Tatiana and Alexander (42 page)

“We don’t speak German,” said Ouspensky. “It won’t do us much good.”

“I speak a little,” said Pasha, “and since we’ll be wearing German clothes, it’s only right we should have German IDs.”

“And what did you promise this young naïve girl for risking her job and livelihood for you?” Ouspensky asked with a sneer.

“My heart.” Pasha smiled. “My undying devotion. Isn’t it what we always promise them? Right, Alexander?”

“Right, Pasha.”

Finally the planned night in February came and the time was near. Everything was ready.

It was eleven in the evening and Ouspensky was snoring. He asked to be woken up ten minutes before departure. Alexander thought it was smart to rest, but he himself could not sleep since yesterday.

He and Pasha were sitting on the floor by the closed window, tugging on the rope that was securely—they hoped—attached to one of the bunkbeds cemented into the floor.

“Do you think Constantine is strong enough to hold the rope steady? He doesn’t look that strong,” Pasha whispered.

“He’ll be fine.” Alexander lit a cigarette.

So did Pasha. “Will we succeed, Alexander? Will we make it?”

“I don’t know.” Alexander paused. “I don’t know what God has planned for us.”

“There you go with your God again. Are you prepared for anything?”

Alexander paused before answering. “Anything,” he said, “except failure.”

“Alexander?”

“Yes?”

“Do you ever think about your child?”

“What do you think?”

Pasha was quiet.

“What do you want to know? If I think she still remembers me? Do I think she has forgotten me—found a new life? Assumed that I was dead, accepted that I was dead.” Alexander shrugged. “I think about it all the time. I live inside my heart. But what can I do? I have to move toward her.”

Pasha was quiet.

Alexander listened to his palpitating breathing.

“What if she is happy now?”

“I hope she is.”

“I mean—” Pasha went on, but Alexander interrupted him.

“Stop.”

“Tania is at her core a happy soul, a resilient person. She is loyal and she is true, she is unyielding and relentless, but she also feels a child’s delight for the smallest things. You know how some people gravitate toward misery?”

“I know how some people do that, yes,” said Alexander, inhaling the nicotine.

“Tania doesn’t.”

“I know.”

“What if she is remarried and has made herself a fine life?”

“I’ll be happy to find her happy.”

“But then what?”

“Then nothing. We salute her. You stay. I go.”

“You’re not risking your life to just
go
, Alexander.”

“No.” I am a salmon, born in fresh water, living in salt water, swimming 3,200 kilometers upstream over rivers and seas back home to fresh water to spawn, and to die. I have no choice.

“What if she’s forgotten you?”

“No.”

“Maybe not forgotten, but what if she doesn’t feel the same way anymore? She is in love with her new husband. She’s got kids. She looks at you and is horrified.”

“Pasha, you have a twisted Russian soul. Shut the fuck up.”

“Alexander, when I was fifteen, I had a crush on this girl, we had a great time for a month, and the next year I went back to Luga thinking we would continue our romance, and you know what? She didn’t even
remember
who I was. How pathetic was that?”

“Pretty pathetic.” They both laughed. “You obviously were doing something wrong if she forgot you that quick.”

“Shut up yourself.”

Alexander had no doubt—whatever Tatiana’s life was, she had not forgotten him. He still felt her crying in his dreams. Every once in a while he dreamed of her not in Lazarevo but in a new place, with a new face, speaking to him, begging him, imploring him—but even in a new place with a new face, Alexander could smell her pure breath, breathing her life into him.

“Alexander,” Pasha barely whispered, “what if we never find her?”

“Pasha, you’re going to make a chain smoker out of me,” Alexander said, lighting up. “Look, I don’t have all the answers. She knows that if I am able, I will never stop looking for her.”

“What are we going to do with Ouspensky?” Pasha said. “Couldn’t we leave him here? Just forget to wake him.”

“I think he’ll notice when he wakes up.”

“So?”

“He’ll send them after us.”

“Ah, he would, wouldn’t he? That’s the thing about him. He’s a bit…baleful, don’t you think?”

“Don’t think twice about it,” said Alexander. “It’s a Soviet thing.”

“Even stronger in Ouspensky,” Pasha muttered, but Alexander sprung up and shook Ouspensky. It was near midnight. It was time.

