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repairing in Moscow—“not yet, but very very soon.”
    Alexander’s mother followed his father’s cues; she endured everything—except the shabbiness of the facilities. Alexander teased her (“Dad, do you approve of Mom’s scrubbing out the smell of the proletariat? Mom, Dad doesn’t approve, stop cleaning.”), but Jane would nonetheless spend an hour scrubbing the communal bathtub before she could get in it. She would clean the toilet every day after work—before she made dinner. Alexander and his father waited for their food.
    “Alexander, I hope you wash your hands every time you leave that bathroom—”
    “Mom, I’m not a child,” said Alexander. “I know to wash my hands.” He would take a long sniff. “Oh, l’eau de communism. So pungent, so strong, so—”
    “Stop it. And in school, too. Wash your hands everywhere.”
    “Yes, Mom.”
    Shrugging, she said, “You know, no matter how bad things smell around here they’re not as bad as down the hall. Have you smelled Marta’s room?”
    “How could you not? The new Soviet order is especially strong in there.”
    “Do you know why it’s so bad? She and her two sons live in there. Oh, the filth, the stench.”
    “I didn’t know she had two sons.”
    “Oh, yes. They came from Leningrad to visit her last month and stayed for good.”
    Alexander grinned. “Are you saying they’re stinking up the place?”
    “Not them,” Jane replied with a repugnant sneer. “The whores they bring with them from the Leningrad rail station. Every other night they have a new harlot in there with them. And they do stink up the place.”
    “Mom, you’re so judgmental. Not everyone is able to buy Chanel perfume as they pass through Paris. Maybe you should offer the whores some—for French cleansing.” Alexander was pleased at his own joke.
    “I’m going to tell your father on you.”
    Father, who was right there, said, “Maybe if you stop talking to our eleven-year-old son about whores, all would be well.”
    “Alexander, darling, Merry Christmas Eve.” Having changed the subject, Jane smiled wistfully. “Dad doesn’t like us to remember the meaningless rituals—”
    “It’s not that I don’t like to,” interjected Harold. “I just want them placed in their proper perspective—past and gone and unnecessary.”
    “And I agree with him completely,” Jane calmly continued, “but it does get you in the chest once in a while, doesn’t it?”
    “Particularly today,” said Alexander.
    “Yes. Well, that’s all right. We had a nice dinner. You’ll get a present on New Year’s like all the other Soviet boys.” She paused. “Not from Father Christmas, from us.” Another pause. “You don’t believe in Santa Claus anymore, do you, son?”
    “No, Mom,” Alexander said slowly, not looking at his mother.
    “Since when?”
    “Since just now,” he replied, standing up and gathering the plates off the table.
    Jane Barrington found work lending books at a university library but after a few months was transferred to the reference section, then to the maps, then to serving lunch in the university cafeteria. Every night, after cleaning the toilets, she cooked a Russian dinner for her family, once in a while lamenting the lack of mozzarella cheese, the absence of olive oil to make good spaghetti sauce, or of fresh basil, but Harold and Alexander didn’t care. They ate the cabbage and the sausage and the potatoes and the mushrooms, and black bread rubbed with salt, and Harold requested that Jane learn how to make a thick beef borscht in the tradition of good Russian women.
     
    Alexander was asleep when his mother’s shouting woke him. He reluctantly got out of his bed and came into the hall. His mother in her white nightgown was yelling obscenities at one of Marta’s sons, who was skulking down the hall not turning around. In her hands, Jane held a pot.
    “What’s going on?” said Alexander. Harold had not gotten up.
    “There I was, going to the