Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

She was screaming although her time is still hours off. She is very tight and badly frightened.
Someone will have to give her an anesthesia. This is going to be a difficult birth. So I postured
before the station master with all my titles." She laughed. "It is even easier to impress Germans
than Gogol’s Russians. He was cowed, ‘Jawoll, Frau Doktor, Jawoll’. I requisitioned a
locomotive to take the woman to Gumbinnen. The engine will arrive in a few minutes!"
She rose onto her toes and gave Konrad a kiss. "Liebster, listen—I decided go with her.
She is alone and speaks no German. Please, will you calm Otto and Elisabeth when they wake
up? I will be back as soon as I can."
She threw her fur coat over her white uniform, put on her boots, and was gone again in
a few minutes. The engine that would take her was hissing and blowing steam outside. A group
of bored passengers had gathered to watch the distraction. They carried the moaning woman
into the engineer’s cabin. Alexandra climbed in behind her. She did not even turn around to
wave to Konrad before she disappeared in the snow flurries of the night.
Konrad put on his coat and went out to walk in the snowstorm, back and forth along the
now deserted platform. He had to get over his guilt about letting himself been persuaded to
return to St. Petersburg.
They had arrived in Eydtkuhnen late at night. When the Russian railroad engineers
refused to change the undercarriages to the Russian gauge or service the engine, two
diplomats and a high Russian government official had tried to commandeer a Russian train on
the other side of the border. The Russian railroad men, armed with pickaxes and waving red
flags, had threatened to attack them. The telegraph was dead too. For a while there had been
talk of turning the train around and heading back to Königsberg, but the negotiations had come
to nothing.
The German railroad administration promised to keep the train heated and supplied, the
strike would surely be put down by the army soon. Such strikes had never lasted longer than a
couple of days, they were chaotic and unorganized. However, this time the Russian border
troops had been sent to the Far East, and the remaining soldiers were in sympathy with the
workers. The strike ground on. This was the third night. Thank God, the snow would not stay
long, it was only the end of October.
Cold and wet he went back to their compartment and lay down. He tossed around. Too
hot. He opened the window a bit and once more stared into the night.
The weeks after their return from Italy had been a series of dinners and farewell parties.
Katharina was due any day now. The thought of her filled him with sad nostalgia, but also with
the vague notion that their affair-à-trois would remain his and Alexandra’s precious memory, a
secret treasure to be retrieved in times of need, whenever their marriage would be threatened
or go stale.
He understood, the woman in labor was Alexandra’s first crucial test as a doctor. She
had kept her head, resisting the temptation of improvising a delivery with her limited
experience. He smiled. Requisitioning a locomotive, something the diplomats had not
succeeded in, was truly Alexandra. How much he loved this woman. With the vision of her
climbing into the engine cab in her fur coat and boots, elegant, alert, he fell asleep.
The snow still fell when Alexandra returned in the late morning. The woman had
delivered a boy, and she had assisted the doctor at the hospital. Next time, she was sure, she
could do that job by herself. Exhausted, she fell into bed.
In the afternoon a group of men and women from the second class carriages massed on
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