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Tatiana drove down the marshy wooded path, carefully and uncertainly, with both hands clutching the big wheel and her feet barely reaching the three pedals Finding the road that stretched along the Gulf of Finland fro was easy There was only one road All she had to do was head west And west she could find by the location of the gloo she showed her Red Cross credentials to a sentry and asked for fuel and directions to Helsinki She thought he asked her about her face, pointing to it, but since she didn’t speak Finnish, she didn’t answer and drove on, this tiht sentry points to show her documents and the wounded doctor in the back She drove for four hours until she reached Helsinki, Finland, in late afternoon
The first thing she saas the lit-up Church of St Nicholas, up on a hill overlooking the harbor She stopped to ask directions to "Helsingin Yliopistollinen Keskussairaala," the Helsinki University Hospital She kne to say it in Finnish, she just couldn’t understand the directions in Finnish After she’d h English to tell her the hospital was behind the lit-up church She could find that
Dr Sayers ell known and loved at the hospital where he had worked since the war of 1940 The nurses brought a stretcher for him and asked Tatiana all sorts of questions she did not understand: lish, some in Finnish, none in Russian
At the hospital she met another American Red Cross doctor, Saash in her face and said she needed stitches He offered her a local anesthetic Tatiana refused "Suture away, Doctor," she said
"You’ll need about ten stitches," the doctor said
"Only ten?"
He stitched her cheek as she sat mutely and motionlessly on a hospital bed Afterward he offered her some antibiotic, some painkiller, and some food She took the antibiotic She did not eat the food, showing Leavitt her swollen and bloody tongue "Tomorrow," she whispered "Tomorroill be better Toht her not only a new, clean, oversize unifors and a flannel undershirt, and they even offered to launder her old, soiled clothes Tatiana gave them the uniform and her woolen coat but kept her Red Cross armband
Later Tatiana lay on the floor by Dr Sayers’s bed The night nurse finally ca her and leading her out Tatiana allowed herself to be led out, but as soon as the nurse went down the hall to her station, Tatiana returned to Dr Sayers
In the ot her old unifored to eat a bit of food She re out theto the patch of the iced-over Gulf of Finland she could see past the stone buildings and the bare trees Dr Leavitt came in the late afternoon to check on her face and to ask her if she wanted to go and lie down She refused "Why are you sitting here? Why don’t you go get so her head to Matthew Sayers, Tatiana didn’t reply, thinking, because that’s what I do -- then, now I sit by the dying
At night Sayers orse still He had a high fever of nearly 42°C, and was parched and sweaty The antibiotics weren’t helping hi to hiain consciousness She fell asleep in the chair next to his bed, her head near hi suddenly that Dr Sayers wasn’t going to-- it was too fa man Tatiana took his hand and held it She placed her hand on his head, and with her broken tongue whispered to hilish, about Aot better He opened his eyes and said in a weak voice that he was cold She went and got him another blanket He squeezed her hand "I’h his mouth
"No, I’m so sorry," she said inaudibly Then louder, "Dr Sayers," she said "Matthew" She tried to keep her voice fro you -- please tell me what happened to my husband Did Dimitri betray him? Was he arrested? We’re in Helsinki We’re out of the Soviet Union I’ back I want so little for myself" She bent her head into his arm "I just want a little comfort," she whispered
"Go toA "That will be his comfort"
"Comfort me with the truth Did you really see hi moment with an expression that looked to Tatiana to be one of understanding and disbelief, and then he closed his eyes Tatiana felt his hand tre in his chest Soon it stopped
Tatiana didn’t let go of his hand until ently led Tatiana away, and in the hall she put her arlish, "Honey, you can do your very best for people, and they still die We’re at war You can’t save everybody, you know"
Sam Leavitt approached her in the hall on the way to his rounds, asking her what she intended to do Tatiana said she needed to get back to America Leavitt stared at her and said, "Back to A toward her, he said, "Listen, I don’t knohere Matthew found you, your English is pretty good, but it’s not that good Are you really an A, Tatiana nodded
"Where is your passport? Can’t get back without a passport"
She stared at hierous now The Gero down all the time"
"Yes"
"Why don’t you stay here till April, work until the ice melts? Your face has to heal The stitches need to come out And we could use another pair of hands Stay in Helsinki"
Tatiana shook her head
"You’ll have to stay here anyway until we get you a new passport Do you want me to take you to Senate Square later? I’ll take you to the US consulate It’ll take them at least a month to issue you new docu to America is hard these days"
Tatiana knew that the US State Departton, would discover only that she was not Jane Barrington Alexander told her they could not stay a second in Helsinki -- the NKVD had a long ar her head, Tatiana backed away fro her backpack, her nurse’s bag, her Jane Barrington travel documents She walked to the semicircular south harbor in Helsinki and sat on the bench, watching the vendors at Market Square pack up their carts and their tables and sweep the square clean
Calulls screeched overhead
Tatiana sat on the bench and waited interot up and walked past a narrow street leading up to the glealanced at it
In the dark she meandered up and down the harbor until she spotted trucks with the blue-and-white Swedish flag, loading sround There was quite a bit of activity in the harbor Tatiana could see that night was the tiet across the Baltic She knew that the trucks did not travel by day, when it was easy to spot theenerally did not bomb neutral trade vessels, so all its shipping and trucking trade with protective convoys Alexander told her that
