Alexander ushered his family out. They stood on a dusty Western street. They didn’t talk about what the appraiser told them. Alexander wanted to get a cold beer. Tatiana wanted to go to the general store on the corner and buy some ice cream. Anthony wanted a cowboy hat. In the end, Alexander didn’t get a cold beer, because he wouldn’t take his family into a saloon, but Tatiana did get an ice cream, and Anthony did get a hat. They walked around the town square. Alexander didn’t know why, but he liked it, liked the Western feel of it, the frontier expanse and yet the small town intimacy of it. They drove around in their Nomad, saw that much of the farmland around the town square was being turned into housing developments. For dinner they had steak and baked potatoes and corn on the cob at a local restaurant with sawdust on the floor.
He asked her what she wanted to do and she said that perhaps they ought to take one more look at the land before they made a final decision.
It was seven in the evening, and the sun was arching downward. Because the sun was a different color, their mountain turned a different color—the rocks now glowed in three-dimensional orange. Alexander appraised the land himself. “Tania, what are the chances that you had been prescient when you bought this land?” he said, bringing her to him after they walked around a while.
“Slim to none,” Tatiana said, her arms going around his waist, “and Slim has already left town. We definitely should sell it, Shura. Sell it as quick as we can, take our money, go someplace else nice and not as hot.”
Leaning down, he placed his lips on her moist cheek. “You’re so nice and hot, babe,” he whispered. She smelled of vanilla ice cream. She tasted of vanilla ice cream. “But I disagree. I think the appraiser is lying. Either there is a housing boom, or there isn’t. But a housing boom means land increases in value.”
“He’s right, though,” she said. “It’s very out of the way.”
“Out of the way for what?” Alexander shook his head. “I really think we can make a little money here. We’re going to wait a while, then sell it.” He paused. “But Tania, I’m confused about your motives. One minute you want to sell the land for pennies to the lowest bidder. The next you’re breathlessly talking about spring.”
Tatiana shrugged. “What can I say? I’m conflicted.” She chewed her lip. “Would you ever consider … living here?” she asked carefully.
“Never! Feel the air. Feel your face. Why, do you want to live here—” Suddenly Alexander broke off, his eyes widening.
Do you want to live in Arizona, Tatia, the land of the small spring?
He had asked this of her—in another life. “Oh, come now,” he said slowly. “You don’t—you aren’t—no, come on … Oh no!” Alexander let out an incredulous laugh. “I just got it! Just. Oh, I’m good. I’m sharp. I don’t know how we ever won the war. Tania, come on! Recall when I said it.”
“I’m recalling it as if you’re saying it to me now,” she said with crossed arms.
“Well, then surely you know I meant it metaphorically. As in, would you like to live somewhere that’s warm. I didn’t actually mean here!”
“No?” Her no was so quiet.
“Of course no! Is that why you bought the land?”
When Tatiana didn’t reply, Alexander became speechless. There were so many baffling things he didn’t understand about her, he simply didn’t know where to look for answers. “We’re in the middle of an iced over, blockaded, heatless Leningrad,” he said. “The Germans are denying you even the unleavened cardboard and glue that you’re eating instead of bread. I briefly mention a vague warm place I barely remember that I had once driven through with my parents. Damn, I should’ve said Miami. Would you have then bought land there?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not serious. Anthony, come here, stop chasing rattlesnakes. Do you like it here?”
“Dad, this is the funnest place in the whole world.”
“What about this cholla? Is that fun?”
“So fun! Ask Mommy. She says it has evil spirits. She calls it the cactus from hell. Tell him, Mama—it’s worse than war.” He ran off with joy.
“Yes,” said Tatiana, “stay away from the cholla, Alexander.”
He furrowed his brow. “I think the heat has done something to both of you. Tania, inland, we’re so far inland, the air doesn’t even carry water on the wind!”
“I know.” She took a hot gulp of air.
They disengaged, spread out, thinking their separate thoughts. Anthony was picking dried-out fruit off the prickly pear cactus. Tatiana was pulling the dried-out red flowers off the cattail-like ocotillo. And Alexander was smoking and looking at the land and the mountain and the valley below. The sun set peacefully, and as the light of the sun changed once more, the rock hills transformed into a blaze. They put down a blanket, sat shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee and watched the sunset while Anthony played.
Alexander thought Tatiana had been thinking of how to convince him to sell the land or not to sell the land, but what she said to him was more perplexing. She said: “Shura, tell me, in Lazarevo, when you were going to go back to the front … we used to look at the Ural Mountains like this. Tell me, why didn’t you just stay?”
Alexander was taken aback. “What do you mean, stay?”
“You know.” She paused. “Why didn’t you just … not go back?”
“Not go back to my command post? You mean—desert?”
She nodded. “Why didn’t we just run—into the Urals? You could have built us an izba, we could’ve settled there, in the forest, found some precious stones, bartered them, grown things to eat. They would’ve never found us.”
Alexander shook his head, his hands opening in deep question. “Tatiana, what in the name of God,” he said, “are you thinking? What in the world is going through your mind, and more important, why?”
“It’s not a rhetorical question. I would like an answer.”
“An answer to what? Why didn’t I desert the Red Army? For one, my commander, Colonel Stepanov, that nice man—remember him, who let me have twenty-nine Lazarevo days with you—would’ve gone to the firing squad for having a deserter in his brigade. So would my major, and all the lieutenants and sergeants I served with. And you and I would’ve been on the run for the rest of our short, doomed lives. On the run! And they would’ve found us, like they find everybody. Remember I told you about Germanovsky? They found him in Belgium after the war, and he’d never even set foot in the Soviet Union. He was born in France. His father was a diplomat. Germanovsky was given ten years hard labor for not returning when he turned eighteen—fourteen years earlier! That would have been us. Except they would have found us in five minutes, the first time we tried to barter some of that precious Ural malachite to match your eyes. It would’ve been over like lightning, and the five extra minutes we would have had would’ve been spent with one eye looking over our shoulder. In other words, prison. That’s what you wanted—?”
Without letting him finish, she jumped up and walked away. What was she thinking? But at the same time, the sun was on fire, and Alexander had spent too long in dark places below ground, and so he didn’t go after her but sat and finished his cigarette, watching the desert sunset up from a hill.
When Tatiana came back to the blanket she said, “It was just a silly question.” She knocked into his shoulder. “I was musing, not serious.”
“Oh, that’s good. As opposed to what?”
“Sometimes I think crazy thoughts, that’s all.”
“The crazy part, absolutely. What thoughts?” Alexander paused.