Tatiana and Alexander (11 page)

“You won’t need clothes where you’re going.”

The guards were young and eager—the worst kind. He walked between them, slightly ahead of them, barefoot up the stone stairs, and down the corridor of the school, out the back way to the woods, barefoot in the March slush. Were they going to ask him to dig a hole? He felt the rifles at his back. Alexander’s feet were numb, and his body was going numb, but his chest wasn’t numb, his heart wasn’t numb, and if only his heart could stop hurting, he would be able to take it much better.

He remembered the ten-year-old Cub Scout, the American boy, the Soviet boy. The bare trees were ghostly but for a moment he was happy to smell the cold air and to see the gray sky. It’s going to be all right, he thought. If Tania is in Helsinki and remembers what I told her, then she would have convinced Sayers to leave as soon as possible. Perhaps they’ve gone already. Perhaps they’re already in Stockholm. And then nothing else matters.

“Turn around,” one of the guards said.

“Do I stop walking first?” Alexander said. His teeth chattered.

“Stop walking,” said the flustered guard, “and turn around.”

He stopped walking. He turned around.

“Alexander Belov,” said the shorter guard in the most pompous voice he could muster, “you have been found guilty of treason and espionage against our Motherland during the time of war against our country. The punishment for military treason is death, to be carried out immediately.”

Alexander stood still. He put his feet together and his hands at his side. Unblinkingly he looked at the guards. They blinked.

“Well, now what?” he asked.

“The punishment for treason is death,” the short guard repeated. He came over to Alexander, proffering a black blindfold. “Here,” he said. Alexander noticed the young man’s hands were shaking.

“How old are you, Corporal?” he asked quietly.

“Twenty-three,” replied the guard.

“Funny—me too,” said Alexander. “Just think, three days ago I was a
major
in the Red Army. Three days ago I had a
Hero of the Soviet Union
medal pinned to my chest. Amazing, isn’t it?”

The guard’s hands continued to shake as he lifted the blindfold to
Alexander’s face. Alexander backed away and shook his head. “Forget it. And I’m not turning around, either.”

“I’m just following orders, Major,” said the young guard, and Alexander suddenly recognized him as one of the corporals who had been in the emplacement with him three months ago at the storming of the Neva to break the Leningrad blockade. He was the corporal Alexander had left on the anti-aircraft gun as he ran out to help Anatoly Marazov.

“Corporal…Ivanov?” Alexander said. “Well, well. I hope you do a better job shooting me than you did blowing up those fucking Luftwaffe planes that nearly killed us.”

The corporal wouldn’t even look at Alexander. “You’re going to have to look at me when you aim, Corporal,” Alexander said, standing tall and straight. “Otherwise you will miss.”

Ivanov went to stand by the other guard. “Please turn away, Major,” he said.

“No,” Alexander said, his hands at his sides, and his eyes on the two men with rifles. “Here I am. What are you afraid of? As you can see I’m nearly naked and I’m unarmed.”

He pulled himself up taller. The two guards were paralyzed. “Comrades,” said Alexander. “I will not be the one to issue you an order to lift your rifles. You’re going to have to do that on your own.”

The other corporal said, “All right, lift your rifle, Ivanov.”

They lifted their rifles. Alexander looked into the barrel of one of the guns. He blinked.
O God, please look after Tania all alone in the world
.

“On three,” said the corporal, as the two men cocked their rifles.

“One—”

“Two—”

Alexander looked into their faces. They were both so afraid. He looked into his own heart. He was cold, and he felt that he had unfinished business on this earth, business that couldn’t wait an eternity. Instead of seeing the trembling corporals, Alexander saw his eleven-year-old face in the mirror of his room in Boston the day he was leaving America. What kind of man have I become? he thought. Have I become the man my father wanted me to be? His mouth tightened. He didn’t know. But he knew that he had become the man he himself wanted to be. That would have to be good enough at a time like this, he thought, squaring his shoulders. He was ready for “three.”

But “three” did not come.

