IN THE MOONLIGHT’S PALLID GLAMOUR
LATE the next morning Tatiana came into the critical care ward at the field hospital, the wooden building that was once a school, and found someone else in Alexander’s bed. She had expected his bed to be empty. She did not expect to see a new patient in Alexander’s bed, a man with no arms or legs.
Staring at the man with incomprehension, she thought she had made a mistake. She had woken up late and rushed and then spent too many hours in the terminal ward. Seven soldiers had died that morning.
But no, it was the critical ward. Leo in bed number thirty was reading. The two beds next to Alexander had also been emptied and refilled by new patients. Nikolai Ouspensky, the lieutenant with one lung next to Alexander, was gone, and so was the corporal next to him.
Why would they have filled Alexander’s bed? Tatiana went to check with Ina, who knew nothing; she wasn’t even on shift duty yet. Ina told Tatiana that late last night Alexander had asked for his dress uniform, which she brought him and then left for the night. Past that she knew nothing. Ina said that maybe Alexander had been moved to the convalescent wing.
Tatiana went to check. He hadn’t been.
She came back to the critical ward and looked under the bed. His rucksack was gone. Alexander’s medal of valor was no longer hanging on the wooden chair that stood by the new patient, whose face was covered in gauze, oozing blood near his right ear. Absentmindedly Tatiana said that she would get a doctor to take a look at him and groggily ambled away. She was feeling as well as she could for a woman four months pregnant. Her stomach was beginning to show, she knew. It was a good thing they were leaving, because she could not imagine explaining herself to the nurses and her patients. She was on her way to the mess to eat but found a nagging tick mowing through her insides. She became afraid that Alexander had been sent back to the front, that he had gone across the lake and been made to stay. She couldn’t eat a bite. She went to look for Dr. Sayers.
She couldn’t find him anywhere, but when she found Ina, who was getting ready to start her shift, Ina told her that Dr. Sayers had been looking for her.
“He couldn’t have been looking very hard,” said Tatiana. “I’ve been in terminal all morning.” Tatiana found Dr. Sayers in the terminal ward himself, with a patient who had lost most of his stomach. “Dr. Sayers,” she whispered, “what’s going on? Where is Major Belov?” She saw that the patient had mere minutes to live.
Sayers didn’t look up from the man’s wounds when he said, “Tatiana, I’m almost done here. Help me hold his sides together while I sew.”
“What’s going on, Doctor?” Tatiana repeated as she helped him.
“Let’s just finish with him first, all right?”
Tatiana looked at the doctor, looked at the patient, and put her gloved and bloodied hand on the patient’s forehead. For a few moments she kept her hand on him and then said, “He is dead, Doctor, you can stop suturing.”
The doctor stopped suturing.
Tatiana ripped off her gloves and walked outside. The doctor followed her. It was nearly the middle of March and unremittingly windy. “Listen, Tania,” Sayers said, taking hold of her hands and looking white. “I’m sorry. Something terrible has happened.” His voice half broke on happened. The circles under his eyes were so dark, it looked as if he had been beaten. Tatiana stared at him for a moment, another moment—
She pulled her hands away. “Doctor,” Tatiana said, paling and looking around for something to hold on to. “What’s happened?”
“Tania, wait, don’t shout—”
“I’m not shouting.”
“I’m very sorry to tell you this, very sorry, but Alexander—” He broke off. “Early this morning, when he was taken with two other soldiers to Volkhov . . .” Sayers couldn’t continue.
Tatiana listened motionlessly, her insides becoming anesthetized. She tried to say, “What?”
“Listen, they were going across the lake when enemy fire—”
“What enemy fire?” Tatiana whispered vehemently.
“They left to cross before the shelling started, but we’re fighting a war. You hear the bombing, the German shells flying from Sinyavino? A long-range rocket hit the ice in front of the truck and exploded.”
“Where is he?”
“I’m sorry. Five people in that truck . . . nobody survived.”
Tatiana turned her back to the doctor and shook so violently that she thought she would split open. Without looking back, she asked, “Doctor, how do you know this?”
“I was called to the scene. We tried to save the men, the truck. But the truck was too heavy. It sank.” His voice was below a whisper.
Tatiana gripped her stomach and was sick in the snow. Her pulse tearing through her body at over 200 beats a minute, she reached down, grabbed a handful of snow, and wiped her mouth. She took another handful and pressed it to her face. Her heart would not quieten. She could not stop retching. She felt the doctor’s hand on her back, heard his voice dimly calling for her, “Tania, Tania.”
She did not turn around. “Did you see him yourself?” she asked, panting.
“Yes. I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I got his cap—”
“Was he alive when you saw him?”
“I’m sorry, Tatiana. No.”
She couldn’t stand any more.
“No, please,” she heard Dr. Sayers’s voice and felt his arms holding her up. “Please.”
Straightening herself, willing herself to remain upright, Tatiana turned around and leveled her gaze at Dr. Sayers, who touched her face and said, very concerned, “You need to go and sit down immediately, you’re in a state of—”
“I know what I am in,” Tatiana said. “Give me his cap.”
“I’m sorry. It breaks my—”
“I’ll take his cap,” said Tatiana, but her hand was shaking so badly that she couldn’t grasp it for a moment, and when she did, it fell out of her hands and onto the snow.
She couldn’t hold the death certificate either. Dr. Sayers had to hold it up for her. She saw only his name and the place of death. Lake Ladoga.
