The Free World (17 page)

She didn’t answer immediately but seemed to carefully consider.

—It might.

Gently, Alec tried to enumerate the options he’d hashed out with Karl.

—Would you be happy having the child with Maxim?

—If this is where you begin, Polina said, you don’t need to say anything else. I have my answer.

—I think you’re wrong.

—Do you want me to have the child?

—No, Alec said.

—So I’m not wrong.

—If that’s the only question, then, no, you’re not wrong.

—It’s the only question that matters, Polina said.

—And about what happens to the child and to you?

—We’ll find our way somehow. We won’t be the first.

—Here in Riga?

—I imagine. Where else?

—Living with Maxim or on your own?

—Or, in time, with someone else.

—Yes, there’s that, too. Raising my child.

—Biologically.

—That isn’t insignificant.

—To whom?

—To me.

—I’m afraid you can’t have it both ways.

—It may also not be insignificant to the child.

—Alec, that is also having it both ways. You can’t claim to care for the feelings of the child you want to abort.

There was logic in what she’d said, but it didn’t change the fact that Alec felt quite certain that he
could
care for the feelings of the child he wanted to abort. That is, once the child was born.

—If I could agree to having the child, I would. If I could be a father to it, I would.

—I never asked you to be a father to it.

—So what did you hope I would say?

—I don’t know. Or rather I do, Polina said, and laughed dryly. It wasn’t what I’d hoped you’d say, but what I’d hoped you wouldn’t say. That’s all.

A stillness of denouement settled upon her, or she summoned it from within. Somehow the conversation he’d planned had escaped his control. It wasn’t even that he’d misled himself by thinking it would be easy. He’d imagined a thorny path that led, in the end, to a favorable resolution. He pictured Polina’s happiness, gratitude even, at his proposal. But now, in actuality, he feared that he’d misspoken and miscalculated. He feared that she would leave before he could even make his big redemptive offer. The offer that would recast him radically and heroically not only in her eyes but in his own.

Sensing that his time was short, he rushed ahead and told her that he was leaving Riga.

He then unfurled his grand plan, like a carpet to a bountiful future. Polina would divorce Maxim. The two of them would marry. An expert doctor would perform the operation with incomparable care in an atmosphere of total privacy. It would be nothing at all like the savagery of the public abortion clinic. No harm would come to
her. She would still be able to conceive. Once they settled somewhere, they could try again properly. This was their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to slip the shackles of the Soviet Union.

—It’s all very rosy, Polina said.

—It could be. I think we could make a good life together over there. I truly believe it.

—Don’t try so hard, Alec, Polina said. Next you’ll tell me you love me.

With the warning she bracketed a great length of silence, long enough to accommodate everything that had happened or would happen: the abortion clinic, Maxim, Alec’s parents, the private doctor, her parents, their spiteful coworkers, the snarling officials, and the dreadful, sunny day when she would sit on a park bench waiting to say goodbye to her sister.

O
ne afternoon at the military hospital in Simferopol a number of patient-musicians had put on a small concert. Their singer was a squarely built young Tatar woman, a surgical nurse. The musicians took up their places under a banner that predicted “Victory over the Fascist Invader.” The ensemble played and the nurse sang traditional Russian songs and the popular songs of the day, ballads of heroism, homesickness, love and loss. In the aisles between the beds, comrades paired up and danced together. Samuil had made captain by then, and as there were no able-bodied officers for partners, he had watched the enlisted men dance.

He was reminded of it when he heard “Where Are You, My Garden?” played by a very different ensemble at Club Kadima. The man who sang it, Samuil had to admit, was as appealing in his own way as that Tatar surgical nurse of long ago. He was a small, bald man of Samuil’s age, a veteran, who sang and played the accordion. A girl, young enough to be his granddaughter, but a graduate of the Leningrad conservatory, accompanied him on the piano. The third member of the group was a cornetist from Riga, a fellow his sons’ age, who had played in the restaurants. They were an unlikely combination, but quite capable. The main credit had to be given to the
singer, who had a sure, soulful voice. His repertoire included Russian and Yiddish songs, and, in either language, he tasted each syllable and didn’t go in for any melodramatic tricks.

