CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Eastern Germany, March 1946
TATIANA WENT TO GERMANYon faith.
She was partnered with a short nurse named Penny--shorter than Tatiana!--and a doctor just out of residency named Martin Flanagan. Penny was a bubbly, heavy, funny gal. Martin was medium height, medium weight, medium paunch under his dress shirts, and excruciatingly serious. Martin was losing what thin hair he was born with, which Tatiana thought might have contributed to his humorlessness. Still, she thought Martin was all right until the day before they were leaving when he told her she was putting too much gauze in the medical kits.
"Is there such thing as too many medical supplies?" she said.
"Yes. Our instructions say one gauze, one adhesive tape, and you're putting in two of each."
"So?"
"That's not what we're supposed to do, Nurse Barrington."
Slowly she pulled out the second gauze, but as soon as he turned his back, she threw another three in the cardboard box. Penny saw and suppressed a giggle. "Don't get under his skin. He is very meticulous about how things are supposed to be done."
"He obviously doesn't have enough to worry about," said Tatiana. What would Martin think when she colored her hair and put on makeup? What would he think when she called him Martin? She found out the next morning when she said, "Ready to sail, Martin?"
He coughed and said, "Dr. Flanagan will be fine, Nurse Barrington."
The hair and makeup he did not comment on. Tatiana had colored her hair black that morning, after she said goodbye to Anthony. She didn't want him to see his mother looking like a different person, and so she took him to playgroup as usual and hugged him as usual and said in as calm a voice as possible, "Anthony, now you remember what we been talking about, right? Mama has to go on business trip for Red Cross, but I'm going to be back as soon as I can, and we'll go somewhere fun for our vacation, all right?"
"Yes, Mama."
"Where did you say you wanted to go?"
"Florida."
"That sounds great. We go there." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
He didn't say anything, just kept his hand on her neck.
"You're going to be all right with Vikki. You know how much she loves to take care of you. She make you eat donuts and ice cream every day."
"Yes, Mama."
She watched him walk through the classroom doors, his backpack on his back, and then went after him. "Anthony, Anthony!"
He turned around.
"Just one more hug for your mommy, honey."
Vikki took the day off to help with the hair color and to see her off. Tatiana wanted to dye her hair and put on makeup because she didn't want to be accidentally recognized. It took them three hours to dye Tatiana's very long hair. "Remember, this is the toughest part. After this, you just do touch-ups at the crown, every five, six weeks. You think you'll be back by then, maybe?"
"I don't know." She didn't think so. "You better give me enough color for several touch-ups."
"How many?"
"I don't know. Give me enough for a dozen."
Vikki put mascara on Tatiana, some liquid black eyeliner, some cake makeup to cover up her freckles, and some rouge. "I can't believe this is what you go through every day," said Tatiana.
"I can't believe this is what it takes to get you to wear makeup. A suicide mission to the war zone."
"Not suicide. And how am I going to apply it without you? Easy, easy on the lipstick!" Lipstick made her mouth too full and conspicuous--not the effect Tatiana was going for. She glanced at herself in the mirror. She wasn't recognizable even to herself. "Well, what do you think?"
Vikki leaned over and kissed the corner of Tatiana's mouth. "You're completely incognita."
But Martin--Dr. Flanagan--said nothing when they met at the docks that morning, though he did clear his throat and look the other way. Penny was stunned, however. "You have the most beautiful blonde hair, and you went and colored it black?" she said incredulously, her own hair a short thin brown.
In a solemn tone, Tatiana said, "I don't think people take me seriously. I color my hair black, I put on a little makeup, maybe they take me seriously."
"Dr. Flanagan," said Penny, "do you take Tatiana seriously?"
"Very seriously," replied Martin.
It was all the girls could do to keep from laughing.
Vikki, who went with Tatiana to the docks, would not let go of her for some minutes. "Please come back," she whispered. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
Tatiana did not respond.