The Ladoga ice.
“Where is he?” she said faintly. “Where is he now—” She could not finish.
“Oh, Tania . . . what could we do? We . . .”
Waving him off, she doubled over. “Don’t speak to me anymore. How could you not have woken me? How could you not have told me instantly?”
“Tania, look at me.” She felt herself being pulled upright. Sayers had tears in his eyes. “I did look for you after I returned. But I can barely stand in front of you now when you’ve come for me, when I’ve got no choice. If I could, I would have sent you a telegram.” He shivered. “Tania, let’s get out of here! You and I. Let’s be done with this place! I have to get out of here, I can’t do it anymore. I need to be back in Helsinki. Come on, we’ll get our things. I’ll call Leningrad, let them know.” He paused. “I have to leave tonight.” He glanced at her. “We have to leave tonight.”
Tatiana did not respond. Her mind was playing tricks on her. For some reason she couldn’t get past the death certificate. It wasn’t a Red Army certificate. It was a Red Cross death certificate.
“Tatiana,” said Sayers, “can you hear me?”
“Yes,” she said indistinctly.
“You will come with me.”
“I can’t think right now,” she managed to utter. “I need to think for a few minutes.”
“Will you . . .” Sayers let out. “Will you please come back to my office? You’re not — Come, sit in my chair. You’ll—”
Backing away from Sayers, Tatiana watched him with an intensity she knew was excruciating to him. She turned and walked as fast as she could to the main building. She had to find Colonel Stepanov. The colonel was busy and refused to see her at first.
She waited outside the front door until he came out.
“I’m headed for the mess tent. Walk with me?” Stepanov said to her, not catching her eye and hurrying forward.
“Sir,” Tatiana said into his back, not taking a step, “what happened to your officer—” She couldn’t say his name out loud.
Stepanov slowed down, stopped, and faced her. “I’m sorry about your husband,” he said gently.
Tatiana didn’t speak. Coming close to him, she took Colonel Stepanov’s hand. “Sir, you are a good man, and you were his commanding officer.” Wind was whipping her face. “Please tell me what happened to him.”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”
Tatiana stood small before the uniformed colonel.
The colonel sighed. “All I know is that one of our armored trucks carrying your husband, Lieutenant Ouspensky, one corporal, and two drivers exploded this morning under what appeared to be enemy fire and eventually sank. I have no other information.”
“Armored? He told me he was going to Volkhov to get promoted this morning,” she said in a faint whisper.
“Nurse Metanova,” said Colonel Stepanov, pausing and blinking. “The truck sank. Everything else is moot.”
Tatiana never looked away from him for a moment.
Stepanov nodded. “I’m sorry. Your husband was—”
“I know what he was, sir,” Tatiana broke in, holding the cap and the certificate to her chest.
With a small shiver of his voice, staring at her with hurting blue eyes, Colonel Stepanov said, “Yes. We both do.”
Mutely they stood in front of each other.
“Tatiana!” said Colonel Stepanov emotionally. “Go back with Dr. Sayers. As soon as you can. It’ll be easier and safer for you in Leningrad. Maybe Molotov? Go with him.”
Tatiana saw him button the top of his uniform. She didn’t take her eyes off him. “He brought your son back,” she whispered.
Stepanov lowered his eyes. “Yes.”
“But who is going to bring him back?”
The bitter wind whistled through her words.
How to move, how to move now, can I get on my hands and knees and crawl, no, I will walk, I will look at the ground, and I will walk away, and I won’t stumble.
I will stumble.
She fell on the snow, and the colonel came over and picked her up, patting her back, and she closed her coat around her and, without looking again at Stepanov, staggered down the road to the hospital, holding on to the walls of buildings.
To hide him her whole life, to hide him every step of the way, to hide him from Dasha, from Dimitri, to hide him from death, and now to hide him even from herself. Her weakness felt insuperable.
Finding Dr. Sayers in his small office, Tatiana said, “Doctor, look at me, look me in the eye and swear to me that he is dead.”
Sinking to her knees, she looked at him, her hands in a plea.
Dr. Sayers crouched down and took Tatiana’s hands. “I swear,” he said, “he is dead.” He did not look at her.
“I can’t,” she said in a guttural voice. “I can’t take it. I can’t take the thought of him dying in that lake without me. Do you understand? I can’t take it,” she whispered wrenchingly. “Tell me he’s been taken by the NKVD. Tell me he’s been arrested and he’ll be storming bridges next week, tell me he’s been sent to the Ukraine, to Sinyavino, to Siberia — tell me anything. But please tell me he did not die on the ice without me. I’ll bear anything but that. Tell me, and I will go with you anywhere, I promise, I will do exactly as you say, but I beg you, tell me the truth.”
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Sayers said, “I couldn’t save him. With my whole heart I’m sorry I couldn’t save him for you.”
Tatiana crawled away to the wall and put her face into her hands.
“I am not going anywhere,” she said. “There is no point.”
“Tania,” Sayers said, coming after her and putting his hand on her head, “please don’t say that. Honey . . . please . . . let me save you for him.”
“There is no point.”
“No point? What about his baby?” exclaimed the doctor.
She took her hands away from her face and stared dully at Sayers. “He told you we are having a baby?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Flustered, the doctor said, “I don’t know.” His hand was still on Tatiana’s head. “You don’t feel good. You’re all cold. You’re—”
She did not reply. She was convulsing.