Tatiana knew that the trucks were headed for Stockhololm," which sounded like "Stockhol the lu loaded onto the back of an open truck Was she scared? No Not any hilish that she was a nurse trying to get to Stockholm and could he please take her across the Gulf of Bothnia with him for a hundred American dollars He didn’t understand a word of what she had said She showed hi the money from her hands, he let her ride with hilish or Russian, so they barely talked, which was fine with Tatiana On the way through the white-out darkness, illu northern lights above her head, she remembered that the first tia, she was really afraid that he was going to know imht, if he asksto lie, because I don’t want hiht that for the first second or two, and then she couldn’t think about anything, because his lips were so abundantly passionate for her, because in her hunger to kiss hi about the first time they kissed took up much of the trip Then Tatiana slept
She didn’t kno long the journey took The last few hours, theyStockholm
"Tack," she said to the driver when they stopped at the harbor "Tack sa ht her that, how to say thank you in Swedish Tatiana walked across the ice, careful not to slip, walked up granite steps and was out on the cobbled seaside proht I’h the half-e -- too early for the stores to be open What day was it? She did not know Near the industrial docks Tatiana found a small open bakery, and on its shelves there hite bread She showed the woman her Americanin Swedish "Bank," she said "Pengar, dollars"
Tatiana turned to go The woman called after her, but in a strident voice, and Tatiana, afraid the wo in Sweden, did not turn around She was already on the street when the wo her a loaf of warm crusty white bread, the likes of which Tatiana had never smelled, and a paper cup of black coffee "Tack," Tatiana said "Tack saher head at theher
Tatiana sat on the bench at the docks overlooking the crescent of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia and ate the whole loaf of bread and had her coffee She stared unblinkingly into the blue dawn in front of her Sorad And somewhere east of that was Lazarevo And in betas the Second World War and Co, she walked around the streets long enough to find an open bank, where she exchanged some of her Aht some more white bread and then found a place that sold cheese -- in fact, all different kinds of cheeses -- but even better, she found a café near the harbor that served her breakfast, and not just oats, and not just bread, but bacon! She bought three helpings of bacon and decided that fro to have for breakfast
The day was still long Tatiana didn’t knohere to go to sleep Alexander told her that in Stockholm there would be hotels that would rent the for their passports Just like in Poland She found that beyond belief then But Alexander, of course, was right
Not only did Tatiana rent a hotel rooet a key to a room that arm, that had a bed and a view of the harbor, but it had its own bathroo that Alexander had told her about, the shower thing that poured water on her from above She must have stayed under the hot stream for an hour
And then she slept for twenty-four
It took Tatiana over twoon the pier bench looking east past the gulf, past Finland, to the Soviet Union, while the seagulls cried overhead
Seventy-six days of--
She and Alexander had planned to stay in Stockholh from the US State Department They would have celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday in Stockhol Tatiana bought yellow tulips and ate fresh fruit right from the market vendors, and she had es She had ice crea in Stockhol her baby in Sweden She liked the tulips and the hot shower
But the seagulls wept overhead
Tatiana never did go to Riddarholm Church, Sweden’s Temple of Fa, where she easily slipped into one of the holds on a Swedish trade cargo vessel bound for Harwich, England, carrying paper products As during her passage from Finland to Sweden, she and her vessel were surrounded by a heavily armed convoy Since Noras Gers and sinkings in the North Sea Nonco any of it, and neither was Tatiana
All was quiet as she crossed the North Sea and docked in Harwich To get to Liverpool, Tatiana took a train, which had the ht herself a first-class ticket The pillohite This would have been a good train to take to Lazarevo after burying Dasha, thought Tatiana
She spent teeks in dank and industrial Liverpool, until she found out that a shipping company called the White Star sailed once a et on board She bought a second-class ticket and appeared on the gangplank When a young midshipman asked for her papers, Tatiana showed him her Red Cross travel docuood; she needed a visa Tatiana said she didn’t have one He said she needed a passport She said she didn’t have one He laughed and said, "Well then, dearie, you’re not getting on this boat"
Tatiana said, "I do not have visa, I do not have passport, but what I do have is five hundred dollars I would like you to have if you let hed She knew that five hundred dollars was a year’s salary for the sailor
The midshipman instantly took the money and led her into a small room below sea level, where Tatiana climbed onto the top bunk Alexander told her he slept on the top bunk at the Leningrad garrison She wasn’t feeling well She earing the larger of her thite uniforinal one had long stopped fitting her, and even this one did not button well around her stomach
In Stockholm, Tatiana had found a place to wash her unifors called tvatt maskins and tork tumlares that she put money into, and thirty minutes later the clothes came out clean, and thirty minutes later the clothes ca in cold water, no washboards, no soaping She didn’t have to do anything but sit and watch the machine
As Tatiana sat and watched the machine, she remembered the last ti at six in the evening, and they finished h time to put on his clothes, kiss her, and bolt out the door When they made love, he had been on top of her She watched his face the whole ti with him not to end, because when he ended he would have to leave Love How did they say it in Swedish?
K?rlek
Jag ?lskar dig, Alexander
As the tork tus, Tatiana was so grateful that the last time she and Alexander made love, she saw his face
The trip across to New York took ten nauseating, spluttering days When she arrived, it was the end of June Tatiana had turned nineteen years old on the White Star line in the hed and thought about Orbeli
"Tatiasha -- re up blood, Tatiana suy of her heart to ask herself -- if Alexander kneas going to be arrested and couldn’t tell her because he knew she would never go without hiritted his teeth and set his jaw and lied?
Yes Everything she knew about Alexander told her that would be exactly what he would do If he knew the truth, he would give her one word
Orbeli