Alexander opened the window. It was a rainy and stormy night, and it was hard to see. He thought that might play to their advantage. The guards wouldn’t willingly be looking up at the rain.

With the ends of the ropes tied around their waists, the slack rolled up in their hands, their belongings tied around their backs, the wire cutters in Alexander’s boot, they stood and waited for the signal from Constantine. The guards on the terrace had already left for the night. Constantine would wave as soon as the guards were gone from the garden, and then Alexander would jump first, then Pasha, then Ouspensky.

Finally, a few minutes after midnight, Constantine waved and moved out of the way. Alexander flung himself out of the small window. The rope had four meters of slack. He bounced hard—too hard—against the wet stone wall, and then quickly released the roll of rope bit by bit as he ran down the wall to the ground. Pasha and Ouspensky were right behind him, but a little slower. He ran across the terrace and jumped over the parapet, releasing the rope bit by bit in a great hurry. The rope was too short, fuck, it yanked him up two meters above the grass, but it was all right, because he let go, fell into the sloshing, icy wet grass, rolled, jumped up and ran to the barbed wire, his cutters already out of his boot. Pasha was behind him, Ouspensky, breathing heavily, was behind Pasha. By the time they got to him, seconds later, the barbed wire was already cut. They squeezed through the hole and hid in the trees over the precipice. The floodlights came on. The guards took longer tonight to come out. It was windy and raining hard. Alexander glanced at the floodlit castle to see if the rope had been pulled up by Constantine. It could have been, it was hard to see through the rain. The guards were still not out and Alexander had extra time to attach one rope fifteen meters long to the branches of the three-hundred-year-old oak. This time he let Ouspensky and Pasha go first. The three of them slowly edged down the slippery wall, suspending themselves over the precipice. It was dark, and a good thing too because Ouspensky called out, “Captain, did I ever tell you I’m afraid of heights?”

“No, and now is not the fucking time.”

“I was thinking now is a very good time.”

“It’s pitch black. There is no height. Just come on! Move a little faster.”

Alexander was soaked to the skin. German trench coats were made of thick canvas, but weren’t waterproof. What good were they?

They all released the rope and jumped to the ground a minute later. Alexander cut through the barbed wire fence surrounding Colditz at the bottom of the hill and they were out.

Now he wished the weather would quieten. Who wanted to run at night in this weather?

“Everybody good?” Alexander said. “We did great.”

“I’m good,” said Ouspensky, panting.

“I’m good, too,” said Pasha. “I scraped myself on something when I landed. Scraped my leg.”

Alexander got out a flashlight. Pasha’s trousers were slightly ripped at the thigh, but he was barely bleeding. “Must have been the barbed wire. Just a scratch. Let’s go.”

They were running, running all day and night, or maybe they slept in barns at night, but they dreamed of running, and when they opened their eyes, they were exhausted. Alexander ran slowly, Pasha ran slower, and Ouspensky barely moved. In the fields, in the rivers, in the woods. A day went by, then another, how far had they gotten from Colditz? Maybe thirty kilometers. Three grown men, five healthy lungs between them, and thirty kilometers. They weren’t even past Chemnitz, just south-west. There were no trains, and they did their best to avoid paved roads. How were they going to get to Lake Constance on the border of Switzerland at this rate?

Pasha slowed down even more on the third day. He stopped chatting in between breaths, and stopped eating on the third night. Alexander noticed because when he said, Pasha, eat some fish, Pasha replied that he wasn’t hungry. Ouspensky made a joke, something like, I’ll eat everything, don’t have to ask me twice, and Alexander gave him the fish without a second glance, but he stared at Pasha. He took a look at Pasha’s thigh. It was raw and red and oozing yellow liquid. Alexander poured diluted iodine on it, sprinkled some sulfa powder on it and bandaged it. Pasha said he was feeling cold. Alexander touched him. He felt warm.

They made a lean-to with their sheets for all three of them, and they crawled in and kept barely warm, and in the middle of the night, Alexander woke up because he was sweating. He thought there was a
fire in the lean-to, he jumped up with a start. But it wasn’t a fire. It was just a burning Pasha.

What’s wrong with you, Alexander whispered.

Don’t feel so good, Pasha mouthed inaudibly.

