Tatiana and Alexander. Paullina Simons

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      A month later, in February 1935, Alexander came home from school and heard his mother and father fighting—again. He heard his name shouted out once, twice.

      His mother was upset for Alexander. But he was fine. He spoke Russian fluently. He sang and drank beer and played hockey on the ice in Gorky Park with his friends. He was all right. Why was she upset? He wanted to go in and tell her he was fine, but he never liked to interrupt his parents’ fights.

      Suddenly he heard something being thrown, and then someone being hit. He ran into his parents’ room and saw his mother on the floor, her cheek red, his father bending over her. Alexander ran to his father and shoved him in the back. “What are you doing, Dad?” he yelled. He kneeled down next to his mother.

      She half sat up and glared at Harold. “Fine thing you’re showing your son,” she said. “You brought him to the Soviet Union for this, to show him how to treat a woman? His wife, perhaps?”

      “Shut up,” said Harold, clenching his fists.

      “Dad!” Alexander jumped to his feet. “Stop!”

      “Your father has abandoned us, Alexander.”

      “I’m not abandoning you!”

      Squaring off, Alexander pushed his father in the chest.

      Harold shoved Alexander and then hit him open-handed across the face. Jane gasped. Alexander swayed but did not fall. Harold went to strike him again, but this time Alexander moved away. Jane grabbed Harold’s legs, yanked, and sent him down on his back. “Don’t you dare touch him!” she yelled.

      Harold was on the floor, Jane, too; only Alexander was standing. They couldn’t look at one another; everyone was panting. Alexander wiped his bleeding lip.

      “Harold,” Jane said, still on her knees. “Look at us! We’re being destroyed by this fucking country.” She was crying. “Let’s go home, let’s start over.”

      “Are you crazy?” hissed Harold, looking from Alexander to Jane. “Do you even know what you’re saying?”

      “I do.”

      “Have you forgotten that we gave up our U.S. citizenship? Have you forgotten that at the moment you and I are citizens of no country; that we’re waiting for our Soviet citizenship to come through? You think America is going to want us back? Why, they practically kicked us out. And how do you think the Soviet authorities are going to feel once they find out we’re turning our backs on them, too?”

      “I don’t care what the Soviet authorities think.”

      “God, you are so naïve!”

      “Is that what I am? What does that make you? Did you know it was going to be like this and brought us here anyway? Brought your son here?”

      He stared at her with disappointment. “We didn’t come for the good life. The good life we could have had in America.”

      “You’re right. And we had it. We’ll make do with what we have here, but Harold, Alexander is not meant to be here. At least send him back home.”

      “What?” Harold could not find his voice to say it above a whisper.

      “Yes.” She was helped off the floor by Alexander as she stood in front of Harold. “He is fifteen. Send him back home!”

      “Mom!” said Alexander.

      “Don’t let him die in this country—can’t you see? Alexander sees it. I see it. Why can’t you?”

      “Alexander doesn’t see it. Do you, son?”

      Alexander was silent. He did not want to side against his father.

      “You see?” Jane exclaimed triumphantly. “Please, Harold. Soon it will be too late.”

      “You’re talking rubbish. Too late for what?”

      “Too late for Alexander,” Jane said brokenly, pale with despair. “For him, forget your pride for just one second. Before he has to register for the Red Army when he turns sixteen in May, before tragedy befalls us all, while he is still a U.S. citizen, send him back. He has not relinquished his rights to the United States of America. I will stay with you, I will live out my life with you—but—”

      “No!” Harold exclaimed in an aghast voice. “Things didn’t turn out the way I had hoped, look, I’m sor—”

      “Don’t be sorry for me, you bastard. Don’t be sorry for me—I lay down in this bed with you. I knew what I was doing. Be sorry for your son. What do you think will happen to him?”

      Jane turned away from Harold.

      Alexander turned away from his parents. He went to the window and looked outside. It was February and night.

      Behind him, he heard his mother and father.

      “Janie, come on, it’ll be all right. You’ll see. Alexander will be better off here eventually. Communism is the future of the world, you know this as well as I do. The wider the chasm between the rich and the poor in the world, the more essential communism is going to become. America is a lost cause. Who else is going to care about the common man, who else will protect his rights but the communist? We’re just living through the toughest part. But I have no doubt—communism is the future.”

      “God!” Jane exclaimed. “When will you ever stop?”

      “Can’t stop now,” he said. “We’re going to see this through to the end.”

      “That’s right,” Jane said. “Marx himself wrote that capitalism produces above all its own gravediggers. Do you think that perhaps he wasn’t talking about capitalism?”

      “Absolutely,” agreed Harold, while Alexander looked the other way. “The communists hate to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions. The fall of capitalism is inevitable. The fall of selfishness, greed, individuality, personal attainment.”

      “The fall of prosperity, comfort, humane living conditions, privacy, liberty,” said Jane, spitting the words out, as Alexander doggedly stared out the window. “The second America, Harold. The second fucking America.”

      Without turning back, Alexander saw his father’s angry face and his mother’s despairing one, and he saw the gray room with the falling plaster, and the broken lock held together by tape, and he smelled the washroom from ten meters away, and he was silent.

      Before the Soviet Union, the only world that had СКАЧАТЬ