Beautiful Soul: An American Elegy (28 page)

It is kind of you to come
to these dinners, Bernardo said at last in his overly correct English that reminded
me strongly of a man I had never met. I know Mother appreciates it. We cannot
be terribly interesting company for you.

I will always compliment
your cooking, Bernardo, but not your subtlety. At this time in my life my
appetite for interesting is much smaller than my need for simple kindness, and
I thank you for it.

Your appetite is not so
good, I have noticed. You did not like the mussels?

They were delicious, of
course. It’s
true,
I’m not hungry these days.

Our eyes met, and I was
surprised by the directness of his gaze. Suddenly he seemed less comical, less
the humble servant, more like—a man. But my gaze did not waver; I’ve been
fooled before. His eyes dropped again to his empty espresso cup.

Do you ever think that
you’ll return to America?

I do not think that.

You’ve made a home here,
then.

Is anyone really at home in
Trieste?

You are being romantic, he
said, or you are having fun with me. You are not romantic, I think.

I’ve given it up, I said.

You should find yourself some
occupation. Mother watches you—watches over you, I should say. She says you’re
lonely. You have no husband?

I have a husband. But he
does not have me.

Very unfortunate for him.
Did you know, he added,
without segue, that I am part Jewish?

You amaze me.

It’s true. Papa was
half-Jewish which makes me one-quarter so. He was lucky to escape when the
Germans were here.

Haven’t the Germans always
been here? Look at the buildings. Look at what you brought for dessert.

Ah!
he
said, the Austrians. That’s not the same thing.

Hitler was Austrian.

I was a little surprised at
the energy of his response, as I was by the entire direction that the
conversation was hurtling. I began to feel less confidence in his English, or
in my own powers of understanding.

Hitler was Hitler.
An accident of history, an abortion.
It was not our fault,
it was the
Anschluss
. My father was an Irredentist. Do you know what that
means?

He was an Italian.

He was an Italian Jew who
wanted Trieste to stay Italian. He felt safer with Mussolini than he did with
Hitler. And he wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t until Il Duce was gone that they began
to kill Jews here.

Why are you telling me
this?

Because you are a Jew and
you will understand.

My husband, I said, would
call that an error in logic.

I would like to meet your
husband, he said simply. I have not met many Jews. I would like to see what
they are like.

There were many Jews here
once.

In Trieste?

In Europe.
But you must find me
disappointing.

Why?

I am not very Jewish.

Ah, but you are an
American, and that also is interesting. An American is so many different
things.

I am not very American
either. I don’t feel American or Jewish. I can’t help being those things, but I
don’t feel them. I don’t know what it would be like to feel them.

Then we are not so different.

It felt, in spite of the
clumsiness of his mother, in spite of his too-round, too smooth egg-like head,
and the little mustache undoubtedly dyed black, like an offer of friendship. We
smiled shyly at each other.

In this posthumous life I lead a friendship seems like
something to risk. Do I
want,
I ask myself that night
in bed with my eyes closed, waiting for the images to come, to restart the
film? I am tired of being looked at, as Bernardo is probably tired of being
ignored. He seems to offer some small, good ground of neutrality, in which I
might wait out these last days before the disease makes itself visible and the
film loses its poetry, turns into something maudlin, a weepie. Before that time
comes I’ll throw the switch, darken the screen. It is strange how I have never
managed to fascinate an American man. My hope is that Bernardo is not
fascinated. I would like to sit in a room with someone unfascinated for a
change. Even to write these letters to you, Elsa, letters you don’t read
,
I feel that pressure of eyes. Your eyes from when you were
very
young,
locked on me like the eyes of Fate
herself. I am as tired of the future as I am of the past. Bernardo has never
started his life. Perhaps he can help me to finish mine.

I had another life, Nadia tells Ruth, as real as this
one.
More real, because it is complete, finished.
Like
a circle, like a snake with its tail in its mouth.

Sitting at the coffeehouse,
the children sleeping in their strollers.
Looking
down at the perfect leaf of her latte.
I had another husband.
Another child.

For a moment Ruth can see
them, like shadows, feel that vanishing presence of the afterlife. Are they
dead? Please don’t say they’re dead.

I was born in 1989 and I
was very young when I met him.
Sixteen.
He was eighteen
and thought he was a man. I did too. He had a motorcycle and he’d take me on
long rides through the hills above our town. Then I got pregnant and said to
him,
You
must marry me. So he did. We were married
twice, in fact, first in a courthouse, and then, to please his mother, in the
Orthodox Church.