Everything was silent and mute. Alexander used the last of their water, placing rags on Pasha’s head. It helped a little. The water was gone, and the rags were hot from Pasha’s forehead, and Pasha was burning. Alexander went out in the cold rain and got more water.

Don’t feel so good, Pasha’s mouth moved. By morning his mouth was cracked and bleeding. Alexander unbandaged his leg. It looked the same as yesterday. More green than yellow. He disinfected it, and poured sulfa powder on it, and then he diluted the sulfa in some rain-water and made Pasha drink it, and Pasha did, and then threw up and Alexander cursed and yelled, and Pasha mouthed, I been wet too long, Alexander. I think I was cold and wet too long.

It was just above freezing. The rain was turning to sleet. Alexander wrapped Pasha in his trench coat. Pasha was burning. Alexander took his trench coat off Pasha.

When it stopped raining, he built another fire and dried all of Pasha’s clothes and gave him a smoke and a small drink of whisky out of their flask. Shaking, Pasha drank the whisky.

“What are we going to do?” asked Ouspensky.

“Why do you have to talk so much?” snapped Alexander.

They decided to walk on.

Pasha tried, he tried to put one foot in front of the other, he tried to move his arms across his body to help propel him forward, but his shaking knees kept buckling. I’m going to rest a bit, mouthed Pasha, and then he said, I’ll be all right. He sat down on the ground. Alexander held him up, stood him up, raised him up, then lifted him and threw him on his back.

“Captain—”

“One more word, Ouspensky, and with my bare hands—”

“Understood.”

They walked, Alexander carrying Pasha all the gray morning. Alexander lowered him, gave him a drink of rain, raised him, carried him all the gray afternoon. Lowered him, gave him a drink of whisky, stuffed a piece of bread into his mouth, raised him, carried him.

Somewhere on a dirt road in south-east Saxony, Pasha felt heavier and heavier. Alexander thought he was getting tired. It was the end of the day. They broke camp, sat by the fire. Alexander went ice fishing in
the pond by the woods. Caught one perch, cooked it in water. He made Pasha drink the fish broth with some diluted sulfa powder, and then he and Ouspensky divided the fish and ate it, head and all.

Ouspensky slept. Alexander smoked. And sat holding the ice rag against Pasha’s burning head. Then Pasha was cold, and Alexander covered him up with two trench coats, and took the coat from Ouspensky for Pasha.

No one spoke anymore, not even to mouth the words.

Next morning, Pasha, his eyes swollen with fever, shook his head, as if to say, leave me. And Alexander shook his, and lifted Pasha and carried him. There was no sun, it was February in central Germany. The slate sky was meters above their heads. Alexander knew they couldn’t stop and ask for help—they spoke no German without Pasha. He also knew that the Saxony police had no doubt been notified about three escapees and was looking for precisely three men, masquerading as Germans yet not speaking a word of German.

They couldn’t get too far with a sick Pasha. He had to get better. They found a small barn and waited out the cold morning covered by hay. Sitting, listening to Pasha’s breaking-up breathing, watching Pasha’s struggle and his inflamed face was too much for Alexander. He got up. “We have to go. We have to keep moving.”

“Can I have a word with you?” Ouspensky said.

“Absolutely not,” said Alexander.

“Outside the barn, for a moment.”

“I said no.”

Ouspensky glanced at Pasha, whose eyes were closed. He seemed unconscious.

“Captain, he is getting worse.”

“All right, Dr. Ouspensky, thank you, that will be all.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to continue. We just need to find a Red Cross convoy.”

“There weren’t any Red Cross personnel in Colditz or Catowice. What makes you think there will be some here?”

“Maybe Red Cross. Maybe Americans.”

“Have the Americans gotten this far?”

“Ouspensky, like you, I’ve been in prison these last four months. How the fuck should I know how far the Americans have gotten? I think probably yes, they’re here somewhere. Didn’t you hear war planes headed to Dresden?”

“Captain—”

“Not another word about this, Lieutenant. Let’s go.”

“Go where? He needs help.”

“And we have to get him help. Help isn’t going to come to us in a barn.”

He picked up Pasha and flung him on his back. Pasha could not hold on.

Alexander barely saw the road in front of him. It took all his effort to continue walking. Every hour he stopped and gave Pasha a drink, and pressed a cold rag against Pasha’s head, and wrapped him tighter in two coats, and walked on again, without his own coat.