The Summer Garden (12 page)

“You’ve been too soft on him,” he said. “He has to learn. He will learn.”

“I know. He’s so little, though.”

“Yes, when he is my size, it’ll be too late.”

She sat on the floor of the deck.

After a while Alexander spoke. “He can’t leave food on his plate.”

“I know.”

“Do you want me to tell you about your brother starving in Catowice?”

She barely suppressed her sigh. “Only if you want to, darling.” Only if you need to. Because, like you, there are many things I would rather never talk about.

In the POW camp in Catowice, Poland, where the Germans threw Alexander, his lieutenant, Ouspensky, and Pasha into the Soviet half—which meant the death half—Alexander saw that Pasha was weakening. He had no fuel to feed the shell that carried his life. It was worse for Pasha because he had been wounded in the throat. He couldn’t work. What they gave the Soviet men was just enough to kill them slowly. Alexander made a wood spear, and when he was in the forest cutting down trees for firewood, he caught three rabbits, hid them in his coat and, back at camp, cooked them in the kitchen, giving one to the cook, one to Pasha, and splitting one between himself and Ouspensky.

He felt better, but he was still starving. From Tatiana, during Leningrad’s blockade, he learned that as long as he constantly thought about food—about getting it, cooking it, eating it, wanting it, he was not a goner. He’d seen the goners—then in Leningrad, now in Catowice—the last-leggers, as they were called, the men unable to work, who shuffled through the camp’s trash eating what scraps they could find. When one of the goners had died, Alexander, about to dig a grave, found Pasha and three others eating the remains of the dead man’s slops by the fire at the outskirts of the barracks.

Alexander was made a supervisor, which did not endear him to his peers, but it did allow him to get a larger food ration, which he shared with Pasha. He kept Pasha and Ouspensky with him, and they moved into a room that housed only eight people instead of sixty. It was warmer. Alexander worked harder. He killed the rabbits and the badgers, and occasionally he didn’t wait to bring them back to camp. He built a fire and ate them on the spot, half cooked, tearing at them with his teeth. It wasn’t making much of a difference even to him.

And Pasha suddenly stopped being interested in rabbits.

Tatiana’s head was folded over her knees. She needed a better memory of her brother.

In Luga, Pasha is stuffing blueberries into Tatiana’s open mouth. She is begging him to stop, trying to tickle him, trying to throw him off her, but in between mouthfuls of blueberries for himself, he is tickling Tatiana with one hand, stuffing blueberries into her mouth with the other, and pinning her between his legs so she can’t go anywhere. Tatiana finally heaves her small body hard enough to throw Pasha off, onto the pails of blueberries they just brought freshly picked from the woods. The buckets tip over; she screams at him to pick them up and when he doesn’t, she takes handfuls and mashes them into his face, painting his face purple. Saika comes from next door and stares blankly at them from the gate. Dasha comes out from the porch and when sees what they’ve done, she shows them what real screaming is all about.

Alexander smoked, and Tatiana, on weakened legs, struggled up and went back inside, hoping that when Anthony was older they could tell him in a way he would understand, about Leningrad, and Catowice, and Pasha. But she feared he would never understand, living in the land of plantains and plenty.

In the
Miami Herald
Tatiana found an article about the House of Un-American Activities Committee investigations into communist infiltration of the State Department. The paper was pleased to call it “an ambitious program of investigations to expose and ferret out Communist activities in many enterprises, labor unions, education, motion pictures and most importantly, the federal government.” Truman himself had called for removal of disloyal government employees.

She became so engrossed that Alexander had to raise his voice to get her attention. “What are you reading?”

“Nothing.” She slammed the newspaper shut.

“You’re hiding things in newspapers from me? Show me what you were reading.”

Tatiana shook her head. “Let’s go to the beach.”

“Show me, I said.” He grabbed her, his fingers going into her ribs and his mouth into her neck. “Show me right now, or I’ll…”

“Daddy, stop teasing Mommy,” said Anthony, prying them apart.

“I’m not teasing Mommy. I’m tickling Mommy.”

“Stop tickling Mommy,” said Anthony, prying them apart.

“Antman,” said Alexander, “did you just…call me
daddy
?”

“Yes. So?”

Bringing Anthony to his lap, Alexander read the HUAC article. “So? They’ve been investigating communists since the 1920s. Why the fascination now?”