“Are you going to be all right?”
She covered her face.
“Will you stay here? Just stay in my office and wait. Don’t get up, all right. Sleep maybe?”
Tatiana made a rasping noise that sounded like an animal pressing its gaping wound into the ground, hoping to die before it bled to death.
“Your patients were asking for you,” Sayers said softly. “Do you think—”
“No.” Through her hands. “Please leave me. I need to be alone.”
Until night fell, she sat on the floor in Dr. Sayers’s office. She put her head into her knees, and sat against the wall. Until she couldn’t sit up anymore, and then she lay down, curled into a ball.
Dimly she heard the doctor return. She heard his gasp and tried to get up but couldn’t. Helping her up, Sayers sucked in his breath when he saw her face. “God, Tania. Please. I need you—”
“Doctor!” Tatiana exclaimed. “All the things you need me to be, I can’t be right now. I’ll be what I can. Is it time?”
“It’s time, Tania. Let’s go.” He lowered his voice. “Look, I went to your bed and got your backpack. It’s yours, right?”
“Yes,” she said, taking it.
“Do you have anything else you need to bring?”
“No,” Tatiana whispered. “The backpack is all I have. Is it just you and me going?”
Dr. Sayers paused before he answered her. “Chernenko came to me earlier today and asked if our plans had changed now that—”
“And you said . . .” Her weak legs weren’t holding her. She sank into the chair and looked up. “I can’t go with him,” she said. “I just can’t.”
“I don’t want to take him either, but what can I do? He told me, not in so many words, that without him we wouldn’t be able to get you through the first checkpoint. I want to get you out, Tania. What else can I do?”
“Nothing,” said Tatiana.
She helped Sayers collect his few things and carried his doctor’s bag and her nurse’s bag outside. The Red Cross vehicle was a big jeep without the enclosed solid steel body customary for ambulances. This one had glass covering the passenger cab but only canvas covering the back, not the safest for the wounded or medical personnel. But it had been the only truck available at the time in Helsinki, and Sayers could not wait for a proper ambulance. The square Red Cross badges were sewn into the tarpaulin.
Dimitri was waiting by the side of the truck. Tatiana did not look or acknowledge him as she opened the tarpaulin and climbed in to load the first aid kit and the box of plasma.
“Tania?” Dimitri said.
Dr. Sayers came up from behind, and said to Dimitri, “All right, let’s hurry along. You get in the back. Once we leave here, you can change into the Finnish pilot’s clothes. I don’t know how you’re going to get your arm through . . . Tania, where are those clothes?” Then to Dimitri, “Do you need morphine? How is your face doing?”
“Terrible. I can barely see. Is my arm going to get infected?”
Tatiana glanced at Dimitri from inside the truck. His right arm was in a cast and sling. His face was swollen black and blue. She wanted to ask what had happened to him, but she didn’t care.
“Tania?” Dimitri called to her. “I heard about this morning. I’m sorry.”
Tatiana retrieved the Finnish pilot’s clothes from their hiding place and threw them on the truck floor in front of Dimitri.
“Tatiana, come,” Dr. Sayers told her. “Let me help you down, we have to get going.”
Taking Sayers’s hand, Tatiana jumped down past Dimitri.
“Tania?” Dimitri repeated.
She lifted her eyes to him filled with such unwavering condemnation that Dimitri could not help but look away. “Just put on the clothes,” Tatiana said through her teeth. “Then get down on the floor and lie very still.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I know how you—”
Clenching her fists, Tatiana lunged furiously at Dimitri, and she would have punched him in his broken nose had Dr. Sayers not restrained her from behind, saying, “Tania, God. Please. No. No.”
Backing away, Dimitri opened his mouth and stammered, “I said I was very s—”
“I don’t want to hear your f*cking lies!” she yelled, her arms still being held by Dr. Sayers. “I don’t want you to speak to me ever again. Do you understand?”
Dimitri, mumbling nervously that he didn’t understand why she should be upset with him, got into the back of the truck.
Dr. Sayers got behind the wheel and stared wide-eyed at Tatiana.
“Ready, Doctor. Let’s go.” Tatiana buttoned up her nurse’s white coat with the Red Cross badge on the sleeve, and she tied her little white hat over her hair. She had all of Alexander’s money, she had his Pushkin book, she had his letters and their photographs. She had his cap, and she had his ring.
They drove into the night.
Tatiana held Sayers’s open map but could not have helped him get to Lisiy Nos. Through the northern Russian woods Dr. Sayers drove his small truck, as they made their way on unpaved, muddy, snowy, liquid roads. Tatiana saw nothing at all, staring out the side window into the darkness, counting inside her head, trying to keep herself upright.
Sayers kept talking to her nonstop in English. “Tania, dear, it will be all right—”
“Will it, Doctor?” she asked, also in English. “And what are we going to do with him?”
“Who cares? He can do what he likes once we get to Helsinki. I’m not thinking about him at all. All I’m thinking about is you. We will get to Helsinki, drop off some supplies, and then you and I will take a Red Cross plane to Stockholm. Then from Stockholm we’ll ride the train to G?teborg on the North Sea, and we’ll take a protected vessel across the North Sea to England. Tania, can you hear me? Do you understand?”
“I can hear you,” she said faintly. “I understand.”
