel permanent, did not feel obliterating. They were soldiers then. And there was always hope--of victory, of Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

escape, of liberation. But now there was victory, and liberation meant surrender to the Soviets, and there was no escape from Sachsenhausen into Soviet-occupied Germany. This prison, these days, this sentence felt like the end of hope, the end of faith, the end of everything.

Little by little, the torrent, the torment of memory ebbed.

At war he had imagined her whole--her laughter, her jokes, her cooking. In Catowice and Colditz, he imagined her whole--oh, but didn't want to.

Here in Sachsenhausen he wanted to imagine her whole, and couldn't.

Here she had become tainted with the Gulag.

His hands are on her. She is shuddering, her body in spasms breaking up into his hands. Alexander takes hold of her legs as he moves against her, and through it all, she moans and shudders helplessly, every once in a while breathing, "Oh, Shura," and Alexander is breaking into pieces from his excitement and his terror. The excitement is inside her. The terror is in his hands as he grips her quivering body tighter and pulls out for a moment, hearing her nearly scream in frustration, but he is not having any of it. She is his right now, he will do with her as he needs to. He knows what he needs--to hold her closer than his own heart, to feel her dissolve in his hands, and all around him. The more helpless she is and the more he feels her need, the more he feels like a man. But sometimes what he needs as he holds her tighter is for Lazarevo not to vanish with the moon. He can't give her that--what she wants most. What he wants most. He gives her what he can.

"You like it, babe?" he whispers.

"Oh, Shura," she whispers back. She can't even open her eyes. Her arms go around his neck.

"You're not done yet," he says. "God, you're trembling."

"Shura, I can't--I can't--I can't--oh, that's it--"

"Yes, honey, yes. That's it."

He closes his eyes, and hears her cry out.

And cry out. And cry out.

He is not stopping.

And cry out.

Now I'm a man, now when I've made my holy maiden shiver in my hands, I've become a man.

And cry out.

"God, I love you, Tania," he whispers into her hair, his eyes still closed.

And wants to cry himself. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Her body limp underneath him, she lies, gently stroking his back.

"Done?" he asks.

"Donefor,"she replies.

Alexander hasn't even begun.

That's the only thing Alexander imagined now. There was no clearing, no moon, no river. There was no bed, no blankets, no grass, no fire. No tickling, no games, no foreplay, no afterplay. There was no end and no beginning. There was only Tania underneath him, and Alexander on top of her, holding her close and tight. Her arms were always around his neck, her legs were always wrapped around him. And she was never silent.

Because she had become tainted with the Gulag, where there were no men.

We are not men. We do not live like men, and we do not behave like men. We do not hunt for our food--all except me when the guards aren't looking--we do not protect the women who love us, we do not build shelter for our children, nor do we use the tools God gave us. We use nothing--not our brains to live by, not our strength to live by, not our cocks to live by.

War defined you. You always knew who you were during war. You were a major. A captain. A second lieutenant, a first lieutenant. You were a warrior. You carried weapons, you drove a tank, you led men into battle, you obeyed orders. You had categories and roles and passages. You didn't always sleep and you weren't always dry and many times you were hungry, and every once in a while you got shot or shelled or snipered. But even that was expected.

Here we give nothing of ourselves to anyone. We haven't just become less as human beings, we have become less as men--we lost the very thing that made us what we were. We don't even fight like we did at war. We were all animals then, but at least we were male animals. Wedrove forward. Wethrust into enemy lines. Wepenetrated their defense. Webroke their ring. We fought asmen .

And now we're being reconstructed before we are sent back to society as eunuchs. Emasculated, we are sent back to our faithless wives, into cities in which we cannot live, into life with which we cannot cope. We have no manhood to offer, not each other, not our women, and not our children.

All we have is our past, which we detest and dissect and wring our hands over. The past in which we were men. And behaved like men. And worked like men. And fought like men.

And loved like men.

If only--

Only nine thousand days like this to go.

Until--

We're given back to the world we saved from Hitler. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html