Bellagrand: A Novel

by Simons, Paullina

  Alexander stared into the bin where The Man Without a Country lay broken-spined and discarded. “I don’t normally keep clothes under my bed, Dad,” he said. “Do you?”

  “Well, then, find it, clever clogs. Eighty-five minutes.” Harry walked out of the room, his shoes making a stern tap-tap on the wooden floor.

  Alexander studied the National Geographic map of the United States his mother had hung in his room to help him with his lessons. Turning to the mirror, he theatrically clenched his fist, furrowed his brow, deepened his voice, tried to make himself look as intense and fierce as he imagined Philip Nolan might have looked, and whispered, his clenched hand shaking, the other pointing to the reflected map of America, “You see? I have a country!”

  Chapter 21

  THE SNAKE AND THE FALCON

  GIA, LOOK! ARE YOU looking?” Harry’s excitement was infectious. “You have to admit they’re amazing. I’ve never seen anything like these Alps. This is just—look how close we are! We can almost touch them.”

  He was right. They could almost touch them. The train raced its way along the side of the carved-out mountain, perilously plunging into tunnels, nearly grazing the rocky cliffs. Alexander said it was like a roller-coaster ride on Revere Beach during the summer fair. Which is better? she asked, but he didn’t reply.

  In the valleys outside Gina’s window were farms, and fields, and women working. One woman, struggling uphill, carried her son on her hip and a large metal bucket. Both looked too heavy for her, because she was so small, but somehow she balanced, she managed. Gina watched Alexander watching the woman, her little boy, her bucket. He was tall now, and big, but it wasn’t so long ago that she had carried him everywhere on her hip the way that woman was carrying her own son.

  “Dad is right, Mom. It is beautiful here. What country are we in now? Austria?”

  Gina’s eyes didn’t leave Alexander, sitting across from her by his father’s side.

  I’ve seen this beauty, she wanted to say. I’ve lived with beauty my whole life. I grew up at the foot of Etna. We were born and raised looking out at the peak of that majestic, fearsome volcano. When Salvo, Alessandro, and I climbed the hills, we could see all the way down to the blue Catania. We swam all year round in the Ionian Sea. I know what beauty is. I’ve seen donne contadine carry their children. There is no reason to romanticize it. It was easier for me to raise my son in Boston than it was for my mother to raise me and my brothers on the outskirts of Belpasso in a hut with no running water. Many years ago we sailed to America because my father wanted to give me and my brothers a chance at something more than carrying buckets of water and milk uphill along with our hip-sized children. He who cut hair and made violins, though he himself had never played the violin, the barber of Belpasso, the greatest man I’ve ever known, the love of my young life, he wanted us to study, to learn, to become successful, to become anything we wanted. Even me, a girl, his only daughter. He wanted me not to be defined by my sex or my children. Gina studied her son, sitting next to his occupied father, forehead pressed against the glass, gazing at the mountains. And yet—here I am, defined by my one child. I am defined more by the one child I have than my father’s mother was by the twelve children she had. My motherhood is undiluted by quantity.

  They were moving down the mountain. Soon the Alps would be behind them, the way America was, the way Italy was. They would leave Austria, be in Hungary, then Poland, they would switch trains, push east and north past Warsaw, be in Moscow in two days, three? Moscow. To think. Her fingers trembling, Gina glanced across at Harry. The image maker, the pulpit maker, the objection maker. His objection had been first to her youth, then to her anarchy, then to her love. To the ties she imposed on him, to the conventions of a normal life she forced on him, to the baby she desperately wanted from him, at whatever the cost. He objected to her desire to live as a normal woman, not as a revolutionary. He objected to it all. He didn’t want the upper-class life any more than he wanted the ghetto of Lawrence or the mansions of heaven or the whiteout of Bellagrand, their one brief shining moment in the blinding sun.

  Alexander coughed. Instantly Gina blinked, came to. “Why are you coughing?”

  “I am a child, Mother. A human being. I got a piece of bread stuck in my human child throat. I coughed to clear it.”

  “Come here, let me feel your forehead.”

  “Leave him alone, Gina. He’s fine.”

