The Summer Garden. Paullina Simons

      “Nearer to thee,” he whispered to her last night before he fell asleep. “Even though it be a cross/that raiseth me.”

      Up, up, up, on the run, unsaved, through Desolation Canyon, through the salt flats of Utah, through the Sunrise Peak Mountains, to where there was wine in the valley.

CHAPTER FOUR

       Vianza, 1947

       Bisol Brut Bobbing Bubbly

       And was there ever wine in the valley.

      Chardonnay, Cabernet, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Franc and Sauvignon Blanc. But sparkling wine was the most delicious of all, creamy, nutty, fruity, exploding with flavors of green apple and citrus, its bubble trapped in the bottle for maximum fizz and maximum joy.

      It was the Italians that drew them in, the Sebastianis, running their tiny California winery on a foggy, winding, tree-canopied, hilly road nestled between other vineyards stretching from the Mayacamas Mountains to the east and the Sonomas to the west. The Sebastianis ran their winery as if they lived in Tuscany. Their yellow stucco Mediterranean house looked like something out of Alexander’s mother’s old country. Alexander could barely whoa the horse and drop the reins, before he was hired on the spot by Nick Sebastiani, who whisked Alexander away at four in the afternoon. It was late August and harvesting season, and the grapes had to come off the vine instantly or something terrible would happen to them, some overripening acidity. They had to be “cooled,” “threshed,” “separated from their skins,” “crushed in steel drums.” That’s what Nick told Alexander as Tatiana remained with Anthony in the unpaved parking lot, trying to figure out what to do next.

      Holding his hand, she ambled over to the winery and said hello to Jean Sebastiani, and fifteen minutes later found herself not only drinking and admiring the unfamiliar but pleasant tastes, but accepting a job as a wine server for the outdoor patio area!

      Tatiana muttered something about Anthony, and Jean said, “Oh, no, the boy can be your helper. We’ll get even more customers, you’ll see.”

      People indeed loved the little helper—and were not entirely averse to the mother helper either. Tatiana continued to constrain herself in vests one size too small while her white limbs peeked out from her white sleeveless dresses as she hurried from table to table. While Alexander worked the fields picking acres of grapes, making seven bucks a day for his twelve hours of trouble, Tatiana was tipped like she was working for the emperors.

      Short of quitting, there was nothing Alexander could do—there were too many men willing to work for even less. So Alexander continued to work like he worked and when Nick Sebastiani saw it, he gave him a raise to ten a day and put him in charge of twenty other migrant hand harvesters.

      Temporarily they stayed in their camper near the barracks to use the shower facilities. Sebastiani wanted Alexander to live in the barracks with the rest of the workers. Alexander refused. “I’m not staying in the barracks with my family, Tania. What is this, Sachsenhausen? Are you going to be my little labor camp wife?”

      “If you wish.”

      They went off site to live, renting a room on a second floor of a bed and breakfast two miles down the road. The room was expensive—five dollars a day—but very large. It had a bed the size of which they’d never seen before. Alexander called it a brothel bed, for who else would need a bed this size? He would have been happy with a Deer Isle twin bed, it had been so long since they’d slept in one. Anthony had his own rollaway in the far corner. There was a bath with a shower down the hall, and the dining room downstairs served them breakfast and dinner so Tatiana didn’t have to cook. Alexander and Tatiana both didn’t love that part.

      Alexander said as soon as it got cold, they would leave. September came and it was still warm; he liked that. Better still, not only was Tatiana making them a little money, she was drinking some sparkling wine, some Bisol Brut, for which she developed a bit of a taste. After work, she would sit with Anthony, have bread and cheese, and a glass of sparkler. She closed the winery, counted the money, played with the boy, waited for Alexander to finish work, and sipped her drink. By the time they drove to the B&B, had dinner, chocolate cake, more wine, a bath, put Anthony to bed, and she fell down onto the goose down covers, arms flung above her head, Tatiana was so bubbled up, so pliant, so agreeable to all his relentless frenzies, and so ceaselessly and supernally orgasmic that Alexander would not have been a mortal man if he allowed anything to come between his wife and her Bisol Brut. Who would do a crazy thing like quit to go into dry country? This country was flowing with foaming wine, and that is just how they both liked it.

      He started whispering to her again, night by night, little by little.

       Tania … you want to know what drives me insane?

       Yes, darling, please tell me. Please whisper to me.

       When you sit up straight like this with your hands on your lap, and your breasts are pushed together, and your pink nipples are nice and soft. I lose my breath when your nipples are like that.

       The trouble is, as soon as I see you looking at me, the nipples stop being nice and soft.

      Yes, they are quite shameful, he whispers, his breath lost, his mouth on them. But your hard nipples also drive me completely insane, so it’s all good, Tatia. It’s all very very good.

      Anthony was segregated from them by an accordion room partition. A certain privacy was achieved, and after a few nights of the boy not being woken up, they got bolder; Alexander did unbelievable things to Tatiana that made her sparkler-fueled moaning so extravagant that he had to invent and devise whole new ways of sustaining his usually impeccable command over his own release.

       Tell me what you want. I’ll do anything you want, Tania. Tell me. What can I do—for you?

       Anything, darling … anything you want, you do …

      There was nothing Gulag about their consuming love in that enchanted bed by the window, the bed that was a quilted down island with four posters and a canopy, with pillows so big and covers so thick … and afterward he lay drenched and she lay breathless, and she murmured into his chest that she should like a soft big bed like this forever, so comforted was she and so very pleased with him. Once she asked in a breath, Isn’t this better than being on top of the hard stove in Lazarevo? Alexander knew she wanted him to say yes, and he did, but he didn’t mean it, and though she wanted him to say it, he knew she didn’t want him to mean it either. Could anything come close to crimson Lazarevo where, having been nearly dead, without champagne or wine or bread or a bed, without work or food or Anthony or any future other than the wall and the blindfold, they somehow managed for one brief moon to live in thrall sublime? They had been so isolated, and in their memories they still remained near the Ural Mountains, in frozen Leningrad, in the woods of Luga when they had been fused and fevered, utterly doomed, utterly alone. And yet!—look at her tremulous light—as if in a dream—in America—in fragrant wine country, flute full of champagne, in a white quilted bed, her breath, her breasts on him, her lips on his face, her arms in rhapsody around him are so comforting, so true—and so real.

      You want me to whisper to you, Alexander whispers on another blue night on the quilt, blue night now but heather dawn already much too near. She is on her back, her arms above her head, her gold hair smelling freshly washed of strawberry shampoo. He is propped up over her, loving her taste of chocolate and wine, kissing her open lips, her throat, her clavicles, licking her breasts, her swollen nipples.

      Maybe not just whisper? she moans.

      He moves lower, happier, presses his face into her stomach, on his knees in front of her; he kisses lingeringly the femoral flesh, listening to her whispering pleas. To draw out his time with her, he caresses her as