Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(210)

A pause.

A hoot of an owl.

Maybe a bat flapping by.

Dogs barking. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"You did all right, Alexander."

He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to her forehead. "Tatiana, my wife, we never had a future. We'll live tonight for five minutes from now," he whispered. "That's how we always lived, you and I, and we will live like that again, one more night, in a white warm bed."

"Be my comfort, come away with me," said Tatiana, weeping. "Rise up and come away, my beloved."

His hand caressed her back. "You know what saved me through my years in the battalion and in prison?" he said. "You. I thought, if you could get out of Russia, through Finland, through the war, pregnant, with a dying doctor, withnothing but yourself, I could survivethis . If you could get through Leningrad, as you every single morning got up and slid down the ice on the stairs to get your family water and their daily bread, I thought, I could get through this. If you survivedthat I could survivethis ."

"You don't even know how badly I did the first years. You wouldn't believe it if I told you."

"You had my son. I had nothing else but you, and how you walked with me through Leningrad, across the Neva and Lake Ladoga and held my open back together and clotted my wounds, and washed my burns, and healed me, and saved me. I was hungry and you fed me. I had nothing but Lazarevo." Alexander's voice broke. "And your immortal blood. Tatiana, you were my only life force. You have no idea how hard I tried to get to you again. I gave myself up to the enemy, to the Germans for you. I got shot at for you and beaten for you and betrayed for you and convicted for you. All I wanted was to see you again. That you came back for me, it'severything , Tatia. Don't you understand? The rest is nothing to me. Germany, Kolyma, Dimitri, Nikolai Ouspensky, the Soviet Union, all of it, nothing. Forget them all, let them all go. You hear?"

"I hear," Tatiana said. We walk alone through this world, but if we're lucky, we have a moment of belonging to something, to someone, that sustains us through a lifetime of loneliness.

For an evening minute I touched him again and grew red wings and was young again in the Summer Garden, and had hope and eternal life.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Berlin, July 1946

THE NEXT MORNING THEYwoke at six. At seven, housekeeping brought breakfast and a U.S. commissioned uniform for Alexander. They laundered Tatiana's nursing uniform.

Alexander had coffee and toast and six cigarettes. Tatiana had coffee and toast but couldn't keep it down.

At seven fifty-five, two armed guards escorted Alexander and Tatiana to the third floor. They sat down silently in the antechamber in wooden chairs.

At eight, the doors opened and John Ravenstock came out. "Good morning, you two. Much better in clean clothes, no?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Alexander stood up.

Ravenstock glanced at Tatiana. "Nurse Barrington, you might want to wait in your room. We're likely to be a good few hours."

"I will wait right here," said Tatiana.

"Suit yourself," Ravenstock said.

Alexander walked behind the consul. Before he disappeared inside he turned around. Tatiana was standing. She saluted him. He saluted her.

Six men sat at a long conference table, while Alexander remained standing.

John Ravenstock introduced Military Governor Mark Bishop ("We've met"), Phillip Fabrizzio, the U.S. ambassador, and the generals for the three branches of the U.S. armed forces stationed in Berlin--Army, Air Force, Marines.

"So?" Bishop said. "What have you got to say for yourself, Captain Belov?"

"Excuse me, Governor?"

"Do you speak English?"

"Yes, of course."

"Because of you we have an international situation brewing here in Berlin. The Soviets are demanding, insisting , that the minute you come through our doors we surrender an Alexander Belov to the proper Soviet authorities. Your wife, however, is telling us that you are an American citizen. Indeed Ambassador Fabrizzio has read your file and things seem to be a bit murky with the nationality of a man named Alexander Barrington. And look, I don't know what you did or didn't do for the Soviets before they threw you in Sachsenhausen. But one thing Ido know--in the last four days you killed a battalion of their men and they are demanding justice for them."

"I find it ironic that the Soviet military command here in Berlin, or anywhere for that matter, should suddenly care about their men, when I myself buried at least two thousand of their men in Sachsenhausen during time of peace."

"Yes, well, Sachsenhausen is a camp for convicted criminals."

"No, sir, soldiers like me. Soldiers like you. Lieutenants, captains, majors, one colonel. Oh, and that's not including the seven hundred German men--high-ranking officers and civilians--who have been either buried or cremated there."

"Do you deny killing their men, Captain?"

"No, sir. They were coming to kill me and my wife. I had no choice."

"You did escape, however?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Yes."

"The Commandant of the Special Camp claims you are an inveterate escapee."