The Summer Garden (17 page)

“How can I even
try
to find my way,” he said, his voice breaking, “if my own wife recoils from me? I know it isn’t what it used to be. I know it isn’t what we had. But it’s all we have now, and this body is all I’ve got.”

“Darling—please,” Tatiana whispered, stretching out her hands to him. “I’m not recoiling from you.” She couldn’t see him through the veil of her sorrow.

“You think I’m fucking blind?” he exclaimed. “Oh God! You think this is the
first
time I noticed? You think I’m an idiot? I notice every fucking time, Tatiana! I grit my teeth, I wear my clothes so you don’t see me, I take you from behind, so nothing of me touches you—
just like you want.
” He enunciated every syllable through his teeth. “You wear clothes in bed with me so I won’t accidentally rub my wounds on you. I pretend not to give a shit, but how long do you think I can keep doing this? How much longer do you think you’re going to be happier on the hard floor?”

She covered her face.

He swept his hand across and knocked her arms away. “You are my wife and you won’t
touch
me, Tania!”

“Darling, I
do
touch you…”

“Oh, yes,” he said cruelly. “Well, all I can say is, thank God, I guess, that my tackle is not maimed, or I’d never get any blow. But what about the rest of me?”

Tatiana lowered her weeping head. “Shura, please…”

He yanked her up and out of bed. The sheet fell away from her. “
Look
at me,” he said.

She was too ashamed of herself to lift her eyes to him. They were standing naked against each other. His angry fingers dug into her arms. “That’s right, you
should
be fucking ashamed,” he said through his teeth. “You don’t want to face me
then
, and you can’t face me now. Just perfect. Well, nothing more to say, is there? Come on, then.” He spun her around and bent her over the bed.

“Shura, please!” She tried to get up, but his palm on her back kept her from moving until she couldn’t move if she wanted to. And then he took his palm away.

Behind her, leaning over her, supporting himself solely by his clenched fists on the mattress, Alexander took her like he was in the army, like she was a stranger he found in the woods whom he was going to leave in one to-the-hilt minute without a backward glance, while she helplessly cried and then—even more helplessly, was crying out, now deservedly and thoroughly abased. “And look—no hands, just like you like,” he whispered into her ear. “You want more? Or was that enough
lovemaking
for you?”

Tatiana’s face was in the blanket.

Himself unfinished, he backed away, and she slowly straightened up and turned to him, wiping her face. “Please—I’m sorry,” she whispered, sitting down weakly on the edge of the bed, covering her body. Her legs were shaking.

“You cover me from other people because you don’t want to look at me yourself. I’m surprised you notice or care that other women talk to me.” He was panting. “You think they’ll run in horror, like you, once they catch a glimpse of me.”

“What—no!” Her arms reached for him. “Shura, you’re misunderstanding me…I’m not frightened, I’m just so
sad
for you.”

“Your pity,” he said, stepping back from her, “is the absolute last fucking thing I want. Pity yourself that you’re like this.”

“I’m so afraid to hurt you…” Tatiana whispered, her palms openly pleading with him.

“Bullshit!” he said. “But ironic, don’t you think, considering what you’re doing to me.” Alexander groaned. “Why can’t you be like my son, who sees everything and never flinches from me?”

“Oh, Shura…” She was crying.

“Look at me, Tatiana.” She lifted her face. His bronze eyes were blazing, he was loud, he was uncontrollable. “You’re terrified, I know, but here I am”—Alexander pointed to himself, standing naked and scarred and blackly tattooed. “Once again,” he said, “I stand in front of you naked and I will try—God help me—one
more
fucking time.” Flinging his fists down, he was nearly without breath left. “Here I am, your one man circus freak show, having bled out for Mother Russia, having desperately tried to get to you, now on top of you with his scourge marks, and you, who used to love me, who has sympathized, internalized, normalized everything, you are not
allowed
to turn away from me! Do you understand? This is one of the unchangeable things, Tania. This is what I’m going to look like until the day I die. I can’t get any peace from you
ever
unless you find a way to make peace with this. Make peace with me. Or let me go for good.”

