3
In Morozovo, Alexander was sitting behind a table in his officer’s tent when Dimitri stepped inside with some cigarettes and vodka. Alexander was wearing his coat, and his injured hands were numb from the cold. He was thinking of going to the mess tent to get some warmth and some food, but he couldn’t leave his tent. It was Friday, and he had a meeting with General Govorov in an hour to talk about their preparations for an assault on the Germans across the river.
It was November, and after four failed attempts to cross the Neva, the 67th Army was now impatiently waiting for the river to freeze. Finally the Leningrad command concluded that it would be easier to attack with the foot soldiers in line formations on ice instead of being clustered in easy-to-destroy pontoon boats.
Dimitri placed the bottles of vodka and the tobacco with the rolling papers on the table. Alexander paid him. He wanted Dimitri to leave. He had just been reading a letter from Tatiana that was puzzling him. He hadn’t written to her for the few weeks that he’d been hurt, even though he could have had a nurse write the letter for him. Alexander knew that if Tatiana saw a letter in someone else’s handwriting, she would go insane reading between the lines into how badly he was really injured. Not wanting her to worry, he had sent her his September money and waited until he could hold a pen, writing to her himself toward the end of the month.
He wrote that his burn wounds were just God’s way of protecting him. Unable to function at his weapons, Alexander had missed two disastrous assaults on the Neva in September, which had decimated the first and second line armies so utterly that all reserves had to be brought in from the Leningrad garrison. The Volkhov front would have been glad to supply the Leningrad front with men — if only they had some. But after Hitler’s directive to Manstein to hold the Neva and the blockade around Leningrad at all costs, there were hardly any men left in Meretskov’s 2nd Army in Volkhov.
Elsewhere, Stalingrad was being razed to the ground. The Ukraine was Hitler’s. Leningrad was barely holding. The Red Army was thoroughly debilitated. Govorov was planning another attack on the Germans across the Neva. And Alexander was sitting at his desk, trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with his wife.
Here it was November, and none of her letters that came with steady and conversational regularity, though without some of her usual candid fervor, mentioned a word about his injuries. He was driving himself to distraction trying to read between the lines of her letters when Dimitri had come in with the supplies. And now Dimitri wasn’t leaving.
“Alexander, can you pour me a drink? For old times’ sake?”
Reluctantly Alexander poured Dimitri a drink. He poured himself a smaller one. He sat behind his desk, Dimitri in a chair opposite him. They talked about the impending invasion and about the frightful battles with the Germans across the Neva on the Volkhov side.
“Alexander,” Dimitri said quietly, “how can you sit there so calmly knowing what’s ahead of you? Four attempts to cross the Neva, most of our men dead, and I hear that the fifth attack once the ice freezes is going to be our last one, that not a single man will be allowed to return until the blockade is broken; did you hear that, too?”
“I heard something about it, yes.”
“I can’t be here anymore. I can’t. Just yesterday I was delivering supplies to the Neva for the Nevsky Patch troops, and a rocket bomb flew all the way from Sinyavino across the river and blew up yet another f*cking squadron getting ready to ferry. I was maybe a hundred meters away from the explosion. But look” — he showed Alexander the cuts on his face — “it doesn’t end.”
“No, Dimitri, it doesn’t.”
Lowering his voice a notch, Dimitri said, “Alexander, you will not believe how unprotected the Lisiy Nos area is right now! I deliver to our border troops there and see the Finns in the woods. There are maybe a dozen men in all. It’s providential. You can come with me in my delivery truck, and before we get to the border, we can dump the truck, and then—”
“Dima!” whispered Alexander. “Dump the truck? Look at you. You can barely walk on straight ground. We talked about this in June—”
“Not just in June. We talked this to death. I’m tired of talking. Tired of waiting. I can’t wait anymore. Let’s just go, we’ll go, and we’ll make it, and if we won’t make it, they’ll shoot us. What’s the difference? At least this way we stand a chance.”
“Listen to me—” Alexander said, getting up from his desk.
“No, you listen to me. This war has changed me—”
“Has it?”
“Yes!” said Dimitri. “It has shown me that I have to fight for my own life to survive. By whatever means necessary. Everything I’ve done so far just hasn’t worked. Not the moving from platoon to platoon, not the foot wound, not the months in the hospital, not the Kobona interlude — nothing! I’ve been trying to save my life until we make our move again. But the Germans are determined to kill me. And I’m determined not to let them.” Dimitri paused and lowered his voice. “Makes your little stunt with the now deceased and forgotten Yuri Stepanov even more infuriating in retrospect.” His voice barely audible, Dimitri said, “He’s dead, and we’re still here. All because you had to bring him back. We’d be in America right now, if it weren’t for you.”
Fighting with himself for control, Alexander came around on Dimitri’s side of the desk, bent down to him, and said through his teeth, “And I told you then the same thing I am telling you now. Over and over then. Over and over now. Go! Leave. Go ahead. I will give you half of my money. You know how to get to Helsinki and Stockholm like the back of your hand. Why don’t you just go?”
Dimitri pulled away on his chair from Alexander. “You know very well I can’t go on my own. I don’t speak a word of English.”
“You don’t need to speak English! Just get to Stockholm and claim refugee status. They’ll take you, Dimitri, even without English,” Alexander said coldly, backing slightly away.
“And now with my leg—”
“Forget your leg. Drag it behind you if you have to. I’ll give you half of the money—”
“Give me half of the money? What the f*ck are you talking about? We are supposed to be going together, remember? That was our plan, right. Together?” Dimitri paused. “I’m not going alone!”
“If you’re not going alone,” Alexander hissed, “then you will wait until I say the time is right.” He unclenched his fists. “The time is not right. In the spring it will be—”
“I’m not waiting till the f*cking spring!”
