The Summer Garden Read Free Page B

French owned it, and lost it to the Japanese during the war. The Japanese lost the war, but they don’t want to leave. The French, rescued by the victors and thus on the side of victory, want their colony back. The Japanese are protesting. While staying neutral, the U.S. are helping their ally France, but they’re really between a rock and a hard place since they’re also helping Japan.”
    “I thought Japan is no longer allowed to have an army?” Tatiana asked in English.
    And he replied in Russian, “They’re not. But they had a standing army in Indochina, and short of the U.S. forcing them out, the Japanese refuse to lay down their arms.”
    She asked in English, “What’s your interest in all this?”
    He replied in Russian, “Ah. In all this—because there just isn’t enough trouble—Stalin for decades has been courting a peasant farmer named Ho Chi Minh, paying for his little educational trips to Moscow, feeding him vodka and caviar, teaching him the Marxist dialectic by the warm fire and giving him some old Shpagins and mortars, and some nice American Lend-Lease Studebakers while training and educating his little band of Vietminh right on Soviet soil.”
    “Training the Vietminh to fight the Japanese whom the Soviets fought and hate?”
    “Believe it or not, no. To fight the former Soviet allies, the colonial French. Ironic?” Alexander stubbed out his cigarette, put down his paper. “Where’s Anthony?” he said in a low voice in English, but before he could even reach for her wrist, Anthony walked into the kitchen.
    “I’m here, Dad,” he said. “What?”
    They needed a room for just themselves, but Anthony didn’t think so, and besides, the old landlady didn’t have one. The choice was one tiny room next to the kitchen in a vertical house overlooking the bay—with two twin beds, and a bath and toilet down the hall—or their camper with one full bed, and no bath and no toilet.
    They had looked at other houses. One had a family of five living in it. One had a family of three. One a family of seven, all women. Generations and generations of women, filling up the white houses, and old men going out on the boats during the day. And younger men—sometimes whole, sometimes not—trickling back from war.
    Mrs. Brewster lived alone. Her only son was not back, though Tatiana didn’t think he was out with the troops. Something in the way the old lady said, oh he had to go away for a little while. She was sixty-six years old and had been a widow for forty-eight of them: her husband died in the Spanish-American War.
    “In 1898 ?” Tatiana whispered to Alexander.
    He shrugged. His heavy hand was squeezing her shoulder, telling her he didn’t much like Mrs. Brewster, but Tatiana was happy to have his hand on her in any capacity. “This is your husband, right?” Mrs. Brewster had said suspiciously before she rented out the rooms to them. “He’s not just some…” She waved her hand around. “Because I won’t have that in my house.”
    Alexander stood mute. The three-year-old said, “Have what?”
    The landlady narrowed her eyes at Anthony. “This your father, boy?”
    “Yes,” said Anthony. “He is a soldier. He was in a war and in prison.”
    “Yeah,” said Mrs. Brewster, looking away. “Prison’s hard.” Then she narrowed her eyes at Tatiana. “So where’s your accent from? Doesn’t sound American to me.”
    Anthony began to say, “Russ—” but Alexander pulled his son behind him, pulled Tatiana behind him. “Are you going to rent us the room or not?”
    She rented them the room.
    But now Alexander asked Tatiana, “Why did we buy the Nomad if we’re not going to stay in it? We might as well sell it. What a waste of money.”
    What would they do when they got to the deserts of the west? she wanted to know. To the wine hills of California? To Hell’s Canyon in Idaho? Despite his sudden frugality, Alexander didn’t sell the camper, the dream of it still so fresh. But this