"I think I can manage."

She says she will be right back and leaves, returning a minute later with the towel washed in the Kama's cold night-time water. "Here, put this on to stop the swelling. Maybe you won't be too black and blue tomorrow."

He lies on his back with a wet cold towel covering his face. "I can't sleep like this," he says in a muffled voice.

"Who wants to sleep?" he hears her say, as she kneels between his legs. He groans through the towel. "What can I do to make it up to you?" he hears her ask.

"I can't think of anything..."

"No?"

She purrs, her gossamer fingers stroking him, her warm mouth breathing on him. He is in her mouth, and the cold wet towel is covering his face.

The train stopped, they disembarked and were arranged in columns outside the small, war-ruined station. Alexander got his boots on; he was sure they weren't his. They were too small for his feet. They stood groggily in the dark, illuminated hazily by one flickering floodlight. A lieutenant guard broke open a piece of paper out of the envelope and in a pretentious voice read aloud that the seventy men in front of him were accused of crimes against the state.

"Oh, no," whispered Ouspensky.

Alexander stood impassively. He wanted to be back on the wooden shelf. And nothing surprised him anymore. "Don't worry, Nikolai."

"Stop talking!" the soldier yelled. "Treason, colluding with the enemy, working against Russia in the enemy's prisoner camps, cooking for the enemy, building for the enemy, cleaning weapons for the enemy. The law is very clear against treason. You are all remanded under the provisions of Article 58, code 1B and will be incarcerated for no less than fifteen years in a series of Zone II corrective work camps ending with Kolyma. Your term begins when you will start to shovel coal into our steam train to refuel it. Coal is there by the side of the tracks. So are shovels. Your next stop will be a work camp in eastern Germany. Now, let's move it."

"Oh, no, not Kolyma," said Ouspensky. "There must be some mistake."

"I'm not finished!" yelled the guard. "Belov, Ouspensky, step forward!"

They shuffled forward a few steps, dragging the chains behind them. "You two, aside from allowing yourselves to fall into enemy hands which carries an automatic fifteen-year prison term, have also been charged with espionage and sabotage during times of war. Captain Belov, you are to be stripped of your rank and title, as you are, Lieutenant Ouspensky. Captain Belov, your term is extended to twenty-five years. Lieutenant Ouspensky, your term is extended to twenty-five years."

Alexander stood as if the words had not been spoken to him.

Ouspensky said, "Did you hear me? There must be some kind of mistake. I'm not going away for twenty-five years, speak to the general-"

"My orders for you are clear! See?" He waved a document in front of Ouspensky's nose.

Ouspensky shook his head. "No, you don't understand, there's definitely been a mistake. I have it on good authority..." He glanced at Alexander, who was looking at him with cold bemusement.

Ouspensky did not speak again while they were shoveling the coal into the furnace of the train and then into storage compartments, but when they were back in their berth, he was seething in a way Alexander could not understand.

"Will the day ever come when I will be free?"

"Yes, in twenty-five years."

"I mean free of you," said Ouspensky, trying to turn from Alexander. "When I won't be chained with you, bunked with you, assisting you."

"Hey, why are you so pessimistic? I heard the Kolyma camps are co-ed. Maybe you can pick yourself a little camp wife."

They sat down together on the shelves. Alexander lay down instantly and closed his eyes. Ouspensky grumbled that he was uncomfortable and had no room next to a man as large as Alexander. The train lurched forward and he fell off the shelf.

"What's wrong with you?" Alexander said, extending his hand to help him up. Ouspensky did not take it.

"I shouldn't have listened to you. I shouldn't have surrendered, I should have minded my own business, and I'd be a free man."

"Ouspensky, have you not been paying attention? Refugees, forced labor workers, people who lived in Poland, in Romania, all the way in Bavaria! From Italy, from France, from Denmark, from Norway. They're all being sent back, all under the same conditions. What makes you think you, of all of them, would be a free man?"

Ouspensky didn't reply. "Twenty-five years! You got twenty five-years, too, don't you even give a shit anymore?"

"Oh, Nikolai." Alexander sighed. "No. Not anymore. I'm twenty-six years old. They've been sentencing me to prison terms in Siberia since I was seventeen." Had he served out his first one in Vladivostok, he'd be nearly done by now.

"Exactly! You, you. Christ, it's all about you. My whole life since the cursed day bad fucking luck had me in a bed next to you in Morozovo has been all about you. Why should I get twenty-five fucking years just because some damn nurse put me in the adjacent bed?" He railed and rattled his chains. The other prisoners, trying to sleep, told him in no uncertain terms to "Shut the fuck up."

