The Free World (24 page)

A
fter Lyova gathered Alec’s belongings, Polina closed the door to the bedroom and turned off the lights. Unwilling to lie down, she sat on the edge of the bed and saw the woeful scene replay itself. It had the grotesque character of a bad dream: the knot of shrillness, violence, and perversity, too strange and horrible to be true. She hadn’t believed everything the girl had said but the simple fact that she was in their apartment proved that there was some underlying substance to it. If nothing else, Alec had allowed himself to become involved with this mixed-up, angry, voluptuous child, and he had brought this ugly scandal into their lives. She recalled Marina Kirilovna’s warning—Alec, a boy with a butterfly net. She had disbelieved her words and disregarded her warning. She’d instead nursed the belief that she saw in Alec what other people failed to see, did not try to see. On the strength of this belief, she had staked her future and her family bonds. Now she was flooded with shame and self-reproach.

Like a swooping bird, the most despicable memory assailed her: when her parents had refused to sign the consent form, she had, in her own hand, written that they were dead. What authority could pardon her for that?

Polina sat stiffly in what felt again like a strange room in a strange city. She saw no way forward with Alec. What options remained for her? If Nadja went, to follow her to Israel? To return to Riga? To venture somewhere else, entirely on her own? The choices made her feel at once captive and terribly adrift. She was dismayed to find herself in this predicament. How can it be, she wondered, to have lived a life that she would have never described as reclusive. To have been loved and nurtured as a child. To have been, at every passage, surrounded by classmates and friends. To have never felt shunned or excluded. To have worked for years amid colleagues—a participant in every party and celebration. To have been twice married. To have been a guest in countless homes, and to have hosted countless guests in return. And after all this, to make a tabulation—sitting in the dark, in tears, in this unfamiliar room—and to discover that you have passed through life like a knife through smoke. That almost nothing has adhered to you. From a lifetime of society, only Nadja, one single wisp.

The prospect of sleeping in the bed, of staying in the room, sickened her. She rose and opened the door. The rest of the apartment was also dark. She had half expected to find Lyova up, reading at the table or in his bed, but she was glad for the darkened apartment. Lyova had drawn the brocade curtain, but Polina brushed it aside and entered his half of the room. She saw the outline of Lyova’s body in his bed. He was facing the wall but, at her approach, he turned toward her. Polina felt that she understood what had brought her to Lyova—the simple wish not to be alone. But she was also aware of another manifestation of this idea: the need to see if she could still act to gratify her desires.

Lyova seemed to wait for her to speak.

—I can’t sleep in that room, Polina said.

He sat up and, after a moment’s hesitation, said, You can have my bed.

Polina easily imagined a scenario in which Lyova gallantly relinquished his bed, and in which nothing more happened between them.

Without saying a word, Polina knelt on the edge of the bed. If she were mistaken, Lyova could still protest, but he didn’t. Instead, he edged toward the wall, making a space for her beside him. For a few moments, they lay silently facing each other before Polina put out her hand and placed it on Lyova’s ribs. She felt Lyova’s hand slide through the bedsheets and onto her ribs in return. She then felt the press of his mouth on hers, and the contortions to undress—the tangle of clothes with the bedsheets and the blanket. The act itself felt like they were assembling a complicated machine for the first time, with pieces strewn about and then forced into place. In the midst of things, Polina thought of Alec, and how this very disorder must have appealed to him.

Afterward, they lay side by side in the narrow bed.

—What will you do? Lyova asked.

—I’m not sure, Polina said.

—I wish I could offer you some help.

—Don’t concern yourself, Polina said. There’s nothing you could do. I’m just waiting for my sister’s letter. When I get it, I’ll know what to do with the rest of my life.

N
ot long after the girl departed, Samuil left the house and set off for the Ladispoli train station, the late autumn sun bright and bolted high overhead. Emma’s exhortations trailed after him as he pressed forward, disregarding her completely and wishing that she might finally sprout the good sense to quiet down.

Syoma, don’t go alone,
she called.
Rome is a zoo. What if you get lost? Let someone come with you!

As he reached the foot of Via Italia, he heard Emma’s voice fade to the point of irrelevance. Pocketing this small satisfaction, he headed toward the station. As he went, he attempted to quell his emotions. He did not want to undertake the trip in a state of excitement. As a soldier and as a manager—if not always as a husband and a father—his greatest strength had been his ability to maintain his composure. He credited it for his successes, and he tried to invoke it here once again.