Martin and Penny stared. "Italians are so emotional," Tatiana said, walking up the plank with them and turning around to wave to Vikki.
Tatiana traveled in white slacks and a white tunic and a white kerchief with a red cross on it. She had gone to an army supply store and bought the best and largest canvas backpack, with many zippered pockets and an attached waterproof trench blanket/coat/tent. She packed another uniform for herself, sundries (toothbrushes for two), undergarments, and two olive drab civilian outfits--one for herself and one for a tall man. She packed the third cashmere blanket she had bought during her first Christmas in New York. She packed the P-38 gun Alexander had given her during the siege of Leningrad. She overstocked her nurse's bag with gauze and tape, and syringes filled with penicillin, and Squibb morphine syrettes. Into another compartment in the backpack, she put a Colt Model 1911 pistol and an outrageously expensive ($200) Colt Commando, apparently the best revolver, which fired not bullets but practically bombs. She also bought a hundred eight-cartridge magazines for the pistol, a hundred .357 rounds for the revolver, three 9-millimeter clips for the P-38 and two army knives. She bought the weapons at the "world famous" Frank Lava's. "If you want the best," said Frank himself, "you have to get the Commando. There is simply no heavier-duty, more accurate, more ferocious revolver in the world."
Frank raised his bushy eyebrows only once--when she asked for the box of a hundred magazines. "That's eight hundred rounds you got there."
"Yes, plus revolver rounds. Not enough? Should I get more?"
"Well, it depends," he said. "What's your objective?"
"Hmm," said Tatiana. "Better give me another fifty for...theCommando." She was doing so well with her definite articles.
She brought cigarettes.
She couldn't lift the backpack when she was done, plain could not lift it off the ground. She ended up borrowing a smaller canvas backpack from Vikki and putting the weapons into it. She carried the personal items on her back and the weapons bag in her hands. It was very heavy, and she wondered if perhaps she hadn't gone a bit overboard.
From her black backpack she took out their two wedding rings, still threaded through the rope she had worn at Morozovo hospital, and slipped the rope around her neck.
When she resigned from the Department of Public Health and Edward found out, he didn't want to talk to her. She went to say goodbye to him at Ellis, and he stared at her grimly and said, "I don't want to speak to you."
"I know," she said. "I'm sorry for that. But Edward, what else can I do?"
"Not go."
She shook her head. "He is alive--" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
"Was alive. Nearly a year ago."
"What am I supposed to do? Leave him there?"
"This is crazy. You're leaving your son, aren't you?"
"Edward," Tatiana said, taking hold of his hand and looking at him with understanding eyes. "I'm so sorry. We almost...But I'm not single. I'm not a widow. I'm married, and my husband may be alive somewhere. I have to try to find him."
They sailed on the Cunard White Star liner, and it took them twelve days to reach Hamburg, Germany. The cargo vessel was filled with the prisoner medical kits from the United States, 100,000 of them, plus food kits and comfort parcels. The longshoremen spent half a day loading them onto large trucks to be transported to the Red Cross hospital in Hamburg and then distributed among the many Red Cross jeeps.
The white jeeps themselves were meant to be self-sufficient, to supply and feed teams of three Red Cross personnel--two nurses and a doctor, or three nurses--for a period of four weeks. The doctor was there to tend to the sick and wounded if need be, and there was certainly a need for tending: the refugees in the Displaced Persons camps they visited suffered from every malady known to man: fungus infections, eye infections, eczemas, tick bites, head lice, crab lice, cuts, burns, abrasion, open sores, hunger, diarrhea, dehydration.
In one such white jeep, Tatiana, Penny and Martin traveled to refugee camps scattered all over northern Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands. They may have had enough food to feed themselves, but the DPs didn't, and there were not nearly enough food parcels to distribute. Several times a day, Martin had to stop driving so they could help someone limping or walking, or lying by the side of the road. The whole of western Europe was reeling with the homeless and camps for them were springing up all over the countryside.
