Waiting For Tatiana. It was like a play. He was once again waiting for Tatiana—this time at Balkman’s barbecue-and-fireworks Fourth of July party.
Margaret, Bill’s girlfriend, who tried to kiss Alexander hello on the lips, asked where Tania was. Amanda asked where Tania was. Cindy asked where Tania was. Alexander himself wanted to know where Tania was. They took Ant to Francesca’s early that morning and Alexander drove her to work so they would have only his truck after the party. She “promised” him with a smile as she got out that she would be at Balkman’s by eight, “the latest,” and here it was, 8:45 and she was still not there. He drank a bit, picked on some chips, had a beer. The food had been served buffet-style in aluminum trays over sterno heaters, but he didn’t want to eat until she got there. He was impatient and irritable. He meandered around the backyard, finally getting into a conversation with Jeff about the Korean War.
“Alexander!” It was Margaret, leading Tatiana across the lawn. “Look who finally graced us with her presence! Party’s almost over, darling. Food’s nearly all gone. See, if you weren’t working, you could’ve had it all hot.”
Tatiana nodded hello to their friends. “Hey,” she said to Alexander. “Erin couldn’t get off work, and she was giving me a ride. Sorry I’m late.”
“You’re always sorry,” he said without smiling. Of course she wasn’t wearing a watch. It was like asking her to wear a weapon.
She had on a tank sundress with a swing skirt and wide straps with satin ties at the shoulders. The dress was pale green with pale yellow flowers. The skirt was flouncy, she must have had a petticoat under it. The unusual thing was that her hair was down, flowing loose on her back. Alexander frowned. “Let’s go. I’ll get you a drink,” he said, leading her away, and when they were at a sufficient distance from everyone, he said quietly, “Why’s your hair down like that?”
“Well, look.” Turning her back to him, Tatiana lifted the hair away from her neck to show him his nocturnal obsessions spilling over into their daytime life. There were four or five fresh scarlet-purple suck marks on the back of her neck and down the rear slope of her shoulders. “Don’t have much choice but to leave my hair down, do I?” She turned to face him. “What would you rather have, everybody see my hair or see those and imagine what you must have been doing to me?” Slightly blushing, she lowered her head. Alexander was silent, recalling what he had been doing to her. Sighing, he kissed her hands.
Suddenly Margaret was upon them. “No, no, no. No spousal privileges at parties. You can do that at home.” She was carrying a tray of crudités. “Tania, you don’t know what a treasure you have in your husband—he didn’t flirt with anyone. He is very good when you’re not around.”
“And that would be quite frequently,” Alexander whispered to Tatiana, standing slightly behind her. She suppressed a laugh.
Margaret took Tatiana by the hand. “Come, let me introduce you to someone. I have a friend here, Joan—she worked once, too. I want you to talk to her about it. She got it out of her system. Alexander, now that your wife is here, go flirt. It’s bad manners for spouses to talk to each other at a party.”
Tatiana left to mingle. Alexander, too, but every once in a while he looked for her amid the talkers. He discussed with Jeff the prospects for the mediocre Boston Red Sox this season and then became embroiled in a conversation with Bill Balkman over Truman’s firing of Douglas MacArthur, who had retaken all of Korea from the Chinese-led Communists in mere months and had wanted to push over the Yalu River right into China against Truman’s wishes; hence the sacking. Balkman said, “No, no. I agree with Truman. Moderation is key. Truman said, ‘Let’s be calm, let’s do nothing.’ MacArthur was out of line. I agree with the President.”
Alexander said, “You don’t think MacArthur was right when he said that moderation in this instance was like advising a man whose family is about to be killed not to take hasty action for fear of alienating the affection of the murderers?”
Balkman laughed, slapping Alexander on the shoulder. “Alexander, you’re hilarious. Look, much more pertinently, did Steve tell you our fabulous news?”
“What news?”
Balkman was beaming. “We got the contract for the Hayes house.”
Alexander was pleased. Dee and Mike Hayes bought three acres of land on a freshly made lake in Scottsdale, north of Dynamite, and had been for months shopping around for a builder for their proposed 7000 square foot home. It was great news for the company and great exposure, since the house was going to be photographed for the Phoenix Sun newspaper and for Modern Home magazine. They toasted their success.
“We’re breaking ground in three weeks. Alex, I want you to foreman the whole op—as they say in the army.”
“Well, they don’t use the word foreman,” said Alexander.
“Ha! Get all the help you need. Mike Hayes told me he needs the house by early spring so we have our work cut out for us. Jeff and Steve have their hands full, but you’re going to finish the Schreiners ahead of schedule.” He patted Alexander affectionately. “I heard you actually put in new subflooring yourself to get it ready earlier. We’ll get a bonus for early delivery, you know. You’ll get half of five thousand dollars.”
“Thanks, Bill.” They shook hands.
“Borrow Dudley from Steve-o,” said Balkman. “He works hard. He’ll help you. Have you met him yet?”
“Yes.” Alexander’s fingers tensed around his beer glass.
“I see Tania’s met him, too.” Balkman smiled. “He’s been flirting with your wife for the last half-hour.”
The smile faded from Alexander’s face. Tatiana was walking toward him, a plate in her hands. By her side was Dudley, swaying from the free booze.
He had his hand on her back—on her hair!
“Dudley-boy, I see you’ve met our Tania,” said Balkman, shaking Dudley’s hand. “Dudley’s another one, Alexander, who’ll do anything. You’re a fine worker, Dud; good to have you on board. How are you enjoying our little party?”
Tatiana went to stand next to Alexander, not meeting his gaze.
“You okay?” he said in a low voice.
“I’m just dandy,” she said. “He’s been following me around for forty minutes. What, you haven’t noticed? Ah, but then, you don’t notice anything anymore.”
Before Alexander could defend his observational skills, she walked away from him. Taking a deep breath he followed her. They went to get a drink, away from other ears for a moment. “Tania, I don’t want you to talk to him. Don’t go near him. He is f*cked up—can’t you see it?”
“Who? Dudley? Oh, come on. He’s harmless,” she said in her little mocking voice. “All men are like that. Don’t worry, he’s fine.”
