Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(43)

He took the book with him, and after school went to the Leningrad public library and in the back, in the three-aisle-wide Pushkin section, found a place on a bottom shelf for his book. He put it between two scholarly-looking tomes that had not been checked out since 1927. He thought it was a good bet no one would check out his book, either. But still, it didn't feel completely safe. He wished there were a better hiding place for it.

When Alexander came home later that evening, his mother was drunk again, showing none of the remorseful affection he had seen in her eyes earlier in the day. He ate dinner quietly with his father, while listening to the radio.

"School good?"

"Yes. It's fine, Dad."

"You have good friends?"

"Sure."

"Any good friends who are girls?" His father was trying to make conversation.

"Some friends who are girls, yes."

His father cleared his throat. "Nice Russian girls?"

Smiling, Alexander asked, "Compared with what?"

Harold smiled. "Do the nice Russian girls," he asked carefully, "like my boy?"

Alexander shrugged. "They like me all right."

Harold said, "I remember you and Teddy hung out with that girl, what was her name again?"

"Belinda." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Yes! Belinda. She was nice."

"Dad." Alexander laughed. "We wereeight . Yes, she was nice for an eight-year-old."

"Oh, but what a crush on you she had!"

"And what a crush on her Teddy had."

"That about sums up all the relationships on God's earth."

They went out for a drink. "I miss our home in Barrington a little," Harold admitted to Alexander. "But it's only because I have not lived a different way long enough. Long enough to change my consciousness and make me into the person I'm supposed to be."

"You have lived this way long enough. That'swhy you miss Barrington."

"No. You know what I think, son? I think it's not working so well here, because it's Russia. I think communism would work much better in America." He smiled beseechingly at Alexander. "Don't you agree?"

"Oh, Dad, for God's sake."

Harold didn't want to talk about it anymore. "Never mind. I'm going over to Leo's for a little while. You want to come?"

The choice was, either go back home to the room with his unconscious mother or sit in a smoked-out room with his father's communist cronies regurgitating obscure parts ofDas Kapital and talking about bringing the war back home.

Alexander wanted to be with his father but alone. He went home to his mother. He wanted to be alone with somebody.

The next morning, as Harold and Alexander were getting ready for their day, Jane, still inebriated from the night before, held on to Alexander's hand for a moment and said, "Stay behind, son, I have to talk to you."

After Harold left, Jane said in a hurried voice, "Collect your things. Where is that book? You have to run and get it."

"What for?"

"You and I are going to Moscow."

"Moscow?"

"Yes. We'll get there by nightfall. Tomorrow first thing in the morning I'll take you to the consulate." They'll keep you there until they contact the State Department in Washington. And then they'll send you home." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"What?"

"Alexander, yes. I'll take care of your father."

"You can't take care of yourself."

"Don't worry about me," said Jane. "My fate is sealed. But yours is wide open. Concern yourself only with you. Your father goes to his meetings. He thinks by playing with the grown-ups he won't be punished. But they have his number. They have mine. But you, Alexander, you have no number. I have to get you out."

"I'm not going without you or Dad."

"Of course you are. Your father and I will never be allowed to return. But you will do very well back home. I know it's hard in America these days, there aren't many jobs, but you'll be free, you'll have your life, so come and stop arguing. I'm your mother. I know what I'm doing."

"Mom, you're taking me to Moscow to surrender me to the Americans?"

"Yes. Your Aunt Esther will look after you until you graduate secondary school. The State Department will arrange for her to meet your ship in Boston. You're still only sixteen, Alexander, the consulate won't turn you away."

Alexander had been very close to his father's sister once. She adored him, but she had an ugly fight with Harold over Alexander's dubious future in the Soviet Union, and they had not spoken or written since.

"Mom, two things," he said. When I turned sixteen, I registered for the Red Army. Remember? Mandatory conscription. I became a Soviet citizen when I joined. I have a passport to prove that."

"The consulate doesn't have to know that."

"It's their business to know it. But the second thing is..." Alexander broke off. "I can't go without saying goodbye to my father."

"Write him a letter."

The train ride was long. He had twelve hours to sit and think. How his mother managed those hours without a drink, he didn't know. Her hands were shaking badly by the time they arrived at the Leningrad Station in Moscow. It was night; they were tired and hungry. They had no place to sleep. They had no food. It was a fairly mild late April, and they slept on a bench in Gorky Park. Alexander had strong bittersweet memories of himself and his friends playing ice hockey in Gorky Park.