CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Dinner at the Sabatellas', 1943
FINALLY, ON A SUNDAYin late October, Tatiana agreed to come for dinner at Vikki's. The Sabatellas lived in Little Italy, at the corner of Mulberry and Grand.
As they walked through the door, Tatiana heard a bellow and a screech and then an alto voice hollered, "Gelso-MEE-nah!" A dark-haired, tanned woman of large size and short stature came out from the kitchen. "You said you were going to be here three hours ago."
"I'm sorry, Grammy. Tania wasn't done with--I don't even know what she does in that hospital. Tania, meet my grandmother, Isabella, oh, and this is Tania's little boy, Anthony."
Tatiana was hugged but Anthony was scooped up by the floury hands, and taken, all three and a half months of him, into the kitchen, where he was splayed out on the counter, on his back, and Tatiana thought if she didn't instantly come to her son's rescue, Isabella might just make a zeppole out of him.
"Gelsomina?" Tatiana inquired quietly of Vikki as they stood in the kitchen and drank wine.
"Don't ask. It means jasmine. It has something to do with my dead mother."
"Your mother is not dead!" Isabella shouted without rancor, caressing the baby. "She is in California."
"She's in California," Vikki explained. "That means purgatory in Italian."
"Stop it. You know how ill she is."
"Your mother is ill?" Tatiana whispered.
"Yes," Vikki whispered back, "mentallyill."
"Stop it, you impossible child," Isabella boomed, beaming at Anthony. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
"I told them under no circumstances to ask you about the baby's father," Vikki loudly whispered. "Is that good?"
"That's good, Vikki," Tatiana quietly whispered back.
Tatiana liked the apartment, which was large and lived-in, with oversized windows and tall bookshelves and big furniture, but she was slightly unsettled by the decorating colors: the entire apartment from the carpeted floors to the walls to the crown molding to the velvet curtains was the color of the red wine she was drinking.
In the burgundy and dark-wood parlor room, she met Travis, Isabella's thin, small and less-boisterous-than-his-wife husband.
"When I met my Travis," Isabella said over dinner, holding Anthony with one hand and serving lasagna to Tatiana with the other, "Vikki, pass the bread to Tania, and the salad, and don't just sit there, pour her some wine for the sake of Mary and Jesus, where was I? When I met Travis--"
"You already said that, woman," said Travis, glancing at Tatiana and scratching his bald head as if in apology.
"Prego, don't interrupt. When I met you, you were on your way to marry my Aunt Sophia."
"Don't tellme !I know. Tellher !"
A little more bread was going to keep her mouth nice and occupied. She could eat and they could talk and a good time would be had by all.
"My mother's younger sister," elaborated Isabella. "Travis and I met in a small town in Italy. Near Florence. You know where Florence is?"
"Yes," Tatiana said. "My husband's mother was from Italy."
"I was sent by my mother to meet Travis at the train station. Because he never could have found his way. We lived deep in the valley between the mountains. I was sent to meet him and bring him to my Aunt Sophia who was waiting."
Vikki said, "Grammy, with your help, henever found his way."
"Be quiet, child. It was ten kilometers--about six miles--back to my house. By the time we had walked two kilometers I knew I could not live a day without him. We had stopped at a local tavern for some wine. I never drank. I was too young, just sixteen, but Travis offered me some of his. We drank from the same chalice..." She had stopped serving, smiled and turned to Travis who was eating lasagna and pretending not to pay any attention.
"We didn't know what to do," continued Isabella. "My aunt was twenty-seven, and so was Travis. They were going to be married, there was no way out. We sat in that tavern in the hills near Florence and we didn't know what to do. So you know what we did?" Isabella poked Travis, who dropped his fork and groused. "We didn't come home. We just said, let's go to Rome, we'll write to the family from there. Instead of Rome, we took a train to Naples, and then a boat from Naples to Ellis Island. We came here in 1902. With nothing but each other." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
Tatiana had stopped eating and was watching Isabella and Travis. "Did your aunt forgive you?"
"Nobody forgave me," said Isabella.
"Her mother doesn't write to her to this day," said Travis, his mouth full.
"Well, she's dead, Travis, she can hardly write to me now."
"Alexander, how long have you loved my sister?" asks a starved and dying Dasha.
"Never. I never loved her," replies Alexander. "I love you. You know what we have."
"You said when you get furlough in the summer you would come to Lazarevo and we would get married," says Dasha, coughing.
