Полина Саймонс – The Summer Garden (страница 38)
Tatiana was crying. “Oh, God … Shura, husband …” she whispered, her arms, her legs going around him. She climbed on top of him in the sleeping bag. She couldn’t hold him close enough to herself. “It was just a vile dream. My eyes are never meaningless.”
He stared at her, near her face. “Then why do you keep looking at me as if you’re missing something, Tania?”
She couldn’t return his pained gaze, even in the black of night. Taking a breath, she said, “I’m not missing anything. I’m just looking for you. Looking for you in the taiga woods. Looking for the Alexander I left behind a million miles away on the pine needle banks of Lazarevo, or in the critical care tent in Morozovo. That’s what I was thinking of at Mercy Hospital.”
That wasn’t the only thing she had been thinking at Mercy Hospital. Having called Esther that morning, she had found out just how determined, how grave, and how unrelenting Sam Gulotta remained. Her good sense was devoured by fear and she went missing and forgot to keep time. Tonight she swallowed and went on. “What could I do then that I can’t seem to do now? That’s what I think about. What can I do to bring you back? What can I do to make you happy? What can I do to help you? Where are you?”
Alexander fell quiet. He pulled her off him. She lay behind him, kissing him softly on a ridged scar over his spine, hearing his heart thunder out through his shoulder blades.
After a while he spoke. “You want to know where I was in Maine?”
“No.”
“I was trying to find that man.”
“Did you,” asked Tatiana in a faltering voice, putting her forehead on his back, “find him?”
“Obviously not,” Alexander replied. “I felt I had fucked it up, that it was all a bust. I didn’t know who I was. I too didn’t recognize the man who came back with you from Berlin. You had wanted the boy you met in 1941, the boy you loved, the boy you married. I couldn’t find him—but I couldn’t find
He had taken his weapons with him, and left her his money. Tatiana was breathing hard into her hands, trying to keep from completely breaking down. “I can’t believe you’re telling me this,” she said. “I can’t believe you’re saying these things out loud to me. I don’t deserve them.”
“I
“Oh my God—but what about you?” Tatiana asked. “Shura, you desperately needed my help.” And still do, she wanted to add. She tried to wipe her face, but it was useless.
He turned to her, lay on his side in front of her. “I know.” He touched her eyes, her lips, her heart. “That’s why I came back,” whispered Alexander, his palm fanning her face. “Because I wanted to be saved, Tatiasha.”
Tatiana slept terribly, like
Up, up, up, on the run, unsaved, through Desolation Canyon, through the salt flats of Utah, through the Sunrise Peak Mountains, to where there was wine in the valley.
And was there ever wine in the valley.
Chardonnay, Cabernet, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Franc and Sauvignon Blanc. But sparkling wine was the most delicious of all, creamy, nutty, fruity, exploding with flavors of green apple and citrus, its bubble trapped in the bottle for maximum fizz and maximum joy.
It was the Italians that drew them in, the Sebastianis, running their tiny California winery on a foggy, winding, tree-canopied, hilly road nestled between other vineyards stretching from the Mayacamas Mountains to the east and the Sonomas to the west. The Sebastianis ran their winery as if they lived in Tuscany. Their yellow stucco Mediterranean house looked like something out of Alexander’s mother’s old country. Alexander could barely whoa the horse and drop the reins, before he was hired on the spot by Nick Sebastiani, who whisked Alexander away at four in the afternoon. It was late August and harvesting season, and the grapes had to come off the vine instantly or something terrible would happen to them, some overripening acidity. They had to be “cooled,” “threshed,” “separated from their skins,” “crushed in steel drums.” That’s what Nick told Alexander as Tatiana remained with Anthony in the unpaved parking lot, trying to figure out what to do next.
Holding his hand, she ambled over to the winery and said hello to Jean Sebastiani, and fifteen minutes later found herself not only drinking and admiring the unfamiliar but pleasant tastes, but accepting a
Tatiana muttered something about Anthony, and Jean said, “Oh, no, the boy can be your helper. We’ll get even more customers, you’ll see.”
People indeed loved the little helper—and were not entirely averse to the mother helper either. Tatiana continued to constrain herself in vests one size too small while her white limbs peeked out from her white sleeveless dresses as she hurried from table to table. While Alexander worked the fields picking acres of grapes, making seven bucks a day for his twelve hours of trouble, Tatiana was tipped like she was working for the emperors.
Short of quitting, there was nothing Alexander could do—there were too many men willing to work for even less. So Alexander continued to work like he worked and when Nick Sebastiani saw it, he gave him a raise to ten a day and put him in charge of twenty other migrant hand harvesters.
Temporarily they stayed in their camper near the barracks to use the shower facilities. Sebastiani wanted Alexander to live in the barracks with the rest of the workers. Alexander refused. “I’m not staying in the barracks with my family, Tania. What is this, Sachsenhausen? Are you going to be my little labor camp wife?”
“If you wish.”
They went off site to live, renting a room on a second floor of a bed and breakfast two miles down the road. The room was expensive—five dollars a day—but very large. It had a bed the size of which they’d never seen before. Alexander called it a brothel bed, for who else would need a bed this size? He would have been happy with a Deer Isle twin bed, it had been so long since they’d slept in one. Anthony had his own rollaway in the far corner. There was a bath with a shower down the hall, and the dining room downstairs served them breakfast and dinner so Tatiana didn’t have to cook. Alexander and Tatiana both didn’t love that part.
Alexander said as soon as it got cold, they would leave. September came and it was still warm; he liked that. Better still, not only was Tatiana making them a little money, she was drinking some sparkling wine, some Bisol Brut, for which she developed a bit of a taste. After work, she would sit with Anthony, have bread and cheese, and a glass of sparkler. She closed the winery, counted the money, played with the boy, waited for Alexander to finish work, and sipped her drink. By the time they drove to the B&B, had dinner, chocolate cake, more wine, a bath, put Anthony to bed, and she fell down onto the goose down covers, arms flung above her head, Tatiana was so bubbled up, so pliant, so agreeable to all his relentless frenzies, and so ceaselessly and supernally orgasmic that Alexander would not have been a mortal man if he allowed anything to come between his wife and her Bisol Brut. Who would do a crazy thing like quit to go into dry country? This country was flowing with foaming wine, and that is just how they both liked it.
He started whispering to her again, night by night, little by little.