“Wait, wait, what INS man?” Vikki asked. “You don’t mean the vulture, the viper, Vittorio, the marauder, Vassman?”
“Yes, him. He nice man.”
Vikki laughed. “His own mother can’t get a parking space in her son’s garage. You got him to issue temporary visas? What did you have to do for him?”
“I made pirozhki for his ailing mother and blinchiki for him and told him he was making success of very difficult job.”
“Did you go to bed with him?”
Tatiana sighed. “You impossible.”
“Edward, have you heard what Tania is doing at Ellis?”
“Oh, I know all about it.”
They were having lunch at the Ellis cafeteria, which was now full of nurses and doctors, since Ellis had become, once again, a refugee port. One of those nurses was not Brenda, who, to everybody’s enormous surprise, quit in June 1945 when her husband came home from the Pacific. No one even knew that Brenda had a husband.
Vikki told Edward the Lower East Side story.
Edward nodded, looking fondly at Tatiana; in fact, looking at Tatiana in a way that made Tatiana look away and Vikki’s eyes widen. “Vik,” he said, “the entire Ellis Island knows about Tatiana. Why do you think they don’t let her go on the refugee boats anymore? She lets in every single person on those boats. They know of her halfway across the ocean. Oh, to get into Tatiana’s inspection line, to get her to touch them.”
“The refugees I understand. But how does she get Vassman to issue them visas?”
“She hypnotizes him every morning. If that doesn’t work, she slips something into his coffee.”
“You’re implying she sees him in the morning?”
“You two have to finish, all right?” said Tatiana. “You just have to stop.”
Edward continued. “Just the other day, I had three women come looking for her on a Saturday afternoon. They took a ferry to Ellis to look for her.”
“Much like your wife used to look for you?” Tatiana asked mildly.
“No, not quite,” Edward returned. “My soon to be former wife was not coming to offer me her life services the way these people come to Ellis seeking you.”
“I don’t know what you talking about,” Tatiana said. “They come to bring me apples.”
“Apples, a shirt, four books.” He smiled. “You weren’t there. I told them I could give them your address—”
“Edward!” The girls shouted in unison.
He laughed. “Apples delivered right to your door, no?”
“No.” Tatiana said.
At the newspaper stand, the man who sold Tatiana and Vikki the Tribune looked at Tatiana and said, “You’re Nurse Tatiana, aren’t you?”
Instantly alert, Tatiana said, “Who wants to know?”
The kiosk man smiled. “They call you the Angel of Ellis. Take the paper. Don’t pay me. Take it. I have a hundred customers because of you.”
As they walked away, Vikki said, “I’m beginning to understand. Oh, my God. You’re not doing it for them.”
“Doing what?”
“You’re doing it for you. You said to that man, who wants to know, as if you’re waiting for the person who wants to know if you’re Nurse Tatiana.”
“Wrong again. How can you be so wrong in one day?”
“Who are you waiting for?”
“It remains from old days,” Tatiana said. “Someone looking for you, it’s bad sign.”
“You’re full of shit. Who are you waiting for?”
“No one.”
“When do you find the time? You have a child. You have two jobs. And I live with you. When do you have time to lead a secret life?”
“What secret? I do nothing. Occasionally I ask our building super if they looking for another doorman. Is that so hard?”
“I don’t know. I don’t ask. Why should you?”
“Because it costs me nothing,” Tatiana replied. “But now Diego from Romania is gainfully employed.”
“What a gas you are,” said Vikki, as she opened the door, putting her arm around Tatiana. “Is this your legacy to America?”
“It is not my legacy,” said Tatiana, walking inside. “It is my thanks.”
Vikki was frequently not home in the evenings. She went out dancing, and to the pictures, she went to dinner, she met friends at bars. When she came home late at night, she often had had too much to drink and wanted to talk, and Tatiana, usually awake no matter what time Vikki came home, obliged her. One evening, though, Tatiana was already in bed sleeping. This did not deter Vikki, who threw off her dress and climbed in next to her. Vikki put her hands over her head and then sighed extravagantly.
“Yes?” said Tatiana.
“Oh, you’re not asleep?”
“Not anymore.”
Vikki took her hands away from her face. She looked tipsy. “Oh, Tania, Tania. I couldn’t get a taxi. Walked all the way home from Astor Place in my high heels. I’m so sore.”
Tatiana heard Vikki crying. Drinking at night tended to make all the Italian emotions come out in Vikki. Tatiana reached over and stroked Vikki’s hair. “What’s the matter, Gelsomina?”
“What am I looking for, Tania? What? I went out with a real idiot tonight, no, such a creep. Todd. From last week.”
“I told you stay away from him.”
“He was so nice at first.”
“You mean last week?”
“Yes. But this week he is all demanding and creepy. Roughed me up outside Ricardo’s. Grabbed me too hard. Thank God a car drove by. He wanted to come home with me and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“Why should he? You said yes to him first time you saw him.”
“I just want to meet a nice man who loves me. What’s wrong with that?”