Alexander was in no mood to be mocked. “Excuse me,” he said, “if I don’t want to have this argument with you in the middle of my boss’s party.”
“I don’t want to talk another second about this,” she said. “You’ve made it very clear you’re not listening. Oh, and about the other thing—I’ll try not to talk to Dudley, but he’s very persistent. But so what? Just men being men, right? I heard,” Tatiana said, widening her eyes, “it’s much worse in the army.”
“Tania!”
“Yes?”
His back stiff, he opened himself a beer. She poured herself a little wine. They stood and drank without talking.
Balkman caught up with them.
“Tania, did Alexander tell you about our great coup?”
“No,” she said curtly.
Balkman himself told her about the Hayes house, and about his plans for Alexander for the next year. Tatiana listened—like a stone might listen—and then said, “That’s great,” but didn’t muster the sincerity or the fake smile.
“What’s the matter?” Balkman said. “Everything all right? Another long day at work?”
“Everything is just fine,” she replied to him, in a voice that said, you jerk, can’t you see how bad it is? “Will you two excuse me?” Her crisp skirt flounced as she swirled away.
Alexander excused himself and went after her. “Are you kidding me,” he said, “acting that way in front of my employer? You want a fight, let’s take it home, and I’ll give you a fight good and proper but don’t bark at me and turn up your nose at my boss when he talks to you.” They were across the lawn standing tensely near the landscaped azaleas.
“Alexander,” said Tatiana, “I am through pretending.”
“No, you’re not,” he said. “You’re going to pretend to be gracious in his house.”
“Like he was gracious to me in my house, telling you to put me in my place?”
“The way you’re acting,” he snapped, “it’s obvious you don’t know it.”
She sharply turned to walk away from him. With great difficulty, he did not grab her arm. Stepping in front of her, he said through his closed mouth, “Stop it. Right now. Do you hear me?”
“I don’t want to be here.”
“That much is clear. But don’t walk away from me.” He did not grab her arm, he took her by the arm, and because the arm was bare, he didn’t squeeze her, he just circled it in his hands. “Now come on. Let’s go sit. The fireworks will come on soon, and then we’ll go.”
“Oh, yes, please. Let’s go sit by your friend, Stevie. Maybe we can talk to him about services at the Ho. I hear it’s a fine hotel. Very accommodating.”
It was all he could do not to fling her arm away from him. They went to sit in a circle of chairs on the edge of the lawn by Jeff and Cindy, Steve and Amanda.
Cindy had been married a month. She was telling Amanda and Tatiana what her first month of marriage was like. Alexander’s face involuntarily turned to Tatiana, sitting to his right. Ten years ago, they had been living their first month together, too. Here under the blackening Phoenix sky, they had almost forgotten. But then she turned her face to him, and in her supplicating expression, he saw that she had not forgotten. Just a glance, a blink, a short nod of the head as a toast to the everlasting Ural Mountains and the everflowing Kama.
“We have news,” said Cindy. “Jeff doesn’t want me to say anything, but you’re my closest friends, I can’t not tell you.”
Jeff rolled his eyes.
“We’re having a baby!” she exclaimed.
There was exultation and congratulations. The men shook Jeff’s hand. The women hugged Cindy. Nobody could believe it. “Already?” Amanda said.
“Well done, man,” Steve said. “Well done! Quick work of it.”
“Why dawdle, I say. If you’re going to do something, do it right.”
Alexander was very careful not to look at Tatiana as they both maintained their smiles for Jeff and Cindy.
Dudley angled by, saw them, and pulled up an empty lawn chair next to Tatiana. Everyone stopped talking about babies. Dudley asked Tatiana if she wanted another glass of wiiiine, seeing that hers was empty; called her Tania. Said that he knew some Russian soldiers when he was in Europe, and heard that Russian girls named Tania were sometimes called Tanechka. “Does anyone call you Tanechka, like you are a Russian girl?” chuckled Dudley, his mouth curled up in a seedy smile.
“Tania is not Russian, Dudley,” said Amanda. “She is from New York.”
“Look at that hair,” said Dudley. “That’s not New York hair. That’s Russian peasant hair.” He grinned and raised his coarse eyebrows. “Before the emancipation of the serfs,” he added suggestively.
Alexander got up, eased a paling Tatiana out of her chair, and switched places with her. “So you and Amanda are not talking over me,” he said, sitting down next to Dudley without glancing at him. But suddenly the conversation sagged.
“I saw your tattoos the other day when you were doing the subflooring,” Dudley said to Alexander. “You got some nifty ones. A hammer and sickle on your arm?”
“Yeah, what of it?”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Catowice.”
“Voluntary or forced?”
“Forced.”
“How’d they get you to sit still for that? I would have fought until I was bled out before I had that on my arm.”
Tatiana reached over and put her hand on Alexander’s leg—her way of comfort, and of warning. He ignored it, turning to silently stare down Dudley with his back to her. “You’ve got tattoos from your neck down to your back,” Alexander said. “The other day at the Schreiners’, I saw on your forearm a tattoo of a dragon doing unspeakable things to a damsel in distress. You’ve got knives plunged into people’s hearts, beheadings, disembowelings. All that is better than a hammer and sickle?”
“Better than a Red brand? Where are you living? Absolutely!” said Dudley. “And I got those willingly, not held down in chains. The choice was mine.”
“Did you get them at the big house?”
“Yeah. So what?”
“Ah. Prison was your choice?”
The other people in the chairs looked uncomfortably into the green grass.
“Prison was not my choice,” said Dudley slowly. “But tell me, is a SchutzStaffel Eagle on your other arm your choice? A hammer and sickle on one arm, a swastika on the other? Where the f*ck did you come from?”
“Dud, come on, there are ladies present,” said Jeff.
Dudley continued as if not spoken to. “The Nazis didn’t brand POW with SS Eagles. You know who did?”
“I know who did,” said Alexander grimly.
“The Sovietskis. In Germany, when they took over the Nazi camps. I know it because we were in one of them watching the Soviet guards with one of their own prisoners. They did it as a sign of respect after the man didn’t confess despite severe torture. They beat him, tortured him, tattooed him and then shot him anyway.”
A groan of pain came from Tatiana behind him.