Samuil had attended the concert reluctantly, at the persistent urging of his wife and of Josef Roidman. They had assured him it would be an evening of musical entertainment to suit his taste. Skeptical, he had arrived with low expectations, but the musicians had exceeded them. They had started with the old standard “Uner Erster Waltz,” and treated it not like some confection but like a task of honest work, each note precise as a rivet. This they followed with “Shpiel, Fidl, Shpiel,” performing that, too, as if they were closely aligned with the old feelings.

The evening had been advertised to appeal to people of their generation, and some two dozen had come. Couples like him and Emma, single men like Roidman, and widows who arrived in the company of other widows. Scattered among them were younger people, though not very many. The friends and families of the musicians, Samuil supposed. Of the older people, few remained seated for long, but reported purposefully to the dance floor. Samuil did his obligatory turn with Emma, taking some pleasure in executing the steps. Around them other couples danced as they did, cohesively, in marked contrast to the modern trend where all thrashed about like epileptics and it was uncertain who was dancing with whom. Was it any wonder, with such culture, that his sons had taken the wrong path?

But what did it matter in the end? he thought as he danced with Emma, surrounded by their dwindling cohort, who danced the steps from memory and nursed the infirmities of old age. They were all obsolete, a traveling museum exhibit of a lost kind: Stalin’s Jews, unlikely survivors of repeat appointments with death. And if he allowed himself to feel any kinship with these people, what was the good of it? It was a kinship with the past. And a kinship with the past was no kinship for a revolutionary. A revolutionary allied himself only with the future. But as it sickened him to even think about the future, his revolutionary days were over.

Samuil sat down when the band began “Where Are You, My Garden?”
Roidman had requested the honor, and was now hobbling with Emma on the dance floor—one arm around Emma, the other on his crutch.

When they returned from the dance floor Emma and Roidman were joined by the rabbi. Samuil had noticed the man circulating around the room, approaching guests or being approached. People more than twice his age—people who should have known better—took his hand reverentially, and drew him near to mouth a joke or a confidence, which the rabbi received with the lofty humility of a sage. A Soviet education, the war, and decades of Soviet life, and still the kernel of religious servility hadn’t been eradicated. It had lain dormant, like a suppressed vice—a prejudice or superstition—waiting for an opportune moment to resurface. Now the moment had come, personified by this man with the pale, thin wrists and patchy beard—purveyor of discount chicken.

Emma led the rabbi to the table. Here was the generous rabbi who had shown such kindness to their grandchildren. He was a gem of a man and a holy person.

—Every Jew is holy before God, the rabbi said to Emma’s approbation.

—Rabbi, I am not a believer, Samuil said. This sort of talk doesn’t interest me.

—I understand, the rabbi said. Your wife has told me. You are not a believer, but you are still a Jew. You carry within you the holy spark.

—These terms are meaningless to me. I would never speak like this about my origins.

—But are these not your origins?

—You’re interested in an account of my origins?

—If you wish to tell me.

—I was born in 1913 in the town of Rogozna in the Kiev region. My father managed a woods and owned a general store. I am Jewish by nationality. I did not complete my higher education. When I was six years old, my father was murdered by the Whites. After his death, my mother became a seamstress, and remained a member of
the proletariat until her death at the hands of the German fascists. At the age of fourteen I was trained by my uncle as a bookbinder. I worked at this trade until the war. At age sixteen I was a member of a Communist cell. In 1940, when the Latvian SSR was established, I joined the Party. During the war, I volunteered for the front and rose to the rank of captain in the Red Army. After demobilization I was finance director of the VEF radio-technical factory. Until six months ago, I was a member in good standing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. I was never expelled from the Party and never had any Party penalties assessed. I have the following awards: Order of the Red Star, Order of the Red Banner, medal for bravery, and medal for Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War, 1941 to 1945. You will notice that I make no mention of any spark, soul, or God.

—Syoma, don’t get upset, Emma said. The rabbi means well.

—He means what he means, Samuil replied, and I mean what I mean.

—Your husband is right, the rabbi said. It is a shame that we mean different things. But I respect your husband as a man of his convictions. Samuil Leyzerovich, if you had applied the strength of your convictions to the torah, I don’t doubt that you could have been a great rabbi today.

—Nonsense. Had I applied myself to your torah, I would not be here today. The NKVD would have put me on a train, or the Germans in a pit.

—All the more reason to return now to the torah. Wouldn’t you say? Out of respect for our martyrs.