  “I said come here. Are you sick?”

  Dutifully he came and squeezed in between her and the window. “I’m fine. I coughed.” But because he was Alexander, he coughed again, dramatically hacking and doubling over. “Just kidding, Mom,” he said when she grabbed him by the shoulders and started pounding his back. “I’m fine. You’ve got to learn to relax. Otherwise you’ll soon be just like Dad.”

  They both looked across at Harry, now sitting by himself, reading, making notes in those Cyrillic hieroglyphs he had been studying. He looked over at them, somber and unsmiling. “What is it?” he said. “I’m practicing Russian. Which is what you should be doing instead of clowning around, coughing, reminiscing like silly children.”

  “But I am a silly child, Dad.”

  “Stop it.” Harry looked down into his books. Gina and Alexander turned back to each other, and to their mountains. She gave the boy some chocolate, and he nibbled on it, not taking his eyes from the river streaming through the valley, from the bare trees in brown contrast against the sky. She stroked his black hair. He would need another haircut soon. His hair grew too fast. Like him.

  “Are you excited, son?”

  “About what? Oh.” He paused. “That.” He sucked on the last of the chocolate. “Sure. Why not? Aren’t you?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Hey, Mom, did we bring any money for this adventure?” he asked. “Dad told me we won’t need any in Moscow. But he was joking, right?”

  “I wasn’t joking, son,” Harry said. “We didn’t bring any money because we don’t need any money. The Soviet government will set us up, and then I will find work. We’ll be fine. That’s the whole point. We are not going to be defined by how much we have—”

  “But by how much we don’t?”

  “Don’t be fresh.”

  “Sorry.” He nudged his mother. “Is that true, Mom?”

  “Yes, don’t be fresh.”

  Gina did not want to catch Alexander’s eye when he posed his question, when he turned to her searching her face for the truth. Putting her arm around him, she drew him to her and put a palm over his face. She jostled him a bit, distracted him, and soon they turned their gazes once again to the countryside beyond their windows, watching the Danube flow past them . . . hours . . . days . . . through Belgrade, through Budapest.

  “Mom, what was that thing you used to sing to me? I can’t remember. But you used to do this thing, when you held me like this. You would say words and kiss me between them.”

  “I kiss you all the time.” To prove it, she kissed him. “What words?”

  “I don’t know. Something singsongy. For bedtime.”

  “How did it go?”

  “Are you listening? I don’t know. Something like . . .” He tried to remember. “My bubby rubby bug. My hip, my bubbiness, my bug, my bug, my bug.”

  She laughed. “Yup, that’s it.”

  “Mom!”

  “What? You got it. Exactly right.”

  He tickled her to get her to stop teasing him. “How did it really go?”

  She took his head in her hands. “My bubby rubby bug—” She kissed him.

  “Mom!” He tried to get free, but she wouldn’t let him. “Are you going to tell me, or are you just going to sit here and joke?”

  She pretended to think about it. “I’m going to sit here and joke.”

  He continued to tickle her.

  She continued to laugh.

  “You two are so loud, I can’t hear myself think,” Harry said, putting down his books and getting up. “How long are these
childish games going to continue?”

  They pretended to quiet down. Harry stepped out of the compartment to stretch his legs.

  As soon as the door closed behind him, Gina spoke. “Don’t worry, son,” she said in a low voice, rushing through her words. “Don’t tell your dad, but I brought a little something with us. A small nest egg. Just in case. You know? For a rainy day.”

  Alexander studied her face. “I thought we were broke. That’s what Dad said. That’s one of the reasons we had to leave, he said. We had nothing left.”

  “Well, he’s right.” She swallowed, dry-mouthed. “Still, though. A few extra dollars to exchange for rubles might come in handy, in case we need something.”

  “Where did you get it? Did it come with you from Italy?”

  “From Italy? When I was fourteen?” She ruffled his black head. “No, rubby bug. I didn’t bring it from Italy. From there we truly came with nothing. What money we had saved, we spent on my father’s funeral. Your grandfather’s. The one you are named after.”

  “I know who I’m named after, Mom,” Alexander said. “Where did you get the money from then, if we have no money?”