“What’s your point?” Alexander said, stretching his hand back, to touch her, to say, it’s all right. I’m here. It wasn’t me they shot.
“My point is,” Dudley said too loudly, “you may be in the Reserve now, but you were never in our army during the war.”
Alexander said nothing.
“Who were you fighting for?”
“Against Hitler. Who were you fighting for?”
“You and I, we never fought on the same side, buddy. I know it. No one has tattoos like you. The SS Eagle is a badge of blind honor for the Nazis, a sign of ultimate respect—they would saw off their own dicks before they gave one to an American POW—even in a f*ckhole like Catowice. No, you were captured too far east to have fought for us. Americans never got to where you were.”
“Dudley, what the hell are you saying?” asked Steve, getting up out of his chair and walking over to stand near him.
“This man is an impostor,” said Dudley. “He is in hiding here. This man was in the Red Army. The Germans branded the Soviet officers with the hammer and sickles—before they shot them. The Soviets branded the Soviet expat soldiers with the SS Eagles—before they shot them.”
There was silence in the circle. Everyone gaped at Alexander, who said nothing, his mouth clenched, his eyes dark. Tatiana squeezed his leg. They exchanged a glance. She said quietly, “You think we should go now?”
“No, no, don’t be silly, stay for the fireworks,” Amanda said quickly. The girls tittered uncomfortably. Jeff said, “I’m sure Dudley’s mistaken. It’s some kind of mistake, that’s all.” Raising his eyebrows, he looked over at Cindy. “Cin, you know what? This is a very good time to go dance.”
Everybody got up except Tatiana and Alexander. Even Dudley managed to hoist himself off the chair. “What a great idea,” he said, crossing Alexander’s path heading to Tatiana. “Want to dance, Tanechka?”
Alexander stood up suddenly and body-checked Dudley, who lost his balance and fell to the ground.
“Dudley,” said Alexander, having already pulled Tatiana out of the chair and away, “if you’re right about me, then you must know what I will do if you touch her again.”
Before Dudley, back on his feet, could even open his mouth, Jeff and Steve were already between them. “Guys, guys, come on,” said Jeff, pushing Alexander away, while Steve pushed Dudley away. “Alex, what’s wrong with you? It’s a party. At my father’s house. Dud, forget it, come with me, let me introduce you to Theo. Come, you’ll like him.” With a sharp stare at Alexander, to say, cool it, can’t you see he’s just wasted? Steve led Dudley away, and Amanda was about to lead Tatiana away, but Tatiana went to Alexander, placed her hand on his chest and said, “Do you want to go home? We can go right now.”
Jeff said not to go. “He’s drunk. It’s nothing. Alexander, forget about him. He’s not worth it, man.”
Tatiana was not moving. She pressed against him and looked up. He brushed the hair out of her face, stroked her cheek briefly and then disengaged from her. “We’ll wait for the fireworks. Look, Margaret is looking for you again. Go. Just remember what I told you.”
Casting him a nervous look, she left, flanked by Margaret and Amanda, and Alexander remained with Jeff. Balkman came over, and they got caught up discussing breaking ground on the Hayes house and whose palms needed to be greased in order to get the inspectors to the site in two weeks and not in two overbooked months. Suddenly Alexander wasn’t paying any attention. The Balkmans had a large lawn, with a pool, a gazebo, landscaped bushes and trees. Across the lawn through the bushes he spotted a plaid shirt and a ponytail. From beyond the man’s jeans, Alexander saw the floral print of Tatiana’s green dress.
His gaze briefly losing its focus, Alexander barely excused himself as he made his way across. Tatiana was pressed against the wood fence and he was leaning over her. Alexander didn’t acknowledge Dudley as he pushed between them to separate them, his eyes on Tatiana’s distressed face. He pulled her away from the fence and only then did he turn. Behind him, Tatiana was grasping his shirt.
“You are completely f*cked up,” Alexander said quietly to Dudley. “What are you doing? I’m telling you, walk away. Turn around, walk away, stay away from my wife.”
“What is your problem, man? This is a free country, unlike that red country you came from. And your wife, for your information, was talking to me. Weren’t you, Tania?”
Tatiana, her mouth tight and skin pale, took Alexander’s hand and said, “Come on, Shura. The fireworks are about to start.”
But Alexander could not walk away. He could not turn his back.
It was dark; there was much commotion. They were near the edge of the lawn slightly away from other people. The first burst of fireworks whistled into the sky and exploded. Over the whistling of the rockets, Alexander heard Dudley’s voice.
“You didn’t answer me,” said Dudley. “I said, what in the world is your f*cking problem?”
“What in the world is your f*cking problem?” said Alexander, turning square to him. “Tania, go wait for me across the grass.”
Tatiana squeezed his hand. “No. Please. Come on, Shura,” she said, trying to pull him away. “Let’s go home.”
But Alexander wasn’t moving. He and Dudley faced off, eye to eye.
“You’ve had a problem with me from the very beginning,” said Dudley, spitting out a black chunk of chewed tobacco.
“You’ve been out of f*cking line from the very beginning.”
“Oh, really?” Dudley said. “Well, you want to take it outside?”
“We are outside, a*shole.”
“Shura, please!” She walked between them, taking hold of both of Alexander’s hands.
“Tania!” Alexander ripped his hands from her, not for a second taking his eyes off Dudley. “I said go wait for me across the grass.”
“Let’s go home, darling,” she said, still in front of him, looking up at him, still trying to take hold of him. “Please.”
“Yes, let’s go home, darling,” mimicked Dudley. “Please. And I’ll get on my knees and suck your cock.”
“Shura, no!”
Alexander moved Tatiana forcibly out of the way with one hand and punched Dudley so savagely and swiftly in the face with the other that if Dudley hadn’t fallen backward, no one would have known that anything at all had transpired between them. The fireworks continued to burst in the sky. People were clapping, cheering. There was music playing. Harry James and his orchestra were finally beginning to see the light.