The morning’s spectacle had deeply unnerved him. The frantic banging on their door. The girl raving in their kitchen. Spewing her wild accusations. Causing a shameful, disgusting scene in front of his grandsons, his daughter-in-law, and his wife.

When Samuil had heard enough, he had said to her,
My son is capable of many things, but not this. Get out of our house.

By the time the train touched off, his anger had subsided. He looked about the train at his fellow passengers—Italians—and, for once, he did not feel estranged from them. He saw people like himself—with a destination, attending to the practical affairs of their lives.

Out his window, he watched the brown countryside unfurl, the fields harvested and tilled. The sky was a flawless blue. Small black birds glided effortlessly across it.

The farms gave way to larger settlements. Samuil saw more pavement and with it more people, more vehicles. Then, curiously, the train slowed, and presently stopped. There was no station, so far as he could see. There was not even a town to speak of. Looking out, Samuil saw a narrow road that ran beside the tracks, he saw scattered houses, low buildings, with many vacant patches between. He turned to regard the other passengers, and saw many of them also peering out the windows. Then a man’s muffled voice sounded over the public address. Even before the man concluded his statement, passengers began to grumble and shake their heads. Some gathered their belongings and made for the doors. Others he saw settling into their seats—some in frustration, some in resignation. Samuil was casting about for another Russian émigré when he caught the attention of a man of his generation, dressed neatly, wearing steel-framed glasses, his eyes gentle, considerate.

The man walked up the aisle to Samuil.

—Non parle Italiano?
he inquired.

Samuil shook his head.

—Français?
the man asked.

Samuil shook his head again.

—Español?

Samuil shook his head once more and, though his knowledge of the language was spotty, proposed,
Deutsche?

It was the man’s turn to shake his head.

—Ruskii? Iddish? Latviesu?
Samuil asked for the sake of formality.

The man smiled regretfully and then paused, as if considering one final, doubtful possibility.

—
?
u vi parolas Esperanton?
he said.

Gingerly, Samuil nodded his head.

He saw the man smile, delighted.

—Many years ago, Samuil said.

—Well, let us try.

—Very well.

—You would like to know why the train is not going?

—Yes.

—The engineers have called a strike. All the trains have stopped.

—For long?

—They did not say. It could be for long.

Samuil digested this.

—How far is it to Rome?

—Fifteen kilometers. Perhaps more.

His feet crunching the gravel of the rail bed, Samuil walked the length of the train, feeling the warmth emanating from its sides, like a great horse at rest. He passed the locomotive and saw in its window the engineer, sitting at his console, reading a newspaper. He could feel no resentment toward a worker asserting his rights in a capitalist system. In the Soviet Union, where socialism had been achieved, workers worked. The country hadn’t seen a strike in seventy years. There, if a train had stopped, he would have gone directly to the engineer and demanded:
Comrade engineer, what is the meaning of this?

After he passed the locomotive, a broad panorama opened up on all sides, the railroad tracks running down its middle, like a zipper on the mantle of the earth. Ahead of him, he saw a string of figures picking their way along the tracks. He looked behind him and saw dozens more, some empty-handed, some with bundles, and others with young children—women carrying the littlest ones in their arms.

As a soldier, he had marched with his division along roads and rail lines, at times covering as many as seventy kilometers in a single day. He had walked in every kind of weather: in the mire of the
rasputitsa,
with the mud pulling at his boots with its ghoulish hands; in the coldest frosts of winter, where comrades made macabre statues out of the frozen German dead; and in the heat of summer, the army crossing the land as a towering pillar of dust.

Compared to all of that, Samuil thought, was he to be deterred by a walk of a mere fifteen kilometers in mild weather? Not to mention that, as a soldier, he had also carried as much as twenty kilos in equipment, ammunition, and kit. Now he was encumbered by nothing other than his blazer. The blazer he removed after fifteen minutes and draped first over one arm and then the other.

From the opposite direction, also along the rail line, he saw other commuters trekking west. He looked, but could not see their train, and, checking behind him, he could no longer see his own. The rail line had snaked and curved, and he had walked a considerable distance. He regretted that he did not have any water with him. There were a few buildings and houses about, but he did not want to stray from his course to appeal to strangers who did not speak Russian. In the time he would lose searching for water, he could gain several kilometers and bring himself closer to the city or the next station.