  “From a secret place.”

  “What place?”

  “A green valley surrounded by mountains,” Gina said. “An isolated, forever happy land far away from the troubles of the outside world. A mythical kingdom.”

  “If it’s mythical, how is the money real?”

  After she found out what Harry had really been up to behind her back, and she started to make plans to take Alexander to Florida, Gina had gone to the bank. Back then, there was still plenty of money, although less than she had expected. After she returned from Miami and discovered that Harry had moved them to a smaller place and sold their furniture, she intended to redeposit it, but never got the chance.

  Hundreds of parchment notes, crisp, clean, recently minted. A stash so slim it was barely a bump in the smallest pocket of her purse on the train seat next to her, barely a dent sewn carefully into the silken lining.

  And although she had initially felt slight remorse for holding on to it instead of paying their rent or their phone bill, once she discovered what Harry had wasted their money on, she regretted only one thing—not that she had taken it, but that she hadn’t taken more. Better her family to have kept it than the Workers Party. And the money wouldn’t have made much difference to Harry in the end. One more tithe to the Daily Worker, one more payment to Domarind. What hubris to think that her tidy sum could have tamped down his lofty dreams.

  Blinking, she smiled at her son. She touched his face. She pressed her fingers to his mouth in a shh. “I saved it instead of spending it, in case you might need it.”

  Alexander giggled. “What do I need money for, Mom? I’m a child.”

  “You’re not always going to be a child, are you?”

  “You better not tell Dad. Ever. He won’t forgive you for keeping secrets.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, having never been forgiven. “I’m hoping we won’t need it. But if we do, or if, God forbid, something happens to me, there is enough to take care of things for you.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean, if something happens to you?”

  She half-smiled. “I’m not getting any younger, Alexander.”

  “Hmm. I suppose not. But, Mom, no one gets any younger.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “Dad is not worried.”

  “Dad is never worried about anything.”

  “Are you worried? About moving to Russia?”

  She smiled. “No, mio caro figlio. I’m not worried either.” She kissed him. “My lovely, living boy,” she said, kissing him between each word. “My hope”—kiss—“my happiness”—kiss—“my love, my life, my joy.” Kiss, kiss, kiss.

  “That’s it, that’s the lullaby!”

  “You’re telling me? I know.”

  Harry returned, sat down.

  “You two have settled down, I hope?”

  “Dad,” Alexander said, “did you say the Soviet Union is a socialist utopia?”

  “Yes, son.” He opened his Russian books, took out his notepad, his pen.

  “Did you know that in Greek, the word utopia comes from ou, meaning no, and topos, meaning place?”

  “The English word is a homonym, Alexander, don’t think you’re so clever. The first syllable, if rendered as eu, means good.”

  “Like I was saying. A good place that doesn’t exist.”

  “It exists. I’m not going to talk about it anymore to win over you or your mother. Very soon, you will see for yourselves. Now say, menya zovut Aleksandr.”

  “Menya zovut Aleksandr,” the boy dutifully repeated, and then, leaning to his mother and lowering his voice, whispered, “Tell me the number in Russian, see if I will understand. It’s good practice for me. How much?”

  “How much what?” said Harry.

  “Nothing, Dad. Mom is teaching me how to count in Russian. Tell me, Mom,” he whispered.

  She was silent, struggling, ambivalent. “Dvatsat tysach dollarov,” she finally whispered back.

  Alexander gasped.

  “What’s wrong?” Harry looked up. “What did you see, son?”

  “Nothing, Dad, nothing.” He sat, his mouth agape, his astonished eyes unblinking.

  “That’s how you know you are fluent in Russian,” Gina said. “If you can understand spoken numbers. It’s one of the most difficult things to grasp in a foreign language. I know how hard it was for me in English.”

  Alexander slumped against the cloth seats. He glanced at his unaware and busy father, avoided catching his mother’s eye, and turned to the window, placing his forehead on the December glass. “What are we headed to,” he whispered, “if that’s for the just in case?”

  Gina didn’t answer.