“What choice do you have? Do you want to succeed, or do you want to fail in a hurry? You know the NKVD border troops shoot deserters on the spot.”
“I’ll be dead by the spring,” said Dimitri, getting up from the chair and attempting to square off against Alexander. “You’ll be dead by the spring. What’s the matter with you? What the f*ck has gotten into you? Do you not want to run anymore? What would you rather do — die?”
Keeping the torment out of his eyes, Alexander did not reply.
Dimitri glared at him. “Five years ago, when you were nobody, had nobody, when you needed me, I did you a favor, Captain of the Red Army.”
Alexander took one stride and stood so close to Dimitri that Dimitri not only backed off but fell into his chair, glancing up at Alexander with anxiety.
“Yes, you did,” Alexander said. “And I have never forgotten it.”
“All right, all right,” Dimitri said. “Don’t get all—”
“Have I made myself clear? We will wait for the right time.”
“But the border at Lisiy Nos is unprotected now!” Dimitri exclaimed. “What the f*ck are we waiting for? Now is an ideal time to go. Later the Soviets will bring more troops in, the Finns will bring more troops in, the war will continue there. Now it’s a stalemate. I say let’s go now — before the battle for Leningrad kills you.”
“Who’s stopping you?” said Alexander. “Go!”
“Alexander,” said Dimitri, “for the last time, I’m not going without you.”
“Dimitri,” said Alexander, “for the last time, I’m not going now.”
“When then?”
“I will tell you when. First we will break the blockade. Yes, it will take all we have, but we will do it, and then in the spring—”
Dimitri chuckled. “Maybe we should just send Tania to do it.”
For a moment Alexander thought he had misheard.
Did Dimitri just mention Tatiana?
“What did you just say?” he asked quietly and slowly.
“I said, maybe we should just send Tania. She is quite the little blockade runner.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That girl,” Dimitri said with admiration, “I am convinced, could get to Australia by herself if she wanted to!” Howling, he threw his head back. “Before we know it, she’ll be making regular food runs between Molotov and Leningrad.”
“What the f*ck are you talking about?”
“I’m telling you, Alexander,” Dimitri continued, “instead of wasting two hundred thousand of our men, including you and me, we should have Tatiana Metanova break the blockade.”
Stubbing out his cigarette, Alexander said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Hoping Dimitri wouldn’t notice, he clenched his hands around the chair posts.
“I said to her, I said, ‘Tania, you ought to enlist. You’ll be a general in no time.’ And she said she actually was thinking of joining—”
“What do you mean—” Alexander interrupted, finding it hard to continue. “What do you mean, you said to her?”
“A week ago. She made me dinner on Fifth Soviet. They finally had their pipes fixed. The apartment, well, some complete strangers are living there, but . . .” Dimitri smiled. “She is getting to be quite the little cook.”
It took most of what Alexander had to remain impassive.
“Are you all right?” Dimitri said with an amused look on his face.
“I’m fine. But what are you talking about, Dima? Is this another one of your little white lies? Tatiana is not in Leningrad.”
“Alexander, believe me, I’d know Tania anywhere.” He smiled. “She looks good. She told me she was seeing a doctor.” He laughed. “Can you believe it? Our little Tanechka. Who would have thought that she would be the only one left standing?”
Alexander would have liked to say stop it, but he did not trust his voice. He said nothing, his hands remaining on the posts of the chair.
He had just gotten a letter from her yesterday. A letter!
“Tania came looking for me at the barracks. Made me dinner. She said she’d been in Leningrad since the middle of October. No, and how she got there, too!” Dimitri laughed. “Literally walking through the Volkhov front, as if Manstein and his thousand-kilo bombs did not exist.” Dimitri shook his head. “When I get into the good fight, I want her with me.”
Keeping himself under barest control, Alexander said, “And when is it, Dimitri, that you think you’ll be going into the good fight?”
“Very clever—”
“Dimitri, I don’t give a shit. This doesn’t matter. But I just realized I’m late. I have a meeting with General Govorov in a few minutes. You will have to excuse me.”
After Dimitri left, Alexander became so upset in his tent that in his stricken fury he broke apart the wooden chair he had been sitting on.
Now he knew what was wrong with her letters. Alexander was weak from anger, and he didn’t have enough time to calm down before his meeting with Govorov, or after. Anger continued to cloud his judgment. After his meeting he went to Colonel Stepanov.
“Oh, no,” said Stepanov, coming from around his desk. “I see that look in your eyes, Captain Belov.” He smiled.
With his hat in his hands, Alexander nodded and said, “Sir, you have been very kind to me. I haven’t had a day off since I came back in July.”
“But, Belov, you had over five weeks off in July!”
“All I’m asking for is a few days, sir. If you like, I can drive a supply truck into Leningrad. That way it will be partly for army business, too.”
“What’s going on, Alexander?” Stepanov said, coming closer and lowering his voice.
Alexander gave a small shake of his head. “Everything is fine.”
Stepanov studied him. “Does it have anything to do with the money you’re sending out of here to Molotov every month?”
“You’re right, sir, maybe we should stop the money transfers to Molotov.”
Stepanov lowered his voice another notch. “Does it have anything to do with the stamp from a registry office in Molotov that I saw in your passport when I was signing you in?”
Alexander kept silent. “Sir, I am urgently needed in Leningrad.” He paused, trying to collect himself. “It’s just for a few days.”
Stepanov sighed. “If you don’t come back by ten o’clock roll call on Sunday . . .”
“Sir, I will be here. It’s more than enough time. Thank you. I’ve never let you down. I won’t forget this.”
As Alexander was leaving, Stepanov said, “Take care of your personal business, son. Forget the supplies. You won’t have another chance for personal business until we break the blockade.”