“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.”
5
“Alexander?” Dr. Sayers said, sitting in the chair next to him. “If I talk quietly, can I speak in English? Russian is so hard for me day in and day out.”
“Of course,” Alexander replied, also in English. “It’s good to hear the language again.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to come by sooner.” He shook his head. “I can see I’m getting myself mired in the hell that is the Soviet front. I’m running out of all my supplies, the Lend-Lease shipments can’t come quickly enough, I’m eating your Russian food, sleeping without a mattress—”
“You should have a mattress.”
“The wounded have a mattress. I have thick cardboard.”
Alexander wondered if Tatiana also had thick cardboard.
“I thought I’d be out of here already, but look at me. Still here. My days are twenty hours long. Listen, I have a bit of time finally. You want to talk?”
Alexander shrugged, studying the doctor. “Where are you from, Dr. Sayers? Originally?”
Sayers smiled. “Boston. Familiar with Boston?”
Alexander nodded. “My family was from Barrington.”
“Ah, well,” Sayers exclaimed. “We’re practically neighbors.” He paused. “So tell me. Long story with you?”
“Long.”
“Can you tell me? I’m dying to know how an American ended up as a major in the Red Army.”
In response Alexander studied the doctor, who said gently, “How long have you lived not being able to trust anyone? Trust me.”
Taking a deep breath, Alexander told him. If Tatiana trusted this man, it was good enough for him.
Dr. Sayers listened intently and then said, “That’s some mess.”
“You’re not kidding,” said Alexander.
Now it was Sayers’s turn to study Alexander. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Alexander did not reply at first. “You owe me nothing.”
Sayers paused. “Do you… want to come home?”
“Yes,” said Alexander. “I want to come home.”
“What can I do?”
Alexander looked at him. “Talk to my nurse. She’ll tell you what to do.” Where was his nurse? He needed to lay his eyes on her.
“Ina?”
“Tatiana.”
“Ah, Tatiana.” The doctor’s face eased into affection. “She knows about you?”
Alexander did a double take at the doctor’s expression and then laughed softly, shaking his head. “Dr. Sayers, I am indeed going to trust you with everything. You will hold two lives in your hands. Tatiana…”