But fall Dudley did into the corner of the lawn, in the dark, near the bushes. Tatiana, ever the nurse, peered at him. He was bleeding profusely from the mouth. His front teeth were dangling by their bloodied roots. Alexander—who had been methodically trained and then baptized by fire in vicious hand-to-hand combat through the Byelorussian villages, fighting the Germans with knives and bayonets and with single fatal blows up through the nose—thought that Dudley got off easy. Without breathing out, he took Tatiana by the hand. “Now we can go,” he said. Nothing in his face moved.
Speechlessly she stared at him.
He walked across the lawn to the back gate. Margaret and Bill were standing on the patio watching the fireworks. Alexander, barely even stopping, came up to Balkman and said into the man’s initially smiling and then sinking face, “That’s it. I’ve had it up to here with you and your f*cking business. I quit—for good. Don’t pay me for last week, don’t give me any of the money you owe me. I’m done with you. Don’t ever call me again.”
“Alexander! Wait! What’s happened?”
Balkman ran after him.
“Alexander! Please wait! Steve! What the hell happened?”
Alexander was moving quickly, pulling Tatiana behind him; she had to run to keep up. Outside on the front walkway, Steve intercepted them, running around to face them, panting, red, fists clenched. “How dare you! How dare you—after all we did for you—”
Alexander jerked his head back but not before Steve jabbed him hard in the chin, knocking him into Tatiana, who lost her footing and fell.
Alexander, without straightening out, punched Steve, smashing his jaw. Steve doubled over. Alexander uppercut him again but harder. He would have hit him a third time, but crumbling onto himself, Steve fell on the stone walkway. “Let’s see how well you lie your way through your miserable life now, you sack of shit,” Alexander said, kicking him hard, and then turning to a frightened and panicked Tatiana to help her off the ground.
They were driving in a matter of minutes. They were utterly silent for several miles.
“Are you all right?” Tatiana asked.
“I’m fine.” He wiped his mouth.
“You could’ve broken your knuckles.”
“They’re fine.” He clenched and unclenched his fist.
She was watching him. “Shura…?”
“Tania,” he said calmly, “I don’t want to talk about a single thing, a single f*cking thing. So just—sit very quietly and say nothing.”
She fell instantly mute. In a few minutes, he stopped his truck on an empty Shea Boulevard by the side of the road. Somewhere far away fireworks were going off. Inside the truck his unsteady hands were gripping the wheel.
“Darling…” she said soothingly.
“I have been such a f*cking idiot. I don’t even know what to do with myself.”
“Please, it’ll be all right. Do you want me to drive?”
His head was on the wheel. She scooted over to him on the bench seat, sat by him. When he looked up, she took a napkin and dabbed his lip. He moved her hand away, and soon began driving again. “Are you okay?” he asked. “That bastard hit me knowing you were behind me, knowing you could get hurt. I didn’t even have a chance to move you out of the way.”
“Are you surprised he wasn’t more of a gentleman?” asked Tatiana.
“Did you not hear me when I said I don’t want you to say a single f*cking thing?”
After a while she spoke. “Dudley asked me if I had heard the rumor about him. That he keeled a man in Montana. I said that he’d been at war, he must have seen plenty of death. And he said, ‘War isn’t real. Montana, now that’s real.’”
“I’ve seen Montana,” said Alexander, his hands grim around the wheel. “I don’t think it’s so real.”
Tatiana couldn’t sleep. He slept. She made out the hands of the clock. Ten to two. The house was quiet, outside was quiet, it was the deep of night by the mountains. Nothing was moving, except Tatiana’s anxiety, freely roaming around in her chest. She couldn’t sleep at all. She was unsettled and anxious.
Quietly reaching over him, she replaced the phone back on the cradle. He always took it off the hook at night before he made love to her.
Anthony was sleeping over at Sergio’s. She wished Ant were home, so she could go and check on him and feel a bit of comfort. Instead, Tatiana placed her hand on Alexander’s chest and listened to his heart. All her adult life this is what she did—listened to his heart. What was it telling her now? It was rhythmic, subdued, whooshing. Lightly she rubbed her lips back and forth against his stubble, kissed him softly, brought her hand down, cupped him, caressed him. He was deeply sleeping, but sometimes, if he felt her like this through sleep, he would roll on his side and throw his arm over her. Tonight he did not wake, remaining on his back. His lip was swollen. His right hand was swollen, iced over, bandaged. He barely let her bandage it. He hated to be pampered over his injuries. He liked to be pampered over other things, bathed, fed, fussed over, kissed—all that he took gladly—but he never liked any fussing over his wounds. It was like he was remembering himself incapacitated in Morozovo where he lay helpless in a hospital bed for two months until he was arrested and she was gone.
Tatiana tossed and tossed, and finally got up, threw on her cream camisole and went out to the living room. She got herself a glass of water, sat on a high stool near the kitchen counter; she didn’t move, she tried not to breathe. The air conditioner was off, there was no noise at all, and it was then, at two thirty in the morning, that Tatiana thought she heard the sound of a distant engine. Slightly opening the front door, she listened. Nothing. Outside was black dread, and there was no moon. After bolting and locking the front door, she went to quietly close the bedroom door, so as not to disturb Alexander and then from the kitchen dialed the hospital.
Erin, her friend and the night receptionist, answered, and the first words out of her mouth were, “Tania! Why was your phone off the hook? I’ve been calling and calling you!”
“Why? What’s the matter?” Tatiana asked quietly.
“Steve Balkman was brought in here again with some other guy. Balkman is still unconscious, but the other one was a wild animal. They had to subdue him with tranquilizers. He was drunk and bleeding. He kept yelling, threatening unbelievable things, and before they shot him up full of drugs, he kept saying your husband’s name, cursing! Do you know anything about that?”
“I do. Is Sergeant Miller there?”
“He went out on his break. Who is that man? And how do you know him? We’ve been trying to call you for three hours!”
“Let me talk to Sergeant Miller. That man needs to be detained.”
“Tania! He can’t be, he left already.”
“He what?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m trying to tell you! At one thirty he stormed out of here without a doctor, without a discharge, without anything. Just pulled out his IV, put on his clothes and left.”
Tatiana’s voice was a whisper when she said, “Erin, tell Miller to send a car to my house.”
“What’s going—”
Tatiana hung up. But now her heart was thudding so hard that she couldn’t hear the quiet, the outside, the inside. Was it a car she had heard? Or was it a fever? A delusion?
