Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(186)

"Fuck you," said Alexander.

"Tsk, tsk. The man has no manners in front of a lady. Well, it doesn't matter." Karolich lowered his voice. "He's not staying here."

"No?" Tatiana was cleaning Alexander's wrists. As she did so, she slipped two pins from her hair into his palm and squeezed it shut.

Karolich shook his head. "No. He and a thousand others are leaving for Kolyma tomorrow." He laughed lightly and poked Alexander in the ribs with the muzzle of the machine gun. "Try to escape from there."

"Please don't provoke the prisoner," said Tatiana, beginning to shave his beard. "Why isn't he wearing prison clothes?"

"He stole these from an orderly in the infirmary. When we caught him, we threw him in here as he was. He obviously likes it here. He always wants to return."

"Why is he bleeding, so bruised? Was he beaten?"

"Nurse, did you hear me? Seventeen times! Beaten? He's lucky he's alive. What if the man yesterday did what he did to you seventeen times? How many times would you take it before you said, enough already and beat him to death?"

Tatiana glanced down at Alexander. His eyes blackened.

"Nurse, you're getting his filth all over your nice white uniform," said Karolich with distaste. "Lay him down on the straw. He doesn't care if he's shaved. He is not used to this kind of treatment. Nor should he be getting it."

She did release Alexander. His wrists were clean and dressed, his hair was cut and washed, his scalp Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

wound cleaned and bandaged. She even had him swill his mouth out with baking soda and peroxide. Now she needed to look at the rest of him, to make sure nothing was broken.

"Does this man have a rank?"

"Not anymore," said Karolich.

"Whatwas his rank?"

"He was a major, once. Demoted to captain."

"Captain, how are your ribs? Do you think they're broken?" asked Tatiana.

"I'm not a doctor," said Alexander. "I don't know. Perhaps."

Unbuttoning his shirt, she slowly ran her hands from his throat down to his ribs, whispering, "What hurts, what hurts?"

He did not answer. He said nothing, nor did he open his eyes.

His body was unclean and black and blue. She thought his ribs were broken, but when she touched them he did not flinch. That could just be Alexander--he didn't flinch when she cleaned his head, either--but decided to leave the matter.

She moved down to his leg irons, detached them, and washed his feet in soapy water. His ankles felt pulpy. The skin on them felt eaten away and raw. It was hard to see in the dark.

Karolich continued to sit. He even lit a smoke, sat coolly and enjoyed it.

"Would you like a smoke, Nurse Barrington? These cigarettes are very good."

"Thank you, Lieutenant, but I don't smoke. Perhaps your prisoner would like one?"

Karolich laughed and shoved Alexander's hip with his boot. "Prisoners in camp jail do not get cigarette privileges, do they, Belov?" He took a deep drag and blew the smoke into Alexander's face.

Tatiana got up. "Lieutenant, stop provoking the prisoner in front of me. We're finished here. Let's go."

Alexander emitted a despondent sound.

Tatiana collected her things. Karolich locked Alexander's wrists and ankles to the manacles once again.

"How long has it been since this prisoner was fed?" she asked.

"We feed him," Karolich replied gruffly. "More than he deserves."

"How does he eat? Do you take the irons off him?"

"The irons never come off him. We put the food in front of him, and he crawls to it and bends his face and eats it off the ground." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"He didn't eat his food. Do you see the state of him? Is this his old plate? He didn't eat it, but the rats did. You have rats here, Lieutenant, because you leave the food on the ground for days, and they know where to come for their supper. You do know that rats carry the plague, don't you? The International Red Cross is here to ensure that exactly these kinds of abuses do not happen. Now, let's get the old straw out and sweep some clean straw under him."

After they had done so, Karolich picked up the plate off the ground. "He'll be brought fresh food later," he said brusquely.

She glanced at Alexander, who lay with his eyes closed, his hands clenched in shackles at his stomach. She wanted to tell him she would be back, but she didn't want Karolich to hear her quivering voice.

"Don't go," he said, without opening his eyes.

"We'll come back later to see how you are," Tatiana said weakly, and was grateful that his hands were manacled because she knew he would not have let her go had he been able to move them.

Tatiana was blinded for a moment by the gray daylight. She stopped cold to get her bearings, and when Karolich asked if she wanted to get some lunch, she said, no, thank you, because she had to count how many supplies they still had left. She told him to go on ahead, that she would soon follow.

The camp prison was located just to the right of the gatehouse and just to the right of her parked Red Cross jeep. The two guards stood sentry above it on the roof. One of them waved to her. She opened the jeep and looked inside. The truck was a quarter full of supplies, there was another bushel of apples and some food parcels left. She knew she had only minutes to think. She stood quietly, and then loaded up the handtruck with sixty medical kits and walked by herself to the nearest barracks. The fact that she could think of entering a barracks by herself, a woman amid 266 men, only spoke of her desperation, but she was not a fool. Her nurse's bag hung on the handtruck handle and her P-38 was tucked into the front of her pants where everyone could see it.