Her shoulders rose and fell. “I’m sorry,” Tatiana said as she came to him, putting her arms around him, kneeling on the floor in front of him, holding him, looking up into his face. “Please. I’m sorry.”

Eventually she managed to soothe him back on the bed. Alexander came—not willingly—and lay down beside her. She pulled him on top of her. He climbed where he was led as her hands went around his back. She wrapped her legs around him, holding him intimately and tight.

“I’m sorry, honey, husband, Shura, dearest, my whole heart,” Tatiana whispered into his neck, kissing his throat. With heartbroken fingers she caressed him. “Please forgive me for hurting your feelings. I don’t pity you, don’t turn it that way on me, but I cannot help that I’m desperately sad, wishing so much—for your sake only, not mine—that you could still be what you once were—before the things you now carry. I’m ashamed of myself and I’m sorry. I spend all my days regretting the things I cannot fix.”

“You and me both, babe,” he said, threading his arms underneath her. Their faces were turned away from each other as Alexander lay on top of her, and she stroked the war on his back. Naked and pressed breast to breast they searched for something they had lost long ago, and found it briefly, in a fierce clutch, in a glimmer through the barricades.

The Sands of Naples

Alexander came home mid-morning
and said, “Let’s collect our things. We’re leaving.”

“We are? What about Mel?”

“This isn’t about Mel. It’s about us. It’s time to go.”

Apparently Frederik had complained to Mel that the man who was running his boats full of war veterans and war widows was possibly a communist, a Soviet spy, perhaps a traitor. Mel, afraid of losing his customers, had to confront Alexander, but couldn’t bring himself to fire the man who brought him thousands of dollars worth of business. Alexander made it easy for Mel. He denied all charges of espionage and then quit.

“Let’s head out west,” he said to Tatiana. “You might as well show me that bit of land you bought. Where is it again? New Mexico?”

“Arizona.”

“Let’s go. I want to get to California for the grape-picking season in August.”

And so they left Coconut Grove of the see-through salt waters and the wanton women with the bright colored lipstick, they left the bobbing houseboats and Anthony’s crashing dreams, and the mystery of Mercy Hospital and drove across the newly opened Everglades National Park to Naples on the Gulf of Mexico.

Alexander was subdued with her, back to Edith Wharton polite, and she deserved it, but the sand was cool and white, even in scorching noon, and the fire sunsets and lightning storms over the Gulf were like nothing they’d ever seen. So they stayed in the camper on a deserted beach, in a corner of the world, in a spot where he could take off his shirt and play ball with Anthony, while the sun beat on his back and tanned the parts that could be tanned, leaving the scars untouched, like gray stripes.

Both he and the boy were two brown stalks running around the white shores and green waters. All three of them loved the heat, loved the beach, the briny Gulf, the sizzling days, the blinding sands. They celebrated her twenty-third birthday and their fifth wedding anniversary there, and finally left after Anthony’s fourth birthday at the end of June.

They spent only a few days in New Orleans because they discovered New Orleans, much like South Miami Beach, was not an ideal city for a small boy.

“Perhaps next time we can come here without the child,” said Alexander on Bourbon Street, where the nice ladies sitting by the windows lifted up their shirts as the three of them strolled by.

“Dad, why are they showing us their boobies?”

“I’m not sure, son. It’s a strange ritualistic custom common to these parts of the world.”

“Like in that journal where the African girls put weights in their lips to make them hang down past their throats?”

“Something like that.” Alexander scooped up Anthony into his arms.

“But Mommy said the African girls make their lips big to get a husband. Are these girls trying to get a husband?”

“Something like that.”

“Daddy, what did Mommy do to get you to marry her?” Anthony giggled. “Did Mommy show you her boobies?”

“Tania,
what
are you reading to our child?” said Alexander, flipping a squealing Anthony upside down by his legs to get him to stop asking questions.

“
National Geographic
,” she said, lightly batting her eyes at him. “But answer your son, Alexander.”

“Yeah, Dad,” said Anthony, red with delight, hanging upside down. “Answer your son.”

“Mommy put on a pretty dress, Antman.” And for a fleeting moment on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, Tatiana and Alexander’s eyes made real contact.