“In England I’ve got a couple of stops to make, but then we’ll either fly to the U.S. or take one of the passenger liners from Liverpool. And once you’re in New York—”
“Matthew, please,” whispered Tatiana.
“I’m just trying to make you feel better, Tania. It’s going to be all right.”
From the back Dimitri said, “Tania, I didn’t know you could speak English.”
Tatiana did not reply at first. Then she picked up a metal pipe from under Dr. Sayers’s feet that she knew he kept in case of trouble. Swinging her arm, she smashed the pipe hard against the metal divider separating her from Dimitri, startling Dr. Sayers nearly off the side of the road. “Dimitri,” she said loudly, “you have to stay quiet and stop talking. You are a Finn. Not another Russian syllable out of you.”
Dropping the pipe onto the floor, she folded her arms around her stomach.
“Tania . . .”
“Don’t, Doctor.”
“You haven’t eaten, have you?” the doctor asked gently.
Tatiana shook her head. “I’m not thinking about food at all,” she replied.
In the middle of the night they stopped by the side of the road. Dimitri had already slipped on the Finnish uniform. “It’s very big,” Tatiana heard him say to Dr. Sayers. “I hope I don’t have to stand up in it. Anyone will see it doesn’t fit me. Do you have any more morphine? I’m—”
Dr. Sayers came back a few minutes later. “If I give him any more morphine, he’ll be dead. That arm is going to give him trouble.”
“What happened to him?” Tatiana asked in English.
Dr. Sayers was quiet. “He was nearly killed,” he said at last. “He has a very nasty open fracture.” He paused. “He may lose that arm. I don’t know how he is conscious, upright. I thought he’d be in a coma after yesterday, yet today he is walking.” Sayers shook his head.
Tatiana didn’t speak. How could he still be standing? she thought. How could the rest of us — strong, resolute, spirited, young — be falling on our knees, be demolished by our life, while he remains standing?
“Someday, Tania,” Sayers said in English, “you will have to explain to me the—” He broke off, pointing to the back of the truck. “Because I swear to Christ, I don’t understand at all.”
“I do not think I could explain,” whispered Tatiana.
On the way to Lisiy Nos they were stopped half a dozen times at checkpoints for papers. Sayers presented papers on himself and papers on his nurse, Jane Barrington. Dimitri, who was a Finn named Tove Hanssen, had no papers, just a metal dogtag with the dead man’s name on it. He was a wounded pilot being taken back to Helsinki for a prisoner exchange. All six times the guards opened the tarpaulin, shined a flashlight in Dimitri’s battered face, and then waved Sayers on.
“It’s nice to be protected by the Red Cross flag,” said Sayers.
Tatiana nodded.
The doctor pulled over by the side of the road, turning the engine off. “Are you cold?” he asked.
“I’m not cold.” Not cold enough. “Do you want me to drive?”
“You know how to drive?”
In Luga, when she was sixteen, the summer before she met Alexander, Tatiana had befriended an army corporal stationed with the local village Soviet. The corporal let Tatiana and Pasha drive around in his truck for the whole summer. Pasha was annoying because he always wanted to be behind the wheel, but the corporal was kind and let her behind the wheel, too. She drove the truck well, better than Pasha, she thought, and the corporal told her she was a quick learner.
“I know how to drive.”
“No, it’s too dark and icy.” Sayers closed his eyes for an hour.
Tatiana sat quietly, her hands in her coat. She was trying to remember the last time she and Alexander had made love. It was a Sunday in November, but where was it? She couldn’t recall. What did they do? Where were they? Did she look up at him? Was Inga outside their door? Was it in the bath, on the couch, on the floor? She couldn’t remember.
What did Alexander say to her last night? He made a joke, he kissed her, he smiled, he touched her hand, he told her he was going across to Volkhov to get promoted. Were they lying to him? Was he lying to her?
He had been trembling. She had thought he was cold. What else did he say? I’ll see you. So casual. Not even blinking. What else? Remember Orbeli.
What was that?
Alexander often told her fascinating little tidbits he picked up in the army, names of generals, stories about Hitler, or Rommel, about England or Italy, about Stalingrad, about Richthoffen, von Paulus, El Alamein, Montgomery. It wasn’t unusual that he would say a word she didn’t understand. But Orbeli was a word she hadn’t heard before, and yet there was Alexander — asking her to remember it.
Tatiana nudged Dr. Sayers awake. “Dr. Sayers, what is Orbeli?” she asked. “Who is Orbeli?”
“Don’t know,” Sayers replied sleepily. “Never heard of it. Why?”
She said nothing.
Sayers began driving again.
They got to the silent, sleeping border between the Soviet Union and Finland at six in the morning.
Alexander had told Tatiana it wasn’t really a border, it was a line of defense, which meant there was anywhere from thirty to sixty meters between the Soviet and Finnish troops. Each side marked its territory and then sat and waited out the war.
To Tatiana the Finnish conifer and willow woods looked like the Soviet conifer and willow woods they had been driving through for the last long hours of the night. The headlights from their truck illuminated a narrow strip of unpaved road ahead. Sunrise was slow in coming toward the ides of March.
Dr. Sayers suggested that if everyone was sleeping, maybe they could just drive across and present their papers to the Finns instead of to the Soviets. Tatiana thought that was an excellent idea.
