The Summer Garden (39 page)

Tatiana waited. “What small personal matter?” she said at last.

“I took up with a local boy,” said Saika casually. “My father was upset with me.”

“You took up with a local boy,” Tatiana repeated without inflection.

“Yes.”

“And your father beat you like that?” Tatiana
tried
to say it without inflection. She failed.

Saika smiled. There was no emotion in her eyes. “What do you think
your
father would do to you, Tania,” she asked, “for taking up with a local boy?”

“I don’t know,” Tatiana replied dully. “He might not be very happy with the local boy.”

“Who says
my
father was happy with the local boy?”

When Tatiana didn’t speak—when Tatiana was speechless—Saika said, “What surprises you, here, Tanechka? My taking up with the local boy? Or the beating?”

Tatiana was very careful when she answered. “It’s the reaction to the action that surprises me,” she said slowly, still thinking. “I really like physics, Saika. Like my grandfather’s math, classical physics is a good, concrete science, with good absolute laws that govern matter—solid things that have mass and occupy space. Things you can touch and see. There is a law in physics that says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I like that law a lot.” Tatiana broke off. She listened to too many adult conversations these days and she didn’t want to say to Saika that this made her think of human
justice
more than she wanted to. “Almost as if Newtonian
science
,” she continued excitedly, “was founded, was sprung whole from principles that govern things that are not science, that are things we can’t touch and see. Invisible, irrational things that govern human stories, that rule over myth and legend and fairy tales and our behavior. Things like: All our actions have meaning—and therefore have consequences.”

“That’s right,” said Saika. “Well, that makes sense. I did wrong and I was punished. Perfect Newton. An eye for an eye.”

“I don’t think your father was trying to punish you,” Tatiana said. “I think he was trying to kill you.”

Saika sat up straighter in the tree. “Are you
judging
him for treating me too harshly?”

“I’m not judging at all, no.”

“Oh, Tania.” Shrugging, Saika lit another cigarette. “You might understand physics, but you clearly don’t understand many things about human beings. You don’t understand Azeri justice.”

Tatiana was looking at the branches and not at Saika. “Is Azeri justice unique?”

Saika smiled her knowing smile again. “How do you know,” she said, “that it
wasn’t
an eye for an eye?”

After a moment of stunned silence, Tatiana said, “You know what? I’ve got to get back. Or
I’ll
be beaten without mercy.”

“Is
that
what you think?” Saika’s tone suddenly changed. It became cold, almost menacing. “Is
that
how you think I was beaten—without mercy?”

Tatiana didn’t say anything. Clearly that is how Saika had been beaten.

“Where in your little Newtonian theories does it say anything about
mercy
?” Saika persisted acidly. “Who tempers his physics with mercy, Tatiana?”

Tatiana was quiet, prickles of fear crawling on her back like venomous ants.

“I disgraced and dishonored my family and was appropriately punished,” said Saika.

“Okay, Saika.” Tatiana’s gaze was on the ground below.

“How do you know my father’s justice wasn’t steeped in mercy?” Saika leaned in. “My father says he
had
mercy on me. What do you think of that? Judge that, why don’t you?”

“I’m nobody. I’m judging no one,” Tatiana said, jumping off the tree, two meters down, to Saika’s gasp and subsequent applause. Without turning around, she clambered through the fence and the nettles and climbed through her window. She wished she could lock it.

Sleep would not come for a long time to Tatiana.

A Small Matter of a Large Cherry Tree

Pasha heard Tatiana before he saw her.
Volodya and Kirill Iglenko were standing at the foot of a large cherry tree at the end of the village road. Tatiana’s voice was chiming, “Ready? Catch!” Volodya and Kirill were looking up with their mouths gaping open. Pasha saw something small and red fall from the tree. Kirill caught it with his hand and popped it into his mouth. Another cherry fell. Volodya caught it, popped it into his mouth. They never stopped looking up at Tatiana. Pasha, as he came closer, could see her bare legs propped up on two branches half a meter apart. He shook his head and quickened his step, cursing under his breath. When he got to the bottom of the tree, without even looking up at his sister, without saying a word to her, or to them, he shoved them hard out of the way of the falling cherries, pushed them away even though they were bigger, and said, “
What
are you doing?”