They were glad they had the camper now in their quest, in their summer trek across the prairies. They had cover over their heads, they had a place for Anthony to sleep, to play, a place to put their pot and spoon, their little dominion unbroken by pungent hotel rooms or beaten-up landladies. Occasionally they had to stop at RV parks to take showers. Anthony liked those places, because there were other kids there for him to play with, but Tatiana and Alexander chafed at living in such close proximity to strangers, even for an evening. After Coconut Grove they finally discovered what they liked best, what they needed most—just the three of them in an unhealed but unbroken trinity.

CHAPTER THREE
Paradise Valley, 1947

Bare Feet and Backpacks

Alexander drove their Nomad through Texas
, across Austin, down to San Antonio. The Alamo was a fascinating bit of history—they all died. He couldn’t get around that fact. Despite the heroism, the bravery, they all died! And Texas lost its battle for independence and continued to belong to Santa Ana. Death to
all
wasn’t enough for victory. What kind of a fucked-up life lesson was that for Anthony? Alexander decided not to tell his son about it. He’d learn in school soon enough.

Western Texas was just flat road amid the dusty plains as far as the eye could see. Alexander was driving and smoking; he had turned off the radio so he could hear Tatiana better—but she had stopped speaking. She was sitting on the passenger side with her eyes closed. She had been telling him and Anthony soothing stories of some of her pranks in Luga. There were few stories Alexander liked better than of her child self in that village by the river.

Is she asleep? He glances at her, squeezed in around herself in a floral pink wrap dress that comes down to a V in her chest. Her glistening, slightly tender, coral nectar mouth reminds him of things, stirs him up a little. He checks to see what Anthony is doing—the boy is lying down facing away, playing with his toy soldiers. Alexander reaches over and cups a palmful of her breast, and she instantly opens her eyes and checks for Anthony. “What?” she whispers, and no sooner does she whisper than Anthony turns around, and Alexander takes his hand away, an aching prickle of desire mixed with frustration all swollen behind his eyes and in his loins.

Their hostilities in Coconut Grove have been yielding some significant crops for him. Just a small measure of his subsequent closed-mouthedness has been making Tatiana trip over herself to show him that his bitter accusations against her were not true. It doesn’t matter. He knows of course they were true, but he doesn’t mind in the least her cartwheels of palpitating remorse.

At night in the tent, he leaves the flaps open, to feel the fire outside, to hear Anthony in the trailer, to see her better. She asks him to lie on his stomach, and he does, though he can’t see her, while she runs her bare breasts over his disfigured back, her nipples hardening into his scars.
You feel that
? she whispers. Oh, he does. He
still
feels it. She kisses him from the top of his head downward, from his buzz-cut scalp, his shoulder blades, his wounds. Inch by inch she cries over him and kisses her own salt away, murmuring into him,
why did you have to keep running? Look what they did to you. Why didn’t you just stay put? Why couldn’t you feel I was coming for you?

You thought I was dead
, he says.
You thought I had been killed and pushed through the ice in Lake Ladoga
. And what really happened was, I was a Soviet man left in a Soviet prison. Wasn’t I dead?

He is fairly certain he is alive now, and while Tatiana lies on top of his back and cries, he remembers
being caught by the dogs a kilometer from Oranienburg and held in place by the Alsatians until Karolich arrived, and being flogged in Sachsenhausen’s main square and then chained and tattooed publicly with the 25-point star to remind him of his time for Stalin,
and now she lies on his back, kissing the scars he received when he tried to escape to make his way back to her so she could kiss him.

As he drives across Texas, Alexander remembers himself in Germany lying in the bloody straw after being beaten and dreaming of her kissing him, and these dreams morph with the memories of last night, and suddenly
she is kissing not the scars but the raw oozing wounds, and he is in agony for she is crying and the brine of her tears is eating away the meat of his flesh, and he is begging her to stop because he can’t take it anymore. Kiss something else,
he pleads.
Anything else.
He’s had enough of himself. He is sick of himself. She is tainted not just with the Gulag. She is tainted with his whole life.