A Replacement Life

by Boris Fishman

  No one emerged until well after nightfall. Streamlets of smoke hissed through the earth where the fire had been. They had never come this close. Some said it was the scouts who needed reproach, not the cowherd, but most, having lay feet from death for hours, did not much feel like administering it to anyone but the Fritzes. Even Zelkin stood off to the side, smoking queasily. And in this way I was spared. Some irony, saved by the Germans from being killed by your own.

  The letter, this new life, had taken all of forty-five minutes. What the Nazis took away, Slava restored. He carried numbers on a pad of paper: Doing this for every person they killed would take 513 years without stopping. Reading over the letter, he felt satisfaction mixed with unease. On the page, it was Grandmother but also not-Grandmother. He couldn’t say why, despite rereading the letter several times. Finally, he gave up, double-checked that it included no references to the applicant’s gender, and entered his grandfather’s name at the top.

  He dozed off only when the familiar dark blue started coming into the sky. His head teemed with strange pictures and sounds: a man washing himself from a well, his coarse shirt and suspenders hung over his legs; a gray military truck rumbling over a rutted country road; the high ping of a shot in the woods. And Grandmother. Grandmother wading through a swamp, Grandmother suffocating a child, Grandmother pouring her guts out onto the grass from too many potato peels.

  The bed was empty when he awoke. A note was taped to the bathroom mirror. “Did we? We should. XOXO.”

  –6–

  FRIDAY, JULY 21, 2006

  Friday morning at Century: Sixteen pairs of feet impatiently tapped the radiant concrete behind the Junior Staff railing in anticipation of the weekend. In his office, Mr. Grayson fidgeted with the classical dial in advance of the weekend’s matinees. The writers kept sneaking out of their offices when Beau wasn’t looking, the doors schussing open and shut.

  Riddle you this: Slava hadn’t slept in his bed since sharing it with Arianna, but he had slept with nobody else. They had been together every night since Kabul. She lived across the park, on the Upper West Side, a quick trip by bus. He could return home in under thirty minutes, he reassured himself whenever he thought about how far he had strayed from routine. On Tuesday night, she had stood by his desk until he paid attention. “It’s six, time to go,” she’d said. “Veg?” he’d said. She laughed.

  They meant to take the train, but they walked the fifty blocks. The city was full of neighborhoods Slava knew nothing about, and again Arianna ticked off landmarks as they walked. Her first apartment in New York, where she had sat on the windowsill chain-smoking and listening to Madonna, was here. Her first kiss was on this corner. This was the deli where she had run into Philip Roth. He had asked if she was all right, and she couldn’t say anything.

  From the high windows of her apartment, you could see the nervy sheet of the river. It was like the river a block from Slava’s windows, only browner. “Now what?” he had said, standing uncertainly in the middle of her suddenly vast living room, her cat dashing between their feet. She brought her shoulders into his hands, then stepped out of her skirt. Her thong peeled off like the skin of a fruit, the salty perfume of her hitting his nose, her thighs wet on top of him when they fell into bed. Afterward, they ate leftovers in bed, her cat trying to get at the chicken in her salad. “Don’t sleep so far away tonight,” she said before shutting the light. It wasn’t even nine.

  At Grandfather’s, the senior Gelmans had read the false testimony the following morning, Slava’s mother dipping into the dictionary to translate the difficult words. When they were finished, they called Slava and burst into tears to show their appreciation. Then the waterworks quit and they got off to find a notary public. “You wrote it—because it happened to you, you have to start thinking that way—and you had your grandson translate it,” Slava said to Grandfather before hanging up. “Got it?” Got it, he said.

  Slava peered dolefully at the wall clock. Eleven-thirty A.M. He owed three submissions to “The Hoot” by the end of the day. After a slow-moving morning, Slava had panned only a single nugget of loot, from the editorial board of the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

  With its cessation of the indigent loophole, the state legislature has stripped the health care law for pants.

  This was Double Trouble: a cliché on top of a flub. He closed his eyes, breathed in and out, counted to three . . . and there it was: “The law for cardigans, however, remains fully intact.” It was easy once you’d done one or two.