  Soon Harry and Gina closed their eyes. Night fell. Only Alexander remained awake, catching the shadows of the mountains, the black peaks, the leafless trees, the needle spires, all fading from view. Teddy’s house, where his family lived, Teddy’s big house in Barrington, with a mother, a father, two sisters, and two grandparents, cost three thousand dollars. A Rolls-Royce his Aunty Esther once told Alexander she was thinking of buying cost twelve thousand dollars. And here was his mother, headed to utopia, with over six Teddy mansions or nearly two aunty Rolls-Royces stuffed in her back pocket, for the just in case.

  For reasons he didn’t understand and didn’t want to, Alexander shivered, even though he and his mother were sitting close and were both covered by an itchy wool blanket. He hoped his mother was just being cautious. She had a tendency to be like that, just as she fussed over his coughing. Perhaps girls who came from volcanic Sicilian villages whose fathers were barbers and violin makers, who once had nothing, tended to be more careful about relocations. But Alexander felt queasy now that he saw the world through the prism of the troubling greenbacks. It was as if the money had tainted something inside him, had stained his anticipation of the bright future. Instead of excitement he began to feel dread.

  Then why are we going? he wanted to ask, but his mother was sleeping. Perhaps the answer was the same as the one she had given him a while back, after his father was arrested, and she was arrested, too, because she had been by his side. Alexander had stayed on his own in their apartment until he thought to call Aunt Esther to come and get him. Thank goodness the telephone was still working then. His mother had returned home after four days, but wouldn’t bail out his father. When Harry had finally come home after a month in jail, she was as livid with him as if the wounds were still freshly bleeding. Why do we stay? Alexander asked her that night, after their terrible fighting had subsided, a violent squall dispersing into scattered showers.

  And she said, I stay because I love him. I stay because he is my family. Because you deserve to have a father. Everywhere he goes, I go. He is the ship, Alexander. We are just passengers. Condividiamo l’amarezza.

  What if the ship goes down?


  We go down, too. When I am dead and opened, his mother had said, the bitter tears still wet in her eyes, you will find your father lying on my heart.

  Tonight on the train she said to Harry before she slept, “Let’s hope Macbeth was wrong, husband. All our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.”

  “Who is Macbeth?” Alexander asked.

  Harry waved away his mother’s stab at an answer.

  “Instead of teaching our son Shakespearean overdramatized nonsense, why don’t you tell him why we’re going. Tell him instead about Maxim Gorky’s greatest prose poem, ‘The Snake and the Falcon.’ ”

  “Ah, dear Maxim again,” Gina said. “He of the lyrical descriptions of peaceful Arctic retreats for enemies of Bolshevism.” She folded her hands on her lap. “You know it so much better, Harry. Why don’t you tell it?”

  Harry got up and squeezed in between Gina and Alexander. Putting his arms around his wife and son, kissing one, then the other, he told Alexander a story. “The snake doesn’t understand the falcon. ‘Why don’t you rest here in the dark, in the good slimy moisture?’ the snake sibilates. ‘Why soar to the heavens? Don’t you know the dangers lurking there, the stress and storm awaiting you, the hunter’s gun that will bring you down and destroy your life?’ But the falcon ignores the serpent. It spreads its mighty wings and soars through the skies, its triumphant song resounding ’cross the heavens. One day the falcon is brought down, blood streaming from its heart, and the snake slithers to him and hisses: ‘You fool. I warned you. I told you to stay where I am, in the dark, in the good warm moisture, where no one could find you and harm you.’ With its last breath, the falcon replies: ‘I have soared through the skies, I have scaled dazzling heights, I have beheld the light, I have lived, I have lived!’ ”

  “That’s all I wanted my life entire,” Alexander’s now sleeping mother had said. “To be the falcon, and not the serpent.”

  Alexander could barely make out the churches in the open valleys between the hills, the low lights, the spires, and the evergreens, all shadow, but for the white crosses lit up by the dim evening lamps. The train raced on, not stopping in the small towns near the hills, towns much like the ones a young girl named Gina Attaviano left behind when she first sailed across the ocean. That sea I loved, Alexander whispered, reaching for the faint fading memory of Spanish carnivals and merry carousels, and once or twice, I touched at isles of paradise.