Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(183)

There was only one way into the prison wing and one way out, and it was guarded by a man in a chair with his machine gun propped up against the wall. He was playing cards with himself.

"How has it been today, Corporal Perdov?"

"Quiet today," the corporal said, standing up briefly in salute. He smiled at Tatiana. She did not smile back.

The prison was a long corridor, floor covered with sawdust and cells on each side. They went through the first five cells.

"How many prisoners are you keeping this way?" Tatiana asked.

"About thirty," Karolich replied.

In the sixth cell, the man had fainted and Tatiana put smelling salts under his nose to revive him. Karolich had left to open cell number seven. Cell number six revived. Tatiana gave him a drink of water and walked out into the corridor.

From inside cell number seven, she heard Karolich say in a mocking voice, "How is my favorite prisoner doing this morning?"

"Fuck you," came the reply.

Her knees buckled.

Tatiana stepped from the corridor into the doorway. The cell was long and narrow with a step down divider, and on the straw beneath the tiny window that shed no light on the floor, twenty feet in front of her, lay Alexander.

The moments of silence fell through the cell. They fell onto her face and her shoulders. Her breath taken away, her burning stopped, her heart stopped too, she stood and looked at the bearded, thin man in manacles, in dark slacks and a blood-drenched white shirt. She dropped her nurse's bag, and her hand went over her mouth stifling a racking sob.

"Oh, I know. This is our very worst, Nurse," said Karolich. "We're not proud of this one, but there is just nothing we can do with him."

When the door opened and light streamed in, Alexander had been sleeping. Rather, he thought he had been sleeping. His eyes were closed, and he had been dreaming. He had not eaten in two days: he hated his food left on the floor for him as if he were a dog. He was planning on eating soon.

Alexander was furious with himself. The last escape had been so close to being successful. The orderly, bringing some medical supplies into the infirmary, was dressed in civilian clothes, and as usual was coming freely in and out of the camp, waving to the sentries, who would wave back and without a second glance open the gate for him. What could be easier? Alexander had been in the infirmary for the previous three weeks with broken ribs. He knocked out the orderly, took his clothes, shoved him in a closet, and walked up to the gatehouse, waving to the guards. And one of them came down and opened Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

the gate for him. Never even looked at Alexander.

He waved a thanks, a goodbye and started walking.

Why did Karolich have to come out of the green casino just on the left, why at that very moment? He looked through the gate, saw Alexander's back and screamed for the sentries.

Now, three days later, bloodied and worn out, he had been dreaming of swimming and of the sun and of cool water on his body. He dreamed of being clean, of not being thirsty. He dreamed of summer. It was so dark in the cell. He dreamed of finding a corner of order in the infinite chaos that his world had shown him. He dreamed of...

...And through the small bars he heard voices and then the door lock turn and the door open. Squinting, Alexander saw Karolich walk in. That Karolich! How he enjoyed flaunting Alexander's failure to Alexander. They had their usual exchange, and then a shadow of a small nurse appeared in the doorway. For a moment, just a single moment, coming out of a dream as he was, the small shape of the nurse looked almost like...but it was hard to see, and, besides, hadn't he been hallucinating her enough? He couldn't get far enough from his delusions of her.

But then she gasped, and he heard her voice, and while the hair was different, the voice belonged only to her, and he heard it so clearly. He tried to see her face, he peered, he tried to sit up, to move away from the wall, but he could do nothing. She took one step forward. God, it looked like Tatiana! He shook his head, he thought he was delirious again, the visions of her in the woods in her polka dot bathing suit with her loveless eyes chasing him through every night, through every day. He raised his arms as far as his chains would permit, raised them in supplication: vision, comfort me this time, don't afflict me again.

Alexander shook his head and blinked, and blinked again.I'm imagining her , he thought. I've imagined her for so long, what she looks like, what she sounds like. She is an apparition, like my father, my mother; I will blink and she too will be gone--as always. He blinked and blinked again. Blinked away the long shadow of life without her, and she was standing in front of him, and her eyes shined and her lips were bright.

And then he heard Karolich say something to her, and it was then that Alexander knew that the bastard Karolich could not be imagining her, too.

They stared speechlessly at each other and in their eyes were minutes and hours, months and years, continental drifts and ocean divides. In their eyes was pain and there was vast regret.

The scythe of grief fell evenly upon their stricken faces.

She tripped on the step and nearly fell. Dropping to her knees by his side, she did what she did not think she would do again in this lifetime.

Tatiana touched Alexander.

He had dried blood on his hair and face, and he was shackled. He looked at her and did not speak.

"Nurse Barrington, we don't treat them all this way, but he has proven himself to be incorrigible and beyond rehabilitating." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html