“No fascination.” Tatiana started to clear the breakfast plates. “You think there are Soviet spies here?”

“Rampaging through the government. And they won’t rest until Stalin gets his atomic bomb.”

She squinted at him. “You know something about this?”

“I know something about this.” He pointed to his ears. “I listened to quite a bit of chatter and rumor among the rank and file outside my door in solitary confinement.”

“Really?” Tania said that in a mulling tone, but what she was trying to do was to not let Alexander see her eyes. She didn’t want him to see Sam Gulotta’s anxious phone calls in her frightened eyes.

When they didn’t talk about food or HUAC, they spoke about Anthony.

“Can you believe how well he’s talking? He is like a little man.”

“Tania, he comes into bed with us every night. Can we talk about
that
?”

“He’s just a little boy.”

“He needs to sleep in his own bed.”

“It’s big and he gets scared.”

Alexander bought a smaller bed for Anthony, who didn’t like it and had no interest in sleeping in it. “I thought the bed was for you,” said Anthony to his father.

“Why would I need a bed? I sleep with Mommy,” said Anthony Alexander Barrington.

“So do I,” said Anthony Alexander Barrington.

Finally Alexander said, “Tania, I’m putting my foot down. He can’t come into our bed anymore.”

She tried to dissuade him.

“I know he has nightmares,” Alexander said. “I will take him back to his bed. I will sit with him as long as it takes.”

“He needs his mother in the middle of the night.”

“
I
need his mother in the middle of the night, his naked mother. He’s going to have to make do with me,” Alexander said. “And
she
is going to have to make do with me.”

The first night, Anthony screamed for fifty-five minutes while Tatiana remained in the bedroom with a pillow pressed over her head. Alexander spent so long in the boy’s room, he fell asleep on Anthony’s bed.

The following night Anthony screamed for forty-five minutes.

Then thirty.

Then fifteen.

And finally, just whimpers coming from Anthony, as he stood by his mother’s side. “I won’t cry anymore, but please, Mama, can
you
take me back to my bed?”

“No,” said Alexander, getting up. “I will take you back.”

And the following afternoon as mother and son were walking back home from the boat, Anthony said, “When is Dad going back?”

“Going back where?”

“The place you brought him from.”

“Never, Anthony.” She shivered. “What are you talking about?” The shiver was at the memory of the place she had brought him from, the bloodied, filth-soaked straw on which he lay shackled and tortured, waiting not for her but for the rest of his life in the Siberian resort. Tatiana lowered the boy to the ground. “Don’t ever let me catch you talking like that again.” Or your nightmares now will pale compared to the ones you will have.

“
Why
does he walk as if he’s got the weight of the whole world on his shoulders?” Alexander asked while walking home. The green and stunning ocean was to their right, through the bending palms. “Where does he get that from?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Hey,” he said, knocking into her with his body. Now that he wasn’t covered with lobster he could do that, knock into her. Tatiana took his arm. Alexander was watching Anthony. “You know what? Let me…I’ll take him to the park for a few minutes while you fix dinner.” He prodded her forward. “Go on now, what are you worried about? I just want to talk to him, man to man.”

Tatiana reluctantly went, and Alexander took Anthony on the swings. They got ice cream, both promising conspiratorially not to tell Mommy, and while they were in the playground, Alexander said, “Ant, tell me what you dream about. What’s bothering you? Maybe I can help.”

Anthony shook his head.

Alexander picked him up and carried him under the trees, setting him down on top of a picnic table while he sat on the bench in front of him so that their eyes were level. “Come on, bud, tell me.” He rubbed Anthony’s little chubby legs. “Tell me so I can help you.”

Anthony shook his head.

“Why do you wake up? What wakes you?”

“Bad dreams,” said Anthony. “What wakes
you
?”

His father had no answer for that. He still woke up every night. He had started taking ice cold baths to cool himself down, to calm himself down at three in the morning. “What kind of bad dreams?”

Anthony was all clammed up.

“Come on, bud, tell me. Does Mommy know?”

Anthony shrugged. “I think Mommy knows everything.”

“You’re too wise for your own good,” said Alexander. “But I don’t think she knows
this
. Tell me.
I
don’t know.”