But one thing that was not springing up all over the countryside was Soviet refugees. Those were nowhere to be seen. And although there were plenty of soldiers, French, Italian, Moroccan, Czech, English, there were no Soviet soldiers.
Through seventeen camps and thousands and thousands of faces, Tatiana did not even come close to finding a Soviet man who had fought near Leningrad, much less to finding anyone who had ever heard of an Alexander Belov.
Thousands of faces, of pairs of hands reaching up, of foreheads she touched, desperate people infected and unwashed.
He was not here, she knew it, she felt it. He was not here. She walked each discouraging day from one camp to another, without Penny or Martin. The next camp was close--seven miles--and she did not want company, nor their chatter, she wanted to march herself into a life where she could feel for him and find him. Her heart sinking, fading in her chest, she could not feel for where he was.
She withdrew from Penny and Martin, wishing instead upon a New York sunset, wishing instead upon the face of her son, now three months going on forever without his mother. Wishing idly for warm bread, for good coffee, for the happiness of sitting on a couch covered up by a cashmere blanket reading a Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
book with Vikki a nudge away, with Anthony a room away. Her blonde roots grew out faster than she could find a private bathroom with a mirror for her touch-ups. She took to wearing her nurse's kerchief at all times.
Three months. Since March, she had been driving the truck, handing out parcels, bandaging wounds, administering first aid, driving through destitute Europe, and every day bending to the ground in prayer as she bandaged another refugee. As she buried another refugee. Please let him be here. Another barracks, another infirmary, another military base. Be here, be here.
And yet...and yet...
The hope had not died completely.
The faith had not died completely.
Every night she went to sleep and every morning she woke up with renewed strength and looked for him.
She found another P-38 on a Ukrainian man who had died practically in her arms. She took his ruck which contained eight grenades and five eight-round clips. She crawled into the jeep and hid her new-found loot along with her weapons bag inside the hidden compartment underneath the floor, a thin, narrow hutch that held crutches and folding stretchers, or litters, and now held an arsenal of fire.
But when Tatiana finally realized that Alexander could not be where there was no trace of him, she quickly lost interest in this part of Europe and suggested they go elsewhere.
"What, you don't think the DPs need our help, Nurse Barrington?" said Martin. They were in Antwerp, Belgium.
"No, they do, they do. But there are so many others who need our help. Let's go to U.S. military base here and talk to base commander, Charles Moss." They had received from the International Red Cross the names and the maps of all U.S. installations and known DP camps in Europe.
"Where do you think they need us most, Colonel Moss?" she asked the commander of the base.
"I'd say Berlin, but I wouldn't recommend going there."
"Why not?"
"We'renot going to Berlin," confirmed Martin.
"The Soviets have rounded up the German soldiers and imprisoned them," said Moss. "I hear the conditions there make the DP camps here seem like resorts on the Riviera. The Soviets have not allowed the Red Cross to distribute parcels in the camps, which is too bad. They could use the aid."
"Where are these Germans held?" Tatiana wanted to know.
"Ah, in a fitting irony, they're being held in the very concentration camps they themselves built."
"Why wouldn't you recommend going there?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
"Because Berlin is a ticking war bomb. There are three million people in the city that cannot be fed."
Tatiana knew something about that.
Moss continued. "The city needs three and a half million kilos of food--a day--and Berlin produces two per cent of that."
Tatiana knew even more aboutthat .
"You figure it out. The sewers are out, the drinking pumps are out, there are no hospitals beds and almost no doctors. Dysentery, typhus, not our little eye infections. They need water, medical attention, grain, meat, fat, sugar, potatoes."
"Even in western zones?" asked Tatiana.
"A little better there. But you have to go to the Soviet zone to get to the concentration camps in eastern Germany. I wouldn't recommend it."
"Are the Soviets amenable?" she asked Moss.
"Yes," he replied. "Like the Huns."
After they left Antwerp, Tatiana said, "Dr. Flanagan, what you think? Should we head for Berlin?" The Soviets were in Berlin.