"Yes. I will come to Lazarevo on furlough, and we will get married," says Alexander to Tatiana's sister, Dasha.
Tatiana deeply lowered her head, kneading and pinching her stiffened fingers.
"We had two daughters in America," continued Isabella. "Travis wanted a son, but God decided otherwise." She sighed. "We tried for a boy. I had three miscarriages." Isabella looked longingly at Anthony, so longingly in fact that Tatiana wanted to get hold of her son again, as if desire somehow equaled possession.
"In 1923, our oldest daughter Annabella had Gelsomina--"
"And called meViktoria ," pointed out Vikki.
"What does she know?" Isabella said dismissively. "What kind of an Italian name is Viktoria? Gelsomina, now that's a beautiful Italian name, fitting for a beautiful girl like you. Our youngest, Francesca, lives in Darien, Connecticut. She comes once a month. She's married to a nice man, no children yet."
"Grammy, Aunt Francesca is thirty-seven. No one has children at thirty-seven," declared Vikki.
"We were meant to have a son," said Isabella mournfully.
"No, we weren't," said Travis. "If we were meant to have a son, we would have had a son. Now give the boy back to his rightful mother and eat, woman."
"Tania, who takes care of him while you work?" asked Isabella, with regret handing Anthony to Tatiana, who took him gratefully.
"I take him with me, or he sleeps, or refugee or soldier looks after him."
"Well, that's not very good," Isabella said. "If you want, I can take care of him for you."
"Thank you," Tatiana said. "But I don't think..." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
"I could come to Ellis and pick him up for you. And then I could bring him back for you."
"Isabella!" exclaimed Travis.
Tatiana smiled at Isabella. "I think about your question, all right?" she said. "And you two are very lucky you have each other. That is wonderful story."
"You're lucky to have your boy," said Isabella.
"Yes," said Tatiana.
"Where is your family?"
Tatiana said nothing at first. "The Germans blockaded Leningrad two years ago," she said. "There was no food." She fell silent.
It is June 23, 1940--Tatiana and Pasha's birthday. They're turning sixteen and the Metanovs are celebrating at their dacha in Luga. They have borrowed a table and put it out in the brambled yard because there's no room in the porch for seventeen people--the seven Metanovs, Papa's sister, husband and niece, Tatiana's Babushka Maya and the six Iglenkos. Papa brought black caviar from Leningrad and smoked sturgeon. He brought herring with potatoes and onions and Mama made hot borscht and five different types of Russian salad. Cousin Marina made a mushroom pie, Dasha made an apple pie, Tatiana's paternal grandmother made her cream puffs, Babushka Maya painted her a picture, and Papa even brought some chocolate from the city because he knows how much Tatiana loves chocolate. Tatiana wears her white dress with red roses. It is the only nice dress she owns. Papa brought it from Poland two years earlier. It is her favorite dress.
Everyone drinks vodka, everyone but Tatiana. They drink until they can't hold the glass in their hands. They tell endless political Russian anecdotes and they eat to bursting. Papa plays the guitar and sings hearty Russian folk songs and everyone else joins in even though they can't remember the words; even though they can't carry a tune.
"If you only knew
Oh how dear to me,
Are these Moscow nights..."
"When you turn eighteen, Tania," says Papa, "I will rent out a banquet hall in the Astoria Hotel for you and Pasha, and we're going to have ourselves a real proper feast, not this."
"You didn't have a party like that for me, Papa," Dasha says, who turned eighteen five years earlier.
"Times were very tough in 1935," says Papa. "We had so little, but things are better now and they'll be better still in two years. I'll raise a glass to you too at the Astoria, Dasha, all right?"
Tania wants to turn eighteen tomorrow so she can have another day like this day. The night air is warm and smells of faded lilacs and blooming cherry blossoms, the crickets are deafening and even the mosquitoes are at bay. Her brother and sister fall on top of her on the grass and they tickle her until she yells, screeches, squeals, stop it, stop it, stop it, my dress my dress, while the adults raise another shaky glass and Papa picks up the guitar again and Tatiana hears his deep inebriated voice carry through the Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
brambles and the nettles and the white cherry trees, scratching out exiled Alexander Vertinsky's lament for Leningrad...
"Uncertain talk by chance brought
Sweet and needless words
Summer Garden, Fontanka, and Neva
Why did you fly here oh words so fleeting?
Here the noise is made by foreign cities
And foreign waters lap against the shores here."