Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(172)

"Yes, plus revolver rounds. Not enough? Should I get more?"

"Well, it depends," he said. "What's your objective?"

"Hmm," said Tatiana. "Better give me another fifty for...theCommando." She was doing so well with her definite articles.

She brought cigarettes.

She couldn't lift the backpack when she was done, plain could not lift it off the ground. She ended up borrowing a smaller canvas backpack from Vikki and putting the weapons into it. She carried the personal items on her back and the weapons bag in her hands. It was very heavy, and she wondered if perhaps she hadn't gone a bit overboard.

From her black backpack she took out their two wedding rings, still threaded through the rope she had worn at Morozovo hospital, and slipped the rope around her neck.

When she resigned from the Department of Public Health and Edward found out, he didn't want to talk to her. She went to say goodbye to him at Ellis, and he stared at her grimly and said, "I don't want to speak to you."

"I know," she said. "I'm sorry for that. But Edward, what else can I do?"

"Not go."

She shook her head. "He is alive--" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Was alive. Nearly a year ago."

"What am I supposed to do? Leave him there?"

"This is crazy. You're leaving your son, aren't you?"

"Edward," Tatiana said, taking hold of his hand and looking at him with understanding eyes. "I'm so sorry. We almost...But I'm not single. I'm not a widow. I'm married, and my husband may be alive somewhere. I have to try to find him."

They sailed on the Cunard White Star liner, and it took them twelve days to reach Hamburg, Germany. The cargo vessel was filled with the prisoner medical kits from the United States, 100,000 of them, plus food kits and comfort parcels. The longshoremen spent half a day loading them onto large trucks to be transported to the Red Cross hospital in Hamburg and then distributed among the many Red Cross jeeps.

The white jeeps themselves were meant to be self-sufficient, to supply and feed teams of three Red Cross personnel--two nurses and a doctor, or three nurses--for a period of four weeks. The doctor was there to tend to the sick and wounded if need be, and there was certainly a need for tending: the refugees in the Displaced Persons camps they visited suffered from every malady known to man: fungus infections, eye infections, eczemas, tick bites, head lice, crab lice, cuts, burns, abrasion, open sores, hunger, diarrhea, dehydration.

In one such white jeep, Tatiana, Penny and Martin traveled to refugee camps scattered all over northern Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands. They may have had enough food to feed themselves, but the DPs didn't, and there were not nearly enough food parcels to distribute. Several times a day, Martin had to stop driving so they could help someone limping or walking, or lying by the side of the road. The whole of western Europe was reeling with the homeless and camps for them were springing up all over the countryside.

But one thing that was not springing up all over the countryside was Soviet refugees. Those were nowhere to be seen. And although there were plenty of soldiers, French, Italian, Moroccan, Czech, English, there were no Soviet soldiers.

Through seventeen camps and thousands and thousands of faces, Tatiana did not even come close to finding a Soviet man who had fought near Leningrad, much less to finding anyone who had ever heard of an Alexander Belov.

Thousands of faces, of pairs of hands reaching up, of foreheads she touched, desperate people infected and unwashed.

He was not here, she knew it, she felt it. He was not here. She walked each discouraging day from one camp to another, without Penny or Martin. The next camp was close--seven miles--and she did not want company, nor their chatter, she wanted to march herself into a life where she could feel for him and find him. Her heart sinking, fading in her chest, she could not feel for where he was.

She withdrew from Penny and Martin, wishing instead upon a New York sunset, wishing instead upon the face of her son, now three months going on forever without his mother. Wishing idly for warm bread, for good coffee, for the happiness of sitting on a couch covered up by a cashmere blanket reading a Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

book with Vikki a nudge away, with Anthony a room away. Her blonde roots grew out faster than she could find a private bathroom with a mirror for her touch-ups. She took to wearing her nurse's kerchief at all times.

Three months. Since March, she had been driving the truck, handing out parcels, bandaging wounds, administering first aid, driving through destitute Europe, and every day bending to the ground in prayer as she bandaged another refugee. As she buried another refugee. Please let him be here. Another barracks, another infirmary, another military base. Be here, be here.

And yet...and yet...

The hope had not died completely.

The faith had not died completely.

Every night she went to sleep and every morning she woke up with renewed strength and looked for him.

She found another P-38 on a Ukrainian man who had died practically in her arms. She took his ruck which contained eight grenades and five eight-round clips. She crawled into the jeep and hid her new-found loot along with her weapons bag inside the hidden compartment underneath the floor, a thin, narrow hutch that held crutches and folding stretchers, or litters, and now held an arsenal of fire.