He shook his head. "Absolutely not. That wasn't on our agenda. Our mission is clear: the Low Countries and northern Germany."
"Yes, but Berlin needs us most. You heard the colonel. There is plenty for these parts."
"Not plenty. Not nearly enough," said Martin.
"Yes, but in eastern Germany, there isn'tany ."
Penny stepped in. "Tania is right, Martin. Let's go to Berlin."
Martin sniffed.
"Hey, how come you allow her to call you Martin?" asked Tatiana.
"I don't allow her," he said. "She just does it."
"Martin and I have traveled together through Europe since 1943," said Penny. "He was just an intern then. If he's going to make me call him Dr. Flanagan, I'm going to make him call me Miss Davenport."
Tatiana laughed. "But Penny, Davenport isn't your last name. It's Woester."
"I always liked Davenport."
All three of them were sitting in the front, squished together in the cabin of the jeep. Tatiana was squeezed between the stiff Martin, who was driving, and the soft Penny. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
"Come on, let's see these work camps, Dr. Flanagan," said Tatiana. "Don't you feel needed? Berlin doesn't have enough doctors. You're a doctor. Go where you are needed."
"Doctor are needed everywhere," said Martin. "Why should we go into the quicksand that is Berlin? We're going to be sunk there."
But they went, first stopping off at Hamburg to replenish the supplies. Martin balked at filling the jeep with too many kits and food parcels, pointing out that regulations clearly stated that the trucks were not to be filled more than four feet high, but both Tatiana and Penny insisted, and their jeep was packed from floor to ceiling. Tatiana couldn't get to her stash under the floor. She figured if and when she needed it, the jeep would be less fully packed.
Tatiana could have firebombed the city of Berlin herself, so well armed and well stocked was she. She even brought a case of twenty liter-and-a-half bottles of vodka from Hamburg, buying it with her own money.
"Why do we need that? We don't need vodka!"
"You will see, Martin, without it, we will get nowhere."
"I don't want to allow that in my jeep."
"Believe me, you won't regret it."
"Well, I think drinking is a filthy habit. As a doctor I don't want to condone that sort of behavior."
"You're so right. Please don't condone." Tatiana slammed the doors of the jeep as if the matter had been closed.
Penny stifled a laugh.
"Nurse Woester, you are not helping. Nurse Barrington, did you not hear me? I don't think we should bring that alcohol."
"Dr. Flanagan, have you ever been in Soviet territory before?"
"Well, no."
"I didn't think so. Which is why you should trust me on this one. Just this one, all right? We will need the vodka."
Martin turned to Penny. "What do you think?"
"Tatiana here is the chief nursing practitioner at Ellis Island for New York's Department of Public Heath," said Penny. "If she says we should bring vodka, we should bring vodka."
Tatiana didn't want to correct her, she didn't want to saywas the chief nursing practitioner.
In the DP camps as they traveled hundreds of kilometers through Allied-occupied western Germany, Tatiana found something else besides money, jewelry, pens and paper: the many hands of the desperately Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
lonely-for-home soldiers. Nearly each one, as she bent over him, touched her and whispered something, in French, or Italian, or German, or in familiar warming English, about what a nice girl she was and what a dark girl and what a pretty girl, and was she lonely too, was she married, was she willing, was she, was she, was she, and to every one of them, Tatiana--who did not stop touching their heads to bring them comfort--would quietly say, "I'm here to look for my husband, I'm here to find my husband, I'm not one for you, I'm not the one."
Penny, however, was not attached and was not looking for her husband. What wasshe looking for? Tatiana was glad Vikki had not come to this cauldron of reckless male want. Vikki would have thought the gods were finally answering her prayers. Penny, less attractive than Vikki--and maybe therein lay the problem--could not stop herself from feeling flattered and from succumbing to their pleas, and every week or so, needed to take injections of penicillin to ward off sicknesses the thoughts of which made Tatiana a little bit sick herself.