He walked another half hour. He saw the train that had stopped on the westbound tracks. And he saw, on the horizon, the geometry of some larger settlement, perhaps an outer suburb of Rome. His thirst made his legs feel heavy, his chest tight. The tightness forced him to labor slightly to draw a full breath, and so he decided to rest.

He scrambled down from the rail bed to the dry, weedy embankment. He spread out his blazer and lowered himself onto it. He sat with his knees bent, his hands resting upon them, and his head up and chin raised so as to better draw breath. He gazed ahead, his field of vision incorporating the long stretch of track. The view was bare. Not a soul passed in either direction. Samuil did not know what had happened to the people who had walked before him. He had passed some of them as they rested beside the tracks. Nor did he know what
had happened to the people who had followed behind. The people with bundles, the men and women with children. It seemed as if they had abandoned the course. Few had persevered so long and come so far as he had. Samuil thought of his family, of Emma and Rosa, all of them, and how they had misjudged him. How surprised they would be, and how none of them had ever fully appreciated.

Samuil surveyed the scene around him. He saw mindless gravel, railroad, and sky. He thought to rise and continue on his way, but to his consternation he felt as if, rather than diminishing, the pressure in his chest had increased. He tried to rise nonetheless, but felt as if the sky had dropped to prevent him. He inhaled and felt something zealously squeezing his lungs, as if his heart, after biding its time, had finally chosen this moment to revolt. He felt a fleeting panic that quickly turned to rage. His own heart was betraying him, like an enemy inside the walls of his body. He was determined to attack it and bend it to his will. He would wage a battle against it. His treacherous heart would have to wrest the breath from his lips.

A
t the end of the workday, a man who identified himself as an employee of the Joint appeared at the briefing department looking for Alec. He was in his middle thirties, balding, slightly flabby, and with the typical Russian look of fatigue—acquired in the womb, marinated in that broth of disappointments. He said he had an important message to convey and suggested that they retire to the corridor for privacy. Alec felt his colleagues’ eyes upon him as he followed the man out.

He had been the object of curiosity all day. He’d crept out of the office at dawn and lurked about the neighborhood, reporting for work only when he saw others start arriving. His colleagues reacted with shock at the sight of his face—more shock than he’d anticipated. He’d thought that, after a week, it was no longer quite so ghastly, but based on their reactions it occurred to him that he had simply grown accustomed to it.

In the corridor, the man from the Joint looked at him dourly before speaking. Alec felt a mounting apprehension and imagined what else Masha might have done.

—Is your father Samuil Leyzerovich? the man asked.

—Yes, said Alec.

—I’m afraid I have some sad news for you.

They went by foot from the office to a mortuary where the Jewish Burial Society had brought Samuil’s body. The man opened the door to an antechamber where Alec saw a shrunken old Jew in a yarmulke sitting on a chair and mumbling something from a small black hymnal. At his shoulder was a long table that supported the weight of a body enfolded completely in a white sheet. The little Jew barely looked up from his mumbling as Alec and the man from the Joint entered the room.

—You’ll forgive me, the man said, but we need you to confirm it’s your father.

Alec approached the figure, drew aside the folds, and uncovered a wax replica of his father’s face. He saw the full head of gray hair, the stern brow, the distinguished masculine nose, and the shiny white granules stippling the cheeks. Someone had shut his father’s eyes and removed his dentures. The latter detail had distorted his face, collapsing his mouth and making him seem ancient. Alec’s impulse was to look away, but he resisted out of a duty to see all. He tried to reconcile this pale waxwork with the father who had been such a vital, dominant presence in his life. He felt crushed by the mortal paradox: how it was that his father lay by his side and that his father was no more. He studied his father’s face and understood that there was such a thing as a soul and that it had departed and left behind a corpse.

—Is it him? the man asked.

—Yes, it’s him, Alec answered.

He covered his father’s face and looked to the man from the Joint for further instruction.

—What happens now?

—The funeral. They like to do it as fast as possible. Tomorrow afternoon.

—I suppose, Alec said. I still have to tell my family.

As they left the room, Alec glanced at the little Jew mumbling his stream of gibberish.

—What’s he doing?

—He stays with the body all night. So it’s never alone.

—Is that necessary?

—Does it bother you?

—I don’t know.

—It’s a Jewish custom. You want him to go away?

