Полина Саймонс – Tatiana and Alexander (страница 27)
Without that money, Alexander was finished.
Alexander had to get his mother sober for long enough to let him hide the money in a place that was not home. He knew that if she found out he had taken it without her knowledge or permission her hysteria would not cease until Harold knew of her treachery. Once Harold knew his wife had mistrusted him from the moment they left the United States, mistrusted him even in her love and her respect, mistrusted him and his motives and his ideals and all the dreams he thought she shared with him from the very start, once he knew that, Alexander felt his father would not recover. And he didn’t want to be responsible for his father’s future, all he wanted was the money to help him be responsible for his own. That’s what his sober mother wanted, too. He knew that. Sober, she would let him hide the money. The trick was to get her sober.
Over the course of one difficult and contemptible weekend Alexander tried to dry out his mother. She, in her convulsing rage, flooded him with such obscenities and vitriol that finally even Harold said, “Oh, for God’s sake, give her a drink and tell her to shut up.”
But Alexander didn’t give her a drink. He sat by her, and he read aloud from Dickens, in English, and he read Pushkin to her, in Russian, and he read her the funniest of Zoshchenko’s anecdotes, and he fed her some soup and he fed her some bread, and gave her coffee, and put cold wet towels on her head, but still she wouldn’t stop ranting. Harold, in a quiet moment, asked Alexander, “What did she mean about you and Svetlana, what was she talking about?”
“Dad, haven’t you learned by now, you have to shut her off? You can’t listen to a word she is saying.”
“No, no, of course not,” muttered Harold thoughtfully, walking away from Alexander, though not far, because there wasn’t anywhere in the narrow room to go.
On Monday, after his father left for work, Alexander cut school and spent all day convincing his morosely, miserably sober mother that her money needed to be put in a safe place. Alexander tried to explain to her, first patiently and quietly, then impatiently and shouting, that if something, God forbid, were to happen to them, and they were arrested—
“You’re talking nonsense, Alexander. Why would they arrest us? We’re their people. We’re not living well, but then we shouldn’t be living any better than the rest of the Russians. We came here to share their fate.”
“We’re doing that gallantly,” said Alexander. “Mom, wise up. What do you think happened to the other foreigners that lived with us in Moscow?” He paused. His mother considered. “Even if I’m wrong, I’m saying it’s not going to hurt us to be a little prudent and hide the money. Now how much money is left?”
After thinking for a few moments, Jane said she did not know. She let Alexander count it. There was ten thousand dollars and four thousand rubles.
“How many dollars did you bring with you from America?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe seventeen thousand. Maybe twenty.”
“Oh, Mom.”
“What? Some of that money went to buy you oranges and milk in Moscow, or did you forget already?”
“I didn’t forget,” Alexander replied in a weary voice. How much for the oranges and milk, he wanted to know. Fifty dollars? A hundred?
Jane, smoking and watching Alexander, narrowed her eyes at him. “If I let you hide the money, will you let me have a drink, as a thank you?”
“Yes. Just one.”
“Of course. One small one is all I want. I feel much better when I’m sober, you know. But just one small drink to get me through the heebie-jeebies would help me stay sober, you know that, don’t you?”
Alexander wanted to ask his mother just how naïve she thought he was. He said nothing.
“All right,” said Jane. “Let’s get it over with. Where are you planning to hide it?”
Alexander suggested gluing the money into the back binding of a book, producing one of his mother’s good, thick-covered hardbacks to show exactly what he meant.
“If your father finds out, he will never forgive you.”
“He can add it to the list of things he won’t forgive me for. Go on, Mom. I have to get to school. After the book is ready, I’m putting it in the library.”
Jane stared at the book Alexander was proposing. It was her ancient copy of Pushkin’s
“Because finding a Pushkin book in the Pushkin section of the Leningrad library is not going to alert anyone. But finding a Bible in English anywhere in the Russian library just might.” He smiled. “Don’t you think?”
Jane almost smiled back. “Alexander, I’m sorry I haven’t been well.”
He lowered his head.
“I don’t want to talk to your father about this anymore because he no longer has any patience for me, but I’m having trouble with our life.”
“We know,” Alexander said. “We’ve noticed.”
She put her arms around him. He patted her on the back. “Shh,” he said. “It’s all right.”
“This money, Alexander,” she said, looking up at him, “you think it will help you somehow?”
“I don’t know. Having it is better than not having it.”
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.”
“Yes! Belinda. She was nice.”
“Dad.” Alexander laughed. “We were
“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’s
“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 of
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.”
“What?”