Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(94)

For the longest time, Tatiana and Sam were utterly quiet. Finally Sam asked, "Has a Tatiana Metanova tried to make inquiries about an Alexander Barrington?"

And finally Tatiana answered. "No." It was just a breath.

Sam nodded. "I didn't think so. There will be nothing for me to put in the file."

"No," said Tatiana. She felt his hand on her back, easing her up, patting her slightly.

"If you give me your address, I can write if I hear anything. But you understand--"

"I understand everything," whispered Tatiana.

"Maybe this cursed war will end, maybe what's going on in the Soviet Union will end, too. If things get more relaxed, we can make some inquiries. After the war might be better."

"After which war?" asked Tatiana, without raising her eyes. "Maybe I write you myself. This way you don't have to keep my address on record. You can always find me at Ellis Island hospital. I don't actually have address yet. I don't live--" She broke off. With her teeth grit and her jaw set, she could not even extend her hand to Sam Gulotta. She wanted to, she just couldn't.

"I'd help you if I could. I'm not the enemy," he said quietly.

"No," she said, moving past him and out of his office. "But it turns out that I am."

Tatiana took two weeks off work, she said for a "needed vacation." She tried to convince Vikki to come with her, but Vikki was juggling two interns and a blind musician and couldn't come. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"I'm not going on some surprise train trip. Where do you think you're going?"

"Anthony wants to see Grand Canyon."

"Anthony is one! He wants to see his mother find herself an apartment and a new husband, not necessarily in that order."

"No. Just Grand Canyon."

"You told me we would look for an apartment."

"Come with us and maybe I look for apartment when I come back."

"You're such a liar."

Tatiana laughed. "Vikki, I am good here at Ellis."

"That's the whole problem. You're notgood here at Ellis. You're all alone, you live in one room with your child, you share a communal bathroom. You're in America, for God's sake. Rent yourself an apartment. That's what we Americans do."

"Youdon't have an apartment."

"Oh, for the love of Jesus and Mary! I have a home."

"I do, too."

"You deliberately don't want a place of your own. Because that keeps you from getting involved with someone."

"I don't need to be kept from getting involved with someone."

"When are you going to start being young? What do you think, if he was alive, he'd be faithful to you? He would not be waiting for you, I'll tell you that. This very second, he would be knocking his brains out."

"Vikki, how do you go around thinking you know so much when you know nothing?"

"Because I know men. They're all the same. And don't start telling me yours is different. He is a soldier. They're worse than musicians."

"Musicians?"

"Never mind."

"I'm not having this talk. I'm not talking to you. I have patients. I have to go to Red Cross. Did I tell you I been hired on part-time basis for American Red Cross? They really need people. Maybe you should apply."

"Mark my words. Knocking his brains out. Just like you should be doing." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Majdanek, July 1944

THEY HAD STOPPED NEARthe woods in eastern Poland and were rearming and taking a drink.

"Why do we have to keep talking about God and about the Germans and the Americans and the war and Comrade Stalin?" said Ouspensky.

"We don't talk about that," said Telikov. "You do. You're the only one who brings that shit up. Before you walked over, do you know what Commander Belov and I were discussing?"

"What?" barked Ouspensky.

"Whether the river perch or the river bass is easier to clean and which fish makes a better soup. I personally think the perch makes a great soup."

"That's because you've never had soup out of bass. Look, you're dropping your ammo as you're standing up," said Alexander. "What kind of a soldier are you?"

"I'm a soldier that needs to lie down with a woman, sir. Or stand up with a woman. Basically anything with a woman," replied Telikov, picking up his magazines.

"We got it, Telikov. The army does not supply women at the front."

"We've noticed that. But I also heard that the 84th battalion a few kilometers south has three women nurses who accompany them in the rear. Why do we have only medics?"

"You're a bunch of f*cking convicts. Who will give you a female nurse? There are two hundred of you. That woman wouldn't be alive in an hour."

"I hardly think that matters, sir, to men like us."

"And that's why you're not getting a female nurse," said Alexander.

Telikov glanced at him in surprise. "Areyou the reason we don't have a woman nurse?"

Ouspensky said to Alexander, "I really don't think it's very fair of you, Captain, just because your own balls have been melted and frozen into igneous rock, that we should suffer. The rest of us are actually made of flesh and blood."