Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(79)

Ouspensky said nothing.

Alexander continued. "We drank a whole bottle of vodka in a few hours. We had ham, some smoked herring, some pickles, and even some fresh black bread. We told jokes, we laughed, we smoked. Think how much worse it could be." Alexander wasn't going to let his mind go down the corridors of its own torture chambers.

"I don't know about you, Captain, but I've got a wife and two small boys I haven't seen in ten months. Last time I saw them was right before I got shot. My wife thinks I'm dead. I can tell my letters aren't getting to her. She is not replying to them." Ouspensky paused and wavered like a sapling.

Alexander said nothing. I have a wife and a child I've never seen. What's happened to her, to the baby? Have they made it anywhere? Are they safe? How can I live not knowing if she's all right?

I can't.

I can't live not knowing if she is all right.

Thou shall not be afraid for the terror by night...nor for the arrow that flieth by day...

Ouspensky drank straight from a newly opened bottle. "Ah," he said, waving his hand. "Hell with it. Life is so f*cking hard."

Alexander took the vodka bottle from Ouspensky and drank from it himself. "Compared to what?" he asked, taking a smoke, inhaling the acrid fumes into his constricted throat.

"Tania, let's get drunk."

"Why, what for?"

"Let's smoke, get drunk, celebrate your birthday, our wedding, and be really rowdy." He raises his eyebrows.

"You're a goose. My birthday was a week ago." She smiles. "We celebrated already. You married me. Remember?"

He grabs her off the pine needle ground.

She throws her arms around him. "All right, all right, I'll drink a little vodka with you." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Not a little. An unconscionable amount. We'll raise our cups..." He pours for the two of them near the fire in the clearing. She is kneeling on the blanket, expectantly. He kneels in front of her. "And we'll drink to our wonderful life."

Tatiana raises her cup. "All right, Shura. Let's drink to our wonderful life."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

New York, June 1944

THE ROOM IS STARKwhite. The curtains, white, barely move. The window is closed. There is no wind. There is no draft. There is no pink and lucid air.

I sit on the floor of my stark white room. The beige door closed. The silver lock latched. There is rust on the hinges that creak as they swing.

Open and shut.

In front of me I hold my black bag, and in this bag, he lives. His beige cap, his black-and-white photo with his white teeth and caramel eyes.

On the gray-tile floor I sit, but outside, not an hour away, lies Bear Mountain. And the trees on the mountain are sepia and cinnabar, colored with copper and sunset. Like his copper eyes and sunset lips. In Sheep Meadow I can play baseball with my cream wooden bat. Like he played when he was a boy...

Scout.

I can make a noose knot like he taught me.

I can climb a green tree.

I can swing under the silver moon in the sinking water under the plum sky.

Through my window just beyond the red, white and blue of the American flag, beyond the Golden Door and the Coral Gothic of Ellis gleams the lazurite bay that leads to the living sea, to the wailing ocean.

My colors run from moon to sun, from rust to sky. The oceans divide us as we fail, as we fall into the whiteout of my once and future life. The whiteout of sky and fog and mist and ice. The ice is cracked and bleeding. You're underneath it. And I am, too.

I sit on the gray-tile floor, touching the black canvas, the metal rim of the gun, the yellowing papers of your savior book, your green crisp dollar bills.

I touch the picture of you and me newly married exploding on red wings, flying to each other on the cyclamen wings of Promethean fire.

Outside, the siren wails, the ball cracks against the bat, the baby cries, the gray ice bleeds. I remain on the floor with the black canvas bag of our surprise hope at my feet. Forever on the floor, black with the Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

colors of my grief.

"Tania, what's the matter?" It was Vikki, standing at the open door of Tatiana's room. Anthony was on the floor playing with his toys. Tatiana was on the floor with her head on the tiles.

"Nothing."

"Are you working today?"

"I'm up, I'm up."

In a startled voice, Vikki said, "What's the matter with you?"

"Not much," Tatiana said. She knew she must have been a sight. Her eyes felt swollen shut. She could barely see.

"It's eight! Have you been crying? The day hasn't begun yet!"

"Let me get dressed. I have to make my rounds."

"Do you want to talk?"

"Not at all. I'm fine. It's my birthday today. I'm twenty."

"That's why you're like this? Happy birthday! Why didn't you say so? What's so awful about your birthday?"

"I can't believe we're getting married on my birthday!" she says.

"This way, you'll never forget me."

"Who could ever forget you,Alexander? "she asks, groping gently for him.

Standing in the stained-glass light, her hair, her heart flying in the air.