"That damn nurse," said Alexander quietly, "was my wife." He paused. "And so you see, dear Nikolai, how inexorably your fate is linked with mine."

For many minutes Ouspensky didn't speak.

"Did not know that," he said at last. "But of course. Nurse Metanova. That's where I heard her name before. I couldn't figure out why Pasha's last name sounded so familiar." He fell quiet. "Where is she now?"

"I don't know," said Alexander.

"Does she ever write you?"

"You know I get no letters. And I write no letters. I have one plastic pen that doesn't work."

"But I mean, there she was, in the hospital, and then suddenly she was gone. Did she go back to her family?"

"No, they're dead."

"Your family?"

"Dead, also."

"So where is she?" he exclaimed in a high-pitched voice.

"What is this, Ouspensky? An interrogation?"

Ouspensky fell silent.

"Nikolai?"

Ouspensky did not reply.

Alexander closed his eyes.

"They promised me," Ouspensky whispered. "They swore to me, swore that I would be all right."

"Who did?" Alexander didn't open his eyes.

Ouspensky did not reply.

Alexander opened his eyes. "Who did?" He sat up straight. Ouspensky backed away slightly but not far enough, chained as he was to Alexander.

"Nobody, nobody," he mumbled, and then, with a surreptitious glance at Alexander, he shrugged.

"Oh, it's as old as the sea," he said, trying to sound casual. "They came to me in 1943, soon after they arrested us, and told me I had two choices-I could be executed by firing squad for crimes committed under Article 58. That was my first choice. I thought about it and asked what my second choice was. They told me," he continued, in the deliberate and flat tone of a man who doesn't care much about anything, "that you were a dangerous criminal, but that you were needed for the war effort. However, they suspected you of heinous crimes against the state, but because ours was the kind of society that abided by laws of the constitution and wanted to preserve your rights-they would spare your life long enough for you to hang yourself."

That's why Ouspensky had never left his side. "And did they ask you to be my noose, Ouspensky?" asked Alexander, gripping his leg irons.

Ouspensky didn't reply.

"Oh, Nikolai," Alexander said in a dead voice.

"Wait-"

"Don't tell me anymore."

"Listen-"

"No!' Alexander shouted, throwing himself on Ouspensky. Grabbing him by the scruff of his neck, helpless and irate, Alexander smashed his head against the wall of the train. "Don't tell me anymore."

Red and panting, Ouspensky, who did nothing to free himself, whispered hoarsely, "Listen to me-"

Again Alexander smashed Nikolai's head against the wall.

Someone said, "Keep it down over there," but feebly. No one wanted to get involved. One less man was one more hunk of bread for someone else.

Ouspensky was choking. His nose was bleeding from the trauma to the back of his head. He did not fight back.

Alexander punched him in the face, and Ouspensky fell off the berth to the floor. Alexander kicked him with the boot that was too small for him. Alexander scared even himself. He was dangerously close to killing another human being in hot blood. It wasn't like the anger at Slonko that had been immediate and unstoppable. His fury at Ouspensky was tinged with fury at himself for letting his guard down, and tinged even more with the black hurt at being betrayed for so long by the person closest to him. This made Alexander weaker instead of stronger, and he pulled back and moved away, sinking onto the berth. He and Ouspensky remained shackled to one another.

For a few minutes, Ouspensky did not speak as he struggled to get his breath back. When he spoke his voice was quiet. "Back then I didn't want to die," he said. "They offered me a way out, they said if I brought them information on you-if you helped your wife to escape, or if you were an American like they suspected, that for that information they would set me free. I would be given back my life and reunited with my wife and children."

"They certainly offered you enough," said Alexander.

"I didn't want to die!" Ouspensky cried. "Surely you of all men can understand that! Every month I had to provide them with reports on everything you said and did. They were very interested in our God discussion. Once a month, I would be called to the NKGB command and questioned about you. Did anything raise my suspicions? Did you do anything to trip yourself up? Did you ever use phrases or words that were either unacceptable or foreign? For all that my wife got an extra monthly ration and an increase in her share of my military pay. And I got a few extra rubles to spend on-"

"You sold me out for a few pieces of silver, Nikolai? You sold me out to buy yourself a couple of whores?"

"You never did trust me."