“Wait!” He heard a voice shout from the side. The guards put down their rifles. Slonko, dressed in a warm coat, felt hat and leather gloves, walked briskly to Alexander. “Stand down, Corporals.” Slonko threw a coat he was carrying onto Alexander’s back. “Major Belov, you’re a lucky man. General Mekhlis himself has issued a pardon on your behalf.” He put his hand on Alexander. Why did that make Alexander shudder?

“Come. Let’s go back. You need to get dressed. You’ll freeze in this weather.”

Alexander studied Slonko coldly. He had once read about Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s similar experience with Alexander II’s guards who were ready to execute him. Dostoyevsky was spared at the last minute with a show of mercy from the emperor and exiled instead. That experience of looking death in the face and then being shown mercy transformed Dostoyevsky. Alexander, on the other hand, did not have time to look so deep into his soul as to be changed even for five minutes. He thought it wasn’t mercy they were showing him but a ruse. He was calm before, and he remained calm now except for an occasional shiver from his skin to his bones. Also, unlike Dostoyevsky, he had stared death in the face too often in the last six years to have been daunted by it now.

Alexander followed Slonko back to the school building with the two corporals bringing up the rear. In a small, warm room he found his clothes and his boots and food on a table. Alexander got dressed, his body shaking. He put his feet into his socks, which had been—surprisingly—laundered, and rubbed his feet for a long time to get the blood flowing again. He saw some black spots on his toes and momentarily worried about frostbite, infection, amputation; but only momentarily because the wound in his back was on fire. Corporal Ivanov came and offered him a glass of vodka to warm his insides. Alexander drank the vodka and asked for some hot tea.

Having slowly eaten his food in the warm room and drunk his tea, Alexander felt full and sleepy. Not just sleepy, close to unconsciousness. The black spots on his feet became fainter and grayer. He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again, Slonko sat in front of him. “Your life has been saved by General Mekhlis himself,” Slonko said. “He wanted to show we are not unreasonable and that we believe in mercy.”

Alexander made no move even to nod. It required all he had to stay awake.

“How do you feel, Major Belov?” asked Slonko, getting out a bottle
of vodka and two glasses. “Come, we’re both reasonable men. Let’s have a drink. We have no differences.”

Alexander acknowledged Slonko by shaking his head. “I ate, and I had my tea,” he said. “I feel as good as I possibly can.” He couldn’t keep himself upright.

“I want to talk to you for a few minutes.”

“You seem to want a lie from me, and I cannot give it to you. No matter how cold you make me.” He pretended to blink. Really he was just closing his eyes.

“Major, we spared your life.”

With great effort, Alexander opened them again. “Yes, but why? Did you spare it because you believed in my innocence?”

Slonko shrugged. “Look, it’s so simple.” He pushed a piece of paper in front of Alexander. “All you need to do is sign this document in front of you that says you understand your life has been spared. You will be sent to exile in Siberia, and you will live out your days in peace and away from the war. Would you like that?”

“I don’t know,” said Alexander. “But I’m not signing anything.”

“You have to sign, Major. You are our prisoner. You have to do as you’re told.”

“I have nothing to add to what I already told you.”

“Don’t add, just sign.”

“I’m not putting my name on anything.”

“And exactly what would your name be?” Slonko said suddenly. “Do you even know?”

“Very well,” said Alexander, his head bobbing forward.

“I can’t believe you’re making me drink by myself, Major. I find it almost rude.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t drink, Comrade Slonko. It’s so easy to fall into the abyss.”

Slonko lifted his eyes from the vodka and stared at Alexander for what seemed to be minutes. Finally he said slowly, “You know, a long time ago, I knew a woman, a very beautiful woman who used to drink.”

No reply was required of Alexander, so he made none.

“Yes. She was something. She was very brave and suffered terribly not to have a drink in prison. When we picked her up for questioning, she was drunk. It took her several days to get sober. When she became sober, we talked for a long time. I offered her a drink, and she took it, and I offered her a piece of paper to sign and she signed it gratefully. She wanted only one thing from me—do you know what it was?”

Alexander managed to shake his head.
That’s
where he heard the name Slonko!

“To spare her son. That was the only thing she asked. To spare her only son—Alexander Barrington.”