Suddenly someone yelled for them to halt. Three sleepy NKVD border troops came up to the doctor’s window. Sayers showed them the papers. After thoroughly looking over the documents, the NKVD soldier said to Tatiana in accented English, “A cold wind, isn’t it?”
And in clear English, she replied, “Very bitter. They say it is going to snow.”
The soldier nodded, and then all three men went around to take a look at Dimitri in the back of the truck. Tatiana waited.
Silence.
The flashlight shined.
Silence.
Then, “Wait,” Tatiana heard. “Let me see his face again.”
The flashlight shined.
Tatiana sat immobile and listened intently.
She heard one of the soldiers laugh and say something to Dimitri in Finnish. Tatiana didn’t speak Finnish, so she couldn’t guarantee that it was Finnish, but the Soviet soldier spoke to Dimitri in a language Tatiana didn’t understand, and obviously Dimitri hadn’t understood either, because he did not reply.
The Soviet officer repeated his question more loudly.
Dimitri remained silent. Then he said something in what sounded to Tatiana like Finnish. After a short snickering silence from the troops, one of them said, in Russian, “Get out of the truck.”
“Oh, no,” whispered Dr. Sayers. “Are we caught?”
“Shh,” said Tatiana.
The soldiers repeated their order to Dimitri to get out of the truck. He didn’t move.
Dr. Sayers turned around and said, in Russian, “He is wounded. He can’t get up.”
And the Soviet officer said, “He’ll get up if he wants to live. Talk to your patient in whatever language he speaks and tell him to get up.”
“Doctor,” whispered Tatiana, “be very careful. If he can’t save himself, he will try to kill us all.”
The three NKVD soldiers dragged Dimitri out of the truck and then ordered Sayers and Tatiana out. The doctor came around and stood by Tatiana’s side near her open door. His slender body was slightly in front of her. Tatiana, feeling herself weakening, touched Sayers’s coat, hoping for some strength. She felt ready to faint. Dimitri was out in the open in plain sight a few meters away from them, dwarfed by the Finnish uniform, a uniform that would have been just right on a bigger soldier.
Laughing, their rifles trained on him, one of the NKVD troops said, in Russian, “So, hey, Finn, we ask you how you got your face wound, and you tell us that you are going to Helsinki. You want to explain?”
Dimitri said nothing, but stared pleadingly at Tatiana.
Dr. Sayers said, “Look, we picked him up in Leningrad, he was grievously wounded—”
Imperceptibly, Tatiana nudged Dr. Sayers. “Keep quiet,” she whispered. “It’s trouble.”
“He may be grievously wounded,” said the NKVD man, “he’s just not grievously Finnish.” The three soldiers laughed. One of the NKVD men walked up to Dimitri. “Chernenko, don’t you recognize me?” he said in Russian, cracking up. “It’s me, Rasskovsky.” Dimitri lowered his good arm. “Keep your hand above your head!” the NKVD soldier yelled, laughing. “Keep it up.” Tatiana saw they were not taking Dimitri seriously, his right arm in a sling. Where was Dimitri’s weapon? she wondered. Did he have one on him?
The two other soldiers stood a short distance away from Dimitri. “You know him?” one of them asked, lowering his rifle.
“Know him?” Rasskovsky exclaimed. “Of course I know him! Chernenko, have you forgotten how much you were charging me for cigarettes? And how I had to pay because I just couldn’t be without my smokes in the middle of the forest?” He laughed. “Just four weeks ago I saw you. Have you already forgotten?”
Dimitri didn’t say a word.
“Did you think I wouldn’t recognize you just because of the pretty color on your face?” Rasskovsky seemed to be having a very good time. “So, Chernenko, darling, can you explain what you’re doing wearing a Finnish uniform and lying in the back of a Red Cross truck? The arm and the face I understand. Someone didn’t like your extortionate prices?”
One of the other two soldiers said, “Rasskovsky, you don’t think our runner is trying to escape, do you?” Everyone roared with laughter.
Under the glare of the lights Dimitri stared at Tatiana, who held his gaze for only an instant. Then she turned her whole body away and moved closer to Dr. Sayers, her arms tight around herself. “I’m cold,” she said.
“Tatiana!” yelled Dimitri in Russian to her. “You want to tell them? Or should I?”
Rasskovsky turned to look at her, and said, “Tatiana? An American named Tatiana?” He walked over to Sayers. “What’s going on, here? Why is he talking to her in Russian? Let me see her papers again.”
Dr. Sayers showed Tatiana’s papers. They were in order.
Looking right at Rasskovsky, Tatiana said in English, “Tatiana? What is he talking about? Listen, what do we know? He said he was Finnish. Right, Doctor?”
“Absolutely,” Dr. Sayers replied, stepping forward and away from Tatiana and the truck, his friendly hand on Rasskovsky’s back. “Listen, no trouble, I hope. He came to our hospital—”
At that moment Dimitri took out his sidearm and shot at Rasskovsky walking in front of Tatiana.
She wasn’t sure whom Dimitri was aiming for — he was shooting with his left arm — but she wasn’t about to stand there to find out. She dropped down. He could have been aiming at the NKVD man. He could have. But he missed and shot Dr. Sayers instead. Or maybe Dimitri didn’t miss. Or maybe he was shooting at her — standing behind the two men — and missed. Tatiana didn’t want to think about it.