"I did trust you," replied Alexander with clenched fists. "I just didn't tell you anything. But I had thought you were worthy of my trust. I defended you to my brother-in-law." And now Alexander understood. "Pasha suspected you from the start, and he kept trying to tell me." He had a sense about people the way Tatiana had a sense about people. Alexander groaned aloud. He hadn't listened, and now look. He would have told Ouspensky everything, but he hadn't wanted to endanger him with information that might have cost him his miserable life.

Ouspensky paused. "I told them everything I knew about you. I told them you talked to the Americans in Colditz in English. I told them you talked to the English in Catowice. I told them you wanted to surrender. I told them everything I knew. Why did I still get twenty-five years?"

"See if you can figure it out."

"I don't know why!"

"Because!" Alexander yelled. "You sold your mortal fucking soul for some phantom freedom. Are you really surprised that you now have neither? What do you think they care for their promises? You think they care for you because you gave them a bit of worthless information? They still haven't found my wife. And they never will. I'm surprised they gave you only twenty-five years." Alexander lowered his voice. "Their rewards are usually eternal."

"Oh, you're taking this all so personally! I'm going to fucking prison and you're-"

"Nikolai, I've been manacled to you for the last two months," Alexander said in a broken voice. "Manacled! For nearly three years you and I ate out of the same fucking helmet at the front, drank out of the same flask..."

"My allegiance was to the state," Ouspensky said. "I wanted it to be. I wanted them to protect me. They told me you were as good as dead with or without my help."

"Why tell me now? Why tell me anything?"

"Why not tell you now?" Ouspensky was down to a whisper.

"God, when am I ever going to learn! Don't speak to me again, Ouspensky," said Alexander. "Ever. If you speak to me, I will not answer you. If you persist, I have ways of forcing you to be silent."

"Then force me." Ouspensky's head was lowered.

Alexander kicked the chains at him and moved a full, stretched-out iron meter away. "Death is too good for you," he said and turned to the wall.

Where they were going it was hard to tell; it was summer outside, and warm, and it didn't rain, and the night air coming through the small opening smelled of trees. Alexander closed his eyes, and rubbed the bridge of his nose, viscerally recalling the wet towel on his face and Tatiana's mouth on him. The longer they traveled, the sharper the memory became until he would nearly groan out loud at the sensation of blood from his nose dripping down onto the white sheets and Tatiana cradling his head to her breasts, murmuring, "You were being fed to me alive, Shura."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR.

Jeb, November 1945 TATIANA AGREED TO GO to dinner with Edward. Vikki looked after Anthony. Tatiana dressed up a little, putting on a blue skirt and a beige merino wool sweater, but no matter how much Vikki asked her to, she did not let down her hair, leaving it pinned back in one very long braid, and she did not put on any makeup. Then she put on her coat and scarf, sat on the couch and waited with Anthony on her lap and a picture book in front of them.

"What are you worried about?" Vikki asked, milling around them, picking up the newspapers that had piled up. "You go to lunch with him all the time and talk. Only the title of the meal will change."

"And time of day."

"Yes, that, too."

Tatiana didn't say anymore, pretending to be preoccupied with Anthony's book.

Edward arrived dressed in a suit. Vikki commented on how handsome he looked. Tatiana agreed that Edward looked nice. Edward was fairly tall, thin, composed. He carried himself well-in a suit, in doctor's whites. He had serious, kind eyes. She felt comfortable and yet intensely uncomfortable around him.

Edward took her to Sardi's on 44th Street. Tatiana had a shrimp cocktail and a steak followed by some chocolate cake and coffee.

After an initial awkward silence, she spent the entire dinner asking Edward questions and listening to him. She asked him about medicine and surgery and the wounded and the dying and the sick, she asked him about the hospitals he had worked in and why he chose to be a doctor and whether it still meant something to him to be a doctor. She asked him about where in America he had traveled to and which place out of all he had seen he liked best. She looked him straight in the eye and laughed in all the right places.

And somewhere in the space between the taking way of the chocolate cake and the bringing of the check, Tatiana, while nodding, while listening, her head slightly tilted to one side, saw a color image of herself sitting across a table just like this from Edward, except the table was longer and they were much older, and around the table with them sat their grown children, all daughters.

She leaped up and asked the waiter the time. "Ten o'clock? My, look how late it is. I must get back to Anthony. I had really nice evening, thank you."

Looking a little shellshocked, Edward took her home in a taxi.

She sat all the way from 44th looking out the side window. Somewhere around 23rd Street, Edward said, "How do you do that? I can't believe what a bore I must have been, talking only about myself."