“They didn’t know who they were dealing with,” said Tatiana, wanting to put her arms around him, but he was too far away. “When you jumped, was that when you found out you indeed could swim?” She smiled.

Alexander smiled back. The soles of his boots were touching the soles of her feet. “I could swim a little bit.”

“Did you have anything on you?”

“Nothing.”

“Papers? Money?”

“Nothing.” Tatiana thought Alexander wanted to tell her something else, but he continued. “It was the summer of 1936. After I escaped, I made my way south on the Volga, on fishing boats, by foot, in the back of horse carriages. I fished, worked briefly on farms, and moved on south. From Kazan to Ulyanovsk, where Lenin was born—interesting city, like a shrine. Then to Saratov, downstream on the Volga, fishing, harvesting, moving on. Wound up in Krasnodar, near the Black Sea. I was headed down south into Georgia, and then Turkey. I hoped to cross the border somewhere in the Caucasus Mountains.”

“But you had no money.”

“None,” Alexander said. “But I made some along the way, and I did think that my English, once I got into Turkey, would help me. But in Krasnodar, fate intervened.” He glanced at her. “As always. It was a brutal winter, and the family I was staying with, the Belovs—”

“The Belovs?” exclaimed Tatiana.

Alexander nodded. “A nice farming family. Father, mother, four sons, one daughter.” He cleared his throat. “Me. We all got typhus. The entire village of Belyi Yar—360 people—got typhus. Eight-tenths of the village population perished, including the Belovs, the daughter first. The local council from Krasnodar, with the help of the police, came and burned down the village, for fear that the epidemic would spread to the nearby city. All my clothes were burned, and I was quarantined until I either died or got better. I got better. The local Soviet councilman came to issue me new papers. Without a moment’s hesitation I said I was Alexander Belov. Since they burned the village in its entire—” Alexander raised his eyebrows. “Only in the Soviet Union. Anyway, since they burned the village, the councilman could not confirm or deny my claim to be Alexander Belov, the youngest Belov boy.”

Tatiana closed her mouth.

“So I was issued a brand-new domestic passport and a brand-new identity. I was Alexander Nikolaevich Belov, born in Krasnodar, orphaned at seventeen.” He looked away.

“What was your full American name?” asked Tatiana faintly.

“Anthony Alexander Barrington.”

“Anthony!” she exclaimed.

Alexander shook his head. “Anthony was for my mother’s father. I myself was never anything but Alexander.” He pulled out a cigarette. “You don’t mind?”

Tatiana shook her head.

“Anyway,” he said, “I returned to Leningrad and went to stay with relatives of the Belovs. I needed to be back in Leningrad—” Alexander hesitated. “I’ll tell you why in a minute. I stayed with my ‘aunt,’ Mira Belov, and her family. They lived on the Vyborg side. They hadn’t seen their nephews in a decade; it was ideal. I was like a stranger to them.” He smiled. “But they let me stay. I finished school. And it was in this school that I met Dimitri.”

“Oh, Alexander,” said Tatiana. “I cannot believe what you lived through when you were so young.”

“I’m far from finished. Dimitri was one of the kids I played with at school. He was spindly, unpopular, and never much fun. When we played war at recess, he was always the one taken prisoner. Dimitri POW Chernenko we used to call him. We said that for him alone the Soviet Union should have signed the 1929 Geneva Convention, because he was getting himself wounded or taken prisoner or killed every time we played, managing to get himself caught somehow without help from anyone.”

“Please go on.”

“But then I found out that his father was a prison guard at Shpalerka.” Alexander stopped.

Tatiana stopped breathing. “Your parents were still alive?”

“I didn’t know,” Alexander said. “So I chose to become close to Dimitri. I hoped that maybe he could help me see my mother and father. I knew that if they were alive, they would be tortured by their worries about me. I wanted to let them know I was all right.” He paused. “My mother particularly,” he said, his voice controlled. “We had been very close once.”

Tatiana’s eyes filled with tears. “What about your father?”

With a shrug, Alexander said, “He was my father. We had some conflict in the last years. What can I say? He thought he knew everything. I thought I knew everything. So it went.”

Tatiana did not blink as she stared at Alexander, transfixed. “Shura, they must have loved you so much.” She swallowed hard.

“Yes,” Alexander said, taking a deep, pained drag of the cigarette. “They did once love me.”

Tatiana’s heart was breaking for Alexander.

“Little by little,” he continued, “I gained Dimitri’s confidence, and we became better and better friends. Dima really liked the fact that I picked him out of many to be my closest friend.”

“Oh, Shura,” said Tatiana. She understood. Crawling to him, Tatiana wrapped her arms around Alexander. “You had to trust Dimitri.”

With one arm he hugged her back. The other held his cigarette. “Yes. I had to tell him who I was. I had no choice but to trust him. Leave my parents to die, or trust him.”

“You trusted Dimitri,” Tatiana repeated incredulously, letting go of him and sitting close by his side.

“Yes.” Alexander looked down into his large hands, as if trying to find the answer to his life in them. “I didn’t want to trust him. My father, the good Communist that he was, taught me never to trust anyone, and though it wasn’t easy, I learned that lesson well. But it’s a hard way to live, and I wanted to trust just one person in my life. Just one. I really needed Dimitri’s help. Besides, I was his friend. I said to myself that if he did this for me and I got to see my mother and father, I would be his friend for life. And that’s exactly what I told him. ‘Dima,’ I said, ‘I will be your friend for life. I will help you in any way that I can.’ “ Alexander lit another cigarette. Tatiana waited, the aching in her chest increasing.

“Dimitri’s father found out that I was too late to see my mother.” Alexander’s voice cracked. “He told me what had happened to her. But my father was still alive, though apparently not for long. He’d already been in prison for nearly a year. Chernenko got Dimitri and me inside Shpalerka, and then we had five minutes with the foreign infiltrator, Harold Barrington. Me, my father, Dimitri, his father, and another guard. No privacy for me and my father.”

Tatiana took Alexander’s hand. “How was that?”

Alexander stared straight ahead. “Pretty much how you imagine it might be,” he said, keeping his voice even. “And bitterly brief.”

In the small gray concrete cell, Alexander looked at his father, and Harold Barrington looked at Alexander. Harold did not move from his bed.

Dimitri stood in the center of the small cell, Alexander to the side. The guard and Dimitri’s father were behind them. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling.

In Russian, Dimitri said to Harold, “We are here for only a minute, comrade. You understand? Just for a minute.”

“All right,” replied Harold in Russian, blinking back tears. “Thank you for coming to see me. I’m happy to see two Soviet boys. Your name, son?” he asked Dimitri.

“Dimitri Chernenko.”

“And your name, son?” His body shaking, Harold looked at Alexander.

“Alexander Belov,” said Alexander.

Harold nodded.

The guard said, “All right, enough gawking at the prisoner. Let’s go.”

Dimitri said, “Wait! We just wanted the comrade to know that despite his crime against our proletarian society, he will not be forgotten.”