Rasskovsky ran toward Dimitri, who fired again, this time hitting Rasskovsky. Dimitri wasn’t quick enough to turn his fire on the other two NKVD soldiers, who, as if suspended in still life, struggled to remove their rifles from their shoulders. Finally they opened fire on Dimitri, who was thrown several meters by the force of the impact.
Suddenly there was return fire from the woods. This fire was not slow and methodical bolt-action fire — the metronome of battle: five cartridges, flip open bolt, thumb in another five, close bolt. No, this was a bursting machine-gun fire that broke apart the truck’s elongated, flattop front end and the entire windshield. The two NKVD men disappeared.
The window of the cabin door above her shattered, and Tatiana felt something hard and sharp fall and lodge itself in her cheek. She tasted liquid metal, and her tongue ran over and got caught on something sharp inside her mouth. When she opened her mouth, blood dripped out. She had no time to think about it, crawling under the nose of the truck.
Tatiana saw Dimitri on the ground. Dr. Sayers was on the ground out in the open. There was an endless barrage of fire, a stifling ringing, a constant popping against the steel hood of the Red Cross truck.
Tatiana crawled out, grabbed hold of Dr. Sayers, and dragged his motionless body with her. Pulling him close and covering him with herself, she thought she saw Dimitri still moving, or was it the strobe lights of gunfire? No, it was him. He was trying to crawl to the truck. From the Soviet side a mortar shell flew into the air and burst in the woods. Fire, black smoke, screams. From here? From there? She couldn’t tell. There was no here or there. There was just Dimitri making his way toward Tatiana. She saw him in the incongruous headlights, searching for her, finding her, and in the second or two when there was no noise she heard him calling for her: “Tatiana . . . Tatiana . . . please . . .” with his hand outstretched. Tatiana closed her eyes.
He will not come near me.
Tatiana heard a whistling noise, a flash, and then a charge that exploded so close that the wave pushed her head into the undercarriage of the truck, and she lost consciousness.
When she came to, Tatiana decided not to open her eyes. She couldn’t hear very well, having just come out of a dead faint, but she felt warm, as if she were in the hot bathhouse in Lazarevo when she would throw hot water on the rocks and the rocks would sizzle and release steam. Dr. Sayers was still partially underneath her body. There was nowhere for her to go. Her tongue ran over the sharp object in her mouth again. She tasted metallic salt.
Sayers felt clammy. Blood loss. Tatiana opened her eyes, felt around on him. A small flame behind the truck illuminated the doctor’s pale face. Where was he hit? With her fingers she felt around under his coat and found the bullet hole in his shoulder. She didn’t find the exit hole, but she pressed her gloved hand into his arm to try to clot the wound. Then she closed her eyes again. There was a blaze behind her, but there were no more gunshots.
How long did that take? Two minutes? Three?
She felt herself starting to slip down into a black abyss. Not only could she not open her eyes, she did not want to.
How long for her life to end, to continue? How long for Dr. Sayers to sleep, how long for Dimitri to stand alone in the glare? How long for Tatiana? How much longer for her?
How long did it take for Alexander to rescue Dr. Sayers and get hit himself? Tatiana had watched it all from the Red Cross truck, positioned behind the trees on the clearing leading to the slope to the river, the slope down which Alexander ran for Anatoly Marazov.
Tatiana had watched it all.
Those two minutes of watching Alexander run for Marazov, shout at Dr. Sayers, run to Dr. Sayers, pull him out, and then drag three men to the truck had been the longest two minutes of Tatiana’s life.
He had been so close to safety. She watched the shell from the German plane fall on the ice and explode. She watched Alexander fly headfirst into the armored truck. When Alexander went down, Tatiana grabbed a box full of cylindrical plasma containers and her nurse’s bag, jumped down from the back of the Red Cross truck, and ran down the embankment, caught near the ice by a corporal who yanked her down and yelled, “What are you, crazy?”
“I’m a nurse,” she said. “I have to help the doctor.”
“Yes, you’ll be a dead nurse. Stay down.”
She stayed down for exactly two seconds. She saw Dr. Sayers hiding behind the armored vehicle that protected him and Alexander from direct fire. She saw him waving for help. She saw Alexander not getting up. Tatiana jumped up and ran out onto the ice before the corporal could utter a sound. She ran at first and then got scared by the crashing artillery shells and dropped onto her stomach, crawling the rest of the way. Alexander was motionless. His shredded white camouflage coat had an enlarging red stain on the right side of his back, surrounded by black ash. Tatiana crawled on her hands and knees to him and pushed the helmet away from his blood-covered head.
One look at Alexander’s face told Tatiana he was about to die.
He was gray and flaxen. The ice underneath him was slippery from his blood. She was kneeling in it. Tatiana said, “Hypovolemic shock. Needs plasma.” Dr. Sayers instantly agreed. While he was searching for a surgical instrument to cut open Alexander’s sleeve, Tatiana took off her hat and pressed it hard into Alexander’s side to slow his blood loss. Reaching down into his right boot, she pulled out his army knife and threw it to Dr. Sayers, saying, “Here, use this.” She didn’t think she breathed once.
Sayers cut open Alexander’s coat and his uniform to expose his left forearm, found a vein, and attached a syringe, a tube, and a plasma drip to him. When he left to get the stretcher and some help, Tatiana, by this time sitting on Alexander’s wound, cut open his other sleeve, got out another bottle of plasma, another syringe, another catheter, and attached it to a vein on his right forearm. She adjusted the syringe so that it dripped the fluid into Alexander’s body at sixty-nine drops a minute, the maximum possible. She sat on his back pressing into him as hard as she could, her white hat and her white coat saturated in his blood, waiting for the stretcher and muttering, “Come on, soldier, come on.”
