The Summer Garden. Paullina Simons

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СКАЧАТЬ you when you’re all clenched up and upset like this? The milk of kindness is not exactly flowing from you tonight.”

      “What, and you’re not upset?” she said quietly.

      “I’m not bothering you, am I?”

      They lay by each other. He unzipped the bag halfway on his side and sat up. After opening the tent flaps for some air, he lit a cigarette. It was cold in the Canyon at night. Shivering, she watched him, considering her options, assessing the various permutations and combinations, factoring in the X-factor, envisioning several moves ahead, and then her hand crept up and lay on his thigh. “Tell me the truth,” Tatiana said carefully. “Tell me here and now, the years without me … in the penal battalion … in the Byelorussian villages—were you really without a woman like you told me or was that a lie?”

      Alexander smoked. “It was not a lie, but I didn’t have much choice, did I? You know where I was—in Tikhvin, in prison, at the front with men. I wasn’t in New York dancing with my hair down with men full of live ammo.”

      “My hair was never down, first of all,” she said, unprovoked, “but you told me that once, in Lublin, you did have a choice.”

      “Yes,” he said. “I came close with the girl in Poland.”

      Tatiana waited, listened. Alexander continued, “And then after we were captured, I was in POW camps and Colditz with your brother, and then Sachsenhausen—without him. First fighting with men, then guarded by men, beaten by men, interrogated by men, shot at by men, tattooed by men. Few women in that world.” He shuddered.

      “But … some women?”

      “Some women, yes.”

      “Did you … taint yourself with a Gulag wife?”

      “Don’t be absurd, Tatiana,” Alexander said, low and heavy. “Don’t divide my words by your false questions. You know what I said to you has nothing to do with that.”

      “Then what did you mean? Tell me. I know nothing. Tell me where you went when you left me in Deer Isle for four days. Were you with a woman then?”

      “Tatiana! God!”

      “You’re not answering me.”

      “No! For God’s sake! Did you see me when I came back? Enough of this already, you’re degrading me.”

      “And you’re not degrading me by your worries?” she whispered.

      “No! You believed I was dead. In New York you weren’t betraying me, you were continuing your merry widowed life. Big fucking difference, Tania.”

      Hearing his tone, Tatiana moved away from the verbal parrying, though what she wanted to say was, “Obviously you don’t think it’s such a big difference.” But she knew when enough was enough with him. “Why won’t you tell me where you went in Maine?” she whispered. “Can’t you see how afraid I am?” She was upset he wasn’t willing to comfort her. He was never willing to comfort her.

      “I don’t want to tell you,” Alexander said, “because I don’t want to upset you.”

      Tatiana became so scared by his hollow voice that she actually changed the subject to other unmentionables. “What about my brother? Did he have a prison wife?”

      Alexander smoked deeply. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

      “Oh, great. So there’s nothing you want to talk about.”

      “That’s right.”

      “Well, good night then.” She swirled away. Really a symbolic gesture, swirling away, turning your narrow naked back to an enormous dressed man next to whom you’re still lying in one sleeping bag.

      Alexander sighed into the smoke, inhaled it. With one arm, he flipped her back to him. “Don’t turn away from me when we’re like this,” he said. “If you must have an answer, a laundry girl in Colditz fell in love with Pasha and gave it to him for free.”

      Tears came to Tatiana’s eyes. “Yes. He was very good at having girls fall in love with him,” she said quietly. She settled as close as she could into Alexander’s unwelcoming side. “Almost as good as you,” she whispered achingly.

      Alexander didn’t say anything.

      Tatiana tried hard to stop shivering. “In Luga, in Leningrad, Pasha was always in love with one girl or another.”

      “I think he was mistaking love for something else,” said Alexander.

      “Unlike you, Shura?” she whispered, desperately wishing for some intimacy from him.

      “Unlike me,” was all he said.

      She lay mutely. “Did you have yourself a little laundry girl?” Her voice trembled.

      “You know I did. You want me to tell you about her?” Throwing his cigarette away, he leaned over her, putting his hand between her thighs. Just like that. No kissing, no stroking, no caressing, no whispering, no preamble, just the hand between her thighs. “She is maddening,” he said. “She is mystifying. She is bewildering, and infuriating.” His other hand went under her head, into her hair.

      “She is true.” Tatiana tried to stay still. She was feeling not mystifying but sickly vulnerable at the moment—naked and small in complete blackness with his overwhelming clothed body, too strong for its own good, over her; with his heavy soldier hand on her most vulnerable place. She forgot her mission, which was to bring him comfort from the things that assailed him. “And she gives it to you for free,” she whispered, her hands grasping his jersey.

      “You call this free?” he said. Miraculously his rough-tipped fingers were caressing her exceedingly gently. How did he do this? His hands could lift the Nomad if they had to, he had the strongest hands, and they weren’t always gentle with her, but they did tread ever so lightly in a place so sensitive it shamed her before his fingers made her senseless. “You don’t fool me, Tatiana, with your reverse questions,” he said. “I know exactly what you’re doing.”

      “What am I doing?” she said thickly, trying not to move or moan.

      “Turning it around to me. If I, an irredeemable sinner stayed clean, then you certainly did.”

      “Obviously, darling, you are not irredeemable …” Her head angled back.

      “One less wrong move by burly Jeb, and you would’ve given yourself to him,” said Alexander, pausing both in word and deed. The pause made Tatiana only less steady. “One more right move by Edward, one more forward move by Edward”—Tatiana couldn’t help it, she moved, she gasped—“and you would have given it to him for free.”

      She was having trouble speaking. “That’s not true,” she said. “What, you think I couldn’t have?” She turned her face into his chest, her body stiff. “I could have. I knew what they wanted. But I …” She was having trouble thinking. “I didn’t.”

      Alexander was breathing hard and said nothing.

      “Is this why you are so detached СКАЧАТЬ