The Summer Garden

by Paullina Simons

  “Talk to the wild beasts about what?” said Tatiana, coming down the porch steps.

  “Nothing, nothing,” said Dasha. Deda kissed the top of Tatiana’s head and went back to stringing up his cucumbers on their supports.

  Pasha asked her if she had heard them talking. “I heard you shouting, yes.”

  “Did you hear what we were shouting about?”

  “If I listened to what this family shouted about every time they shouted, I’d never read a word of anything.” Tatiana grinned. “Tell me what were you shouting about.”

  “Nothing,” said Dasha. “Go set the table, will you, and slice the bread. Don’t forget to give me the thickest piece, right near the crust.”

  “You can have all the bread you can eat and then you’ll get nice and fat, Dasha,” said Tatiana, skipping inside.

  In the evening after dinner, Deda and Dasha watched Tania and Pasha playing loud dominoes. Tania was loud-winning as always and Pasha was loud-sore-losing, as always. They played fifteen, sixteen games, and Pasha lost every one. “How! Tell me, how do you do that! How do you always win at this! You do something, you cheat, I know you do! Deda, play Tania, let me see if you can beat her.”

  “I beat her in chess, that’s enough for me,” said Deda, smiling at Tatiana.

  Leaving Pasha to his bitter defeat, Dasha sat with her grandfather on the bench outside in the overgrown garden. Moving over slightly, Deda said, “Dasha, don’t blow your cigarette smoke into my face.”

  “What are you going to tell your Tania when she starts smoking?” Dasha said, moving away.

  “I’ll tell her not to blow her smoke in my face.”

  Dasha sighed. Why did she suspect that though Deda loved her, he slightly disapproved of her, as if somehow her conduct in life was less to his liking than, say, Tania’s. Pasha, as the only male child, was beyond reproach. Why not Dasha, too? What did she do or not do? Didn’t she cook and clean and take care of the urchins as if she were their mother?

  Deda put his arm around Dasha, and she threw away her cigarette. “I struggle, Dedushka,” Dasha said quietly. “I struggle all the time.”

  “Dasha, dear, it’s good to have conflict inside you. Struggle away.” Dasha wanted to know what specifically Deda was referring to. Stefan and Mark? Dasha was not married, and she was young. She just wanted to have a bit of fun. Was that so wrong?

  “Does Tania struggle?” she asked. “She doesn’t think about things she can’t understand.”

  “How convenient,” said Dasha. “Can I be that blind? But she reads more than anyone, how can she read Stendhal’s The Red and the Black and not see the corruption, the immorality, the lust underneath all those proper skirts and trousers the ladies and gentlemen of France wear? How can she read so much yet see nothing?”

  “Tania sees nothing?” said Deda, turning his surprised gaze at Dasha.

  “That’s the whole problem, isn’t it? If she saw, you think she’d be up in that tree in her dress?”

  Deda shook his head. “What a miracle,” he whispered, kissing Dasha. “Granddaughter, I didn’t know you too were so funny. Despite your problems, you are growing up to be a fine and funny young woman. But willfully or inadvertently, you’re misunderstanding your sister.”

  “I am?”

  “Of course. Haven’t you figured out by now,” Deda said, “that Tania sees through everything, right from the start?”

  “She doesn’t see through Kirill and Volodya.”

  “She does. She knows they’re harmless. So don’t worry about her. Worry only about your own life.”

  “What’s to worry about?” said Dasha, her face falling. “We are all fish swimming in the same water. We don’t know we can’t breathe in the air.”

  “You’re right, our choices are slightly blunted,” agreed Deda. “But we don’t all live the same life. Do you see the Kantorovs? You think they swim in the same water we do?”

  “Yes.”

  Deda was quiet. “What, you don’t like them either? Tania keeps saying the Saika girl is no good.”

  Without answering, Deda said, “You know who I like?”

  “Tania?”

  “No. Your grandmother. Her I like. Her I have an opinion on. Otherwise, I refrain from all judgment.”

  But Dasha did not think he was refraining. “Dedushka, what am I supposed to do?” she said plaintively, suddenly in the confessional. “I don’t want to be playing these games with my boss, but what are my alternatives?”

  “You’re telling your grandfather too much,” said Deda. “His pregnant wife will have nowhere to go after he kicks her out,” Dasha continued.

  “Dasha, stop!”

  Dasha stopped, briefly. “They still live with his mother, in one room,” she said quietly. “But where’s he going to go? Can he come and live with us? Can he sleep in one bed with me and Tania?”

  Deda did not reply.

  “This is what I mean about my choices,” Dasha said. “You see I’m trying. Just trying to find a little love, Dedushka. Like you and Babushka. Did you have a place to live, to be alone, when you fell in love, when you married?”

  “It was at the turn of the century,” said Deda, “and we had a great big apartment in the center of town, near Aleksandr Pushkin’s house on Moika Canal.” Wistfully he smiled. “We had your father and your Aunt Rita there. We lived happily and well for many years.”

  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 rereading 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 wa
nt?”

  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.

  DEUTERONOMY 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 so
ldiers?”

  “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 93oF 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.