He cajoled and prodded. Anthony’s ice cream was melting; they kept wiping up the drips. Finally Anthony, looking not at his father’s prying face but at his shirt buttons, said, “I wake up in a cave.”

“Ant, you’ve never been in a cave. What cave?”

Anthony shrugged. “Like a hole in the ground. I call for Mom. She’s not there. Mommy, Mommy. She doesn’t come. The cave starts to burn. I climb outside, I’m near woods. Mommy, Mommy. I call and call. It gets dark. I’m alone.” Anthony looked down at his hands. “A man whispers,
Run, Anthony, she is gone, your mommy, she is not coming back
. I turn around, but there is no one there. I run into the woods to get away from the fire. It’s very dark, and I’m crying. Mommy, Mommy. The woods go on fire too. I feel like somebody’s chasing me. Chasing and chasing me. But when I turn around, I’m all alone. I keep hearing feet running after me. I’m running too. And the man’s voice is in my ear.
She is gone, your mommy, she is not coming back
.”

The ice cream dripped through Alexander’s fingers, through Anthony’s fingers. “That’s what you dream about?” Alexander said tonelessly.

“Uh-huh.”

Alexander stared grimly at Anthony, who stared grimly back. “Can you help me, Dad?”

“It’s just a bad dream, bud,” Alexander said. “Come here.” He picked up the boy. Anthony put his head on Alexander’s shoulder. “Don’t tell your mom what you just told me, all right?” he said in a hollow voice, patting the boy’s back, holding him close. “It’ll make her very sad you dream this.” He started walking home, his gaze fixed blinklessly on the road.

After a minute, he said, “Antman, did your mother ever tell you about her dreams when she was a little girl in Luga? No? Because she used to have bad dreams, too. You know what she used to dream about? Cows chasing her.”

Anthony laughed.

“Exactly,” Alexander said. “Big cows with bells and milk udders would go running down the village road after your young mother, and no matter how hard she ran, she couldn’t get away.”

“Did they go moo?” said Anthony. “Here moo, there moo, everywhere moo-moo.”

“Oh, yes.”

In the night Anthony crawled to his mother’s side, and Alexander and Tatiana, both awake, said nothing. Alexander had just come back to bed himself, barely dry. Her arm went around Anthony, and Alexander’s damp icy arm went around Tatiana.

The Body of War

As it began to stay lighter later
, they would go swimming when the park beaches emptied. Tatiana hung upside down on the monkey bars, they played ball, they built things in the sand; the beach, the bars, the breaking Atlantic were good and right as rain. Alexander sometimes even took off his T-shirt while he swam in the languid evenings—slowly, obsessively trying to wash away in the briny ocean typhus and starvation and war and other things that could not be washed away.

Tatiana sat near the shoreline, watching father and son frolic. Alexander was supposed to be teaching Anthony how to swim, but what he was doing was picking the boy up and flinging him into the shallow waters. The waves were perfect in Miami for a small boy, for the waves were small also. Son jumped to father, only to be thrown up in the air and then caught again, thrown up in the air very high and then caught again. Anthony squealed, shrieked, splashed, full of monumental joy. And there was Tatiana nearby, sitting on the sand, hugging her knees, one of her hands out in invocation,
careful, careful, careful
. But she wasn’t saying it to Alexander. She was saying it to Anthony. Don’t hurt your father, son. Be gentle with him. Please.
Can’t you see what he looks like
?

Her breath burned her chest as she furtively glanced at her husband. Now they were racing into the water. The first time Tatiana had seen Alexander run into the Kama River in Lazarevo, naked except for his shorts—like now—his body was holy. It was gleaming and woundless. And he’d been in battles already, in the Russo-Finnish War; he’d been on the northern rivers of the Soviet Union; he had defended the Road of Life on Lake Ladoga. Like her, he had lived through blighted Leningrad. Why then, since she had left him, had this happened to him?

Alexander’s bare body was shocking to see. His back, once smooth and tanned, was mutilated with shrapnel scars, with burn scars, with whip marks, with bayonet gouges all wet in the Miami sun. His near-fatal injury at the breaking of the Leningrad blockade was still a fist-sized patch above his right kidney. His chest and shoulders and ribs were defaced; his upper arms, his forearms, his legs were covered with knife and gunpowder burn wounds, jagged, ragged, raised.