Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(75)

"Let me understand," said Tatiana. "You weren't spending time with her so she throw you out?"

"That's correct."

Tatiana asked slowly, "But won't this mean you be spending even less time with her?"

Edward laughed. "I don't think she liked me very much, Tania," he said.

"That's unfortunate in wife," she commented.

Vikki, who had brought them some biscuits covered with honey, had a self-satisfied look about herself, a look that later prompted Tatiana to quietly call Vikki a trouble maker.

There was soothing caroling Christmas music on, there was the smell of ginger, of apple pie, of spaghetti sauce filled with garlic, the burgundy colors in the apartment became somehow appropriate, and Vikki was wearing a brown velvet dress that went well with her brown velvet hair and her brown velvet eyes. Isabella and Travis fed everybody as though there were no war. The conversation was as light as the wine.

Later, she sat in the quiet bedroom and nursed her son while the happy noises full of Christmas graces filled the apartment. Inside the room was quiet and warm and dark. She closed her eyes and rocked.

There was no comfort for a young woman named Tatiana this Christmas Eve, not at the candlelight mass, not at the celebration dinner, not during prayer, not in sleep, not with Vikki, not in Ellis. As she nursed her boy, Tatiana's salty tears fell on his face that she didn't bother to wipe, and in her tears and in her milk and in her heart only one word struck the clock of her soul on the stroke of every minute: Alexander.

Ellis at Christmas was a grim place. Why was that so soothing to her? Because the wounded needed her. Because someone besides her son needed her. She fed the soldiers lying in their white beds, and she Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

whispered to them to think of their brothers in arms, who had neither bed nor solace. "Well, Nurse Tania, that's because they don't have you looking after them," said a wounded German pilot named Paul Schmidt in accented English. He had been flying over the North Channel, bombing the tankers bringing food and arms into the North Sea. He had been brought down into the water. En route to the U.S. he had both his legs amputated and was now convalescing long enough to be sent back home. He told Tatiana that he didn't really want to be sent home. "If I still had my legs, the Americans would send me to work for their war effort, wouldn't they? Like they do the rest of our boys?"

"They just might send you anyway. You could sit and milk cows."

"What I'd like," he said with a smile, "is to have a nice American girl marry me and keep me from going back."

Tatiana smiled back. "You might ask one of other nurses," she said. "I not American."

"I don't care," he said, the interest in his eyes not waning.

"You think your wife back home would like that? You marrying?"

"We wouldn't have to tell her." He grinned.

She told him a little about herself. Tatiana found it remarkably easy to tell the German and Italian soldiers about her life before America, compared with how remarkably difficult she found it to talk to Vikki or Edward. She could not let her friends know where she lived every day of her life, among the snows of Leningrad and the waters of Lazarevo. Yet these men, homeless and dying strangers, understood her well, knew her well.

"I'm glad I'm not on the Eastern Front anymore," said Paul Schmidt.

I'm not, Tatiana wanted to say. Because when I was on the Eastern Front, my life meant something. "You weren't wounded on the Eastern Front," she said finally. Bending her head, she continued to feed him, looking down into the metal spoon touching the white enamel plate. She concentrated on the chicken broth smell, concentrated on the feel of white crisp starched linen under her arms, on the wool of his blanket, on the slight chill of the ward. She tried to detach herself from visions of the Eastern Front. Feeding her husband...bringing the spoon to his lips...sleeping in the chair next to him...walking away from his bed, and turning around --

No. NO.

"You have no idea what the Soviets are doing to us," he repeated.

"I have some idea, Paul," Tatiana said. "I was nurse in Leningrad last year. Not long before that, I saw what you German boys did to our Soviet men."

He shook his head while swallowing the broth, so vehemently that some of the liquid escaped his mouth and ran down his chin. Tatiana wiped it and brought another spoonful to his mouth.

"The Soviets are going to win this war," he said, lowering his voice. "And do you know why?"

"Why?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Because they don't value the lives of their men."

And then they were both quiet.

"Does Hitler value your life?" asked Tatiana.

"More than Stalin would. Hitler tries to heal us so he can send us back to the front, but Stalin doesn't even bother. He lets his men die and then sends thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds to the front. And then they die."

"Soon," Tatiana said, "there will be no one left to send."

"The war will be Stalin's before that happens."

Tatiana was called away to tend to the other wounded, but returned to Paul with some Christmas cookies, giving him what remained on her tray and pouring him tea with milk.