Did Dasha go out every Friday and Saturday night after work and get involved with her boss, a married dentist, because she wanted to meet a nice man who loved her, too? And then she met a nice man, a tall Red Army officer in Sadko. (“Tania, wait till you meet him. You’ve never met anyone so handsome!”)
“Nothing.”
“I want that Harry back. Harry—he was such a sweetie.”
He was a drunk. Tatiana didn’t say anything.
“I want Jude back, or Mark, or even my former husband. Before the war ended it was better. Now they come back and they want us, they just don’t know how to treat us. They want us to be like their war buddies.”
“Do we know how to treat them?”
“I want my loving heart back,” said Vikki, crying. “You know what I’m afraid of? That I will turn out like my mother. Rootless. I don’t want to be like her. They say we all turn out like our mothers, you believe that?” Before Tatiana had a chance to answer, Vikki went on. “My mother left me, left New York, went abroad, traveled, loved, I guess, but ended up in a home somewhere in Montecito, imagine, I don’t even know where Montecito is and my mother found a loony bin there.”
“I’m sorry for her. And about her.”
“You know what I think sometimes?” Vikki whispered with a small sob. “Sometimes I think I want my mother back. Isn’t that ridiculous?”
“No,” said Tatiana. “I want my mother back.”
“Did you have a good mother?”
“I don’t know. She was my mother, that’s all.”
“Did you have a good sister?”
“I had a very good sister,” Tatiana whispered. “She carried me on her back when I was young and protected me from bad boys her whole life. I want them all back. My sister, my brother.” She closed her eyes. Pasha and Tania holding on to the same rope, swinging over the River Luga, one swing, two, three, letting go, and falling in, Pasha and Tania running flat out to the banks of the Luga, taking a running jump and diving in.
“But don’t you want love, too? I want love. A nice two-bedroom Levitt house in the suburbs of Long Island, a car, two kids. I want what my grandparents have. For forty-three years they’ve had each other.”
“Vikki,
you don’t want that. You don’t want kids. It’s not for you. You have wandering heart.”
Vikki squinted in the dark at Tatiana. Mascara was spread in black globs under Vikki’s eyes. “I could have that.”
Without taking her hand away from Vikki’s hair, Tatiana shook her head.
“What do you know about anything? You never leave this apartment.”
“Where do I have to go? I’m home.”
“Do you?” asked Vikki, reaching out and touching Tatiana’s hair. “Do you have a wandering heart?”
“I wish I did.”
Vikki moved over and put her arms around Tatiana, who shut tight her eyes and lay nestled into Vikki, the way she once, a lifetime ago, used to sleep at the Fifth Soviet apartment, nestled into Dasha.
“Tania,” said Vikki, “how could you have not given yourself to anyone all this time?”
Tatiana made no reply.
“Have you been with a man other than your husband?”
Tatiana moved away in the bed. To bear it in the night next to someone else was beyond her strength, beyond her limits. “No,” she said in a low voice. “I fell in love when I was sixteen. I never loved anyone else. I never been with anyone else.”
“Oh, Tania. My Grammy was right about you. She said that girl is still getting over her Travis.”
Tatiana said nothing. Vikki inched over, putting her arms around her again.
“But you have his son. Isn’t he a comfort to you?”
“When I don’t think of his father, yes.”
“But don’t you want love again? Happiness? Marriage? God, Tatiana,” Vikki breathed out. “You have…so much to give.” She held Tatiana closer. “Edward’s divorce has come through. Why don’t you go to dinner with him? Why do you always keep him at lunch length?”
“Edward deserves better than me.”
“Edward doesn’t think so. I don’t think so.”
Tatiana laughed lightly, caressing Vikki’s arms. “I’ll get there,” she whispered. “You said so yourself, I’ll get there.”
Hours in the dark, and they were not sleeping. Vikki sobered up a bit, drank some water. She was smoking and lying in bed under the covers.
“Please tell me you’ll go to dinner with him. What can one dinner hurt?”
“What do you matter about all this?”
Vikki laughed. “I care,” she emphasized, “because I know he wants to. And because I think you would be adorable together.”
“Together? Forget everything. You said dinner.”
“Yes. Dinner together.”
“Together implies a number of dinners. Maybe even Levitt house.”
“And that would be wrong, why?”
“I go to sleep now. You do what you like.”
She couldn’t tell Vikki about the ugly thoughts. She couldn’t tell Vikki about the beautiful thoughts. She couldn’t tell Vikki about the sky, or the sorrow.
How comforting it was to sleep next to another human being. Not to be alone. How comforting it was to feel a breathing body, and a trembling heart, to feel someone’s dark hair on your shoulders, to feel, to feel.
All Vova has to say is, “Don’t worry, Alexander. We’ll take good care of Tania when you’re gone.”
At home she sits helplessly before him in the chair, looking flummoxed.
“Let me ask you,” Alexander says, his voice dripping with sarcasm, and Tatiana says, “Shura, darling—”
“Let me ask you,” he repeats, louder. “Don’t interrupt me.” He is pacing in front of her like a caged animal. “Just tell me, how long do you think you might wait before you let Vova take care of you? Oh, and maybe the guitar-wielding Vlasik, maybe you can ask him what else he wields. Ask him if he delivers the goods. Or would you like me to speak to him personally?”
