Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(61)

"What does she know?" Isabella said dismissively. "What kind of an Italian name is Viktoria? Gelsomina, now that's a beautiful Italian name, fitting for a beautiful girl like you. Our youngest, Francesca, lives in Darien, Connecticut. She comes once a month. She's married to a nice man, no children yet."

"Grammy, Aunt Francesca is thirty-seven. No one has children at thirty-seven," declared Vikki.

"We were meant to have a son," said Isabella mournfully.

"No, we weren't," said Travis. "If we were meant to have a son, we would have had a son. Now give the boy back to his rightful mother and eat, woman."

"Tania, who takes care of him while you work?" asked Isabella, with regret handing Anthony to Tatiana, who took him gratefully.

"I take him with me, or he sleeps, or refugee or soldier looks after him."

"Well, that's not very good," Isabella said. "If you want, I can take care of him for you."

"Thank you," Tatiana said. "But I don't think..." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"I could come to Ellis and pick him up for you. And then I could bring him back for you."

"Isabella!" exclaimed Travis.

Tatiana smiled at Isabella. "I think about your question, all right?" she said. "And you two are very lucky you have each other. That is wonderful story."

"You're lucky to have your boy," said Isabella.

"Yes," said Tatiana.

"Where is your family?"

Tatiana said nothing at first. "The Germans blockaded Leningrad two years ago," she said. "There was no food." She fell silent.

It is June 23, 1940--Tatiana and Pasha's birthday. They're turning sixteen and the Metanovs are celebrating at their dacha in Luga. They have borrowed a table and put it out in the brambled yard because there's no room in the porch for seventeen people--the seven Metanovs, Papa's sister, husband and niece, Tatiana's Babushka Maya and the six Iglenkos. Papa brought black caviar from Leningrad and smoked sturgeon. He brought herring with potatoes and onions and Mama made hot borscht and five different types of Russian salad. Cousin Marina made a mushroom pie, Dasha made an apple pie, Tatiana's paternal grandmother made her cream puffs, Babushka Maya painted her a picture, and Papa even brought some chocolate from the city because he knows how much Tatiana loves chocolate. Tatiana wears her white dress with red roses. It is the only nice dress she owns. Papa brought it from Poland two years earlier. It is her favorite dress.

Everyone drinks vodka, everyone but Tatiana. They drink until they can't hold the glass in their hands. They tell endless political Russian anecdotes and they eat to bursting. Papa plays the guitar and sings hearty Russian folk songs and everyone else joins in even though they can't remember the words; even though they can't carry a tune.

"If you only knew

Oh how dear to me,

Are these Moscow nights..."

"When you turn eighteen, Tania," says Papa, "I will rent out a banquet hall in the Astoria Hotel for you and Pasha, and we're going to have ourselves a real proper feast, not this."

"You didn't have a party like that for me, Papa," Dasha says, who turned eighteen five years earlier.

"Times were very tough in 1935," says Papa. "We had so little, but things are better now and they'll be better still in two years. I'll raise a glass to you too at the Astoria, Dasha, all right?"

Tania wants to turn eighteen tomorrow so she can have another day like this day. The night air is warm and smells of faded lilacs and blooming cherry blossoms, the crickets are deafening and even the mosquitoes are at bay. Her brother and sister fall on top of her on the grass and they tickle her until she yells, screeches, squeals, stop it, stop it, stop it, my dress my dress, while the adults raise another shaky glass and Papa picks up the guitar again and Tatiana hears his deep inebriated voice carry through the Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

brambles and the nettles and the white cherry trees, scratching out exiled Alexander Vertinsky's lament for Leningrad...

"Uncertain talk by chance brought

Sweet and needless words

Summer Garden, Fontanka, and Neva

Why did you fly here oh words so fleeting?

Here the noise is made by foreign cities

And foreign waters lap against the shores here."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In the Volkhov Prison, 1943

SLONKO WAS DEAD, BUTnothing was resolved about Alexander's fate. He was transferred to Volkhov and had to deal with a more malicious class of idiot. He found himself in a different state of mind after he learned that Tatiana had escaped the clutches of the Soviet Union. His relief was mingled with an unrelenting melancholy. Now that he knew she was irrevocably gone, he didn't know who to rail at first, the person who interrogated him or the guard who pointed a rifle at him. But he hated himself most of all.

She was gone--that washis doing.

Volkhov, like Leningrad and unlike Morozovo, actually had two prisons--one for criminals, one for politicals. The distinction was fine, and Alexander was being housed in the prison for criminals. They seemed to have better cells. He remembered his few days in Kresty after his arrest in 1936 before he was put on a train to Vladivostok. The cells had been small and odorous. In this prison in Volkhov the cells were bigger, had two bunks, a sink, a toilet. The cell had a steel door with a barred window, which was opened briefly to pass through his tray of food.