—There were many kinds of martyrs. You honor yours; I’ll honor mine.

Samuil excused himself and went outside. The rabbi had switched topics and begun to speak about Israel and the peace negotiations with Egypt. He spouted drivel about the age of redemption. For the first time since the destruction of the Second Temple, the Jews were once again masters over Greater Israel, the portion that the Almighty had promised to Abraham. All of this portended the imminent arrival of the messiah. Thus it was absolutely forbidden for
Begin to surrender any of the sacred land to the Arabs. God’s covenant inhered in every stone and every shrub.

Outside Club Kadima, Samuil walked away from the building and leaned against the low wrought-iron fence. The security guard, a beefy middle-aged émigré, tossed a casual remark about the humidity inside the club. Samuil didn’t bother to reply. He rested his hip against the fence and waited for the coolness and quiet to act upon his thoughts. The rabbi’s remarks had agitated him too much and caused his blood pressure to spike. He’d become flushed and lightheaded and he’d noticed Emma appraising him. He’d felt a tremendous urgency to get free of both of them.

Alone in the street, he calmed down. The talk of religion, martyrs, and Begin led him to think of his cousin. Begin was in America meeting with Carter and the Egyptian Sadat. The entire civilized world attended his every move. But who was Begin? A simple Jew from Brest, a Betar activist and disciple of Jabotinsky. Like Yankl, he’d been deported to Siberia in the summer of ‘41. A year later, he was pardoned and allowed to join the Polish army. It was possible that Yankl had met with a similar fate. And so it was possible that he’d survived the war and found his way to Palestine. His biography, up to a point, was sufficiently similar to Begin’s or to those of many of the other Israeli leaders of the same generation. Ordinary Jewish activists like him had founded their country and were now international statesmen.

Samuil recalled his cousin’s words from the final night. He had bet on one horse, while Samuil and Reuven had bet on another. That night it had seemed that Yankl’s horse had lost. Nearly forty years later, this was no longer so. Now it seemed instead that Yankl had prematurely conceded the race. But the race had continued. The horses went around and around the track indefinitely, switching places. The race was never lost or won. All that happened was that, in the interim, men died. The trick was to die at the right moment, consoled by the perception of victory. More likely than not, Yankl had died too soon. As for himself, Samuil thought, he would die too late.

W
ith the music still streaming from Club Kadima, Samuil pushed open the gate and walked in the direction of home. He felt no inclination to account for himself or his whereabouts. When Emma came looking for him, the security guard would tell her all she needed to know. Or not.

Samuil minded his steps on the sidewalk that led from Via Mexico to Via Napoli. In places, tree roots had buckled the concrete, making the footing treacherous. Few people were out in the streets, though the night was pleasant. Now that it was September, many vacationers had returned to Rome. During the afternoons, when he took his walks along the beach, he saw how the crowds had thinned. Soon enough, when the weather cooled some more, the Russians would have the beach to themselves.

It will be us and our stray dogs, Samuil thought grimly.

The dogs, mostly large breeds, the mastiffs and wolfhounds favored by Russians, roamed in hungry, scraggly packs around Ladispoli, often congregating along the shore. They had been abandoned by owners who’d flown off to Canada or America—who, after going to considerable lengths to process and transport the animals
from the Soviet Union to Italy, had finally been dissuaded from taking them any farther. During the day, the dogs sprawled listlessly in the shade of the palm trees, and in the evenings they skulked about in search of food. As with people in similar straits, the largest ones fared the worst. Great, once proud beasts dragged themselves about with downcast eyes, begging for scraps. To feed them was only to prolong their misery. Samuil had seen Italians shooing the animals away using the Russian words for “no” and “scram.”

Where Via Napoli crossed Via Italia, Samuil turned left and took the main road toward the beach. There was still life in the cafés along Via Italia, but it, too, had diminished with the waning of the summer season. Samuil noticed a proliferation of signs on the doors and windows of cafés advertising, in Russian, ice cream, pastries, and beer. A number of these signs were the product of Rosa’s handiwork, done with paints and brushes at their kitchen table. Karl— who no longer lifted a finger unless there was a potential for profit—landed Rosa the job. Similarly, he’d gotten her a position making up signs to promote upcoming events at Club Kadima.