There were some wards and some camps, in Bremen for instance, where things were so heated that the Red Cross nurses were not allowed to go into the wards by themselves, either without an armed convoy or without a male Red Cross representative. Trouble was, the convoy sometimes was paid to look the other way, and the Red Cross male reps were unreliable. In all honesty, who could Martin have stopped?
Tatiana took to carrying the P-38 on her at all times, tucked into her belt at her back. Often she did not feel safe.
To get to Berlin, they had to pass through a number of Soviet checkpoints. Every five miles or so, they were stopped by another military post on the road. Tatiana thought of them not as checkpoints but as ambushes. Every time they looked at her American passport, her heart thumped extra loud in her chest. What if one of them was alerted to the name Jane Barrington?
As they pulled away after one checkpoint, Martin said, "Why do you call yourself Tania if your name is Jane Barrington?" He paused. "Rather, why did you name yourself Jane Barrington if your name is Tania?"
"Martin! Don't be such a clod," exclaimed Penny. "Don't you know anything? Tania escaped from the Soviet Union. She wanted to give herself an American name. Right, Tania?"
"Something like that."
"So why would you be going back into Soviet-occupied territory if you escaped from the Soviet Union?"
"Oh, thatis a good question, Martin," said Penny. "Why, Tania?"
"I go where I'm needed most," said Tatiana slowly. "Not where it's most convenient."
Every other checkpoint, the Soviet soldiers asked to inspect the jeep. Since the truck of the jeep was packed to the gills, all the soldiers did was open the doors and close them again. They did not know about the hidden compartment so they never requested to look in there, nor did they look through the personal belongings. Martin would have had a conniption if he saw how much morphine Tatiana was carrying in her nurse's bag. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
"Where is this Berlin already?" said Tatiana.
Penny replied, "You're in it."
Tatiana looked around at the long rows of houses. "This is not Berlin."
"Yes, it is. What were you expecting?"
"Big buildings. The Reichstag. The Brandenburg game."
"What do you think firebombing means?" Martin said loftily. "There is no more Reichstag. There are no more big buildings." They drove on to the center of town.
Tatiana pointed. "I see the Brandenburg gate is still standing."
Martin fell quiet.
Berlin.
Post-war Berlin.
Tatiana didn't know what she was expecting, but having lived through a bombed Leningrad, she had braced herself for the worst, and was still surprised by the destruction she found. Berlin wasn't a city, it was a ruin of biblical devastation. Most buildings in inner Berlin were lying in rubble, and the residents lived in the shadow of those ruins, as their children played amid the broken concrete, as they hung their washing out to dry from one mangled steel post to another. They built tents around the places where they used to live, and made fires in pits in the ground, and ate what they could and lived how they could. That was the American sector.
The Tiergarten Park that had made Berlin famous was now the stomping ground for thousands of displaced Berliners, the River Spree was polluted with cement ash, glass, sulfur, sodium nitrate--the debris of firebombing that left nearly three quarters of the central city razed to the pavement.
Penny was right. Berlin was not cramped like New York into a cigarette pack of an island, was not even like Leningrad, a neat ink blot stopped by the gulf. Berlin sprawled in all directions, broken buildings jutting out for miles.
No wonder the sectors were so hard to contain, Tatiana thought. There isn't one way in and one way out, there are hundreds of ways in. Tatiana wondered how the Soviets were keeping all the Germans from escaping into the American, French and English sectors.
Martin explained. "I told you, because all the Germans are in jail."
"All the Germans?"
"The rest are dead."
They met with the American military governor in Berlin, an ageing brigadier general by the name of Mark Bishop originally from Washington Heights in Manhattan, who fed them, was very interested in news from back home, and let Tatiana telegraph a wire to Vikki and Anthony ("AM WELL AND SAFE. M Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
ISS YOU. LOVE YOU.") and one to Sam Gulotta ("INBERLIN. ANY NEWS? ANY HELP?") and put them up in a hostel for the night. The building was badly damaged but inhabitable. The inside walls had partly collapsed and the windows were all blown out. But many medical and military personnel used the building to sleep in, and so did Tatiana, Penny, and Martin. Tatiana and Penny shared a room. It was June, it was breezy and cool and there was the constant noise of awake men coming from the outside. Tatiana slept lightly with her hand heavily on the pistol.