“That was good of her,” said Alexander. He clenched his hands together to still them. He willed his body to remain still. He wanted to be like the chair, like the desk, like the blackboard. He didn’t want to be like the glass rattling in the March wind. Any minute now the glass was going to pop out of the frame.
Like the stained glass in a church in Lazarevo
.

“Let me ask you, Major,” Slonko said amiably, downing his drink and tapping the empty glass on the wooden table. “If you yourself were going to ask for one thing before
you
were put to death, what would it be?”

“To have a cigarette,” Alexander replied.

“Not for mercy?”

“No.”

“Do you know your father also begged me to show you mercy?”

Alexander paled.

Slonko said in English,
“Your mother begged me to fuck her but I refused.”
He paused, and then smiled.
“At first.”

Alexander ground his teeth together. Nothing else on him moved. In Russian he said, “Are you speaking to
me
, comrade? Because I speak only Russian. They tried to get me to learn French in school, but I’m afraid I wasn’t very good at languages.” After that he said nothing. His mouth was dry.

“I’m going to ask you again,” said Slonko. “I’m going to ask you patiently and politely. Are you Alexander Barrington, son of Jane and Harold Barrington?”

“I will answer you patiently and politely,” said Alexander patiently and politely. “Though I have been asked this a hundred and fifty times already. I am not.”

“But Major, why would the person who told us this lie? Where would he get this information from? He couldn’t have made it up. He knew details about your life no one could have had any idea about.”

“Where is this person?” Alexander said. “I’d like to see him, I’d like to ask him if he is sure it’s me he is talking about. I for one am certain he made a mistake.”

“No, he is sure you’re Alexander Barrington.”

Alexander raised his voice. “If he is so sure, let him identify me. He is an upstanding comrade, this man you talk about? He is a proper Soviet citizen? He is not a traitor, he has not spat on his country? He served it proudly as I have? He’s been decorated, he never shied away from battle, no matter how one-sided, no matter how hard-won? This man you speak of, he is an example to us all, correct? Let me meet the paragon of new Soviet consciousness. Let him look at me, point his finger and say, “This is Alexander Barrington.” Alexander smiled. “And then we will see.”

Now it was Slonko’s turn to pale. “I came from Leningrad to talk to you like a reasonable man,” he hissed, losing some of that effacing false humility, baring his teeth, narrowing his eyes.

“And I am certainly glad to talk to you,” Alexander said, feeling his own dark eyes darken. “As always I am happy to talk to an earnest Soviet operator, who seeks the truth, who will stop at nothing to find it. And I want to help you. Bring my accuser here. Let’s clear up this matter once and for all.” Alexander stood up and took one half-menacing step in the direction of the desk. “But once we get this cleared up, I want my besmirched name back.”

“Which name would that be, Major?”

“My rightful name. Alexander Belov.”

“Do you know that you look like your mother?” Slonko said suddenly.

“My mother has long died. Of typhus. In Krasnodar. Surely your moles told you that?”

“I’m talking about your real mother. The woman who would suck off any guard to get a shot of vodka.”

Alexander did not flinch. “Interesting. But I don’t think my mother, who was a farmer’s wife, had ever seen a guard.”

Slonko spat and left.

A guard came to stand over Alexander. It was not Corporal Ivanov. All Alexander wanted to do was close his eyes and fall asleep. But every time he closed his eyes, the guard rammed the butt of the rifle under his chin with a call to wake up. Alexander had to learn to sleep with his eyes open.

The bleak sun set and the room became dark. The corporal turned on the bright light, and shined it into Alexander’s face. He became rougher with the rifle. The third time he tried to slam the barrel into Alexander’s throat, Alexander grabbed the barrel, twisted it out of the
guard’s hands and turned it on him. Standing over him, he said, “All you have to do is ask me not to fall asleep. No stronger measures are required. Can you do that?”

“Give me my rifle back.”

“Answer me.”

“Yes, I can do that.”

He gave the guard the weapon back. The guard took it, and struck Alexander in the forehead with the butt of the rifle. He flinched, saw black for a moment but made no sound. The guard left the classroom and returned shortly with his replacement, Corporal Ivanov, who said, “Go ahead, Major. Close your eyes. When they come I will yell. You will open your eyes then, yes?”