“What? Nothing. She’s getting us cherries,” said Volodya, blinking innocently.

“Get the hell out of here.” Pasha lowered his voice. “Who are you talking to? I’m not Tania. I told you and told you, stay away from her. Now go.”

“Pasha—”

“I said
go
!”

They slowly walked away, regretfully waving to Tatiana.

“Pasha,” Tatiana called to him, “what did you say to poor Volodya? Why did you shoo him like a fly?”

Pasha paused and then looked up. He looked up quickly, in the hope that maybe he was wrong, maybe this one time, his sister’s dress was not hitched to her hips, maybe she had tucked it under herself, maybe her bare white panties and the whites of the insides of her thighs were not exposed to two teenaged boys as they stood gawking up at her while she dropped cherries into their mouths.

But he was not wrong.

“Tania, get down,” Pasha said, looking away with a sigh.

“Why? Come up here. Want some cherries?”

“No!”

She threw some down to him anyway, and he swatted them away and said resignedly, “Just get down, will you?”

She jumped down like a cat in a floral sundress, landing on the balls of her feet with bent knees, with hardly a noise when she touched the ground. As she straightened up, she looked into Pasha’s face. “What’s wrong with
you
?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Tania, when will you—” He broke off. Her face was flushed and smiling and happy and he just could not.

“When will I what?”

“Forget it, nothing. Let’s go. Dasha is making potatoes.”

“Oh, potatoes! Well, let me run. I’ve never had that delicacy before. Wherever did she get them?”

“Go ahead, mock. Can’t eat mock for dinner, Tania.”

“I’ll eat cherries instead,” said Tatiana, shoving her brother but he was not in a playful mood.

When they got home, Tatiana disappeared to her room to read, and Pasha went to Dasha who was outside peeling potatoes into the bushes. He slumped down by her. “Dasha, what are you planning to do about Tania?”

“Oh, no, what did she do now?”

“You know where I found her again?”

Dasha laughed. “In the cherry tree?”

Pasha nodded with exasperation.

“So talk to her, Pasha.” She smiled.

“You’re her sister. That conversation is much better left to the girls.”

“You think
I
should talk to her?”

“She is fourteen next week! She
can’t
be that oblivious anymore. She is not a child.”

Dasha was still smiling when she said quietly, “But Pasha, she
is
a child.”

“Well, it’s not appropriate.”

“So talk to her.”

“I can’t. You talk to her.”

“You want her to listen to someone? Have Deda talk to her.”

And Deda’s strong voice sounded from the cucumber beds where Dasha and Pasha had not seen him. “I will
not
be talking to her.” He came out from the cucumber leaves, holding rope in his hands, his thick gray hair disheveled. “I think if you should be talking to anyone, Pasha, it should be to your two friends. After all, it is not Tatiana who is behaving inappropriately.”

Dasha and Pasha said nothing.

Deda studied the two of them for a few moments and then said, “Have you two got nothing better to do? Once you talk to her, she won’t be able to be friends with them anymore. You want to ruin her summer? Oh, and also—she’ll never horseplay with you, or tickle you, or swim in the river with you, or tie you up, or kiss you unexpectedly or sit on your lap again. She will never again do any of the things she does, because she will have eaten from your cursed cherry tree. Is that what you want?”

They said nothing.

“I didn’t think so. Your sister,” said Deda, “knows everything she needs to. Dasha, why don’t you ask her to tell
you
how to behave. Better yet, leave the child alone. And Pasha, talk to the wild beasts you call your friends—or I will.”

“Talk to the wild beasts about what?” said Tatiana, coming down the porch steps.

“Nothing, nothing,” said Dasha. Deda kissed the top of Tatiana’s head and went back to stringing up his cucumbers on their supports.

Pasha asked her if she had heard them talking.

“I heard you shouting, yes.”

“Did you hear what we were shouting about?”

“If I listened to what this family shouted about every time they shouted, I’d never read a word of anything.” Tatiana grinned. “Tell me what were you shouting about.”

“Nothing,” said Dasha. “Go set the table, will you, and slice the bread. Don’t forget to give me the thickest piece, right near the crust.”