When Samuil had looked askance, Karl had said, If we’re going to be here a long time, we will need the money.

His son’s implication was that Samuil—singlehandedly responsible for the length of their Italian purgatory—was not entitled to issue critiques.

He and Emma had made two trips to the Canadian embassy to plead their case. At the first appointment, they had been cursorily dismissed on account of his medical results. But so long as they made a good impression, anything was possible. This was the homily Emma and Rosa repeated in their attempts to gain Samuil’s cooperation the second time around.

He told them that he would go to the appointment and express to the Canadians that he would not become a strain on their health and welfare system. He would vow that if he became ill, he would jump from a window and spare everyone the trouble and the expense.

—Since this is what concerns them, Samuil said.

—Back home, when you wanted to accomplish something, Samuil Leyzerovich, you knew very well how to conduct yourself, Rosa said. Why not here?

—Please, don’t speak to me of back home, Samuil cautioned.

—Syoma, you said you would try, Emma remonstrated.

—I said I would, and I will.

—To try means to try, Rosa said.

And he had. He’d allowed himself to be demeaned, even. Emma had done more of her secret plotting. He’d lived thirty-two years as her husband and wasn’t so credulous as to be taken in by her tricks. The morning they were to depart for the consulate, Roidman had arrived and offered to lend Samuil his medals. He and Emma both vigorously denied that she had put him up to it. However, seeing as how his friend made the suggestion, Emma encouraged that Samuil accept it.

—Where is the deceit? Emma asked. You earned the same decorations.

He knew his decorations down to the serial numbers and the nicks in their enamel. How could he explain to Emma the disgrace of using the medals of a Red Army soldier to curry the favor of some petty capitalist official?

In the living room, Samuil watched Roidman fumble to remove the medals from his blazer. Emma hovered above him, itching to intervene. Unsteady progress obliged Roidman to sit. A sheen rose on his bald head. In time, he managed to unscrew the medals from their backings. Then, with more ease, he unpinned the ribbons. Emma didn’t lose a second before she started to apply the decorations to Samuil’s blazer, which she’d laid out on the coffee table. Samuil pretended to ignore her as she arranged and rearranged the medals.

—How did you used to have yours? she asked.

He didn’t bother to answer.

With Roidman waving farewell at their doorstep, they left for the Ladispoli train station. Once inside the train, Samuil took the window seat and glared out at the passing countryside. Emma sat on
the aisle and, in an attempt to quell her own anxiety, scrutinized and remarked upon the other occupants of their train car.

What an interesting woman. How old do you think, Syoma? My coeval? Back home a woman this age would never think to wear such a provocative dress. Even if she could get one.

Look at what a well-behaved little girl. There is an example of the difference between boys and girls. Could you imagine Zhenya sitting like that even for a minute?

If there is one thing I have noticed between here and back home, it’s that I haven’t seen any drunks. In Riga, I can’t remember a time when I rode a train for so long and not a single drunk came into the car. Have you observed this, Syoma? Although from what I’ve heard, the Italians have a serious epidemic of pickpockets and purse snatchers. This is why women are advised to wear their purses with the strap crosswise, like so.

At Termini they filed out into the gargantuan space. Trains, in their rectilinear ranks, towered above them. They had been to this station once before, but that had been with Karl, and it hadn’t made the same daunting impression. At the other major train stations, in Bratislava and Vienna, they had been part of the swirling émigré vortex. Now, for the first time, they were facing the vastness by themselves. Samuil felt Emma clutching his arm and pressing up against him, hobbling his thoughts and his stride.

—What is it with you? he asked.

Emma looked at him with sorrow.

—I’m afraid. I’m afraid to get lost.

With Emma pulling at his arm, Samuil pressed ahead. He set a harsh face not only against the people in his path, but also against the physical bulk of the imposing machines. He felt as though even the machines wished him ill. The feeling was new. A Soviet train, forged in a Soviet factory and meant to travel the length and breadth of the Soviet land, had never seemed to him malevolent.