  Slava was not asked to come up with the rejoinder. Paul Shank did that. Once upon a time, Slava had gently flouted this unwritten rule, thinking he would send something brilliant to Paul Shank, impress him, and make his life easier, whereupon Paul Shank would sit up and think: This mother is good; let him write something longer. But when Paul Shank failed to respond in this way—he did, once, run what Slava had proposed, though without discussing it with the brilliant young man on Junior Staff, leaving Slava to feel like he had been slept with but not called the next day—Slava decided to mount a modest rebellion and quit forwarding rejoinders to Paul Shank altogether. This, too, passed without remark by his superior.

  So Slava wrote the rejoinders “for the drawer,” as they used to say about the great suppressed writers during the Soviet period. He was Mandelstam, Pasternak, and Bulgakov. He chortled at himself in disgusted amusement. Then noted that he had been communicating with himself at a more frequent rate.

  Blearily, he looked back at the papers. A Texas town had renamed itself after a cable network in exchange for free DISH service (The Paris News, Northeast Texas). A Vermont man had invented skis for wheelchairs (Rutland Herald). But no flubs. The clock ticked. He had the naughty idea to invent a flub. Would the Rutland Herald call to complain? Not if he invented the paper as well. He chortled again. For two years, he had spent his weekdays combing through news from Fayetteville, Champaign, Westerly. At first he resented these provincial towns and the news they produced—after a year of strident debate, the Westerly Yacht Club had decided to build dinghy docks—skimming sonorously until he alighted on the haystack needle that would bring him one “Hoot” entry closer to the freedom to work on his own things. At some point, however, he had begun to regard their prominent personages, and the men and women who reported on them, as confederates of a kind. Lubbock, it’s you again. He knew many of its streets, if only by name. He wondered what it looked like in real life. He had never been west of New Jersey.

  There was a commotion down the hall. Through the knuckles rubbing his eyes, he registered Beau making his way toward the Junior Staff pen. As Beau passed, the heads of writers and editors popped out of the offices that lined the hallway, several deciding to join the boss’s procession, as if he were leading a chorus. By the time Beau arrived in front of Junior Staff, he had an entourage.

  “Morning,” Beau said, surveying the Juniors. With two thumbs, he snapped his suspenders. He held a box cutter. “Mr. Grayson?” he called out. With a great exhalation, Junior Staff’s bow-tied captain bounced from his chair. (Mr. Grayson smoked three packs of Merits a day. For his seventieth birthday, the Juniors threw together to get him a carton of Nat Shermans from the Forty-Second Street store, and he still coughed out praise of their fine smoke two years later, though everyone knew they remained untouched in the bottom drawer of his desk.)

  Mr. Grayson declined the bald globe of his head. “Mr. Reasons?”

  “How many ad pages this issue?”

  “Ho, ho, ho,” Mr. Grayson said, regarding the floor. “I’ll have to count to be sure. Sixty-four, I believe, Mr. Reasons. Sixty-four. Don’t quote me on that.”

  “Sixty-four!” Beau yelled. “What was it two years ago?”

  The eyes of Junior Staff swiveled back to Mr. Grayson.

  “In the twenty-to-thirty range,” Mr. Grayson said obediently. “Is my best recollection.”

  “Twenty to thirty,” Beau said chidingly. “And what was two years ago?”

 
“I believe when you started, Mr. Reasons,” Mr. Grayson confirmed bashfully.

  “I raise ad pages twofold—more—and what kind of letters do we get?” Beau said. “‘Too many ads.’ It takes them an hour to find the first story.” He held up his hands. “But that’s fine. We’re in the business of serving our readers. We’re going to change the layout designs. Starting next month, you’ll be able to order the magazine in three versions: the regular, the low-ad, and the no-ad. Like milk. But it has to go manual for an issue or two before the layouts are reprogrammed. Who’s the Layout liaison among you?”

  Heads turned to Avi Liss, who raised his hand fearfully.

  “So you’ll be the point man,” Beau said. He held up the box cutter. “This is top-of-the-line, okay? One slice and it’s out, straight down the margin. Watch your fingers—this thing can cut glass.”