—It doesn’t matter.

—It’s his job. He’s paid for it.

—Then leave him, Alec said.

Alec caught a nine o’clock train out of Rome. He arrived in Ladispoli after ten and walked the dark, empty streets to his family’s house. He saw the world with the clarity conferred by the knowledge of death. He saw everything as it truly was. Every mundane thing existed in terms of death. Everything was tinged by this tragic impermanence.

The lights were on when Alec came to the house. He knocked on the door and heard exclamations and frantic scrambling. He felt the imminence of what was to come. The door would soon open and he would have to look into his mother’s eyes and speak the words so that they entered irrevocably into the world. He felt his intransitive physical bulk on the doorstep. Somehow the fate of his life had designated him for this.

The door was thrown open and he saw his mother—her anxious, haggard expression. Pressed up behind her were Rosa and the boys, followed by Karl, who took Alec’s meaning from across the room. For an instant, his mother was confused, distracted by Alec’s mutilated face.

—My God, what did you do to your eye?

—An accident. It’s nothing.

Then his mother seemed to remember what was uppermost in her mind. She asked nervously, as if fending off the knowledge, Alec, you’re alone? Where is Papa?

Alec managed only to slowly say
Mama
before she interrupted him, her eyes gaping with terror, and pleaded, What happened, Alec? Where is your father?

On the train and walking the dark streets of Ladispoli he had silently practiced the words. Now he opened his mouth and they tumbled out: Papa is gone.

His mother wailed,
Oi, Syomachka!
as if something had cracked inside her. Rosa drew her close and the two of them wept into each other’s neck. The boys, bewildered, also started to cry. Karl said, Come, let’s go inside, and they all trailed into the house, Alec shutting the door behind them.

They settled in the living room, where Samuil had spent so much of his time writing his secret memoirs.

—It’s my fault, his mother bemoaned, looking up from her anguish. I should have never let him go by himself.

—It isn’t your fault, Emma Borisovna, Rosa responded. She looked bitterly at Alec and added, It was because of your slut that your father went off to Rome. If not for that, he would still be alive!

—Don’t say that! his mother snapped. Don’t say that to him! He’s not to blame. Syoma went to help him. He was a father concerned for his son.

That night Alec slept on the floor of the living room. Karl stayed in the bedroom with the boys, and Rosa slept in his mother’s bed so that she would not have to be by herself. Before she joined his mother, Alec heard Rosa soothing the boys with a lullaby. The lullaby she sang was familiar, though not because he recalled anyone ever singing it to him.

The half moon shines above our roof

Evening stands at our yard

For little birds and for little children

The time has come now to sleep

In the morning you’ll wake

and the bright sun will rise above you again

Sleep little sparrow

Sleep little son

Sleep my dear little chime.

Alec lay on the floor and listened to her sing. He could not have said precisely why he was so moved. The words and the melody pierced his heart and he lay on the floor and quietly wept.

In the morning they scurried to make arrangements for the funeral. Karl went to coordinate with the rabbi and Rosa deposited the boys at a friend’s apartment. Alec was left alone with his mother. He watched her comb fastidiously through the house collecting the stray items his father had left behind: his reading glasses, his slippers, a newspaper he had been reading. When she finished, she looked at Alec dolefully and he waited for her to say something more about what had sent his father to Rome.

—Will you call Polina? Emma asked.

—I don’t think I can, Alec said.

She studied him for a moment, with a wisdom for which he seldom credited her, and didn’t insist further. Instead she sent him to Club Kadima to find Josef Roidman. He was his father’s friend, and she believed that he would want to attend the funeral.

Alec found Roidman at Club Kadima, sitting alone with a newspaper. He apologized for disturbing him and asked if he remembered who he was.

—What’s to remember? Roidman said merrily. But for the eye, you’re the spitting image of your father.

Alec told him that his father had died.

—It can’t be, Roidman said.

—The funeral is today. I am here to see if you wish to come.

—Vey, vey
, the old man said and shook his head despondently.

Roidman gathered himself up and hobbled for the exit.

—I am not properly dressed to pay my respects. Is there time enough for me to go home?

Alec accompanied the old man to his apartment, where he put on a cap and the same blazer with the medals Alec had seen him wearing the day of the pope’s coronation.

