Paullina Simons - The Summer Garden

Tatiana continued to stand in front of him and not speak.

“We’re leaving tomorrow morning,” he said finally. “We’re leaving and going to Washington.”

“No!”

“ No? ”

“That’s right, no. Absolutely under no circumstances. We stay put. We go nowhere. Unless it’s to the woods in Oregon.”

“I’m not going to the woods in Oregon,” said Alexander. “I’m not hiding out in the Urals. Or Bethel Island.”

Tatiana bent to him, raising her voice, carrying it far. “We’re not going, and that’s it ,” she said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

He frowned at her angry face. “Well, I’m going.”

Her mouth trembled as she straightened up. “Oh, that’s just perfect, you’re going, you , like you’re all by yourself, only you. Returning to the front, are you? Well, then, you’re going to have to go without me, Alexander. This time if you go, you go alone. Anthony and I aren’t coming with you.”

He got up so furiously he knocked the chair down behind him and the plates and the glasses and his cigarettes. Tatiana backed away, her hands up; he took one lunging step toward her. “Oh, that’s just fucking priceless!”

“Shura, stop!”

He loomed too close to her on the dock. “You’re threatening me with leaving? ”

“I’m not threatening you with leaving!” she yelled. “You’re the one who’s telling me you’re going by yourself. I’m telling you we’re not going!”

“We are!”

“No!”

Anthony came out, having been awakened by their raised voices, and stood warily on the edge of the dock. Raggedly panting, they stared at each other. Then Tatiana took the boy inside and didn’t come back out.

After a long while Alexander returned to the house to find her under the covers. He sat on the bed, and she turned away in a coil.

“What, that’s it?” he said. “You walked away, in the middle, got into bed, and that’s it ?”

“What more is there?” she said tonelessly.

“My own government is looking for me,” he said. “I won’t have it.”

Tatiana shuddered.

“Don’t you understand—they’re going to come for me, Tania,” said Alexander. “One day, they’ll find me, working on a farm somewhere, picking grapes, making wine, driving a boat, catching lobster, and the statute of limitations won’t run out on me.”

“Yes, it will,” she said. “After ten years it will.”

“Are you joking?” he whispered into her back. “Ten years ? What are you talking about? What am I, in espionage? I’ve done nothing wrong!”

“Well, if you go back, they’re going to cuff you and put you away for obstructing justice, for running from the law, or even for treason. You’ll be in prison though you did nothing wrong. Or worse—they’ll …” She was speaking into the pillow, Alexander could barely hear her.

“So what do you propose?” he said. “Living your life hoping you’re going to stay one step ahead of the United States government?”

“I can’t have this argument with you, Shura,” said Tatiana. “I just can’t.”

Alexander turned her to face him, she turned back. He moved her to him, she moved away, pulling the blankets over her head. He removed all the pillows, all the blankets and threw them on the floor, leaving her naked on the empty sheet. She covered her body from him. He pulled her hands away; she struggled against him. He bent to her bare stomach, to the soft gold space below her navel, pressed his mouth to it, whispering to her, touch me, touch my head . She was shaking and didn’t. He lay on top of her naked body in all his clothes, flat on her, but since there was no peace inside her, there was no peace for him. Piercing her sadness with his sadness, barely undressing, he made deaf mute love to her and then they lay deaf mute, unable to utter the things that were piercing them—he thought he had made himself so clear, and she thought she hadn’t made herself clear enough.

Her back was to him. His back was to her. “I won’t live like this,” said Alexander. “This was my life in the Soviet Union, trapped, running, lying, afraid. This can’t be my life in America. This can’t be what you want for us.”

“I just want you,” she said. “I’ll take you in the Ural Mountains, I don’t care how many men you kill with your desertion. I know, it’s unforgivable, but I don’t care. I will take you running and trapped and lying. I will take you any way. I don’t care how difficult it will be. Everything has been difficult.”

“Tania, please. You don’t mean it.”

“Oh, yes, I do,” she said. “How little you know me. Better take that magazine quiz again, Shura.”

“That’s right,” he said, “I obviously don’t know you at all. How could you have kept this from me?”

Tatiana didn’t reply; a gasp was all that came from her.

Alexander unrolled her out of her fetal ball, holding her wrists away from her face. “All this time you deceived me, and now you say you won’t come with me?”

“Please,” she whispered. “Please, you are so blind! I’m begging you, begging you, please see reason. Listen to me. We can’t go to them.”

“I lived in a prison already,” said Alexander, squeezing her wrists, bearing down on her. “Don’t you understand? I want a different life with you.”

“See, that’s the difference between us. I just want a life with you,” said Tatiana, not struggling against him at all, lying fragile and open under his hands. “I told you this back in Russia. I didn’t care if we lived in my cold Fifth Soviet room with Stan and Inga at our door. All I wanted was to live there with you. I don’t care if we live here on Bethel Island, or in one small room on Deer Isle. Soviet Union, Germany, here—it doesn’t matter. I just want it with you.”

“On the run, hiding out, forever scared?” he said. “That’s how you want it?”

“Any which way,” she said, crying. “Just with you.”

“Oh, Tania,” he said, letting go of her.

She crawled to him, grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Not now, not in Russia, not ever ,” she said with sobbing anger, “did you ever protect yourself for my sake, for Anthony’s sake!”

“Shh,” he said, opening his arms. “Come here. Shh.”

But she wouldn’t come, her hands clenched in supplication. “Please, let’s not go,” she said. “For Anthony. He needs a father.”

“Tania …”

“For me,” she whispered.

Frozen in time they remained on the bed in a November Leningrad embrace.

“I swore to myself in Berlin,” she said into his chest, “that they would never have you again.”

“I know,” Alexander said. “So what are you going to do? Inject me full of morphine like you planned to, kill me like you wouldn’t kill Colonel Moore?” He extended his upturned forearm to her, tapping on his tattooed blue numbers. “Go ahead. Right here, Tatiana.”

“Oh, stop it, just stop it!” she whispered madly, slapping his arm away.

They didn’t speak the rest of the night.

In the morning, without saying a word to each other and barely one to Anthony they packed their things and left Bethel Island. Mr. Shpeckel waved goodbye to them from his boat, a regretful look about him in the pale sunrise. “What did I tell you, Captain?” he called after Alexander. “I always knew you were runners.”

After a traveling day of stunning silence, somewhere in the drifting sands of Nevada, Alexander whispered, cradling her in the sleeping bag, “They won’t have me again. I promise you.”

“Yes,” she said. “Not them, not me.”

“Come on, I’ll take care of it. Trust me.”