She was standing at the kitchen counter. The shades weren’t drawn in the living room. They never drew the shades. There was no one around. Was there wind? She couldn’t tell, but the black-and-blue shadows kept moving in long strides through the windows. She couldn’t hear anything outside. She was paralyzed with deafening fear on the inside. She needed to walk across the living room into the bedroom and wake Alexander, but she couldn’t move. It would mean walking across the house, past two unshaded windows, past two doors.
She was still in the kitchen when the shadow in her window rose in the darkness into the shape of a man moving slowly up the steps of her front deck. She always left that window open so she could see Alexander walking up the steps to his home. This wasn’t the wind!
She moved, she took three steps away from the counter, past the front door, and before she could take another, the door crashed open, and before she had a chance to scream, Dudley, his mouth full of black holes, his eyes filled with black rage, was in front of her. He grabbed her around the mouth and throat so she couldn’t make a sound and twisted her head back so hard she thought her neck would break. There was a pistol in his hand. And she had so solicitously closed the bedroom door to let Alexander sleep!
But the front door, the door! It was such a loud crash. Maybe he would hear.
He heard.
The bedroom door slowly opened, and Alexander appeared and stood naked in the doorway. Dudley showed him Tatiana. “Here I am, motherf*cker,” Dudley said, lisping through the missing incisors. “And here she is. We’re going to finish this in your house.” He was holding Tatiana around the throat. The cocked pistol was pointed at Alexander. “You pigging Red, don’t move. You think you can break my f*cking face and get away with it? You don’t know soldiers for shit. I’ve brought it right back home to you.” Dudley’s hand around Tatiana’s throat fanned out over her breast. She exhaled piercingly, her eyes wildly pleading to Alexander, who stood like a tomb, not blinking, not breathing, looking only at Dudley. “Stevie told me she never had another cock but yours,” Dudley said. “Oh, we said, how sweet that must’ve been for you—with tiny little her. Well, guess what? I’m going to find out if she’s still like candy”—he smacked his lips—“find out right in front of you, and then you can have my sloppy seconds. Now step away from the door”—Dudley steadied his cocked weapon—“but slowly.”
Alexander did as he was told. He slowly stepped away from the door, and without anything else moving on him and without another instant of time ticking by, he raised his left arm that had been hidden behind the door jamb, pointed the Colt M1911 pistol straight at Tatiana’s face and fired in the dark.
The reverberating thudding impact of the .45 caliber round travelling a distance of 20 feet at a speed of 830 feet per second and breaking apart a skull was so loud and shocking that it felt as if Alexander had shot her. Dudley’s head exploded six inches away from Tatiana’s face. With Dudley still clutching her, they were both thrown back; he hit the wall behind him and slumped forward to the floor in a heap on top of her. She was blinded, she couldn’t see, she didn’t even know if she was screaming, or crying, or dying. His arm remained around her throat.
Alexander was pulling her from under him, untangling her, lifting her. That’s when she heard herself screaming. She started flailing at him, hitting him, trying to get away from him. He said nothing, did nothing but held her to him; he held her to his chest while she thrashed and screamed in terror. His heart was just inches away through his breastplate. It was beating steady, it was pounding on, and he was saying, shh, and his heart was saying shh, and staying sanguine. But she couldn’t calm down. She thought she had been hit. Her skin was cold, her own heartbeat at two hundred. Alexander sat her down, held her firmly around the shoulders, pressed her to him, and put his hand over her mouth. “Shh,” he said. “Calm down.” His hand remained over her as she breathed in out carbon dioxide. “Shh. Shh,” he kept saying. He took his hand away, opened her mouth and exhaled into it. “Feel my calm breath? Now slow down, it’s all right. Slow down.”
Her eyes gazed at him in horror. “You shot me?” she mouthed.
He rocked his head, rocked his body, rocked her. “No. You’re fine. Shh.”
“I’m covered in—is that my blood? Is that my skull?”
He held her as she continued to shake. They were still on the couch when the lights of the police cars flashed outside. The silk camisole she was wearing was blood slick and sheer, and he was still naked. The police officers walked in through the open door. Alexander left Tatiana on the couch and went to put on jeans and a T-shirt, bringing her a terry cloth robe. She remembered about the blood on her. She struggled to her feet to go get cleaned up, but the police said no, Alexander said no.
She knew two of the police officers. One of them was Miller. More police came. A reporter from the Phoenix Sun came. He was shooed away, but not before he took pictures.
The police began to ask her questions and took Alexander from her, to ask him questions in the bedroom. When he stood up to walk away, she started to cry.
He sat back down. She clutched him. “Don’t—don’t go—please.”
“Just in the bedroom, Tatiasha, just in our bedroom.”
Sitting, covered in blood, she talked to the police, her head down, while in the bedroom, away from her, Alexander, his head up, standing, talked to the police.
Why were you up, they asked her. Why did you call the hospital? Why were you in the kitchen? Why didn’t you run to the bedroom? Did you hear him come up the steps? Why did he come? Is it true he and your husband had a fight? We got a report of an assault, of two assaults. That man wanted to press charges against your husband. What happened? The man was badly hurt. The other man is badly hurt. Sergeant Miller intervened. The other man is Steve Balkman, he said. All the policemen nodded. Not again, someone said. Were they drunk, was your husband drunk? What was the fight over? Were there two separate fights or was it the same fight? Alexander shattered a man’s face, broke another man’s teeth, why? Was it true that there already was bad blood? His father, Bill Balkman, a long-time member of this community, said he didn’t know what had happened. It was a complete surprise. He said it was just a fight between boys. Boys will be boys, he said. He told them all to take it easy. His son was going to be fine. It would all be just fine. Yet a man was lying in her house dead.
Where did your husband shoot from? He didn’t know Dudley had a pistol, how did he know to take a gun to the bedroom door? Why did he use deadly force? Was there a way to get the man to release you without lethal violence? Was it breaking and entering? Attempted assault, attempted rape, attempted murder? Was it excessive force on the part of your husband to hit another man at a party simply for making a rude comment about you? And was Dudley overreacting to Alexander’s overreacting? And what did Steve Balkman do this time?