Alexander of the broken hearted! Alexander of the innocent, the eloquent, the invincible, the invisible, the inordinate, Alexander of the warrior, the combatant, the commander, Alexander of the water and the fire and the sky, Alexander of my soul--good Lord, deliver me to you, to my soldier man of the tanks and the trenches, of the smoke and the sorrow, to Alexander of all my bliss and my longing, to you wherever you may be--I am searching for you. Please O God be on this earth, Alexander of my heart.
The next morning, there was a telegram from Sam waiting for her at Bishop's administrative offices. "Y OU ARE MAD. JOHNRAVENSTOCK CONSULATE. HE WILL HELP."
Vikki also telegraphed: "COME HOME. WE HAVE NO BREAD."
Mark Bishop himself, eager to get the Red Cross inside the Soviet zone of occupation, took the three of them through the Brandenburg gate to meet with the lieutenant-general of the Berlin garrison who was also the military commander of Berlin.
"He doesn't speak English. Do any of you speak Russian, or do I have to get an interpreter?" asked Bishop.
Martin volunteered Tatiana. "She speaks Russian."
She would have to talk to him about volunteering her for things.
"Tania, you don't mind translating, do you?" said Penny.
"Not at all. I do my best," Tatiana replied, and then took Penny a side. "Penny," she whispered, "don't call me Tania, all right? We're in Soviet territory. Don't call me by my Russian name. Call me Nurse Barrington."
"I didn't even think, I'm sorry," Penny said and smiled. "All that lovin' must be going to my brain."
"Did you take your penicillin shot today? Yesterday you forgot."
"I took it. I'm nearly all better. Thank God for penicillin, huh?"
Tatiana smiled wanly, cringed slightly.
The buildings on the boulevard Unter den Linden in the district of Mitte that had been commandeered to quarter the Soviet army were as decrepit as the hostel Tatiana had slept in. Tatiana was stunned most of all not by the destruction, but by the absolute and foreboding lack of reconstruction, a year after the war. New York, which was not even bombed, was building feverishly as if it were gearing up for the next century. Yet the eastern section of Berlin was stagnant and ruined and sad. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
"Commander Bishop, why is it so quiet here? Why isn't Berlin rebuilding?"
"We are rebuilding. Slowly."
"Not that I can see."
"Nurse Barrington, the tragedy that is Berlin I cannot explain in the five minutes before we meet the Soviet garrison commander. The Soviets don't want to pay for the rebuilding. They want the Germans to pay for the rebuilding."
"All right," said Tatiana, "Berlin is a German city. They should."
"Ah. But first the Soviets want to rebuild the Soviet Union. It's only right."
"It is."
"So there is no money for eastern Berlin. Or brains. They're sending all the engineers and all the money to the Soviet Union."
"Why don't the western Allies help?"
"If only it were that simple. The very last thing the Soviets want is our help in their occupied zone. They hate us being in Berlin. They wish we weren't here. They're going to try to force us out, you'll see. They accept nothing from us. You'll see how impossible it will be to convince the garrison commander to enter the concentration camps even for humanitarian reasons."
"They just don't want us to see how badly they're treating German men," said Tatiana.
"Maybe. But they want us out. I'm not looking forward to this meeting."
The stairs inside the building were marble. It was broken and chipped marble, but it was marble nonetheless. The lieutenant general was waiting for the four of them in his quarters.
They went in. He turned around and smiled. Tatiana gasped out loud.
It was Mikhail Stepanov.
Penny and Martin turned around to look at her. She stepped behind Martin to collect herself. Would he recognize her with her black hair and no freckles and all that makeup? After making the introductions, the governor said, "Nurse Barrington, will you come forward and translate for us, please."
