Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(72)

Though the stretch that kept getting knocked out of order was always the same five kilometers, Alexander could not put his men on the railroad at any time of day, at any one-hundred-meter stretch of the broken rails without an instant barrage from the hills. It was June and the weather was mild. Every afternoon Alexander carried the casualties off the railroad tracks and onto the field behind the poplars where they were lowered into mass graves that were not even covered over by dirt. The graves had been dug by mines a few weeks before and the holes were not yet filled up with dead men. The entire area smelled of dug dirt, and fresh water, and fresh death. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

June 22, 1943 came and went. Two years since the start of war. Two years since the start of everything.

Orbeli and His Art, 1941

Alexander was woken up at four in the morning, after sleeping for barely an hour. His small consolation was that everyone else was also woken up, and told to go outside into the courtyard.

It was June 22, summer solstice, the longest day of the year, 1941. Sunday morning. Outside was pink dawn and light. Colonel Mikhail Stepanov addressed his garrison troops.

"About an hour ago, Hitler wiped out our Crimean naval fleet stationed in the Black Sea. Our planes, our ships and our men have been destroyed. His men are now on Soviet ground. He has also invaded our border from the Ukraine north through Prussia. Defense Minister Comrade Molotov is going to make an announcement at noon. It's war."

There was a rumble among the barely awake troops. Alexander stood silent. He wasn't surprised; there had been talk of war for a long time among the Red Army officers, and there had been rumors about Hitler's border fortifications since winter, but Alexander's first thought about war was, "War! That will give me another chance for escape."

Alexander kept himself awake with coffee and cigarettes as he listened for four hours to defense plans. He was then assigned to patrolling Leningrad until six in the evening, at which time he had to be back at the barracks for sentry duty. He left the garrison gladly at eleven in the morning.

He strolled breezily through the Haymarket and down Nevsky Prospekt, where he broke up a fight between a woman and a much bigger man. The woman was hitting the man with her bag, screaming at him. It took Alexander a few minutes to figure out that the woman was upset with the man for trying to cut in line. "Doesn't he know that war has started? What does the comrade think we're all doing here? He is not getting in front of me. I don't care if the whole Red Army comes down here."

Raising his eyebrows to the man, Alexander said, "You heard her. You're not getting in front of her."

Down by the Grand Elisey food store, he broke up a m?l?e that included eight women who were all clawing at each other over a sausage that belonged to one woman, fell out of her bag and was quickly picked up by another. While this was going on, a third woman walked off with someone's flour. Alexander played King Solomon only briefly. He felt this was not his strength, arguing about sausage with eight irate women. He walked away, straight into another fight over who was getting on the bus first.

Alexander decided to get away from Nevsky. It was worse than being in a war. In a war, at least you could take out your gun and shoot the enemy. He walked down to St. Isaac's, to the statue of the Bronze Horseman where things were more peaceful. He stood for a few minutes, smoking, looking at the statue. It had been several weeks since he had checked on his book in the Leningrad library. Now that war had started, he thought it would be wise to get the book out and keep it with him; it would probably be safer. The libraries and the museums no doubt would be shipping their precious volumes out of Leningrad--just in case. As he smoked, Alexander tried to remember bits of the "Bronze Horseman" poem he liked:And in the moonlight's pallid glamor, rides high upon his charging brute, hand outstretched in echoing clamor, the Bronze Horseman in pursuit. Smiling at himself for remembering words he had not read in many years, lighting another cigarette, Alexander proceeded down the embankment, past the Admiralty Gardens, past the Palace Bridge, past the Hermitage Museum, where he walked past a tall man in a suit, hunched over the parapet, looking into the river. The man took out a cigarette and nodded to Alexander without smiling. Alexander nodded back and slowed down. The man said, "Have you got a Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

light?"

Alexander stopped and took out his lighter. "Left my matches inside," the man said quickly. "Thank you." He extended his hand. "Josif Abgarovitch Orbeli," he said, flicking the ashes out of his long, graying, unkempt beard.

"Lieutenant Alexander Belov." They shook hands.

"Ah," said Orbeli, looking into the river. "Lieutenant, is it true? War has started?"

"It's true, citizen. Where did you hear?"

Without turning around, Orbeli pointed to the Hermitage. "At work; I'm the curator. So tell me honestly, what do you think? Will the Germans get to Leningrad?"

"Why not?" said Alexander. "They got to Czechoslovakia, Austria, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Poland. Europe is in Hitler's hands. Where else is Hitler going to go? He can't go to England. He's afraid of water. He had to come here. This was his plan all along. And he will come to Leningrad." With the Finns' help, he wanted to add, but didn't. The curator looked too upset.