The Summer Garden Read Online Free PDF

water, Tatiana didn’t know where he was. When he went outside at three in the morning and convulsed on the bench, Tatiana wished she didn’t know where he was. Where was she within him? She didn’t want to know.
    When she was done clearing up, she came outside to sit on the gravel by his feet. She felt him looking at her. She looked up. “Tania…” Alexander whispered. But Anthony saw his mother on the ground and instantly planted himself on her lap, displaying for her the four beetles he had found, two of them fighting stag beetles. When she glanced up at Alexander, he wasn’t looking at her anymore.
    After Anthony was asleep and they were in their twin bed, she whispered, “So do you want to—move in with Nellie?” The bed was so narrow, they could sleep only on their sides. On his back Alexander took up the whole mattress.
    “Move in until her husband comes back and she kicks us out because she might actually want some privacy with the man who’s back from war?” Alexander said.
    “Are you…angry?” she asked, as in, please be angry.
    “Of course not.”
    “We’ll have more privacy at her house. She’s got two rooms for us. Better than the one here.”
    “Really? Better?” Alexander said. “Here we’re by the sea. I get to sit and smoke and look at the bay. Nellie’s on Eastern Road, where we’ll just be smelling the salt and the fish. And Mrs. Brewster is deaf. Do you think Nellie is deaf? Having Nellie at our bedroom door with her young hearing and her five years without a husband, do you think that would spell more privacy for us? Although,” he said, “do you think there could be less privacy?”
    Yes, Tatiana wanted to say. Yes. In my communal apartment in Leningrad, where I lived in two rooms with Babushka, Deda, Mama, Papa, my sister, Dasha—remember her?—with my brother, Pasha—remember him? Where the toilet down the hall through the kitchen near the stairs never flushed properly and was never cleaned, and was shared by nine other apartment dwellers. Where there was no hot water for four baths a day, and no gas stove for four lobsters. Where I slept in the same bed with my sister until I was seventeen and she was twenty-four, until the night you took us to the Road of Life. Tatiana barely suppressed her agonized groan.
    She could not—would not—she refused to think of Leningrad.
    The other way was better. Yes, the other way—without ever speaking.
    This bloodletting went on every night. During the day they kept busy, just how they liked it, just how they needed it. Not so long ago Alexander and Tatiana had found each other in another country and then somehow they lived through the war and made it to lupine Deer Isle, neither of them having any idea how, but for three o’clock in the morning, when Anthony woke up and screamed as if he were being cut open, and Alexander convulsed on the bench, and Tatiana thrashed to forget—and then they knew how.
    Tainted with the Gulag
    He had such an unfailing way with her . “Would you like some more?” he would say, lifting the pitcher of lemonade.
    “Yes, please.”
    “Would you like to take a walk after dinner? I heard they’re selling something called Italian ices by the bay.”
    “Yes, that would be nice.”
    “Ant, what do you think?”
    “Let’s go. Let’s go now.”
    “Well, wait a second, son. Your mother and I have to finish up.” So formal. Mother .
    He opened doors for her, he got jars and cans for her off the high shelves in the kitchen. It was so handy him being tall; he was like a step stool.
    And she? She did what she always did—for him first. She cooked for him, brought the food to his plate and served him. She poured his drink. She set and cleared his table. She washed his clothes, she folded them. She made their little beds and put clean sheets on them. She made him lunch for the boat, and extra for Jimmy too, because one-handed Jimmy didn’t have a woman to make him a sandwich. She shaved her legs for him,