She looks at him slightly aghast. She says nothing. She is not angry with him, how could she be when she knows he adores her, when she knows all he wants to do is to love her less.
“Answer me, dammit,” he says, taking a menacing step toward her.
She sits in the chair, her hands clasped between her breasts. “I beg you—”
“Beg me all you want,” he returns cruelly. “Would you like me to speak to Vlasik personally? Or are you going to use the words I taught you on him, perhaps when you’re missing me?” His eyes are flaming. He grabs her by her arm and yanks her to her feet.
Tatiana pulls at his hand. “Let go of me.” Backing away from him, she finds herself wedged between her sewing table and the brick wall of the peasant oven. Stepping forward, she tries to get past him into the open space of the cabin, but Alexander doesn’t move out of her way and does not let her pass, shoving her lightly back into the corner with his body. “We’re not done here,” he says.
“Shura!”
“Don’t raise your voice to me!”
“Shura! Stop it!” she says loudly and again attempts to get past him, but he does not let her out of the corner, this time pushing her back with his hands. “I said stop it! Stop. This is all for nothing.”
“To you it’s nothing.”
“Are you out of your mind?” She rams her body against him. “Get out of my way.”
“Make me.”
“Shura!” she screams. She tries very hard not to cry. She is shaking. “Please, stop.” From the effort not to cry, her lower lip begins to tremble. Above her, Alexander slams his head against the wall. And then he steps away.
“What do you think, Alexander, that I will care less you’re leaving if you do this? Keep going. Do you think this will make me glad to see the back of you? That anything in the world is going to make it easier for me once you’re gone?”
“You seem to think so,” Alexander replies, backing farther away from her.
Tatiana watches him, her eyes clearing for a moment. “Wait a minute. This isn’t about me. This isn’t about me at all.” She emits a stifled groan. “It’s you—you think that if you imagine me taking up with every village idiot, your feeling for me will fade? You think, if only Tania betrays me, it will be so much easier for me to die, to leave her, to abandon her.”
“Tania, shut up.”
“No!” she shouts. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Imagine the worst, and then suddenly I’m not your wife, I’m just some slag with no heart, how perfect, and my husband is free. I’m a slag who has found another knocker to replace yours in minutes.” She is so upset that she clenches her fists.
“Tania, I told you, shut the hell up!”
“No!” she yells, jumping on the hearth so she can be a little taller, feel a little braver. “That’s what you want, what you need, to imagine the impossible to rid yourself of me.” Tears trickle down her face. “Well, I don’t give a damn how much you need it,” she says furiously. “I’m not giving it to you. I’m not giving that to you. You can have anything else, but I will not pretend to whore myself out just so you can feel better about leaving me.”
“You’re going to stop, do you hear?”
“Or what?” she says. “Make me, Alexander. Because I’m not keeping quiet about this.”
“No, of course not!” he shouts, helplessly kicking their kettle across the room.
“That’s right!” she shouts back. “You won’t have this. You want a fight? I’ll give you a fight for this.”
He grits his teeth and comes for her. “You don’t know what a fight is,” he says, yanking her off the hearth, ripping her dress from her chest to her hips, pulling her down to the wood floor, holding her down, tearing off her underwear, prying her legs open, descending on her.
Tatiana closes her eyes.
He is rough with her. She doesn’t want to hold him at first, but it is impossible not to hold his anguished body. “Soldier…” she manages through her groans. “You can’t take me, you can’t leave me—”
“I can take you,” he whispers.
Suddenly uttering a helpless groan, he pulls away and goes outside, leaving Tatiana on the floor, where she lies cur
led into a ball, coughing, panting.
He is on the bench, smoking. His hands are shaking. Tatiana, wrapped in a white sheet, stands in front of him. Her voice is shaking. “Tomorrow,” she says, barely able to get the words out, “is our last day here in Lazarevo.” She can’t look at him and he can’t look at her. “Please, let’s not do this.”
“All right, let’s not.”
She lets the sheet fall to the ground and comes close to his knees. “Careful,” Alexander says quietly, glancing at his lit cigarette.
“It’s too late for careful,” replies Tatiana. “Our destruction is close. What do I care about your cigarette?”
For a long time in bed in the dark Alexander holds her to his warm chest, without talking, without moving, nearly without breathing, without finishing what he had started earlier.
Finally he speaks. “I cannot take you with me,” he says. “You’ll be in too much danger. I cannot risk—”
“Shh.” Tatiana kisses his chest. “I know. Shura, I’m yours. You may not like it today, you may not want it tonight, you may wish for it all to be different now, but it remains, and I remain, as always, only yours. Nothing can change that. Not your wrath, your fists, your body, or your death.”
He emits a grinding rasp.
“Darling, honey.” She starts to cry. “We are orphans, Alexander, you and I. All we have is each other. I know that you lost everyone you ever loved, but you’re not going to lose me. I swear to you on my wedding band, and on my maiden ring that you broke, on my heart you’re breaking, and on your life, I swear to you, I will forever be your faithful wife.”