Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(44)

"I need a drink, Alexander," Jane whispered. "I need a drink to take an edge off my life. Stay here, I'll be right back."

"Mother," said Alexander, putting his steady hand on her to keep her from getting up. "If you leave, I will go straight to the station and take the next train back to Leningrad."

Deeply sighing, Jane moved closer to Alexander and motioned to her lap. "Lie down, son. Get some sleep. We have a long day tomorrow." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Alexander put his head on his mother's shoulder and eventually slept.

The next morning they had to wait an hour at the consulate gate until someone came to see them--only to tell them they could not come in. Jane gave her name and a letter explaining about her son. They waited restlessly for another two hours until the sentry called them over and said the consul was unable to help them. Jane pleaded to be let in for just five minutes. The sentry shook his head and said there was nothing he could do. Alexander had to restrain his mother. Eventually he led her away and returned by himself to speak to the guard. The man apologized. "I'm sorry," he said in English. "They did look into it, if you want to know. But the file on your mother and father has been sent back to the State Department in Washington." The man paused. "Yours, too. Since you're Soviet citizens, you're not under our jurisdiction anymore. There is nothing they can do."

"What about political asylum?"

"On what grounds? Besides, you know how many Soviets come this way asking for asylum? Dozens every day. On Mondays, near a hundred. We're here by invitation from the Soviet government. We want to maintain our ties to the Soviet community. If we started accepting their people, how long do you think they'd allow us to stay here? You'd be the last one. Just last week, we relented and let a widowed Russian father with two small children pass. The father had relatives in the United States and said he would find work. He had a useful skill, he was an electrician. But there was a diplomatic scandal. We had to give him back." The sentry paused. "You're not an electrician, are you?"

"No," replied Alexander. "But I am an American citizen."

The sentry shook his head. "You know you can't serve two masters in the military."

Alexander knew. He tried again. "I have relatives in America. I will live with them. And I can work. I'll drive a cab. I will sell produce on the street corner. I will farm. I will cut down trees. Whatever I can do, I will do."

The sentry lowered his voice. "It's not you. It's your father and mother. They're just too high profile for the consulate to get involved. Made too much of a fuss when they came here. Wanted everyone to know them. Well, now everyone knows them. Your parents should have thought twice about relinquishing their U.S. citizenship. What was the hurry? They should have been sure first."

"My father was sure," said Alexander.

The trip back from Moscow was only as long as the tripto Moscow; why did it seem decades longer? His mother was mute. The countryside was flat bleak fields; there was still no food.

Jane cleared her throat. "I desperately wanted to have a baby. It took me ten years and four miscarriages to have you. The year you were born the worldwide flu epidemic tore through Boston, killing thousands of people, including my sister, your father's parents and brother, and many of our close friends. Everybody we knew lost someone. I went to the doctor for a check-up because I was feeling under the weather and was terrified it might be the dreaded flu. He told me I was pregnant. I said, how can it be, we'll fall sick, we've given up our family inheritance, we are broke, where are we going to live, how will we stay healthy, and the doctor looked at me and said, "The baby brings his own food."

She took Alexander's hand. He let her.

"You, son--you brought your own food. Harold and I both felt it. When you were born, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Alexander--when you were born, it was late at night, and you came so suddenly, I didn't even have time to go to the hospital. The doctor came, delivered you in our bed, and said that you seemed in a great hurry to get on with living. You were the biggest baby he had ever seen, and I still remember, after we told him we were naming you Anthony Alexander after your great grandfather, he lifted you, all purple and black-haired, and exclaimed, "Alexander the great!" Because you were so big, you see." She paused. "You were such a beautiful boy," she whispered.

Alexander took his hand away and turned to the window.

"Our hopes for you were extraordinary. I wish you could imagine the kinds of things we dreamed for you as we strolled down the Boston Pier with you in the carriage and all the old ladies stopping to gaze at the baby with hair so black and eyes so shining."

The flat fields were rushing by.

"Ask your father--ask him--when next you can, if his dreams for you ever includedthis for his only son."

"I just didn't bring enough food, did I, Mom?" said Alexander, with hair so black and eyes so shining.

CHAPTER TEN

The Ghosts of Ellis Island, 1943

THERE WAS SOMETHING UNDENIABLYcomforting about living and working at Ellis. Tatiana's world was so small, so insular, and so full that there was little left of her to imagine a different life, to move forward in her imagination to New York, to the real America, or backward in her memory, to Leningrad, to the real Alexander. So long as she stayed at Ellis with her infant son, lived with him in a small stone room with the large white window, slept in her single bed on her white linen, wore her one set of white clothes and sensible shoes, so long as she lived in that room with Anthony and her black backpack, she didn't have to imagine an impossible life in America without Alexander.