Samuil steered them toward the huge board that displayed arrivals and departures, where destinations and times came and went with the synchronized clacking of hundreds of black plastic
tiles. People with fixed objectives sped one way and another. Samuil saw stores, cafés, newspaper stands, and bookshops. By the entrance to one of these, a Gypsy woman squatted on the ground in her long skirt. Beside her, a boy no older than ten played a small accordion. Farther ahead, there were steps and an escalator leading to an upper level. Beyond this, the concourse continued, and he could see the possibility of a turn to the left and to the right. Samuil couldn’t recall which way they had gone the last time they’d been at the station. He felt sorely conspicuous because of the medals. People glanced at him as if at some oddity.

For these indignities, Samuil blamed his wife and his son. Emma had insisted on the medals, and Alec, predictably inattentive, had specified a bus number, but not where the bus might be found. In a station like Termini, the size of a small town, such an omission was unforgivable.

Once they found the depot, boarding the bus brought no relief, only the fear of missing their stop. Emma supplicated the bus driver—a young, impassive dullard—babbling and holding the sheet of paper with their directions. She then sat apprehensively at the window, trying to read street names and recognize landmarks, not trusting the driver to call their stop. Though when the time came, the driver barked a word and one of their fellow passengers pointed conscientiously to the door.

The second meeting was worse than the first. They had been assigned to a total incompetent: a young man who did not wear a jacket or tie, but a yellow sweater over his shirt collar. On his table he’d had an open can of soda, from which he drank periodically and unapologetically during their interview. He also smiled, for no evident reason, from hello to goodbye. And when he spoke, it was only to utter some nonsense. Though Emma had admitted to no knowledge of English, the caseworker insisted that she nevertheless try to read several pages from an illustrated children’s book about a polar bear. When she stumbled, which was at every word, he corrected her. To his invitation that Samuil also make an attempt, Samuil declined through the interpreter.

—If it’s to demonstrate my ability, there’s nothing to demonstrate.

—If it’s to demonstrate your willingness to learn … Emma whispered.

—To learn or to be ridiculed? Samuil said.

On the subject of his fitness, Samuil delivered his standard response. He was fit enough for any work.

He believed that he had turned in a blameless effort, in spite of everything.

He’d even suffered in silence while Emma launched into the epic of his wartime service. The caseworker had nodded approvingly at Samuil’s medals and contributed that his own father had seen action in the Canadian military. Here again, Samuil felt that he had responded prudently, and that his behavior had been beyond reproach. He had held his tongue. Instead of inquiring why it had taken the Western powers three years to open up a second front, he had said something complimentary about the Canadian army.

Nevertheless, he could tell that Emma hadn’t been satisfied with how he’d comported himself. She would not admit to it, but her displeasure was immanent.

Returning home, Samuil and Emma occupied two of the last available seats, one behind the other. As they rode, they didn’t have to look at each other or speak. But when the bus came to its inexplicable halt Emma tapped him on the shoulder. The doors had opened and the bus driver had climbed out and lit a cigarette. Passengers grumbled and cursed. Some left and started walking. Samuil heard a word repeated that sounded much like the Russian word for bus driver: “schoffer.” A woman cradling an infant called out to the driver. Samuil saw him shrug his shoulders, not unsympathetically. The woman slid back into her seat, dug an orange out of her purse, and began to peel it. A man standing beside Samuil checked his watch and then turned the page of his newspaper.

They remained on the immobile bus for upward of two hours. The driver went away down the street, evidently abandoning his vehicle and his passengers entirely. When he returned, he climbed back into
his seat as if nothing had happened, turned the ignition, and resumed the route.

At eight in the evening, many hours late, they descended from their train at Ladispoli Station. Before Samuil could take five steps, he saw his daughter-in-law and his grandchildren. Rosa was already in motion, issuing exclamations, rushing toward them, pulling the boys along by their hands. At the sight of Rosa and the boys, Emma nearly fell into a swoon of martyrdom and fatigue. It was a reunion for the ages, Samuil thought. Yet another one.

At home, Karl was waiting, the reverse image of his wife. As much as Samuil deplored Rosa’s hysterics, he found that he also deplored his son’s indifference.

—They waited over two hours on a stationary bus, Rosa exclaimed.

—But what did I tell you? Karl said.

—So what? Anything could have happened, Rosa said.

—But what happened? Karl asked.

—Never mind, Rosa said. Look at your mother, she’s half dead.

All that trouble for nothing, Samuil thought. They had dressed him up and dragged him to Rome for this. A farcical interview at the consulate and then a wildcat transit strike: sitting on a bus, going nowhere.