Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(91)

As if she were leaving herself with him because he needed her more. She was saying goodbye not only to him but to herself. There you go, Alexander, Tatiana was saying, take me and go. Have it all. There will be nothing left, but I will grow something new for myself. The Tania you love will remain with you. Take her. And he did, until there was nothing left.

Her warm wet space engulfed him. He was not returning to the womb, he was giving himself back to eternity. He was closing his eyes and surrendering to the universe that loved them and believed in their youth. To the stars and the mystery moon and the River Kama rushing onward to its thousand-kilometer trek, for ten million years feeding into the Caspian Sea. Long after Tania and Shura will have returned to the earth, the river, the pines, the mountains, the imploding stars would still be here, constant and Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

changeless over Lazarevo. They were eternal, and Alexander's Tatiana, too...she was eternal, moaning softly against his neck, warm breath, warm breasts and lips and legs around him, surrounding him, all things to him.

Limpid morning became desert evening. He wished he could help her, but he knew what they were losing, better than she who was still an innocent. But he knew everything.

Alexander knew what was ahead.

It was tomorrow.

He was leaving.

It was tomorrow.

He had left.

It was tomorrow.

And he was without her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Sam Gulotta, Washington DC, July 1944

TATIANA COULDN'T LEAVEALEXANDER'Smedal alone. Couldn't leave Orbeli alone. She took an unprecedented day off, took Anthony with her, went to Pennsylvania Station, bought a train ticket and traveled to Washington DC where she found the United States Department of Justice on Pennsylvania Avenue. After four hours of shuffling from the Executive Office for Immigration Review to the Office of Immigration and Naturalization, to the National Central Bureau or Interpol Office, she finally found a clerk who told her she was in the wrong building and the wrong department entirely and needed to go to the Department of State on C Street. She and Anthony went to a small coffee shop where they had soup and, with their ration cards, warm bacon sandwiches. It remained a small marvel to her that delicious meat products were readily available in a country at war.

At the Department of State, Tatiana slogged from the Bureau of European Affairs to the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration and finally found the Office of Consular Affairs where she, with her tired legs and tired baby, would not move from the receptionist's desk until she was put in touch with someone who knew something about expatriate emigrationout of the United States.

That is how she met Sam Gulotta.

Sam was an athletic-looking man in his thirties with curly brown hair. Tatiana thought he looked less like an under secretary for consular affairs than a physical education teacher, and she wasn't far wrong--he told her that he coached his son's Junior League baseball team in the afternoons and summer camps. Fingers tapping, Sam leaned over the scuffed wooden counter messy with scattered papers and said, "Now what's this all about?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Tatiana took a deep breath, held the cranky Anthony to her chest and said, "Here?"

"As opposed to where? Over dinner? Yes, here." He smiled when he said it. He wasn't gruff, but it was five o'clock on a government Thursday.

"Mr. Gulotta, when I was in Soviet Union, I met and married a man who come to Moscow as young boy. I think he was still American citizen."

"Really?" Gulotta said. "What are you doing in the States? And what is your name now?"

"My name is Jane Barrington," said Tatiana, taking out her residence card and showing it to him. "I have permanent residence in United States. Soon to be citizen. But my husband...how to explain?" She took a breath and told him, beginning with Alexander and ending with the Red Cross death certificate and Dr. Sayers smuggling her out of the Soviet Union.

Gulotta listened silently and then said, "You are telling me too much, Jane Barrington."

"I know. I need your help. I want to find out what happen to my husband," she replied in a faint voice.

"You know what happened to him. You have the death certificate."

How to explain theHero of the Soviet Union medal? Gulotta would not have understood. Who could? How to explain Orbeli?

"Maybe he not dead?"

"Mrs. Barrington, you have much more information on that than I have."

How to explain to an American the penal battalions? She tried.

"Mrs. Barrington, excuse me for interrupting," Gulotta interrupted. "What penal battalions? What ranking officers? You have the death certificate. Your husband, whoever he was, wasn't arrested. He drowned. He is out ofmy jurisdiction."

"Mr. Gulotta, I think maybe he not drowned. I think maybe certificate was fake and he was arrested and maybe he in one of those penal battalions now."

"Why would you think that?"

That, she could not adequately explain. She couldn't even try. "Due to unforeheard circumstances--"

"Unforeheard?" Gulotta could not help a small smile.

"I..."

"Do you mean unforeseen?"

"Yes." Tatiana blushed. "My English--I still learning--"