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“Martha told me one of her derelict sons has had his horn removed!” she whispered. “Removed, Alexander, and do you know why?”
“I’m not sure I want to.”
“Because he got frenchified! Do you know what that is?”
“I think—”
“And her other son’s got French pigs all over his body. It’s the most revolting thing!”
“Yes, it—”
“The French curse! The French crown! Syphilis! Lenin died from it eating up his brain,” she whispered. “No one talks about it, but it’s true all the same. Is that what you want for yourself?”
“Hmm …” said Alexander. “No?”
“Well, it’s all over the place. Your father and I knew a man who lost his whole nose because of it.”
“Personally, I’d rather lose the nose than—”
“Alexander!”
“Sorry.”
“This is very serious, son. I have done all I can to raise you a good, clean boy, but look where we are living, and soon you’ll be out on your own.”
“How soon you think?”
“What do you think is going to happen when you don’t know where the harlot you’re with has been?” Jane asked resolutely. “Son, when you grow up, I don’t want you to be a saint or a eunuch. I just want you to be careful. I want you to protect what’s yours at all times. You must be clean, you must be vigilant, and you must also remember that without protection, you will get a girl up the stick, and then what? You’re going to marry someone you don’t love because you weren’t careful?”
Alexander stared at his mother. “Up the stick?” he said.
“She’ll tell you it’s yours and you’ll never know for sure, all you’ll know is that you’re married, and your horn is falling off!”
“Mother,” said Alexander. “Really, you must stop.”
“Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“How can I not?”
“Your father was supposed to explain to you.”
“He did. I think he did very well.”
Jane got up. “Will you just once stop with your joking around?”
“Yes, Mom. Thanks for coming in. I’m glad we had this chat.”
“Do you have any questions?”
“Absolutely none.”
The Changing of the Hotel’s Name, 1935
One frostbitten late January Thursday, Alexander asked his father as they headed out to their Party meeting, “Dad, why is our hotel’s name changing again? It’s the third time in six months.”
“Surely not the third time.”
“Yes, Dad.” They walked side by side down the street. They weren’t touching. “When we first moved in, it was the Derzhava. Then the Kamenev Hotel. Then the Zinoviev Hotel. Now it’s the Kirov Hotel. Why? And who is this Kirov chap?”
“He was the Leningrad Party Chief,” said Harold.
At their meeting, the old man Slavan laughed raucously after he heard Alexander’s question repeated. He beckoned Alexander to him, patted him on the head and said, “Don’t worry, son, now that’s it’s Kirov, Kirov it will stay.”
“All right, enough now,” Harold said, trying to pull his son away. But Alexander wanted to hear. He pulled away from his father.
“Why, Slavan Ivanovich?”
Slavan said, “Because Kirov is dead.” He nodded. “Assassinated in Leningrad last month. Now there’s a manhunt on.”
“Oh, they didn’t catch his killer?”
“They caught him, all right.” The old man smirked. “But what about all the others?”
“What others?” Alexander lowered his voice.
“All the conspirators,” said the old man. “They have to die, too.”
“It was a conspiracy?”
“Well, of course. Otherwise how can we have a manhunt?”
Harold called sharply for Alexander, and later on, when they were walking home, he said, “Son, why are you so friendly with Slavan? What kinds of things has that man been telling you?”
“He is a fascinating man,” Alexander said. “Did you know he’s been to Akatui? For five years.” Akatui was the Tsarist Siberian hard labor prison. “He said they gave him a white shirt, and in the summer he worked only eight hours and in the winter six, and his shirt never got dirty, and he got a kilo of white bread a day, plus meat. He said they were the best years of his life.”
“Unenviable,” grumbled Harold. “Listen, I don’t want you talking to him so much. Sit by us.”
“Hmm,” said Alexander. “You all smoke too much. It burns my eyes.”
“I’ll blow my smoke the other way. But Slavan is a troublemaker. Stay away from him, do you hear?” He paused. “He is not going to last long.”
“Last long where?”
Two weeks later, Slavan disappeared from the meetings.
Alexander missed the nice old man and his stories.
“Dad, people keep disappearing from our floor. That lady Tamara is gone.”
“Never liked her,” put in Jane, sipping her vodka. “I think she is sick in the hospital. She was old, Alexander.”
“Mom, two young men in suits are living in her room. Are they going to share that room with Tamara when she returns from the hospital?”
“I know nothing about that,” said Jane firmly, and just as firmly poured herself another drink.
“The Italians have left. Mom, did you know the Italians have left?”
“Who?” said Harold loudly. “Who is disappearing? The Frascas have not disappeared. They are on vacation.”
