Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(10)

There were many Russian foods that--much to his misfortune--he discovered he loathed. Anything bathed in onions and vinegar he could not share the same table with.

Most of the Russian food placed before them by the other well-meaning compatriots of the hotel was bathed in onions and vinegar.

Except for the Russian-speaking Georgian brothers, the rest of the people on their floor did not speak much Russian at all. There were thirty other people living on the second floor of Hotel Derzhava, which meant "fortress" in Russian; thirty other people who came to the Soviet Union largely for the same reasons the Barringtons did. There was a communist family from Italy, who had been thrown out of Rome in the late twenties, and the Soviet Union took them in as their own. Harold and Alexander thought that was an honorable deed.

There was a family from Belgium, and two from England. The British families Alexander liked most because they spoke something resembling the English he knew. But Harold didn't like Alexander continuing to speak English, nor did he like the British families very much, nor the Italians, nor really anyone on that floor. Every chance he got, Harold tried to dissuade Alexander from associating with the Tarantella sisters, or with Simon Lowell, the chap from Liverpool, England. Harold Barrington wanted his son to make friends with Soviet girls and boys. He wanted Alexander to be immersed in the Moscow culture and to learn Russian, and Alexander, wanting to please his father, did.

Harold had no problem finding employment in Moscow. During his life in America he, who didn'thave to work, had dabbled in everything, and though he could do few things expertly, he did many things well, and what he didn't know he learned quickly. In Moscow the authorities placed him in a printing plant for Pravda , the Soviet newspaper, for ten hours a day cranking the mimeograph machine. He came home every night with his fingers ink-stained so dark blue they looked black. He could not wash the ink off.

He could have also been a roofer, but there wasn't much new construction in Moscow--"not yet," Harold would say, "butvery very soon." He could have been a road builder, but there wasn't much road building or repairing in Moscow--"not yet, butvery very soon."

Alexander's mother followed his father's cues; she endured everything--except the shabbiness of the facilities. Alexander teased her ("Dad, do you approve of Mom's scrubbing out the smell of the proletariat? Mom, Dad doesn't approve, stop cleaning."), but Jane would nonetheless spend an hour scrubbing the communal bathtub before she could get in it. She would clean the toilet every day after work--before she made dinner. Alexander and his father waited for their food.

"Alexander, I hope you wash your hands every time you leave that bathroom--"

"Mom, I'm not a child," said Alexander. "I know to wash my hands." He would take a long sniff. "Oh, l'eau de communism. So pungent, so strong, so--" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Stop it. And in school, too. Wash your hands everywhere."

"Yes, Mom."

Shrugging, she said, "You know, no matter how bad things smell around here they're not as bad as down the hall. Have you smelled Marta's room?"

"How could you not? The new Soviet order is especially strong in there."

"Do you know why it's so bad? She and her two sons live in there. Oh, the filth, the stench."

"I didn't know she had two sons."

"Oh, yes. They came from Leningrad to visit her last month and stayed for good."

Alexander grinned. "Are you saying they're stinking up the place?"

"Not them," Jane replied with a repugnant sneer. "The whores they bring with them from the Leningrad rail station. Every other night they have a new harlot in there with them. And they do stink up the place."

"Mom, you're so judgmental. Not everyone is able to buy Chanel perfume as they pass through Paris. Maybe you should offer the whores some--forFrench cleansing." Alexander was pleased at his own joke.

"I'm going to tell your father on you."

Father, who was right there, said, "Maybe if you stop talking to our eleven-year-old son about whores, all would be well."

"Alexander, darling, Merry Christmas Eve." Having changed the subject, Jane smiled wistfully. "Dad doesn't like us to remember the meaningless rituals--"

"It's not that I don't like to," interjected Harold. "I just want them placed in their proper perspective--past and gone and unnecessary."

"And I agree with him completely," Jane calmly continued, "but it does get you in the chest once in a while, doesn't it?"

"Particularly today," said Alexander.

"Yes. Well, that's all right. We had a nice dinner. You'll get a present on New Year's like all the other Soviet boys." She paused. "Not from Father Christmas, from us." Another pause. "You don't believe in Santa Claus anymore, do you, son?"

"No, Mom," Alexander said slowly, not looking at his mother.

"Since when?"

"Since just now," he replied, standing up and gathering the plates off the table. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Jane Barrington found work lending books at a university library but after a few months was transferred to the reference section, then to the maps, then to serving lunch in the university cafeteria. Every night, after cleaning the toilets, she cooked a Russian dinner for her family, once in a while lamenting the lack of mozzarella cheese, the absence of olive oil to make good spaghetti sauce, or of fresh basil, but Harold and Alexander didn't care. They ate the cabbage and the sausage and the potatoes and the mushrooms, and black bread rubbed with salt, and Harold requested that Jane learn how to make a thick beef borscht in the tradition of good Russian women.