By the time the doctor came back, her plasma bottle had emptied and Tatiana had attached another one. Taking off her stained coat, Tatiana laid it on the stretcher sideways, and when they lifted Alexander onto it, she wrapped her coat tightly around his wound. He was excruciatingly heavy to lift, because his clothes were wet. Dr. Sayers asked how they were going to carry him, and she replied that they were just going to pick him up on three and carry him, and he said incredulously, you are going to carry him? and she said without blinking, yes, I will carry him, NOW.
And afterward Tatiana struggled with the Soviet doctors, with the Soviet nurses, and even with Dr. Sayers, who had taken a look at Alexander’s blood loss and the hole in his side and said, forget it. We can’t do anything for him. Put him in the terminal ward. Give him a gram of morphine, but no more.
Tatiana hooked an IV to Alexander’s vein herself and fed him morphine and fed him plasma. And when that wasn’t enough, she gave Alexander her blood. And when that wasn’t enough, and it looked as if nothing was going to be enough, she trickled blood from her arteries into his veins.
Drop by drop.
And as she sat by him, she whispered. All I want is for my spirit to be heard through your pain. I sit here with you, pouring my love into you, drop by drop, hoping you’ll hear me, hoping you’ll lift your head to me and smile again. Shura, can you hear me? Can you feel me sitting by you letting you know you’re still alive? Can you feel my hand on your beating heart, my hand letting you know I believe in you, I believe in your eternal life, I believe you will live, live through this and grow wings to soar over death, and when you open your eyes again, I will be here. I will always be here, believing in you, hoping for you, loving you. I’m right here. Feel me, Alexander. Feel me and live.
He lived.
Now as Tatiana lay under the Red Cross truck in the coming of the cold March dawn, she thought, did I save him so he could die on the ice without my arms to hold him, to hold his young, beautiful, war-ravaged body, the body that loved me with all its great might? Could my Alexander have fallen alone?
She would rather have buried him as she had buried her sister than live through this. Would rather have known she had given him peace than live through another starless second of this.
Tatiana could not endure another moment of herself. Not another moment. In one more instant there was going to be nothing left of her.
Dimly she heard Dr. Sayers moan. Tatiana blinked, blinked away Alexander, opened her eyes, and turned to Sayers. “Doctor?” He was semiconscious. The forest was still. The dawn was steel blue. Tatiana disentangled herself from him and crawled out from under the truck. Rubbing her face, she saw it was covered in blood. Her fingers touched a chunk of glass stuck in her cheek. She tried to pull it out, but it hurt too much. Grabbing it by one side, Tatiana wrenched it out, screaming.
It didn’t hurt enough.
She continued to scream, her eviscerated cries echoing back to her through the barren woods. Her hands gripping her legs, her stomach, her chest, Tatiana knelt in the snow and screamed as the blood dripped from her face.
She lay down on the ground and pressed her bleeding cheek into the snow. It wasn’t cold enough. It couldn’t numb her enough.
There was nothing sharp in her mouth anymore, but her tongue was torn and swollen. Getting up, Tatiana sat in the snow, looking around. It was eerily quiet; the bleak, bare birches contrasted somberly with the white earth. No sound anymore, not an echo, not even of her, not a gray branch out of place. Deep in the marsh, close to the Gulf of Finland.
But things were out of place. The Red Cross truck was ruined. One NKVD man in his dark blue uniform lay to the right of her. Dimitri was on the ground within a meter of the truck. His eyes were still open, and his hand remained extended to Tatiana, as if by some providential miracle he expected to be delivered from his own eternity.
Tatiana stared for a moment into Dimitri’s frozen face. How Alexander would enjoy the story of Dimitri’s getting recognized by the NKVD. She looked away.
Alexander had been right — this was a good spot to get through the border. It was poorly manned and poorly defended. The NKVD troops were lightly armed; they had their rifles, and from what she could see they had one mortar, but one wasn’t enough to keep them alive — the Finns had bigger shells. On the Finnish side of the border things were quiet, too. Despite the size of their shells, were they also all dead? Looking through the trees, Tatiana could see no movement. She was still on the Russian side. What to do? New NKVD reinforcements would no doubt be here soon, and she would quickly be whisked away for questioning, and then?
Tatiana felt her stomach through her coat. Her hands were freezing.
She crawled back under the Red Cross truck. “Dr. Sayers,” she whispered, putting her hands on his neck. “Matthew, can you hear me?” He was not answering. He was in bad shape; his pulse was around forty, and his blood pressure felt weak through his carotid. Tatiana lay down by the doctor, and from his coat pocket she pulled out his U.S. passport and both their Red Cross travel documents. They plainly stated in English that one Matthew Sayers and one Jane Barrington were headed for Helsinki.
What should she do now? Should she go? Go where? And go how?
Climbing inside the cabin, she turned the ignition. Nothing. It was hopeless. Tatiana could see what extensive damage had been done by the gunfire to the front end. She peered through the woods across the Finnish side. Was anyone moving? No. She saw human forms on the snow and behind them a Finnish army truck, a little bigger than their Red Cross one. That wasn’t the only difference between them: the Finnish truck didn’t look ruined.
