“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