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potato fields, Alexander gave her his enormous dark hand to help her off the ground, and her white one disappeared into his warm fist as he pulled her to her feet.
    “Thank you.”
    “Thank you.”
    When they first got to Deer Isle, in the evenings, after Anthony was finally asleep, they climbed up the steep hill to where their Nomad was parked off road near the woods. Once inside, Alexander took the clothes off her—he insisted she be bare for him—though most of the time he did not undress himself, leaving on his T-shirt or his sleeveless tank. Tatiana asked once. Don’t you want to undress, too? He said no. She didn’t ask again. He kissed her; with his hands he touched her to soften her; but never said a word. He never called her name. He would kiss her, clasp her body to him, present himself to her eager mouth—sometimes too forcefully, though she didn’t mind—and then he would deliver himself unto her. She moaned, she couldn’t help herself, and there had once been a time when he lived for her moaning. He himself never made a sound anymore, not before, not during, and not even at the end. He aspirated at the end; made an H. Sometimes not even a capital H.
    Many things were gone from them. Alexander didn’t use his mouth on her anymore, or whisper all manner of remarkable things to her anymore, or caress her from top to bottom, or turn the kerosene light on—or even open his eyes.
    Shura . Naked in the Nomad was the only time in their new life Tatiana called him by that beloved diminutive now. Sometimes she felt as if he wanted to put his hands to his ears so he wouldn’t hear her. It was dark in the camper, so dark; there was never light to see anything. And he wore his clothes. Shura. I can’t believe I’m touching you again .
    There were no Edith Wharton novels in the camper, no Age of Innocence . He took her until she had nothing more to give, but still he took her until there was nothing.
    “Soldier, darling, I’m here,” Tatiana would whisper, her arms opened, stretched out to him in helplessness, in surrender.
    “I’m here, too,” Alexander would say, not whispering, getting up, getting dressed. “Let’s go back downhill. I hope Anthony is still sleeping.” That was the afterglow. Him giving her his hand to help her up.
    She was defenseless, she was starved herself, she was open. She would give it to him any way he needed it, but still…
    Oh, it didn’t matter. Just that there was something so soldierly and unhusbandly about how silently and rapaciously Alexander needed to still the cries of war.
    Near tears one night, she asked him what was the matter with him—with them —and he replied, “You have become tainted with the Gulag.” And then they were interrupted by a child’s maniacal screams from down below. Already dressed, Alexander ran.
    “Mama! Mama!”
    Old Mrs. Brewster had trotted into his room, but she only terrified Anthony more.
    “MAMA! MAMA!”
    Alexander held him, but Anthony didn’t want anyone but his mother.
    And when she ran in, he didn’t want her either. He hit her, he turned away from her. He was hysterical. It took her over an hour to calm him down. At four Alexander got up to go to work, and after that night Tatiana and Alexander stopped going to the camper. It stood abandoned in the clearing up the hill between the trees as they, both clothed, and in silence, with a pillow or his lips or his hand over her mouth to stifle her moaning, danced the tango of life, the tango of death, the tango of the Gulag, creaking every desperate bedspring in the twin bed across from Anthony’s restless sleeping.
    They tried to come together during the day when the boy wasn’t looking. Trouble was, he was always looking. By the end of long napless Sundays, Alexander was mute with impatience and discontent.
    One late Sunday afternoon Anthony was supposed to be in the front yard playing with bugs. Tatiana was supposed to be cooking dinner, Alexander was supposed to be