  Avi remained seated, so Beau waved the box cutter impatiently at his employee. “But—” Avi said.

  “You don’t have to do all three million!” Beau said, laughing. “It’s a pilot thing. Twenty thousand. Give or take.”

  Avi walked up to Beau, closed his fingers around the cutter, and returned to his desk shamefully. Silence took over, ringing phones filling the void. Beau stared at the Juniors. The Juniors stared at their boss.

  “That was a joke,” Beau said disappointedly. He turned to the editors behind him. “It was funny back there.” He turned back to Avi. “Give me that razor.”

  Avi, his head hung, returned the box cutter, several obliging titters rising from the crowd.

  Slava peered at the next newspaper in his pile, wishing Beau would get on with it. On the front page was a photo of earthmovers by a riverbank. A flub invented itself, along with a newspaper to shame:

  Paiute (Col.) Star-Bulletin: “During the night, the concrete pilings meant to hold back the river gave way. ‘I’ll be damned,’ Mac Turpentine, the lead engineer, said on sighting the bedlam at dawn.”

  Century: “The river won’t be.”

  “Good issue next week,” Slava heard Beau say, nodding at Peter. Slava burned in his seat a little. “I need to know where we are on a couple of things.”

  Rinkelrinck (Ark.) Gazette: “Drivers on eastbound U.S. 36 over the weekend reported a naked man on the shoulder by Exit 11, near Fran’s Fry-Up. He was brandishing a samurai sword at passing drivers, though he did not cross into traffic. He was taken into custody but almost released due to the absence of penal code for the offense in question. Finally, he was charged with public exposure while displaying a dangerous weapon.”

  Century: “He also had a samurai sword.”

  Slava’s desk phone rang: 718. Brooklyn. He didn’t recognize the number. In the brief pause of Beau’s monologue, the ring was shrill and grating. Slava grabbed the receiver and lowered it back into the cradle.

  “Mr. Headey,” Beau said. “Where are we on food flavoring?”

  You just had to give it some specific detail—Fran’s Fry-Up—and it sounded real. You might even get away with inventing a town called Rinkelrinck. Let Paul Shank notice. Finally, he would notice.

  Charlie Headey answered Beau in too much detail. Beau politely heard him out, feeling bad about the box cutter. Then he turned to Avi Liss and asked about the layout, though he knew perfectly well from the Layout department. Reliably, Ari flubbed the offer of rehabilitation, mumbling for eternity about sources and deadlines.

  “Ms. Bock—‘Missing Leonardo’?” Beau said.

  Arianna delivered a false claim of progress, swiftly and briefly; she had barely started. Beau’s eyes thanked her for her quiet efficiency.

  Fanning (North Dak.) Advertiser: “In response to the mayor’s claim that the ball was dropped by the developer, Dakota Properties cried foul. ‘That’s a red herring,’ Jim Foulbrush, the CEO, said to reporters. ‘They’re after me like a hungry pack of wolves because they need a straw man.’”

  Century: “Hold those horses, McCoy.”

  The phone rang again. Slava would really have to change the ringtone. He peered at the display—same number. Watching Beau recede down the hallway, he snatched the receiver.

  “Allo?” a hoarse voice said in Russian. “Allo?”

  “Yes?” Slava answered obediently.

  “You are being called by Israel Abramson,” the caller announced. “Allo? You are very difficult to hear.” A throat was cleared on the other end. “Excuse me.” Then, with a mix of apology and disappointment: “You are busy?”

  “Busy?” Slava said. “No. I’m sorry, who is this?”

  “I heard about the letter you wrote for your grandfather,” Israel said. “It’s very good.”

  Slava was stunned into silence. It couldn’t be. “I didn’t write any letters for my grandfather,” he said quickly.

  “Take it easy, young gun,” Israel said. “Your secret’s safe with me. By the way, Israel’s not my real name. I took it when we came here, to show my support. It was Iosif before, but you know who else had that name.”

  Slava didn’t say anything, his mind scrambling. Did Century keep phone records?