Vladimir couldn’t find a
job so one day he said to
me,
Let’s go to Petersburg,
my cousin works there. We went. His cousin was named Nikolai, he was fair where
Vladimir was dark, he had pale feathery eyebrows and a blond beard and strong
muscles from the work he did in construction, he had a job on a work site and
he got Vladimir a job too, although Vladimir was smaller and much more
delicate, he would have preferred to work at a desk but he had no education, he
left school to be with me. We lived together in Nikolai’s flat in a big
building in a series of big buildings far from the city
center,
you only knew it was St. Petersburg because of the river rolling by heading
north to Finland. I wanted to work but Vladimir was proud, like Boris is now,
he said it wasn’t good for the baby and I should stay home. I was bored, I
watched TV, the doctor told me not to smoke but he was smoking a cigarette when
he said it so I still smoked occasionally. I didn’t drink though, I never liked
it, I left that to Vladimir and Nikolai,
in
the
evenings they’d empty a bottle of vodka and sing together on the little balcony
overlooking the river while I was inside with the TV. Then it happened that
they began to work different shifts, Vladimir wasn’t good at his job but
Nikolai intervened for him and they made Vladimir a night watchman, his only
job was to walk around the site all night pressing buttons so his bosses knew
he wasn’t asleep. He’d come home just before dawn and crawl into bed next to me
stinking of some chemical like formaldehyde they must have used on the site,
though Nikolai never smelled like that. I’d have to get up then and to amuse
myself I’d cook breakfast for Nikolai, who was just waking up. I made elaborate
breakfasts for him, traditional Russian dishes like blini with sour cream and
cold meats and hardboiled eggs and Turkish coffee brewed very strong. Then he’d
sit there eating and smoking and talking to me like Vladimir never talked, he
wasn’t full of resentful dreams of the life he’d forsaken to be with me, he was
living the life he’d chosen and was happy. Of course it was inevitable what
would happen, with me bored all day, Vladimir snoring away in one room and me
watching TV in the other, or wandering the halls of the building avoiding the
old ladies and their gossip, or sometimes taking the little money Vladimir gave
me and going out to buy something, anything, a cheap music player or a handbag,
taking the subway or the bus to the Nevsky Prospekt where I could see a bit of
life, the women in their expensive shoes and makeup and the men very sharp in
their business suits, and the tourists speaking other languages, German and
French and English, taking pictures of each other. Coming home to Vladimir,
who’d yell at me for spending money, heating up something frozen for supper and
then letting him paw me a little before he pulled on his boots and headed out
to the construction
site.
He always left an hour or
two before his shift, who knows what he was up to after all? Then Nikolai would
come home, tired but exuberant, and pull off his own workboots and tell me
about the day while I made for him his own special supper. No thank you, I’d
say to him, I’ve already eaten, I’ll just watch you, I don’t want to sit down,
I sit all day waiting for you. It was
natural,
it was
human, what happened between us. I only had to remember in the middle of the
night to be sure and get up and move from Nikolai’s little bed to the larger
one that Vladimir and I shared. I didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant
of
course,
I didn’t have to worry about anything,
that’s what I thought. My belly was getting bigger, Vladimir didn’t want to
touch me anymore, that was fine with me, Nikolai liked it, he caressed my belly
and spoke to it,
he
said the child might as well be
his. You can leave him, he told me, we’ll go away together, we’ll go to
America, I will raise your son as my own, or your daughter, it doesn’t matter,
I love you I love you. I looked into his eyes and saw truth there, he was no older
than Vladimir but he was a man and he loved me and I loved him I suppose. I
remember how his beard and mustache felt, kissing me.

