Tatiana and Alexander. Paullina Simons
“Why she keep losing him?”
Vikki laughed. “The question I think should be why does Dr. Ludlow let himself be lost so often.”
“All right, why?”
Vikki waved Tatiana off. Tatiana understood. Vikki did not want to be talking about Dr. Ludlow. With a small smile, Tatiana appraised Vikki. Now that she had stopped crying, Tatiana could see that Vikki was a striking girl, a proper girl who was pretty and knew it and did everything to make sure everyone knew it. Her hair was shiny and long and swept over her face and shoulders, her eyes were outlined in black eyeliner and runny mascara, and her full lips had traces of bright red lipstick. Her white uniform was tight on her long-limbed figure and came just a touch too high above the knee. Tatiana wondered how the wounded men responded to so much … Vikki.
“Vikki, why you cry? You not love your husband?”
“Oh, I love him, all right. I love him.” She sighed. “I just wish I could love him from five thousand miles away.” Lowering her voice, she continued. “This is really not a good time for him to come back.”
“For husband to come back to his wife?” When was not a good time for that?
“I wasn’t expecting him.” She started to cry again, into her coffee. Tatiana moved the cup away slightly so Vikki could finish the coffee later if she wanted to.
“When were you …?” What was the word? Expecting?
“At Christmas!”
“Oh. Why he coming home so soon?”
“Can you believe it? He was shot down over the Pacific.”
Tatiana stared.
“Oh, he’s fine,” Viktoria said dismissively. “It’s a scrape. A little superficial shoulder wound. He flew the plane ninety miles after he was shot. How bad could it be?”
Tatiana stood from the table. “I think I go feed my son.”
“Yes, but Chris is going to be miserable.”
“Who is Chris?”
“Dr. Pandolfi. You haven’t met him? He comes here with Dr. Ludlow.”
Chris Pandolfi. That’s right. “Oh, I met him.” Dr. Pandolfi was the doctor who had come aboard the ship she was on and decided he was not going to help to deliver her baby on U.S… . soil. He wanted to send her back to the Soviet Union, broken amniotic waters, TB and all. It was Edward Ludlow who had said no and made Dr. Pandolfi help get Tatiana to the hospital on Ellis Island. Tatiana patted Vikki on the shoulder. She wasn’t sure Chris Pandolfi was such a great catch. “You be fine, Viktoria. Maybe stay away from Dr. Pandolfi. Your husband is coming home. You are so lucky.”
Viktoria got up and followed Tatiana down the hall to her room. “Call me Vikki,” she said. “Can I call you Jane?”
“Who?”
“Isn’t your name Jane?”
“You call me Tania.”
“Why would I call you Tania when your name is Jane?”
“Tania my name. Jane just on documents.” She saw Vikki’s uninterested and confused face. “Call me what you like.”
“When are you getting out?”
“Getting out?”
“Out of Ellis.”
Tatiana thought about it. “I do not think I am getting out,” she said. “I have nowhere to go.”
Vikki followed Tatiana into her room and glanced at her son sleeping in his bassinet. “He’s kind of little,” she said absent-mindedly, touching Tatiana’s blonde hair. “His father was dark-haired?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s it like being a mother?”
“It’s—”
“Well, when you’re all better, I want you to come home with me. Meet Grammy and Grampa. They love little babies. They keep wanting me to have one.” Vikki shook her head. “God help me.” She glanced again at Anthony. “He’s sort of cute. Too bad his father has never seen him.”
“Yes.”
The boy was so helpless. He couldn’t move, or turn his head, or hold his head. He was so difficult to dress—his floppy arms and head defying Tatiana’s awkward mothering skills—that some days she kept him naked just in a cloth diaper, swaddled underneath the blankets. She had no clothes for him except for the few nightgowns Edward had brought for her. It was summer and warm and he didn’t need much, thank goodness, for the head would not fit in the nightgown hole, the arms refused to go into the long sleeves. Bathing him was even harder, if that were possible. His bellybutton had not healed completely, so she washed his body with a cloth, and that was not too bad, but washing his hair was outside her expertise. He couldn’t do anything, he could not help her in any way, he could not lift his arms or stay still when she needed him still or be propped up. His head bobbed backward, his body slipped out of her grasp, his legs dangled precariously above a sink. She lived in fear that she would drop him, that he would slither out of her arms and onto the black-and-white tile floor. Her feelings about his absolute dependence on her fluctuated from intense anxiety over his future to an almost suffocating tenderness. Somehow, and maybe that was how nature intended it, his need for her made her stronger.
And she needed to be made stronger. Too often when he was asleep and safe, Tatiana herself felt that her own bobbing head, her own dangling arms and legs, her fragile body would slip on the sill and plummet down to the concrete ground below.
And so to draw sustenance from him, she would uncover him, unwrap him and touch him. She would lift him from his bed and place him on her chest, where he would sleep, head on her heart. He was long, his limbs were long, and as she caressed him, she imagined looking at another boy through the eyes of his mother, a baby boy, long like Anthony, dark like him, soft like him, touched by his mother, bathed, nursed, caressed by his new mother who had waited her whole life to have this one boy.
The Interrogation, 1943
HE HEARD VOICES OUTSIDE, and the door opened.
“Alexander Belov?”
Alexander was going to say yes but for some reason thought of the Romanovs shot in a small basement room in the middle of the night. Was it the middle of the night? The same night? The next night? He decided to say nothing.
“Come. Now.”
He followed the guard to a small room upstairs, this one not a classroom. It was an old storage area, maybe a nurses’ station.
He was told to sit in the chair. Then he was told to stand up. Then to sit back down again. It was still dark outside. He couldn’t figure out what the time was. When he asked, he was met with a “Shut up!” He decided not to ask again. After a few moments, two men entered the room. One of them was the fat Mitterand, one of them was a man he did not know.
The man shined a bright light into Alexander’s face. He closed his eyes.
“Open your eyes, Major!”
Fat Mitterand said softly, “Vladimir, now now. We can do this another way.”
He liked that they were calling him major. So they still couldn’t get a colonel to interrogate him. As he had suspected, they didn’t have anyone to deal with him here in Morozovo. What they needed to do was get him to Volkhov where things would be different for him, but they didn’t want to risk any more of their men for a drive across the river. They had already failed once. Eventually he would go in a barge, but the ice would have to melt first. He could spend another month in the Morozovo cell. Could he take another minute in it?