  “Stalin!” Israel said. “You don’t know history? That butcher. In 1952, my cousin was working at the Second Children’s Hospital—”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Slava said. “Israel . . . I’m sorry—what’s your patronymic?”

  “Good manners still, that’s nice,” he said. “Arkadievich. Israel Arkadievich.”

  “You . . . you . . .” Slava said.

  “You want me to get to the point,” Israel said. “I understand completely. I want you to write a letter for me also. You wrote a pretty good letter for your grandfather. You need to pinch a couple of things here and there, but otherwise. I do some writing myself, I understand these things.”

  “Maybe you should write it yourself,” Slava said. “Just to make sure you get everything right.”

  “Oh, don’t be a schoolgirl.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this at work,” Slava said. “How did you get my phone number?”

  “The ghetto inmate himself gave it to me.”

  “I have to call you back,” Slava said, and hung up.

  He heard Arianna’s fingers rapping the divider. In the past week, they had taken to passing notes around it. Slava would hear a tap, and there would be a folded square of paper between two fingers reaching around the edge of the wall.

  A: True or False: Leonardo da Vinci had six fingers on his left hand.

  S: False.

  A: True or False: I am not wearing underwear.

  S: True.

  A: True or False: I’ll stay late if you fuck me in the office.

  S: Where?

  A: On the couch in Beau’s office. Revenge.

  Now her piece of paper said:

  A: Everything all right?

  S: 100 percent. Just going to make a call.

  A: Mmmmkay.

  Slava began to pound digits. He kept misdialing. If he had Grandfather’s calculating acumen, if Arianna had not interfered, probably he wouldn’t have dialed from his desk phone. Probably he would have gone into the library and called from his cell phone. Later, he would wonder about this moment.

  “Yes,” Grandfather said wearily.

  “I just had a really incredible phone conversation,” Slava barked in Russian into the phone.

  “Who is this?” Grandfather slurred.

  “Oh, come off it,” Slava said. “Do you understand what can happen if someone finds out?”

  “Please don’t yell at me.”

  “I’m not yelling, I’m whispering loudly.”

  “I was proud of my grandson, what can I tell you.”

  “Don’t give me that. Who is he, anyway? You need him for something?”

  “I need him for something? He can barely walk.”

  “You are not acquainted with the law here,” Slava said. “But they take this shit seriously.”

  “You listen to me,” Grandfather said, his voice stiffening. “Your grandmother died n
ot a week ago. You remember that, or you’re already on with your life? Because here, we still remember—”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m saying!”

  “Here, we’re still mourning,” he went on. “And your philosophical questions . . . Your grandmother is in a coffin. There’s your philosophy, Einstein. So I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Who?”

  “Israel. Iosif. Whatever his name is.”

  “He’s from Minsk, too. We grew up together. We go to Dr. Korolenko together. I’ve got the gout, and he’s got knee stuff or whatever.”

  “You don’t have gout.”

  “Just don’t worry about it. He couldn’t come on Sunday, so he called to say his condolences. I thought you were a writer. So here’s another story.”

  “You want to make a family tradition of going to prison?” Slava yelled. Immediately, he regretted it. Grandfather didn’t know that he knew.

  The old man coughed painfully. He was so fragile, and Slava insisted on committing attacks. Then he said lightly, “I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

  “I have to go,” Slava said as angrily as he could, and hung up.

  His heart smashed in his chest. He made himself inhale and exhale. He was overreacting. Century didn’t keep phone records—why would it? He would tell Israel no, a misunderstanding, his fabulist grandfather, the usual schemes. Israel would grumble, and then it would be over. He couldn’t do it. Could he? Did Century keep phone records?

  Sweat on his forehead, Slava opened his Web browser. In response to “Holocaust restitution claims,” he got a long list of newspaper stories about recent developments in the restitution program. Some group was getting together to advocate for an expansion of eligibility. Not what he needed. “Holocaust restitution claims,” he retyped, and then added, “fraud.” He had an alibi, if he ended up pinioned in some defendant box. He could have been researching an article, or a comedy item for “The Hoot.” Holocaust restitution-claim fraud: yuks.