Two more reporters came from the Phoenix Sun, standing in the living room with their spiral notebooks and their whooshing camera flashes, writing it all down, recording it for the morning papers. Did he touch you? Did he hit you? Did he cut you? Is any of this your blood?
Was Tatiana hurt? No one could say for sure, not even Tatiana. Only Alexander said, no, she’s not hurt, she’s in shock. They were worried about her. They called for a doctor. Sergeant Miller said he wanted her to go to the hospital. She refused. Alexander thought she should go. She refused. She was fine, she said. She was a nurse, she knew about these things.
Hours went by. Alexander remained in the bedroom with the police. She would catch glimpses of him, pacing, smoking, sitting on the bed. Then they closed the door, and she cried again. Dudley’s body remained limp on the floor behind the bloodied couch where she sat.
Finally Alexander came out of the bedroom. She clutched at him desperately, she buried her face in him. He kept repeating, shh, shh. His arms were around her. Suddenly his presence terrified her. She began to cry again, push him away. The police, the medical emergency workers, the reporters, stood silently watching while Alexander, pressing her bloodied head to him, kept soothing her. Tania, he kept whispering, shh, shh. Come on. She might need a shot, he finally said, getting up to get her nurse’s bag. She is clammy. I’m fine, she said, but couldn’t stop shaking. She looked at Alexander standing smoking. He was calm. He wasn’t agitated, his hands were steady, his movements normal. He was in control of himself. She remembered him near Berlin on the hillside, strapped with machine guns, grenades, semi-automatic pistols, automatic weapons, alone in a trench, systematically mowing down the battalion of soldiers who were crawling, running, charging up the hill to kill him, to kill her.
A man came up the hill to hurt my wife, Alexander said to the police without emotion, a cigarette in his mouth. Look at the door. The front door lock is busted, one of the hinges broken. The police were going to check out the Montana prison escape story. They were going to talk to Bill Balkman about hiring a man suspected of escaping prison, suspected of murder. It was a federal offense to hire a man suspected of a felony.
How did Dudley know where Alexander lived? Who would have given Dudley Alexander’s address? And if it was Steve Balkman, wouldn’t he have had to give him the address before the party, since after the party, he wasn’t talking? Why would Steve do that—give Dudley Alexander’s address? That Steve Balkman, Miller said, shaking his head. Loved trouble, caused trouble, always been trouble. Well, that’s it, he said. This time we’re not keeping it out of the papers, no matter what his father does.
It was six in the morning. The light was barely steel blue over the mountains. Someone brought coffee, rolls. Alexander gave Tatiana a cup, tried to get her to eat.
A drunk, belligerent man was dead in the middle of the night after breaking and entering a mobile home in the McDowell Hills a mile up a dirt road from Pima Boulevard in the middle of nowhere. Those were the undisputed facts. Neither Tatiana nor Alexander shared with the police the three years of disputed facts. Or the lifetime of disputed facts.
Sun came up, more police came, took more pictures. At eight in the morning Alexander called Francesca and asked her to keep Anthony the rest of the day. Tatiana continued to sit on the couch. She leaned back at one point, fell back and thought she passed out. When she opened her eyes, she was in the crook of Alexander’s arm, and Dudley’s body was still behind her. The chalkline was on their black and white linoleum floor. In the light of merciless day, the blood was now drying and browning, chips of bone were over the living room carpet, in the hall in front of Anthony’s bedroom, on the counters, on the door, on the walls. Tatiana looked back only once. Dudley was still all over Tatiana. Nothing anybody could do about that until the police left.
The phone did not stop ringing.
The police asked Alexander if he knew Dudley’s next of kin. Who did they notify of his death? Alexander and Tatiana exchanged a disbelieving glance. Were they really being asked about Dudley’s next of kin?
A doctor finally arrived to examine her. She was fine, she said, shaking; she didn’t need a doctor. Alexander got her a blanket, covered her with it. Carefully the doctor removed the blanket and took off her robe. He asked if she’d been assaulted, if she’d been beaten, hurt, penetrated. She watched Alexander watching her from across the room in her stained see-through camisole. He walked over and pulled the terry robe back over her. The doctor pulled it off again, looked at her arms, her legs, her red throat where Dudley had grabbed her. Pulling her hair back, he noticed the suck marks on the back of her neck. He asked about them. She didn’t reply. Normally she would have blushed, but not this morning. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No.”
“What are those?”
She didn’t reply, just raised her eyes at him. The doctor was the one who became deeply flustered. “You’re covered with blood, with some bruises. It’s hard to tell where you’re actually hurt from this particular incident. I apologize.”
“I’m a nurse at Phoenix Memorial Hospital,” she said. “I know if I’m hurt.”
The doctor was David Bradley. She’d never met him. He was one of the attending physicians in ER, but he worked nights and she worked days. After seeing the marks on the back of her neck, he was unable to meet her eyes. She closed hers anyway.
Ten, eleven in the morning. Finally the coroner came and pronounced the body—dead! What would we do without coroners? Alexander quietly said to Tatiana.
The medical examiner’s assistants examined the body to determine cause of death. Gunshot wound to the head, Alexander said evenly.
Gunshot wound to the head, they wrote.
Who was Alexander, the police asked, to shoot a man in the head when his wife was only inches away? Who are you? They said something about reckless endangerment. Couldn’t you have waited until he wasn’t so close to your wife before you shot him?
He didn’t think he could have waited, no. For the thirtieth time he told them that once he came fully out of that doorway, he would have had to drop his weapon, and there would have been no other time, and his wife would have been assaulted in front of him, and then they both would have been killed. Impatiently he pointed to Dudley’s loaded pistol, reminded them that they were policemen. They reminded him he wasn’t a policeman. He said that surely they knew it was all about snap judgment in a pitched battle. You lost your life, or he his. That was the only choice. There was no later.
They said it wasn’t war. But Alexander disagreed. He said it was. A man came up the hill to his house wanting to kill him and hurt his wife. The man brought war to his house. Now he lay dead. These were the facts and they were not in dispute. Only the degree of force, and Alexander’s snap judgment, and Steve Balkman’s broken face were in dispute.