Of course this story
doesn’t have a happy ending. It ends stupidly, obviously. One cold autumn
evening Vladimir left for work as usual, talking as he always did about the
need for us to find a place of our own. He was sick of being crowded and he
didn’t much like his cousin anymore, he said, he was a nice guy but a bit
simple, he didn’t have ambition like Vladimir did, Vladimir who tried to study
economics in between pushing buttons, he still wanted to go to university
someday, to make something of himself. We need our own place, something big
enough for us and the baby, just us, our little family he said. I nodded, I
didn’t listen, I was thinking about Nikolai, he’d be home soon, with his beard
and his big handsome hands, he’ll take care of me, all I’d ever wanted was to
be cared for the way he cared for me, and I had this now, why couldn’t this go
on forever? My belly was very big, it stuck out of my dressing gown, which was
all I wore, my old clothes didn’t fit me anymore and Vladimir was too cheap to
buy me maternity clothes, he was saving for our apartment he said, and when
Nikolai tried to buy me something Vladimir flew into a rage, It’s none of your
business, he said to him, out there on the balcony where they were drinking,
and I imagined they would fight, absurd as that idea was, little Vladimir
against giant Nikolai, Nikolai could squeeze the life out of him with one hand
if he wanted, but he would never do that, he was so gentle. Vladimir left and I
waited for Nikolai, I cooked him his favorite supper, a ham steak and boiled
potatoes. The hour came and went, he didn’t appear, I didn’t worry and then I
did, it was late, very late, when I woke up where I was curled on Nikolai’s bed
and Vladimir was sitting there beside me with his arm around my shoulder and
tears on his face, I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, there was an accident
today, I’ve come from the hospital, What is it, I screamed, what is it you are
telling me, Calm down he said, you’ve got to calm down, you’ll hurt the baby,
Where is he, I screamed, where is Niko, where is my Nikolai, He’s dead you
stupid lying cunt he’s dead I know you cheated on me with him he lost his
balance and he fell twenty meters, he’s dead, I got up screaming No, no, tore
myself from Vladimir’s shaking hands and hurried out into the hallway,
clutching my belly where the pain had started, one of the doors opened and a
pair of malicious black eyes peeped out, Shut the door you bitch, I said, it
sounds much worse in Russian, very disrespectful, and then before she could
shut it I said Please call the hospital, my baby is coming. He did come, I
labored all night in the hospital, Vladimir didn’t come into the room but
waited outside wringing his hands, he was filled with remorse he said, he came
to me in the morning where I was holding little Josip and said Please don’t be
angry with me, I didn’t mean it, our cousin is dead, let bygones be bygones.
But I couldn’t manage it somehow, I had to leave him, I went on public
assistance and found my own place, and poor little Josip had been born with a
heart condition, they tried to fix it, three operations, and the last one he
didn’t survive, the last time I saw Vladimir was at the funeral, we buried our
little boy, not three months old, and I said to myself There are no more tears.
But I didn’t want to die, I wanted to live, and I was still good-looking though
at seventeen years of age I felt fifty or sixty, I made myself up and went on
the Internet and met Boris, he was already living here, he came to court me for
one weekend in Petersburg and showed me life, fancy dinners and dancing and a
suite at the Hotel Astoria, he is not a handsome man but he makes me laugh, he
tells good jokes, he is a Jew in fact like you, I saw you hesitate before you
told me, it’s all right, I am married to a Jewish man, though he’s not the
least religious and though my father and grandfather blamed the Jews for every
evil in the world, besides he has his own business, he’s ambitious, he works as
a computer engineer in Chicago, so when he asked me to marry him at the end of
the weekend I said yes, there was no problem with the divorce, Vladimir I think
wanted to forget everything and he was happy to sign the papers, last I heard
he had moved to Moscow to enroll in university there. So six months after the
divorce was final Boris flew me here and a little less than a year after that
we had Boris Junior, my American son, and I have nothing left to wish for but
for these memories I have just related to you to lose somehow their hold on me,
there’s a terrible sort of feeling that comes up when I think about that other
life, though not when I tell it to you, Ruth, with your kind eyes. Your eyes
tell me I ought to forgive myself, like the woman doctor Boris pays for, she
tells me that every week. Yes, I might as well admit there are days I find it
difficult to get out of bed. The worst thing I’ve ever done is to lie there
while little Boris screams for me, he’s alone in his room and the door is shut
and he can’t get out, he screams for what seems like hours, and the worst
moment of all comes when he stops screaming, all of a sudden like that, like a
light switch, and only then in the silence does the guilt and remorse flood my
spirit, giving me the strength finally to rise and go to his room and open the
door where he is only asleep on the floor, pink and innocent like I was
innocent in my love for Vladimir, my love for Nikolai, my love for Josip,
buried now like Nikolai in a faraway country that I can’t forget. You are very
lucky to have been born here, Ruth, you are lucky to be a real American. Even
tragedies are cleaner here, they aren’t really tragedies: yes, sad things
happen, even terrible things, but everyone just forgets as soon as they can and
goes on, you are all so optimistic, don’t try to deny it, I see it in your
eyes, you believe tomorrow will be better than today, that’s your birthright,
and I want it to be little Boris’s birthright, as it can never be mine, because
somehow it has the power of coming true. Even big Boris is somehow a believer,
I don’t know how he managed it, because he is a Jew perhaps, he is more
American now than Russian, though my English is already much better than his,
he is on fire for this country, where there are no oligarchs, no one-man rule,
no Putin and Medvedev playing ping-pong with the presidency, no gangs except in
the bad neighborhoods where nobody goes, and where more than money there is hope,
endless hope. I am not yet a citizen, I cannot vote, but I wish that I could
vote for this man, this black man who wants to be President, I can tell by
looking at him he is a good man, a compassionate man, an educated man who wants
the best for his people, even people who don’t look like he does. Boris hates
him, he says he is going to kill the American dream, but I do not hate him,
when he comes on the television I always watch and listen. I am even thinking
of going to door to door for him, canvassing, although I cannot vote. It is my
way of feeling a little American and making a better life for my son, who I
hope will never know anything about his brother or Vladimir or Nikolai or
Russia or the woman I was before he was born.