There was nowhere to go. Tatiana stepped forward. She did not smile and Stepanov did not smile at her. He stood completely still and his eyes barely blinked. The only movement his body made in acknowledgement of her was his hand gripping the edge of his desk.
"Hello, General Stepanov," she said in Russian.
"Hello, Nurse Barrington," he said. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
Her lips were shaking as she translated for the military governor. The Red Cross was offering to help disperse much needed medical help to the thousands of Germans held by the Soviets in eastern Germany. Could they have permission to administer the aid?
"I think they will need quite a lot of aid," said Stepanov. He still stood straight, but he looked older. He looked tired. There was a worn-out expression in his eyes that said he had seen too much and was finished with nearly all of it. "The camps are not run very well, I'm afraid. The Germans were taken prisoner as part of the reparations effort to help rebuild Soviet Russia, but we're finding that many of them have simply lost their will to work."
"Let us help them," said Tatiana.
Stepanov invited them to sit down. They sat. Tatiana fell into her chair. Thank God she didn't have to stand anymore. "There is a real problem, unfortunately," Stepanov said, "and I don't know if your little parcels are going to do the trick here. There is a growing hatred toward the German prisoners in Berlin and the surrounding areas, a lack of the military discipline essential for running the camps properly, no training for our prison guards, no experience. This all provokes an endless cycle of crime--escape, resistance to the guards and violence. The political costs are quite harsh. Many German workers, who would otherwise work for us and help us, are refusing. In their rebellion, the workers are fleeing to the western zones. It's a problem that we're going to need to address, and soon, and I fear that the Red Cross might simply inflame an already unstable situation."
When Tatiana translated Stepanov's words, Martin said, "The lieutenant general is absolutely right. We have no business here. We don't know what we're playing with."
But Tatiana did not translate that into Russian. Instead she said, "The International Red Cross is a neutral body. We do not take sides."
"You would if you saw these camps." Stepanov shook his head. "I have been trying to get something done about the inequitable distribution of food, the unsanitary conditions, the arbitrary and unfair enforcement of rules. Four months ago I ordered the squalid conditions of the camps to be corrected, to no avail. The army contingent responsible for the Russian camps refuses to punish abuses in its own ranks, leading only to more hostilities."
"The Russian camps?" said Tatiana. "You mean the German camps?"
Stepanov blinked. "Russians in there, too, Nurse Barrington," he said, staring at her. "Or at least there were four months ago."
Tatiana began to tremble.
"What army contingent is responsible for the camps? Maybe I--we--should go talk to them."
"You'd have to go to Moscow and speak to a Lavrenti Beria," said Stepanov. He smiled grimly. "Though I wouldn't recommend it--rumors say thathaving coffee with Beria can be a life-ending experience."
Tatiana clasped her hands between her legs. She did not trust her body to remain impassive. So the NKVD governed the concentration camps in Germany!
"What did he say, Ta--Nurse Barrington?" Penny asked. "You're forgetting to translate." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
Martin said, "Our minds are already made up. This is a waste of our resources."
Tatiana turned to him. "We have plenty of resources, Dr. Flanagan. We have the whole United States of America as our resource. The commander is saying that camps desperately need our help. What, are we going to back out now when we discover to our dismay that they need help even more than we thought they did when we came here?"
"Nurse Barrington makes a good point, Dr. Flanagan," said Penny, keeping a serious face.
"The point is to help those who have a way of saving themselves," Martin declared.
"You know what? Let's help first, then we let them sort out if they can help themselves." She turned back to Stepanov. Quietly she said, "Sir, how did you get here?"
"What are you asking him?" said Bishop.
"They transferred me after the fall of Berlin," Stepanov replied. "I was doing too good a job in Leningrad. That'll teach me. They thought I could do the same here. But this isn't Leningrad. Leningrad doesn't have any of these problems. Different problems, with food and housing and clothing and fuel, yes, but Berlin has all that plus a clash of countries, of people, of economies, of justice, of reparations, of punishment. The morass I'm afraid is sinking me." He fell quiet. "I don't think I'm going to last much longer here."