The police examined the Colt, the rounds. Did he always keep a loaded gun in his house? Yes, all his weapons were always loaded, said Alexander. They lived by themselves up in the mountains. He had to be prepared for anything. They examined the weapons he kept in the bedroom: two models of the M-1 carbine, and an M4 submachine gun in a locked cabinet with the ammunition. He kept the German Walther, the Colt Commando, the M1911, and a .22 caliber Ruger with their extra magazines and all his knives in his nightstand, which he locked during the day and unlocked at night. They asked why he chose the M1911 out of all his handguns. The Ruger was supposed to be more accurate. Alexander said he chose the weapon that would inflict the maximum damage. He chose the M1911, the handcannon of pistols, he said because he knew he would get only one chance to kill Dudley.
Who was he? the police asked. Where did he learn to shoot? Did he have marksman qualifications?
Alexander looked at Tatiana. She sat numbly. Yes, he said. He had marksman qualifications. He was a captain in the U.S. Officer Reserve Corps. Funny how one little sentence could change things. They looked at Alexander differently then. Treated him differently. A captain in the U.S. Army. Did he fight in the Second World War? Yes, he said. He fought in the Second World War.
And no one asked him anything after that.
At noon, the hospital arrived with a body bag.
The police told them not to touch anything. This was a crime scene. On Monday, a cleaning crew would come to break it down and clear the room of the detritus of death. Until Monday the captain and his wife and child had to stay elsewhere.
Sergeant Miller said there would be a public inquest into a wrongful death, but privately Miller told Tatiana and Alexander he didn’t know how the Balkman kid made it as long as he had without getting killed. Rumor was, Miller said, that his army injury while stationed in England had not been just friendly fire.
Everyone left—and finally they were alone.
Alexander closed the door after Miller and came to sit next to her on the couch. She raised her eyes to him. They stared at each other. Perhaps he stared. She glared.
“You call this normal, Alexander?” said Tatiana.
Without saying a word he got up and disappeared into the bedroom. She heard the shower go on in the ensuite bath. “Let’s go,” he said when he came out. But she couldn’t walk, couldn’t move. Lifting her into his arms, he carried her inside. “I can’t stand up,” she said. “Let me have a bath.”
“No,” he said. “I can’t have you sitting in his bloody water. Just stand for five minutes, and when you’re clean, I’ll run you a bath.”
Alexander took off her terry robe, her bloodied camisole, threw them both in the trash. He held her hand as she stepped into the tub. He took off his clothes, got under the shower with her. The water was so hot, and yet she shivered uncontrollably while he carefully washed the brown dried blood from her face, her neck, her hair. He shampooed her hair twice, three times. Bit by bit, Alexander pulled Dudley out of Tatiana’s hair. When she saw the bony chunks he was pulling out, she started to sink into the tub and, slippery and scared, couldn’t stand, no matter how much he implored her. Crouching beside her, he continued to clean her hair. “It’s useless,” she said, reaching into the cabinet near the sink for the scissors. “I can’t touch it anymore. I can’t have you touch it anymore.”
“No,” he said, stopping her, taking the scissors away. “You’ve cut off your hair once before, but now I’m here. I’ll get it clean. If you cut it, you’ll be upsetting only me.”
She stared hard at him. He said, “Ah. Is that the point?” And handed her back the scissors.
But she didn’t cut it. She leaned over the tub and threw up in the toilet.
He waited, his head down. He cleaned himself with the soapy washcloth, and afterwards silently washed her face and scrubbed her entire body, holding her up with one wet arm.
“How many times in my life will you be cleaning blood off me?” Tatiana asked, too weak to stand.
“By my count, it’s only twice,” Alexander replied. “And both times, the blood is not yours. So we can be thankful for the mercies we’re given.”
“My leg isn’t broken this time, or my ribs.” But this violence in her little house. The Germans with their tanks across the River Luga, from their Luftwaffe plane formations raining down warning leaflets before the machine gun rounds, punctually from nine to eleven. Surrender or die, the leaflets said.
Alexander didn’t speak to her through the subsequent bath, which he ran for her, didn’t speak as he dried her and laid her on the bed, covering her, bringing her coffee, holding her head while she drank. He asked if there was anything else she needed, because he had to go outside to clear his head. She pleaded with him not to go. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, he was sitting and watching her from the armchair, all his weapons, including the automatic rifles, between his legs.
“Why did you come out? What did you hear?” Tatiana asked.
“The crashing door. First I reach for my weapon, then I open my eyes.”
“The Colt has come in quite useful.” She stared at him. “The Fritzes, the Soviets, Karolich, and now even in America, we’re recreating our old life. We just can’t seem to get away from it.”
“We’re not recreating our old life. Every once in a while, we simply can’t hide who we are. But he is the dregs found everywhere, even in America. You know what’s come in useful? My U.S. Army commission. Richter had said I’d never know when it would come in handy. He’s been proven quite right.” Alexander paused. “Why did you get up? Why were you out there?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Why?”
“I felt something. I was frightened.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Why would I?”
“Because you felt something. Because you were frightened.”
“You didn’t give a damn about my feelings and fears for three years,” she said. “Now suddenly I’ve got to wake you in the middle of the night for them?”
He shot up off the armchair.
“Please, please don’t go,” she said. “I didn’t mean it.”
He left anyway.
Tatiana heard the back door opening, closing. She wanted to get up, go to him. But she was crashing. She slept.
The phone kept ringing, or was that just a dream? She kept hearing his voice. Was that just a dream, too? For some reason she started being afraid she was alone again, without him, she began to whimper in her sleep, to cry for him. “Alexander, please help me, please…Alexander…” She couldn’t shake herself awake. It was his hands that woke her, holding her firmly, lifting her to sit.
They looked at each other. “We have to leave here,” he said.
“We have to get Anthony.” She started to cry. “My God, what if he’d been here with us?”
“Well, he wasn’t. And Francesca said she’d keep him till Sunday.”
“Let’s stay here. I don’t want to leave my bed.”
“I can’t be in this house with his blood and brains everywhere.”
Her tears spilling, she stretched out her arms to him. He got into bed with her. She curled up inside his body.
“How do you do it?” she whispered. “Such frenzy, and you stay calm.”
