The Summer Garden (129 page)

BOOK: The Summer Garden

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To cross the street or not to cross?

To follow her? To hop on the bus, after her? What absolute madness.

He comes around the bus; he only thinks he is running. He doesn’t run anymore. He walks slowly to the bench where she is sitting. In front of her he stands and she raises her eyes to get a good look at him; she raises and raises them, for he is tall.

Her hair is fading white. Alexander blinks. It’s blonde and long again. The lines are gone from her face. The green eyes sparkle, the freckles multiply, her red sandal toe bounces up and down with her crossed leg, and the strap of her white dress slips off her shoulder. Smiling, he says, “Tatiana, your ice cream is, as always, melting.” He stretches out his hand to her—and wipes her mouth and fixes her shoulder strap.

“I am ridiculously hot,” Alexander says, sitting down on the bench, opening his Coke and lighting a cigarette. “I can’t believe I agreed, no,
chose
to come here. We could be in Bay Biscayne right now.” He shakes his head and shrugs. Taking a long puff, he glances at her. They’re sitting shoulder to bare shoulder. “Well? Thinking up another witty riposte for me?”

Tatiana turns to him, looks up at him, and smiles. “Do you know what a happy ending is to a Russian?” she says. “When the hero, at the end of his own story, finally learns the reason for his suffering.”

Taking another swig of Coke, Alexander says, “Your jokes are getting so lame.” He knocks into her with his stretched-out leg. She takes hold of his hand. “What?” he asks.

“Nothing, soldier,” says Tatiana.

He is thinking of sailboats in distant oceans, the desert from dimmest childhood, the ghost of fortune, the girl on the bench. When he saw her, he saw something new. He saw it because he wanted to see it, because he wanted to change his life. He stepped off the curb and out of the deadfall.

To cross the street. To follow her. And she will give your life meaning, she will save you. Yes, yes—to cross.

“
We’ll meet again in Lvov, my love and I…
” Tatiana hums, eating her ice cream, in our Leningrad, in jasmine June, near Fontanka, the Neva, the Summer Garden, where we are forever young.

THE SUMMER GARDEN

Paullina Simons was born in Leningrad and emigrated to the United States in 1973.
The Summer Garden
is her seventh novel. She lives close to New York with her husband and four children.

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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is coincidental.

Harper
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This paperback edition 2007

FIRST EDITION

First published in Australia and New Zealand by HarperCollins
Publishers
2005

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Publishers
2006
Copyright © Paullina Simons 2005

Besame Mucho
Written by Consuelo Velazquez © 1941 & 1943 P.H.A.M.,
Mexico Latin-American Music Pub. Co. Ltd, London.
Used by permission

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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EPub Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-39081-6