Paullina Simons - The Summer Garden

She groaned in remonstration.

He lay quietly behind her, cut off mid-sentence, mid-pain. He couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t get out of the tent fast enough. He said nothing, just left.

Tatiana lay inside by Anthony. She was cold. When the boy was finally asleep, she crawled out of the tent. Alexander was sitting wrapped in a blanket by the fading fire.

“Why do you always do that?” he said coldly, not turning around. “On the one hand you draw me into ridiculous conversations and are upset I won’t speak to you, but when I speak to you about things that actually gnaw at me, you shut me down like a trap door.”

Tatiana was taken aback. She didn’t do that, did she?

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, you do do that.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Then why do you?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t help that I can’t talk about Ant’s unspeakable dreams. Or yours.” She was terror-stricken enough.

“Well, run along then, back in the tent.” He continued to sit and smoke.

She pulled on him. He jerked away.

“I said I was sorry,” Tatiana murmured. “Please come back inside. I’m very cold, and you know I can’t go to sleep without you. Come on.” She lowered her voice as she bent to him. “Into our tent.”

In the tent he didn’t undress, remaining in his long johns as he climbed inside the sleeping bag. She watched him for a few moments, as she tried to figure out what he wanted from her, what she should do, what she could do. What did he need?

Tatiana undressed. Bare and unprotected, fragile and susceptible, she climbed into the sleeping bag, squeezing in under his hostile arm. She wanted him to know she wasn’t carrying any weapons.

“Shura, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I know all about my boy. I know all about the consequences of my leaving him. But there is nothing I can do now. I just have to try to make him better. And he does have both his parents for my trouble and his trouble. I’m hoping in the end, somewhere down the line, that will mean something to him, having his father. That the balance of things will somehow be restored by the good that’s come from my doing the unforgivable.”

Alexander didn’t say anything. He wasn’t touching her either.

Putting his hand under his crew, she rubbed his stomach. “I’m so cold, Shura,” she whispered. “Look, you’ve got a cold nude girl in your tent.”

“Cold is right,” he said.

Pressing herself against him, Tatiana opened her mouth and he cut her off half-murmur. “Stop this whole speaking thing. Just let me go to sleep.”

She sucked in her breath, held her other words back, and tugged at him, opening her arms to him, but he remained unapproachable. “Forget about comfort, forget about peace,” he said, “but even what kind of relief do you think I’m going to get from you when you’re all clenched up and upset like this? The milk of kindness is not exactly flowing from you tonight.”

“What, and you’re not upset?” she said quietly.

“I’m not bothering you , am I?”

They lay by each other. He unzipped the bag halfway on his side and sat up. After opening the tent flaps for some air, he lit a cigarette. It was cold in the Canyon at night. Shivering, she watched him, considering her options, assessing the various permutations and combinations, factoring in the X-factor, envisioning several moves ahead, and then her hand crept up and lay on his thigh. “Tell me the truth,” Tatiana said carefully. “Tell me here and now, the years without me … in the penal battalion … in the Byelorussian villages—were you really without a woman like you told me or was that a lie?”

Alexander smoked. “It was not a lie, but I didn’t have much choice, did I? You know where I was—in Tikhvin, in prison, at the front with men. I wasn’t in New York dancing with my hair down with men full of live ammo.”

“My hair was never down, first of all,” she said, unprovoked, “but you told me that once, in Lublin, you did have a choice.”

“Yes,” he said. “I came close with the girl in Poland.”

Tatiana waited, listened. Alexander continued, “And then after we were captured, I was in POW camps and Colditz with your brother, and then Sachsenhausen—without him. First fighting with men, then guarded by men, beaten by men, interrogated by men, shot at by men, tattooed by men. Few women in that world.” He shuddered.

“But … some women?”

“Some women, yes.”

“Did you … taint yourself with a Gulag wife?”

“Don’t be absurd, Tatiana,” Alexander said, low and heavy. “Don’t divide my words by your false questions. You know what I said to you has nothing to do with that.”

“Then what did you mean? Tell me. I know nothing. Tell me where you went when you left me in Deer Isle for four days. Were you with a woman then?”

“Tatiana! God!”

“You’re not answering me.”

“No! For God’s sake! Did you see me when I came back? Enough of this already, you’re degrading me.”

“And you’re not degrading me by your worries?” she whispered.

“No! You believed I was dead. In New York you weren’t betraying me, you were continuing your merry widowed life. Big fucking difference, Tania.”

Hearing his tone, Tatiana moved away from the verbal parrying, though what she wanted to say was, “Obviously you don’t think it’s such a big difference.” But she knew when enough was enough with him. “Why won’t you tell me where you went in Maine?” she whispered. “Can’t you see how afraid I am?” She was upset he wasn’t willing to comfort her. He was never willing to comfort her.

“I don’t want to tell you,” Alexander said, “because I don’t want to upset you.”

Tatiana became so scared by his hollow voice that she actually changed the subject to other unmentionables. “What about my brother? Did he have a prison wife?”

Alexander smoked deeply. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Oh, great. So there’s nothing you want to talk about.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, good night then.” She swirled away. Really a symbolic gesture, swirling away, turning your narrow naked back to an enormous dressed man next to whom you’re still lying in one sleeping bag.

Alexander sighed into the smoke, inhaled it. With one arm, he flipped her back to him. “Don’t turn away from me when we’re like this,” he said. “If you must have an answer, a laundry girl in Colditz fell in love with Pasha and gave it to him for free.”

Tears came to Tatiana’s eyes. “Yes. He was very good at having girls fall in love with him,” she said quietly. She settled as close as she could into Alexander’s unwelcoming side. “Almost as good as you,” she whispered achingly.

Alexander didn’t say anything.

Tatiana tried hard to stop shivering. “In Luga, in Leningrad, Pasha was always in love with one girl or another.”

“I think he was mistaking love for something else,” said Alexander.

“Unlike you, Shura?” she whispered, desperately wishing for some intimacy from him.

“Unlike me,” was all he said.

She lay mutely. “Did you have yourself a little laundry girl?” Her voice trembled.

“You know I did. You want me to tell you about her?” Throwing his cigarette away, he leaned over her, putting his hand between her thighs. Just like that. No kissing, no stroking, no caressing, no whispering, no preamble, just the hand between her thighs. “She is maddening,” he said. “She is mystifying. She is bewildering, and infuriating.” His other hand went under her head, into her hair.

“She is true.” Tatiana tried to stay still. She was feeling not mystifying but sickly vulnerable at the moment—naked and small in complete blackness with his overwhelming clothed body, too strong for its own good, over her; with his heavy soldier hand on her most vulnerable place. She forgot her mission, which was to bring him comfort from the things that assailed him. “And she gives it to you for free,” she whispered, her hands grasping his jersey.