The Summer Garden (40 page)

Dasha listened intently.

“Things changed,” he continued. “But even after the Revolution, when your grandmother and I were evacuated for two years during the Civil War—during all that strife and famine and chaos—we hid out and lived in a little fishing village called Lazarevo on the river Kama, near Molotov, and if you ask your grandmother, Dashenka, she will tell you that those two years in Lazarevo were the happiest two years of her life.” Dasha gazed at him as Deda closed his eyes and tilted back his head just a little, as if he had leaned into some hidden away gilded tresses of his long memory and touched gladness that made the heart lighter.

“So don’t fret so much,” he said when he spoke again. “Even in this life, joy is possible. Have fun, darling. Go dancing, smoke, laugh, be young. Be young when you can. It will all be over soon enough. Then you’ll have plenty of time to muddle yourself with married dentists.”

“Is this what you talk to Tania about?” Dasha whispered. “Lazarevo?”

Deda laughed. “Your sister hasn’t
once
sat on this bench asking
me
for guidance.”

“No, she’s too busy swinging like a freckled monkey off the trees,” grumbled Dasha.

“That’s right. And you want it to end so she can sit here glum like you?”

Dasha fell silent. She liked her grandfather’s arm around her, and he did not take it away.

“Protect her, Dasha,” whispered Deda. “It’ll be gone for her soon enough.”

In the house, Tatiana was on top of her bed, buried in her book. She didn’t stir, not when Dasha came in, not when she sat on the edge of the bed, not when she slapped her sister’s behind with her open hand. What Tatiana said without missing a breath was, “Hmm.”

“Tania.”

“Hmm.”

Dasha swiped the book out of her hands. “You’re
still
reading
Queen Margot
?”

“I’m
re
reading it.” Tatiana turned over on her back.

“Why?” Dasha leafed through it indifferently. “Does it have a happy end?”

“Hardly happy. To save the Queen, La Môle sacrifices his life, is so horribly tortured that he sweats blood, and is then beheaded as she weeps.”

“She never forgets him?”

“I don’t know. The story ends with his death.”

“Does she love again?”

“I don’t know,” Tatiana said slowly. “The story ends with his death.”

Dasha smiled. “Is that the kind of love you want, Tanechka? Great passion, short-lived, ending with his torture and death?”

“Hardly,” Tatiana muttered, staring with confusion at Dasha. “Is that the kind of love
you
want?”

Dasha laughed. “Tania,” she said, “I’d settle for anything but what I’ve got at the moment. Now go to sleep. Are you ready for bed?”

“I’m in bed, aren’t I?” Tatiana stretched out.

“Did you wash? Brush your teeth?”

“Yes, Dasha,” said Tatiana solemnly. “I did what I’m supposed to. I’m not a child, you know.”

“No?” said Dasha, gently touching Tatiana’s barely budding chest.

“Oh, stop it,” Tatiana said easily without moving away. “What do you need from me?”

“Who said I need anything from you?”

Tatiana sat up. Her clear eyes on Dasha, she sat, blinked twice, twice again, placed her hand on Dasha’s face and said, “What? What is it?”

Sighing, Dasha kissed her hand and stood up. “Lights out. I don’t care what Queen Margot is getting up to with her Protestant lover.”

In the middle of the night, Dasha was woken up by whimpering coming from near her bed. She opened her eyes to find Tatiana crawling to her bedside.

“What’s the matter?” Dasha whispered. Tatiana found the corner of the blanket. Dasha helped her by lifting it. Tatiana was still whimpering.

“Had a bad dream. Very bad dream. That Saika just won’t leave me alone, even in my nightmares.” Softly crying, she crept in. Dasha turned on her side and opened her arms. Tatiana’s warm frightened body curved against her. Dasha’s arms went around Tatiana, who pushed her spine as far as she could into Dasha, curled up, her head on Dasha’s arm and whispered, “When are they going to stop?”

“Never,” said Dasha. “You just become scared of different things. What was the dream about?”

