4
Alexander thought of nothing else but when he would see her again the following day. She came around lunchtime, bringing him his food. “I’ll feed him, Ina,” she said brightly to the regular nurse. Ina didn’t look too pleased, but Tatiana paid no attention.
“Nurse Metanova thinks she owns my patient,” Ina said, signing Alexander’s chart.
“She does own me, Ina,” said Alexander. “Isn’t she the one who brought me the plasma?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” mumbled Ina sulkily, glaring at Tatiana and walking away.
“What did she mean by that?” Alexander asked.
“Don’t know,” Tatiana replied. “Open your mouth.”
“Tania, I can feed myself.”
“You want to feed yourself?”
“No.”
“Let me take care of you,” she said tenderly. “Let me do what you know I ache to do for you. Let me do for you.”
“Tania, where is my wedding ring?” he asked. “It was hanging on a rope around my neck. Did I lose it?”
Smiling, she pulled the braided rope out of her uniform. Two rings hung next to each other. “I’ll keep it until we can wear them again.”
“Feed me,” he said, his voice deepening with emotion.
Before she could feed him, Colonel Stepanov came to see Alexander. “I heard you’d awakened,” he said, glancing at Tatiana. “Is this a bad time?”
Tatiana shook her head, put the spoon back on the tray, and stood up. “Are you Colonel Stepanov?” she asked, looking from Alexander to the colonel.
“Yes,” he replied, puzzled. “And you are—”
Tatiana took the colonel’s hand in both of hers and held it. “I’m Tatiana Metanova,” she said. “I just want to thank you, Colonel, for all you have done for Major Belov.” She did not let go of his hand, and he did not pull away. “Thank you, sir,” she repeated.
Alexander wanted to hug his wife. “Colonel,” he said, grinning, “my nurse knows that my commander has been good to me.”
“Nothing you don’t deserve, Major,” said Stepanov. He did not pull his hand away from Tatiana’s until she released him. “Have you seen your medal?”
The medal hung on the back of the chair by Alexander’s bed.
“Why didn’t they wait until I was conscious to give it to me?” Alexander asked.
Stepanov said, “We didn’t know if—”
“Not just a medal, Major,” interrupted Tatiana. “The highest medal of honor there is. A Hero of the Soviet Union medal!” she added breathlessly.
Stepanov looked from Tatiana to Alexander and back again and said, “Your nurse is very . . . proud of you, Major.”
“Yes, sir.” He was trying not to smile.
Stepanov said, “Tell you what, why don’t I come back another time, when you’re less busy?”
“Wait, sir,” Alexander said, looking away from Tatiana for a moment. “How are our troops doing?”
“They’re fine. They had their ten days off, and now they’re trying to push the Germans out of Sinyavino. Big problems there. But you know, little by little.” Stepanov paused. “Better news — von Paulus surrendered in Stalingrad last month.” Stepanov chuckled. “Hitler made von Paulus a field marshal two days before surrender. He said no German field marshal in history had ever surrendered.”
Alexander smiled. “Von Paulus obviously wanted to make history. That is great news. Stalingrad held. Leningrad broke the blockade. We may yet win this war.” He fell quiet. “It will be a Pyrrhic victory indeed.”
“Indeed.” Stepanov shook Alexander’s hand. “The kinds of losses we’re suffering, I don’t know who’ll be left to enjoy even a Pyrrhic victory.” He sighed. “Get better soon, Major. Another promotion is waiting for you. Whatever else happens, we’ll get you away from the front line.”
“Don’t want to be away from the action, sir.”
Tatiana shoved him in the shoulder.
“I mean, yes, thank you, sir.”
Again Stepanov stared at Alexander and Tatiana.
“It’s good to see you in better spirits, Major. I don’t remember the last time I saw you so . . . cheerful. Near-fatal injury agrees with you.”
Stepanov left.
“Well, you’ve completely flummoxed the colonel,” said Alexander, grinning at Tatiana. “What did he mean by near-fatal injury?”
“Hyperbole. But you were right. He is a nice man.” Tatiana looked at Alexander with teasing rebuke. “I can see you forgot to thank him for me, though.”
“Tania, we’re men. We don’t go around slapping each other on the shoulder.”
“Open your mouth.”
“What food did you bring me?”
She had brought cabbage soup with potatoes and white bread with butter.
“Where did you get all this butter from?” There was a quarter of a kilo.
“Wounded soldiers get extra butter,” she said. “And you get extra extra butter.”
“Like extra extra morphine?” he asked, smiling at her.
“Mmm. You need to get better quick.”