“You can have all the bread you can eat and then you’ll get nice and fat, Dasha,” said Tatiana, skipping inside.

In the evening after dinner, Deda and Dasha watched Tania and Pasha playing loud dominoes. Tania was loud-winning as always and Pasha was loud-sore-losing, as always. They played fifteen, sixteen games, and Pasha lost every one. “How! Tell me, how do you do that! How do you always win at this! You do something, you cheat, I know you do! Deda, play Tania, let me see if you can beat her.”

“I beat her in chess, that’s enough for me,” said Deda, smiling at Tatiana.

Leaving Pasha to his bitter defeat, Dasha sat with her grandfather on the bench outside in the overgrown garden. Moving over slightly, Deda said, “Dasha, don’t blow your cigarette smoke into my face.”

“What are you going to tell your Tania when she starts smoking?” Dasha said, moving away.

“I’ll tell her not to blow her smoke in my face.”

Dasha sighed. Why did she suspect that though Deda loved her, he slightly disapproved of her, as if somehow her conduct in life was less to his liking than, say, Tania’s. Pasha, as the only male child, was beyond reproach. Why not Dasha, too? What did she do or not do? Didn’t she cook and clean and take care of the urchins as if she were their mother?

Deda put his arm around Dasha, and she threw away her cigarette. “I struggle, Dedushka,” Dasha said quietly. “I struggle all the time.”

“Dasha, dear, it’s good to have conflict inside you. Struggle away.”

Dasha wanted to know what specifically Deda was referring to. Stefan and Mark? Dasha was not married, and she was young. She just wanted to have a bit of fun. Was that so wrong?

“Does Tania struggle?” she asked.

“She doesn’t think about things she can’t understand.”

“How convenient,” said Dasha. “Can I be that blind? But she reads more than anyone, how can she read Stendhal’s
The Red and the Black
and not see the corruption, the immorality, the lust underneath all those proper skirts and trousers the ladies and gentlemen of France wear? How can she read so much yet see nothing?”

“Tania sees nothing?” said Deda, turning his surprised gaze at Dasha.

“That’s the whole problem, isn’t it? If she saw, you think she’d be up in that tree in her dress?”

Deda shook his head. “What a miracle,” he whispered, kissing Dasha. “Granddaughter, I didn’t know you too were so funny. Despite your problems, you are growing up to be a fine and funny young woman. But willfully or inadvertently, you’re misunderstanding your sister.”

“I am?”

“Of course. Haven’t you figured out by now,” Deda said, “that Tania sees through everything, right from the start?”

“She doesn’t see through Kirill and Volodya.”

“She does. She knows they’re harmless. So don’t worry about her. Worry only about your own life.”

“What’s to worry about?” said Dasha, her face falling. “We are all fish swimming in the same water. We don’t know we can’t breathe in the air.”

“You’re right, our choices are slightly blunted,” agreed Deda. “But we don’t all live the same life. Do you see the Kantorovs? You think they swim in the same water we do?”

“Yes.”

Deda was quiet.

“What, you don’t like them
either
? Tania keeps saying the Saika girl is no good.”

Without answering, Deda said, “You know who I like?”

“Tania?”

“No. Your grandmother. Her I like. Her I have an opinion on. Otherwise, I refrain from all judgment.”

But Dasha did not think he was refraining. “Dedushka, what am I supposed to do?” she said plaintively, suddenly in the confessional. “I don’t want to be playing these games with my boss, but what are my alternatives?”

“You’re telling your grandfather too much,” said Deda.

“His pregnant wife will have nowhere to go after he kicks her out,” Dasha continued.

“Dasha, stop!”

Dasha stopped, briefly.

“They still live with his mother, in one room,” she said quietly. “But where’s he going to go? Can he come and live with us? Can he sleep in one bed with me and Tania?”

Deda did not reply.

“This is what I mean about my choices,” Dasha said. “You see I’m trying. Just trying to find a little love, Dedushka. Like you and Babushka. Did you have a place to live, to be alone, when you fell in love, when you married?”

“It was at the turn of the century,” said Deda, “and we had a great big apartment in the center of town, near Aleksandr Pushkin’s house on Moika Canal.” Wistfully he smiled. “We had your father and your Aunt Rita there. We lived happily and well for many years.”