But Tatiana didn’t answer. Pasha was snoring in the cattycornered bed by the window. Dasha lay awake, feeling Tatiana’s blonde body rise and fall in the pale moon light of night. Tatiana, she whispered, curl up against me, press yourself against me, and sleep in my arms where I have missed you these days in Luga, so used I am to sleeping with you in our bed in Leningrad. Rise and fall and tell me why it is that when you crawl in to seek comfort by me and find your sleep, I, instead, am comforted by you. Tell me that as you rise and fall.

And your head of hair so silk and your heart so light and your breath like a baby’s, and your golden halo around you as you tread and read and speak, and our hearts become lighter when we hear your voice when we know you are near. We worry less about ourselves when you are here, and your spirit trickles out drop by drop and stills our restless hearts.

BOOK TWO: ITHACA

Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint.

D
EUTERONOMY
8:15

CHAPTER SEVEN
Conjugal Compromises

Where To?

In the hammock in Key West, above the sand, near the ocean
, in the heart of the tropics, tanned, freckled, scarred, together they lay, Alexander on his back, legs splayed, and Tatiana on top of him, on her back, legs together, staring up into the overhanging moss oaks. He was wearing his white swim trunks; she, a white bathing bottom and a bandana kerchief tied in a bow around her chest. His jet hair was longer and spiky; he was darkly tanned. She was golden but looked like snow in his arms by comparison. Once in a while his hands would drift languidly to fondle her breasts. His lips were rubbing against her briny ocean hair. She smelled of salt and coconut suntan lotion, which always made him a little light-headed.

They were talking about states. It was the deep summer of 1949. “Shura, be good. If you touch my breasts again, this conversation will be over.”

“This is supposed to stop me?”

“Come on, where were we?”

“We were crossing off states and caressing your…”

“Oh, yes. We were having a trivial conversation about where to spend the rest of our life.” They had returned to Miami for the winter, to work the boats again, and then travelled south to the Keys for the summer.

“Shura!”

“Okay, okay. Where were we? You said snow states are out. So no DC? Richter won’t be happy,” Alexander said. “You know how he likes me right by his side. And your Vikki won’t be happy. You know how she likes you right by hers.”

“They’ll have to move where we are, won’t they? Now then. No snow. So—no Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York”—Tatiana sighed theatrically but longingly—“Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington. They’re all out.”

“Also no Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska,” Alexander added.

“Is that all?”

“Wait, West Virginia. Maryland. Virginia.”

“It doesn’t snow in Virginia,” Tatiana said.

“Tell that to General Sherman,” said Alexander.

“Fine. Twenty-one states left.”

“Aren’t you a good little counter. A capitalist, a geologist, a cartographer, and a mathematician, too.” He laughed, bending his head, trying to see the expression on her face.

She turned her face up to him. “The Oregon woods are out,” she said softly. “Because it rains all the time. Also, it’s on the water.”

“Are we excluding water states?”

“You don’t have to,” she said. “But nothing is going to sway back and forth in my home state except a hammock.”

“So no California? No Napa Valley?” He smiled. “No more champagne?” Pulling down her bandana top, he played with her bouncy stand-up swell and swelling breasts.

“You can buy me all the champagne you like,” she murmured, her hips lightly rubbing into him. “I hear they sell it in all forty eight states. So no California. Or North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida—”

“Hold on there. We’re reserving Florida. That’s my one peremptory challenge.”

“Fine. No Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi—”

“Wait,” Alexander said, “Mississippi is on the water?”

She tilted her head back. “You’re joking, right?”

“Oh, come on, we don’t have to live right on the river.”

“The state
is
the river.”

“Oh, fine.”

“Moving right along. Texas.”

“Texas is on the water?” he said with surprise.

“Have you never heard of the Gulf of Mexico?”

“We’ll live in Abilene, which has never heard of the Gulf of Mexico.”

“Moving right along. What does that leave?”

“Europe, I think,” Alexander muttered.

“Nevada. Nevada is out because I’m not living in a state where the only thing my husband will be able to do for a living is play poker in cathouses.”

Alexander laughed. “Really?” he said. “You don’t think my playing poker in cathouses fits your definition of a normal life?”

“Moving right along. Utah…mmm, a possibility. The mountains are real.”