Every time the spoon moved to his mouth, bringing her fingers closer to him, Alexander breathed in deeply, trying to smell her hands behind the soup.
“Have you eaten?”
Tatiana shrugged. “Who’s got time to eat?” she said breezily. She pulled up her chair closer to his bed.
Alexander said, “Do you think the other patients will object if my nurse kisses me?”
“Yes,” she said, pulling away a bit. “They’re going to think I kiss everybody.”
Alexander looked around. There was a man across the room from them, dying, his legs gone. Nothing could be done for him. In the isolation tent next to Alexander’s bed, he heard a man struggling for his every breath. Like Marazov.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Oh, Nikolai Ouspensky? He’s lost a lung,” Tatiana said. She cleared her throat. “He’ll be fine. He is a nice man. His wife lives in a village nearby, keeps sending him onions.”
“Onions?”
Tatiana shrugged. “Villagers, what can I tell you.”
“Tania,” he said quietly, “Ina told me I needed fluid replacement. How badly—”
Tatiana quickly said, “You’re going to be fine. You lost a little blood, that’s all.” She paused, then shook something off. “Listen,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, “listen carefully—”
“Why aren’t you here with me all the time? Why aren’t you my nurse?”
“Wait. Two days ago you told me to go away, and now you want me here all the time?”
“Yes.”
“Dearest,” she whispered, smiling, “he is here all the time. Did you not hear me? I’m trying to keep a professional distance. Ina is a good critical care nurse. Soon you’ll get better, and maybe we can move you to a convalescent bed if you want.”
“Is that where you are? I’ll get better in a week.”
“No, Shura. I’m not there.”
“Where are you?”
“Listen, I need to talk to you, and you keep interrupting.”
“I won’t interrupt,” said Alexander, “if you hold my hand under the blanket.”
Tatiana stuck her hand under the blanket and took hold of his hand, intertwining her little fingers through his. “If I were stronger, bigger, like you,” she said softly, “I would have picked you up and carried you off the ice myself.”
Squeezing her hand tight, he said, “Don’t make me upset, all right? I’m too happy to see your lovely face. Please kiss me.”
“No, Shura, will you listen—”
“Why do you look so f*cking incredible? Why are you oozing happiness? I don’t think you’ve ever looked better.”
Tatiana leaned toward him, parting her lips and lowering her voice to a husky whisper. “Not even in Lazarevo?”
“Stop, you’re making a grown man cry. You’re just shining from the inside out.”
“You’re alive. I’m ecstatic.” She looked ecstatic.
“How did you get to the front?”
“If you would listen, I’d tell you.” She smiled. “When I left Lazarevo, I knew I wanted to become a critical care nurse. Then after you came to see me in November, I decided to enlist. I was going to the front where you were. If you were going into battle for Leningrad, so was I. I was going to go on the ice with the medics.”
“That was your plan?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “I’m glad you didn’t tell me then, and I certainly don’t have the strength for this now.”
“You’re going to need a lot more strength when you hear what I’m about to tell you.” She could barely contain her excitement. His heart pounded. “So when Dr. Sayers came to Grechesky,” Tatiana continued, “I immediately asked him if he needed an extra pair of hands. He came to Leningrad at the Red Army’s request to help with the anticipated flow of the wounded in this attack.” She lowered her voice. “I have to tell you, I think even the Soviets underestimated the number of wounded. There is simply no place to put anyone. Anyway, after Dr. Sayers told me he was going to the Leningrad front, I asked him if there was anything I could do to help . . .” Tatiana smiled. “I learned that question from you. As it turned out, he did need my help. The only nurse he had brought with him took ill. Not a surprise is it, in wintry Leningrad? Poor thing caught TB.” Tatiana shook her head. “Imagine. Now she’s better, but she remained in Grechesky. They need her there. Since I hadn’t enlisted yet, I came here with Dr. Sayers as his temporary assistant instead. Look,” Tatiana said proudly, showing Alexander her white armband with the Red Cross symbol on it. “Instead of a Red Army nurse, I’m a Red Cross nurse! Isn’t this great?” She beamed.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying being at the front, Tania,” Alexander said.
“Shura! Not at the front. Do you know where Dr. Sayers came from?”
“America?”
“I mean, where he drove his Red Cross jeep from to come to Leningrad?”
“I give up.”
In a thrilled whisper, she said, “Helsinki!”
“Helsinki.”
“Yes.”
“All right . . .” Alexander drew out.
“And do you know where he is going back to in a little while?”
“No, where?”
“Shura! Helsinki!”