Tatiana hopped out and said to Dr. Sayers, “I’ll be right back.”
He didn’t reply.
“All right, then,” she said, and walked across the Soviet-Finnish border. It felt about the same, she thought, being in Finland as being in the Soviet Union. Tatiana walked carefully among the half dozen dead Finns. In the truck sat another man, dead behind the wheel, his body keeled forward. To get inside she would have to pull him out.
To get inside she heaved him out, and he fell with a thud onto the trampled snow. Climbing in, Tatiana tried the key, still in the ignition. The truck had stalled. She put it in neutral and tried to start it again. It was dead. She tried again. Nothing. She looked at the gauge on the gas tank. It said full. Jumping down, she went to the back of the truck and climbed under to see if the gas tank was punctured. No, it was intact. Tatiana went around the nose of the truck and opened the hood. For a minute she stared, unfocused, but then something came to her. It was a diesel engine. How would she know that?
Kirov.
The word Kirov sent a long shudder through her body, and she fought off the impulse to lie down in the snow again. This was a diesel engine, and she used to make diesel engines for tanks in the Kirov factory. “I made you a whole tank today, Alexander!” What did she remember about them?
Nothing. Between the diesel engines and the woods in Finland so much had happened that she could barely remember the number of the tram she took to get home.
One.
It was tram Number 1. They would take it part of the way home so they could walk the rest down the Obvodnoy Canal. Walk, talking about war and America, their arms bumping into one another.
Diesel engine.
She was cold. She pulled the hat down over her ears.
Cold. Diesel engines had trouble starting in the cold. She checked to see how many cylinders it had. This one had six. Six pistons, six combustion chambers. The combustion chambers were too cold; the air just couldn’t get hot enough to cause the fuel to ignite. Where was that little glowworm Tatiana used to screw in on the side of the combustion chamber?
Tatiana found all six glowworms. She needed to heat them up a little so the air could get warm enough during compression. Otherwise the engine was drawing below-zero air into the cylinders and expecting it to warm up to 540°C in the one-up-one-down motion of the pistons.
Tatiana looked about her. Five dead soldiers lay in the vicinity. She stuck her hand into the small pocket of one of their rucksacks and pulled out a lighter. Alexander had always kept his lighter in the small pocket of his rucksack, too. She used to fetch it to light his cigarettes for him. Flicking the lighter on, she held the small flame to the first glow plug for a few seconds. Then to the second one. Then to the third. By the time she got through all six, the first one was as cold as before she had started. Tatiana had had quite enough. Gritting her teeth and groaning, she broke a low branch off a birch and tried to light it. The branch was too wet from the snow. It wouldn’t light.
She looked around in frantic desperation. She knew exactly what she was searching for. She found it behind the truck in a small case on the body of one of the Finns. He was wearing a flamethrower. Tatiana yanked the flamethrower off the dead Finn, her jaw set and her face dark, and strapped it to her back like Alexander’s rucksack. Holding the propellant hose firmly in her left hand, she pulled out the ignition plug in the tank, flicked the lighter on, and pressed it to the ignition.
Half a second passed and all was still, and then a white nitrate flame burst out of the hose, the recoil nearly knocking Tatiana backward onto the snow. Nearly. She remained standing.
She walked up to the open hood of the truck and pointed the flame over the engine for a few moments. Then a few more moments. She could have stood there for thirty seconds, she couldn’t tell. Finally with her right hand she popped the ignition lever down, and the handheld fire shut off. Flinging the flamethrower off her back, Tatiana climbed into the truck, turned the key, and the engine creaked once and revved into life. She started the truck in neutral, depressed the clutch, put the transmission into first gear, and stepped on the accelerator. The truck lurched forward. She drove slowly across the defense line to pick up Dr. Sayers.
To get Sayers inside the Finnish truck required more out of her than she had.
But not much more.
After she got him in, Tatiana’s eyes caught the Red Cross flag on Sayers’s truck.
She found Dimitri’s army knife in his boot. Walking over to the truck, Tatiana reached up and carefully cut out the Red Cross badge. How she was going to attach it to the tarpaulin on the Finnish truck, she had no idea. She heard Dr. Sayers moan in the back and then remembered the first aid kit. With mindless determination she got the kit, along with a plasma bottle. Cutting away the doctor’s coat and shirt, she attached the plasma bottle to his vein, and while the plasma was draining, she looked over his inflamed wound, which was red around the entry hole and unclean. The doctor was hot and delirious. She cleaned the wound with some diluted iodine and covered it with gauze. Then with grim satisfaction she poured iodine onto her cheek and sat pressing a bandage to her face for a few minutes. It felt as if the glass were still inside her skin. She wished she had some undiluted iodine and wondered if the cut would need stitches. She thought it would.
Stitches.
Tatiana remembered the suture needle in the first aid kit.
Her eyes clearing, Tatiana took the suture needle and suture thread, jumped down, and, standing on tiptoe, carefully sewed the large Red Cross symbol into the brown canvas of the Finnish truck. The thin thread broke several times. It didn’t matter. It just had to hold until Helsinki.
After she was done, Tatiana got behind the wheel, turned to the back, said into the small window, “Ready?” to Dr. Sayers, and then drove the truck out of the Soviet Union, leaving Dimitri dead on the ground.
