The Summer Garden

Alexander stopped talking. “Should I go to Bangor Hospital, too?” he asked.

“No, darling, no, Shura,” she whispered. “You have your own nurse right here. Round the clock.”

“Tania …”

“Please … shh.” They were whispering desperately, he into her hair, she into the pillow in front of her.

“Tania, would you … do it for me, if I asked? If I was … like him—”

He broke off.

“Faster than you can say Sachsenhausen.”

Click click somewhere, crickets crickets, bats and wings, Anthony snoring in the silence, in the sorrow. There was once so much Tatiana could help Alexander with. Why couldn’t she do it anymore?

Soundlessly she cried, only her shoulders quaking.

The next day Alexander took the colonel to the Bangor Army Hospital, four hours away. They left in the early morning. Tatiana filled their flasks, made them sandwiches, and washed and ironed Alexander’s khaki fatigues and a long-sleeved crew.

Before he left he asked, crouching by Anthony’s small frame, “You want me to bring you something back?”

“Yes, a toy soldier,” replied Anthony.

“You got it.” Alexander ruffled his hair and straightened up. “What about you?” he asked Tatiana, coming close to her.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said, purposefully casual. “I don’t need anything.” She was trying to look beyond his bronze eyes, into somewhere deeper, somewhere that would tell her what he was thinking, what he was feeling, trying to reach across the ocean waters she could not traverse.

Nick was already in the camper, and his wife and daughter were milling nearby. Too many people around. The backs of Alexander’s fingers stroked her cheek. “Be a good girl,” he said, kissing her hand. She pressed her forehead into his chest for a moment before he stepped away.

When he was near the cab of the Nomad, he turned around. Tatiana, standing still and erect, squeezed hard Anthony’s hand, but that was the only indication of the turmoil within her, for to Alexander she presented herself straight and true. She even managed to smile. She blew him a kiss. Her hand went up to her temple in a trembling salute.

Alexander didn’t come back that night.

Tatiana didn’t sleep.

He didn’t come back the next morning.

Or the next afternoon.

Or the next evening.

She searched through his things and saw that his weapons were gone. Only her pistol remained, the German-issue P-38 he gave her in Leningrad. It was wrapped in a towel near a large wad of bills—extra money he had made from Jimmy and left for her.

She slept in a stupor next to Anthony in his twin bed.

The next morning Tatiana went down to the docks. Jimmy’s sloop was there, and Jimmy was doing his best to repair some damage to the side. “Hey, little guy,” he said to Anthony. “Your dad back yet? I gotta go and get me some lobsters or I’m gonna go broke.”

“He’s not back yet,” said Anthony. “But he’s going to bring me a toy soldier.”

Tatiana wavered on her calf legs. “Jim, he didn’t say anything to you about how many days he was going to take off?”

Jimmy shook his head. “He did say if I wanted to, I could hire one of the other guys coming here looking for work. If he doesn’t come back soon, I’m gonna do it. I gotta get back out there.”

The morning was dazzling.

Tatiana, dragging Anthony by the hand, practically ran uphill to Bessie’s and knocked until Bessie woke up and came miserably to the door. Tatiana, without apologizing for the early call, asked if Bessie had heard from Nick or from the hospital.

“No,” Bessie said gruffly. Tatiana refused to leave until Bessie called the hospital, only to find out that the colonel had been admitted without incident two days ago. The man who brought him stayed for one day and then left. No one knew anything else about Alexander.

Another day passed.

Tatiana sat on the bench by the bay, by the morning water, and watched her son push himself on a tire swing. Her arms were twisted around her stomach. She was trying not to rock like Alexander rocked at three o’clock in the morning.

Has he left me? Did he kiss my hand and go?

No. It wasn’t possible. Something’s happened. He can’t cope, can’t make it, can’t find a way out, a way in. I know it. I feel it. We thought the hard part was over—but we were wrong. Living is the hardest part. Figuring out how to live your life when you’re all busted up inside and out—there is nothing harder. Oh dear God. Where is Alexander?

She had to go to Bangor immediately. But how? She didn’t have a car; would she and Ant go there by bus? Would they leave Stonington for good, leave their things? And go where? But she had to do something, she couldn’t just continue to sit here!

She was clenched inside, outside.

She had to be strong for her son.

She had to be resolute for him.

Everything was going to be all right.

Like a mantra. Over and over.

This is my vicious dream, Tatiana’s entire body shouted. I thought it was like a dream that he was with me again, and I was right, and now I’ve opened my eyes, and he’s gone like before.

Tatiana was watching Anthony swing, looking beyond him, dreaming of one man, imagining only one other heart in the vastness of the universe—then, now, as ever. She still flew to him.

Is he still alive?

Am I still alive?

She thought so. No one could hurt this much and be dead.

“Mama, are you watching me? I’m going to spin and spin and spin until I get dizzy and fall down. Whee! Are you watching? Watch, Mama!”

Her eyes were glazed over. “I’m watching, Antman. I’m watching.”

The air smelled so August, the sun shone so brightly, the pines, the elms, the cones, the sea, the spinning boy, just three, the young mother, not even twenty-three.

Tatiana had imagined her Alexander since she was a child, before she believed that someone like him was even possible. When she was a little girl, she dreamed of a fine world in which a good man walked its winding roads, perhaps somewhere in his wandering soul searching for her.

On the Banks of the Luga River, 1938