“Well, somebody has to stay calm, Tania.” He patted her behind.
“But it’s almost like you get calmer. Were you like this always?”
“I guess.”
“Were you like this at war? In Finland? Over the Neva in your pontoon boat? Crossing Polish rivers? In all your battles? From the beginning?” She peered into his cool bronze eyes.
“I guess,” he said.
“I want to be like you.” She stroked his face. “It’s a survival thing. That’s how you did it, stayed alive. You’re never rattled.”
“Obviously,” said Alexander, “I’m sometimes rattled.”
They got dressed and left their house. Dudley’s insides remained on their walls.
She went into shaking distress when they passed the old beat-up truck parked a mile down by the side of the road.
“Which hotel?” he asked her, grim but not in shaking distress.
“Don’t care. As long as it’s not the Ho,” she said, her head back.
They went to the Arizona Biltmore Resort, designed by another of Phoenix’s adopted sons, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. They took a penthouse suite and were in the steaming bath together when the room service came. They ordered it, Alexander went to get it, but they didn’t eat it. Barely dry, they crawled out into a starched hotel bed and slept dead till Sunday morning.
When they got Anthony, they told him there had been a burglar at the house, a small problem, they couldn’t go back for a while. They stayed a luxurious two days at the Biltmore, had Sunday brunch, swam in the pool. On Monday morning the clean-up squad came from the coroner’s office, and by Tuesday morning when they returned, it was as if Dudley had never existed.
They replaced the rug, the linoleum. Alexander built two new kitchen cabinets. They repainted the house, they bought a new couch.
But Alexander became wretched again. The house had become soiled for him. Arizona had become soiled for him. He told her if everything went all right at the inquest, they would sell the land and leave. He made his choice, chose Bill Balkman, and look what happened. “And you know, Tania, it all began with that picture of the naked girl.”
Tatiana was silent.
“I couldn’t place my finger on what was wrong with it, but now I know. It was a test for everyone who came in, every painter, every roofer, every framer Balkman hired. They all had to walk past that topless gate. They said something about it, they smiled knowingly, they exchanged a glance that told Bill they were on the same page. It’s not a coincidence that every crew he hired behaved exactly the same way. He hired them based on their reaction to that picture. That’s how he managed to weed them out. Now I know.”
“What did my husband do to make Bill Balkman think he was one of them?” Tatiana asked quietly.
Alexander sighed. “I did nothing. I said nothing. And that’s how he knew I would be okay with it. And he was right. I was willing to overlook it.”
Tatiana disagreed. She said that perhaps Balkman wanted some of what Alexander was to rub off on his son. Perhaps a better example than himself was what Balkman wanted for his son Stevie.
Alexander said nothing.
Tatiana couldn’t fall asleep in her own house without a tranquilizer, couldn’t fall asleep without the P-38 by her side of the bed.
Even with the tranquilizer and the Walther, she woke up every night, perspiring, screaming, seeing before her sleeping eyes an image she could not shake down, not even during daylight—her husband, her Alexander standing like a black knight, looking straight at her with his deadly unwavering gaze, pointing a .45 caliber weapon at her face—and firing. The deafening sound of that shot reverberated through all the chambers of Tatiana’s heart.
She needed nearly the whole bottle of champagne before she would let him touch her again. After a pained and underwhelming coupling, she lay in his arms, the alcohol making her woozy and light-headed.
“Tatiasha,” he whispered, “you know, don’t you, that if it weren’t for women like you who love their men, the soldiers who come back from war would all be a little like Dudley. Cast out, afflicted, completely alone, unable to relate to other human beings, hating what they know, yet wanting what they hate.”
“You mean,” Tatiana said, looking into his face, “what you were like when you came back?”
“Yes,” Alexander said, closing his eyes. “Like that.”
She cried in his arms. “You’re still like that, walking around with the war this close.”
“Yes, I’m pretending I’m civilized. What did you tell me in Berlin under the linden tree? Live as if you have faith, and faith shall be given to you. So that’s what I keep trying to do.”
“How could you have shot him when I was just inches away? And shot him with your left hand, too. God! Your marksman rating is for your right hand, soldier. You don’t know how to shoot with your left.”
“Um—”
“What if you missed?”
“I didn’t miss.”
“I’m asking you—what if you did?”
“There was a lot at stake. I tried not to miss. But Tania, you threw in your lot with mine. You knew what you were getting into. Who better than you knows what I am?” Suddenly he let go of her and moved away.
“What?” Tatiana said, reaching for him. “What?”
He shook her arm off him. “Stop talking to me. I can hear you loud and clear through all the pores of your skin. You’re so hostile. I know what you’re thinking.”
“No, you don’t. What?”
“That because I had forgotten what you are, look what I’ve let into our house,” Alexander said coldly. “Isn’t that what you said to me?”
In their bed, under the white quilt, Tatiana pulled him back to her, held him close, pressed him to her heart, to her breasts. “That’s not what I’m thinking, darling,” she said. “When did I ever expect you to be perfect? You pick yourself up and you try to do better. You fix what you can, you move on, you hope you can learn. The struggle doesn’t end just because you know the way. That’s when it’s only beginning.”
“So what are you thinking then, if not that? The things Dudley said?” He shuddered and his fists clenched. “The things he threatened?”
She shook her head. “Shh. No. He was saying the things he knew were the most vicious for you to hear because he was declaring war. He was taking what is most sacred to you and degrading it to debase you, and us. I know something about this. And you do, too—Steve’s been doing that for three years.” She paused. “But I’m not thinking of that. I’m thinking of me, not you this time,” Tatiana said. “And of what Blanca Davidovna once said to me. I wish she never said it. I wish I never knew. I saved her from the burning house and this is the thanks I get. She said to me, God has a plan for each of us. And both the crown and the cross are in your tea cup, Tatiana.”
“Yes,” said Alexander. “And my father said to me, here’s my plan for you, son. I’m taking you to the Soviet Union because I want it to make you into the man you are meant to be. And so what you and I have been doing, when there’s been a little too much cross for us, is raging against our fate. And believe me, we’re not done. Because, despite Dudley’s best efforts, our life is not over yet.”