“Dad, it’s winter. Vacation where?”
“The Crimea. In some resort near Krasnodar. Dzhugba, I think. They’re coming back in two months.”
“Oh? What about the van Dorens? Where have they gone? Also the Crimea? Someone new is living in their room, too. A Russian family. I thought this was a floor only for foreigners?”
“They moved to a different building in Moscow,” said Harold, picking at his food. “The Obkom is just trying to integrate the foreigners into Soviet society.”
Alexander put down his fork. “Did you say moved? Moved where? Because Nikita is sleeping in our bathroom.”
“Who is Nikita?”
“Dad, you haven’t noticed that there is a man in the bathtub?”
“What man?”
“Nikita.”
“Oh. How long has he been there?”
Alexander exchanged a blank look with his mother. “Three months.”
“He’s been in the bathtub for three months? Why?”
“Because there is not a single room for him to rent in all of Moscow. He came here from Novosibirsk.”
“Never seen him,” Harold said in a voice that implied that since he had never seen Nikita, Nikita must not exist. “What does he do when I want to have a bath?”
Jane said, “Oh, he leaves for a half-hour. I give him a shot of vodka. He goes for a walk.”
“Mom,” said Alexander, eating cheerfully, “his wife is coming to join him in March. He begged me to talk to everybody on the floor to ask if we could have our baths earlier in the evening, to let them have a bit of—”
“All right, you two, you’re having me on,” said Harold.
Alexander and his mother exchanged a look, and then Alexander said, “Dad, go check it out. And when you come back, you tell me where the van Dorens could have moved to in Moscow.”
When Harold came back, he shrugged and said, “That man is a hobo. He is no good.”
“That man,” said Alexander, looking at his mother’s vodka glass, “is the head engineer for the Baltic fleet.”
A month later, in February 1935, Alexander came home from school and heard his mother and father fighting—again. He heard his name shouted out once, twice.
His mother was upset for Alexander. But he was fine. He spoke Russian fluently. He sang and drank beer and played hockey on the ice in Gorky Park with his friends. He was all right. Why was she upset? He wanted to go in and tell her he was fine, but he never liked to interrupt his parents’ fights.
Suddenly he heard something being thrown, and then someone being hit. He ran into his parents’ room and saw his mother on the floor, her cheek red, his father bending over her. Alexander ran to his father and shoved him in the back. “What are you doing, Dad?” he yelled. He kneeled down next to his mother.
She half sat up and glared at Harold. “Fine thing you’re showing your son,” she said. “You brought him to the Soviet Union for this, to show him how to treat a woman? His wife, perhaps?”
“Shut up,” said Harold, clenching his fists.
“Dad!” Alexander jumped to his feet. “Stop!”
“Your father has abandoned us, Alexander.”
“I’m not abandoning you!”
Squaring off, Alexander pushed his father in the chest.
Harold shoved Alexander and then hit him open-handed across the face. Jane gasped. Alexander swayed but did not fall. Harold went to strike him again, but this time Alexander moved away. Jane grabbed Harold’s legs, yanked, and sent him down on his back. “Don’t you dare touch him!” she yelled.
Harold was on the floor, Jane, too; only Alexander was standing. They couldn’t look at one another; everyone was panting. Alexander wiped his bleeding lip.
“Harold,” Jane said, still on her knees. “Look at us! We’re being destroyed by this fucking country.” She was crying. “Let’s go home, let’s start over.”
“Are you crazy?” hissed Harold, looking from Alexander to Jane. “Do you even know what you’re saying?”
“I do.”
“Have you forgotten that we gave up our U.S. citizenship? Have you forgotten that at the moment you and I are citizens of no country; that we’re waiting for our Soviet citizenship to come through? You think America is going to want us back? Why, they practically kicked us out. And how do you think the Soviet authorities are going to feel once they find out we’re turning our backs on them, too?”
“I don’t care what the Soviet authorities think.”
“God, you are so naïve!”
“Is that what I am? What does that make you? Did you know it was going to be like this and brought us here anyway? Brought your son here?”
He stared at her with disappointment. “We didn’t come for the good life. The good life we could have had in America.”
“You’re right. And we had it. We’ll make do with what we have here, but Harold, Alexander is not meant to be here. At least send him back home.”
“What?” Harold could not find his voice to say it above a whisper.
“Yes.” She was helped off the floor by Alexander as she stood in front of Harold. “He is fifteen. Send him back home!”
“Mom!” said Alexander.
“Don’t let him die in this country—can’t you see? Alexander sees it. I see it. Why can’t you?”
“Alexander doesn’t see it. Do you, son?”