“Tatiasha? In Utah, can I get myself one more wife?”

“Utah’s out.”

He tweaked her, kissed her, rubbed her, pressed her to him, ground against her for good measure. She absorbed it all. “Oklahoma is out,” she finally said, “just because.”

“So what are we left with?”

“New Mexico, Arizona, Florida,” she said. “Florida is out. Too much sway.”

“Arizona is out then,” he said. “Not enough.”

“Well, the choice is clear. New Mexico it is.”

They fell quiet.

He wanted Miami.

She wanted Phoenix. “Shura, come on—no rivers!”

“Salt River.”

“No winter.”

“No oceans either.”

“Nothing familiar, nothing old. And other soldiers live in Phoenix.”

“You want me to associate with other soldiers?”

“It’s the last thing I want, but they at least understand things. You say, I was at war, and they nod their heads, and say no more because they don’t need to. They know. No one wants to talk about it. That’s what I want,” she said. “Not to talk about it.”

“Is there a military base in Phoenix?”

“No, but there’s a training facility in Yuma, two hundred miles away, and an actual army intelligence base at Fort Huachuca, near Tucson, also two hundred miles away.”

“I see my topless tadpole has done a little background work,” he said, his thumbs kneading her. “Two hundred miles away? Once a month?”

“We’ll all go with you, spend the weekend,” she said. “We’ll stay in married quarters.” She squirmed away from his fingers. “Ant and I will sightsee and you can debrief, translate, evaluate dossiers and documents to your and Richter’s hearts’ content.”

“It’s too hot in Phoenix,” Alexander said.

She gave him a look. It was 93°F in Key West that morning.

“It’s too hot
and
there is no ocean,” he said.

“There’ll be lots of work.”

“I’m not convinced,” he said. “I can work anywhere.”

“Yes, but you’ve already smelled like lobsters. You already carted young ladies around on boats. You’ve picked apples and grapes and corn. What about something good for yourself, Shura?”

He didn’t have a flip response to that, though he was thinking of one.

“Phoenix was an ancient Roman bird,” she said, “that set fire to itself, burned down, and then rebuilt itself anew out of its own ashes. Phoenix reborn.”

“Hmm.”

“Did I mention it doesn’t get cold?”

“Once or twice,” he said. “Miami doesn’t get cold either.”

“I know you love your water, but we can build a pool. In Phoenix there is no past. That’s how I want to live. As if I have no past.”

“I’ll be in Phoenix. Hard to forget the past when me and my tattoos are on top of you, Tania.” His long legs wrapped around her.

Picking up his dark hand off her white breast and kissing it, she pressed it to her face. “Yes, I’ve learned that lesson well. For better or worse, Alexander,” she said, “you’re the ship I sail on—and go down with.”

“Did you say go down with or on?”

She pulled his forearm hair. “You I take with me—to our ninety-seven acres of America. We have nothing else to do but live there and die there. And when we die, we can be buried on the land by our mountain.” She almost smiled. “Not in the ice, not in the frozen earth, but near a sunset. We can call it our Riddarholm Mountain, like that place in Stockholm, and we can be buried there like kings and heroes in our own Temple of Fame.”

“You’re daydreaming of dying then?” asked Alexander. “Is this how you always get what you want?”

“I don’t always get what I want. If I got what I wanted,” said Tatiana, staring up into the moss oaks, “we wouldn’t be orphans, you and I.”

They went to Phoenix.

Double Wide or Triple Wide?

“Let’s buy a mobile home and put it on our property.”
That was him.

“You mean a
trailer
?” That was her.

“Not a trailer,” Alexander said patiently. “A mobile home. Have you noticed your Temple of Fame-y ninety-seven acres have no house? Where would you like to live while we save up for one? In the tent?”

They were sitting cross-legged opposite each other in the clay sand on their land on top of Jomax. Anthony was chasing Gila monsters or collecting cholla blooms. The electricity had finally been run on their unpaved upwardly sloping road. A mile down near Pima someone had built two small homes. The desert was singed; it was scorching July. Alexander sat palms out with Tatiana’s little palms flat on top of his.