Alexander didn’t say anything. Slowly he turned his head away and closed his eyes. He heard her calling him. He opened his eyes and turned back to her. Her eyes were dancing, and her fingers were tapping his arm, her warm face flushing red, her breathing rapid.
He laughed.
A nurse on the other side of the hall turned around.
“No, don’t laugh,” Tatiana said. “Keep quiet.”
“Tatia, Tatia, stop. I beg you.”
“Will you listen to me? As soon as I met Dr. Sayers, I started thinking and thinking.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.”
“What are you thinking?”
“In Grechesky I thought and thought, trying to come up with a plan—”
“Oh, no, not another plan.”
“Yes, plan. I asked myself, can Dr. Sayers be trusted? I thought he could be, yes. I thought I could trust him because he seemed like a good American. I was going to trust him and tell him about you and me, and beg him to help you get back home, beg him to help get us to Helsinki somehow. Just to Helsinki. After that you and I could make it to Stockholm ourselves.”
“Tania, I can’t take any more of this.”
“No, listen to me!” she whispered. “If only you knew how God is with us. In December a wounded Finnish pilot came to Grechesky. They come in all the time — to die. We tried to save him, but he had severe head wounds. Crashed his plane into the Gulf of Finland.” She was barely audible. “I kept his uniform and his ID tag. I hid them in Dr. Sayers’s jeep, in a box of bandages. That’s where they are now — waiting for you.”
In astonishment Alexander gaped at Tatiana.
“The only thing I was afraid of was asking Dr. Sayers to risk himself for total strangers. I didn’t know quite how to do that.” Tatiana leaned over and kissed his shoulder. “But you, my husband, you had to intervene. You had to save the doctor. Now I’m sure he will help get you out if he has to carry you on his back.”
Alexander was speechless.
“We will put you in a Finnish uniform, you’ll become Tove Hanssen for a few hours, and we will drive you across the Finnish border in Dr. Sayers’s Red Cross truck to Helsinki. Shura! I will get you out of the Soviet Union.”
Alexander was still speechless.
Laughing soundlessly but happily, Tatiana said, “We have amazing luck, don’t you think?” Pointing to the Red Cross badge on her arm and squeezing his hand under the covers, Tatiana said, “Depending on when you’ll be strong enough, from Helsinki we will take either a merchant vessel, if the ice on the Baltic has broken, or a truck with a protective convoy to Stockholm. Sweden is neutral, remember?” She smiled. “And no, I don’t forget a single word of anything you ever tell me.” Letting go of him, she clapped her hands. “Is that not the best plan you ever heard? Much better than your idea of hiding out in the gulf swamps for months.”
He looked at her with delirium and dizzy disbelief. “Who are you, this woman sitting in front of me?”
Tatiana got up. Bending over him, she kissed him deeply on the lips. “I’m your beloved wife,” she whispered.
Hope was an amazing healer.
Suddenly the days stretching out weren’t long enough for Alexander to try to get up, to walk, to move. He couldn’t get out of bed, but he tried supporting himself on his arms, and he sat up finally, and fed himself, and lived for the minutes when Tatiana could come and see him.
His idleness was making him crazy. He asked Tatiana to bring him pieces of wood and an army knife, and while waiting for her he sat for hours carving the coarse wood into palm trees, into pine trees, into knives and stakes and human forms.
She would come, every day, many times a day, and sit by him, and whisper. “Shura, in Helsinki, we can take a sleigh ride, a drozhki ride. Wouldn’t that be something? And we could actually go to a real church! Dr. Sayers told me Helsinki’s Emperor Nicholas church looks a lot like St. Isaac’s. Shura, are you listening?”
Smiling, he would nod and whittle.
And she would sit by him and whisper. “Shura, did you know that Stockholm is all built out of granite, just like Leningrad? Did you know that our very own Peter the Great took the hotly contested Karelia from Sweden in 1725? Ironic, don’t you think? Even then we were fighting over the land that will now set us free. By the time we get to Stockholm, it’ll be spring, and apparently right on the harbor they have a morning market where they sell fruits and vegetables and fish — oh, and Shura, they have smoked ham and something called bacon, Dr. Sayers told me. Have you ever had bacon? Shura, are you listening?”
Smiling, he would nod and whittle.
“And in Stockholm we’ll go to this place, called, I can’t remember right now — oh, yes, called, Sweden’s Temple of Fame, the burial place for her kings.” Delight was all over her face. “Her kings and heroes. You’d like that. We’ll go and see it?”
“Yes, sweet girl,” Alexander said, putting down his knife and his wood, reaching for her, bringing her to him. “We’ll go and see it.”