Karl secured transport to ferry them all to the cemetery. Despite it having been repainted, Alec nevertheless recognized it as Lyova’s
old Volkswagen van. Piled inside were all the members of his family—minus the boys—along with Josef Roidman, the rabbi, and six other Jewish men: three of the rabbi’s bearded adjutants, as well as two idle Russian pensioners and one teenage boy, whom the rabbi had recruited with the promise of a break from their routine and a complimentary meal.

The rabbi directed them to the cemetery and Karl turned off Via Tiburina at Piazzale delle Crociate, where an iron gate stood ajar. They followed a paved road into the grounds. The road, lined with cypress trees, stretched deep into the cemetery and curved away at a high mausoleum wall. Not far from the entrance, at the edge of the road, was a black hearse with a uniformed driver. The rabbi directed Karl to park the van in front of the hearse. The rabbi exchanged a few words with the hearse’s driver and then gestured for everyone to follow him to the graveside. Even without the rabbi’s instruction, everyone had already noticed the mound of freshly turned earth with a simple pine coffin beside it. At the sight of the coffin, Alec heard his mother and Rosa begin to whimper and to call his father’s name. He and Karl lagged some distance behind, at the tail of the procession. Alec looked at his brother to see how he was taking all of this. Karl’s face was grim and brooding.

—You’re a fool, you know that? Karl said.

Alec didn’t think he had anything to say in his own defense.

—You can’t tell when you’re climbing into a nest of vipers?

—I thought it would all come out differently.

—Fool, Karl said with disgust.

He halted and peered up at the sky, as if he could no longer bring himself to look at Alec.

—They’ll go to Germany. They can be smuggled in. I’m sure they’ll prosper. There’s plenty of opportunity. Let them be the Germans’ problem.

His brother went ahead to join the others and Alec followed.

At the graveside, added to their number were two young Italian groundskeepers who indicated how the coffin needed to be lifted and
positioned onto the straps. Karl and Alec both stepped forward to take up the coffin, but the rabbi stopped them.

—Immediate kin do not lift the body.

Alec and Karl then watched the rabbi and his assistants perform the task. The neighboring plots, Alec saw, were already occupied by other Russian émigrés who had failed to complete their journies. The white stones were thin and bore no decoration, save for an etched Star of David, the name of the deceased, and the dates each came into and departed the world.

In an aching, reedy voice, the rabbi sang some verses from a prayer book. At certain predetermined moments his assistants responded,
Omayn.
They were the only ones. Nobody else knew what he was doing.

When the rabbi finished his portion, he flipped through the book and extracted a laminated card that he’d filed away between the pages. He presented the card to Karl.

—It is the kaddish. For you and your brother to read together.

Alec stood at Karl’s side to read. The card was typed with Hebrew words transliterated into Russian.

—What does it mean? Alec asked.

—It sanctifies God’s name, for your father’s sake.

—Our father wasn’t a believer. If it’s for his sake, he’d want nothing about God at his grave.

—Alec, the rabbi is showing us how to do it according to the rules, his mother admonished.

On the rabbi’s cue, he and Karl read the unfamiliar words, mispronouncing some. But after they’d read everything on the card, Alec still felt troubled by misgivings. He asked the rabbi what more there was to the ceremony.

—Only to fill the grave. Though if there’s anything you wish to add, there’s no law against it.

—I feel we should do something he would have wanted.

—And what is that? the rabbi asked.

—What is done at the burial of a Communist?

—What is done? You want us to sing the “Internationale”? Rosa asked.

—Not a bad idea. At least everyone knows it.

—You’d ask the rabbi to sing the “Internationale”?

—Why not? I’m sure he also knows the words. The rabbi was probably a Pioneer and maybe even a Young Communist. Am I wrong, rabbi?

—We all make mistakes in our youth.

—But do you have any objections against singing this song in our father’s memory?

The rabbi smiled faintly and shrugged his shoulders.

Alec expected that Karl would disparage the idea and so put an end to it, but his brother didn’t say a word.

The first to sing was Josef Roidman. He raised his voice martially and proudly. Alec turned to see the little man standing at attention, his eyes wet, gripping his crutch, his chest with its medals thrust forward.

Arise you branded and accursed,

The whole world’s starving and enslaved!

Roidman began and the others gradually joined in. The old men and the teenage boy who had come along for the car ride and the free meal. His mother, her arms linked with Rosa’s. Karl with his heavy bass. And singing softly, the rabbi and the other bearded men.