Tatiana took his hand. The military governor, Martin, and Penny all gaped at her.
"He who brought your son back," she breathed out. "Where is he?"
Stepanov shook his head, his eyes on the hand that held his.
"Where?"
He raised his eyes. "Sachsenhausen. Special Camp Number 7."
Tatiana squeezed him, and released him. "Thank you, Lieutenant General."
"What did the general say about Sachsenhausen?" Martin said. "You're forgetting to translate. Maybe we should get an interpreter."
"He was telling me where I'm needed most," Tatiana said, with an effort getting up out of her chair and standing on her unsteady legs. Her mouth was dry. "We would appreciate directions to the camps, sir. Maybe a relief map of the area, just in case? Will you please telegraph them to let them know we're coming? We will telegraph Hamburg for more Red Cross convoys to come to Berlin. We will get enough kits and food into your camps, we promise. It won't correct all the ills, but it will be something, it will be better."
They all shook hands. Stepanov nodded to Tatiana. "Go soon," he said. "The Russian prisoners are doing very poorly. They've been getting transferred to the Kolyma camps over the last several months. You may already be too late for them."
As they were leaving, Tatiana turned around one last time to glance at Stepanov, who was once again Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
standing stiffly beside his desk. He raised his hand. "You're not safe," he said. "You're on the class enemies number one list. I'm not safe. And he is not safe most of all."
"What did he say?" asked Martin as they left.
"Nothing."
"Oh, it's ridiculous! Governor." He turned to Bishop. "Nurse Barrington is obviously keeping important information from us."
"Dr. Flanagan," said Bishop, "you obviously don't speak another language. Whenever you translate, you translate only the salient points."
"I have certainly done that," said Tatiana. When they got outside, she had to sit down on a hunk of mortar that was lying near what used to be an esthetically pleasing fountain.
Bishop came over and perched next to her. "He said the wordvrag to you as we were leaving. I know that means enemy. What was he saying?"
Tatiana had to take a number of breaths before she could find her composed voice. Quietly she said, "He told us the Soviet army regards us--the Americans--as the enemy. Nothing we can do about that. I didn't want to say that out loud. The doctor"--she nodded in Martin's direction--"is weak-stomached as it is."
The governor smiled. "Understood." He patted her arm, looking at her with approval. "Not like you?" They walked back to Penny and Martin.
"Governor," said Martin, "do you think we should go to Sachsenhausen?"
"I don't see how it can be avoided, Doctor. That's what you came here for. Your nurse here got him to agree to let us into the camps. How did you do it, Nurse Barrington? That's a huge breakthrough for the Red Cross efforts. I will telegraph Hamburg immediately, ask them to send another forty thousand kits."
"Wait, Tania," said Penny, "I want you to explain how you took hold of a Soviet general's hand, got him to let us into the work camps, and not have him call the secret police on you?"
"I am a nurse," said Tatiana. "I touch them all."
"You shouldn't be getting so friendly with the Soviets," said Martin censoriously. "Remember we're neutral."
"Neutral does not imply indifferent, Martin," said Tatiana. "Neutral does not mean unhelpful, uncomforting. Neutral means we do not take sides."
"Not in your professional life," said the governor. "But Nurse Barrington, the Soviets are barbarous. Do you know that they closed off Berlin for eight days after the German surrender? Closed it off to our armies. For eight days! No one could get in. What do you think they were doing here?"
"I don't want to guess," she said. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
"Raping young women like you. Killing men like Dr. Flanagan. Pillaging every house still standing. Burning Berlin."
"Yes. Have you seen what the Germans did to Russia?"
"Ah," said Martin. "I thought we did not take sides, Nurse Barrington?"
"Or the enemy's hands," said Penny.
"He was not the enemy," Tatiana said, and turned away from the others so they wouldn't see her cry.