A Replacement Life

by Boris Fishman

  “Hi,” Slava said cautiously.

  “Hi yourself,” Grandfather said.

  “News?” Slava said.

  “The new bed’s here,” he said. “It’s nice. Smaller but nice. Japanese wood. First they brought a twin, but that’s the width of a hospital bed. I’m not sleeping in a hospital bed. Oh, it doesn’t matter. I can’t live here anymore. How can I live here if I lived here with your grandmother?”

  Grandfather had forgotten their argument long ago. He didn’t hold grudges. They were impractical.

  “How do you feel,” Slava said, stalling.

  “Like a racehorse. You?”

  “Spoken to Mom?”

  “More often than you,” Grandfather said. “She’s been here every night.”

  “Do you need anything?”

  “I need it to be 1975,” he said. “Your grandmother and me on the beach in Yevpatoriya. Do you know how difficult it was to get a vacation voucher for husband and wife at the same time? Most people had to take vacations one by one. And the authorities were always wondering why the country had such a problem with adultery. Degenerates. Do you remember when we took you there, you thought it was water in the cup but it was vodka, and you fell asleep under the table on the beach?”

  “Can you tell me something else about Grandmother?” Slava said. “Something about the ghetto?”

  “I told you everything I know.”

  “Try to remember something else. I need it.”

  “What for?”

  “I just need it.”

  Grandfather took a moment to ponder this. “She didn’t like to talk about it,” he said at last.

  “I know, you said that. But surely she said something else. How can you live with someone for fifty years and not know!”

  “So now you will educate me on how to live with a woman. Why don’t you wipe the snot from your nose first.”

  “I’m about to go into the tunnel.”

  “Good for you.”

  “The phone doesn’t work in the tunnel.”

  “There were pogroms,” Grandfather said. “In the ghetto. Thinning the herd, they called it.”

  “And?”

  “That’s all there is!”

  “All right,” Slava said.

  “Call more often,” he said. “Remember your grandfather.”

  –8–

  SATURDAY, JULY 29, 2006

  She slept without any clothes. In the morning, Slava liked to finger the grooves left in her face by the pillow. She twitched so he would leave her alone. He waited and then started again. The cat collaborated by climbing on her head. Its name was Tux, but Arianna always called it the Beast. It didn’t look very beastly, just black and white spots that shifted together with its bulk when it moved. Occasionally, Slava and the cat would stare off across Arianna’s sleeping body, taking the other’s measure.

  Finally, she opened her eyes. “You know, if you stopped, he’d stop,” she said.

  “We can’t stop,” Slava said. “We’re animals about you.”

  She laughed. “If you’re so fond of me, let me sleep.”

  “You’re hot as a furnace inside that blanket. You could power a factory.”

  “So that’s why you sleep so far away,” she said. She threw off the blanket and jumped on top of Slava. The cat resentfully gave up its position. The weight of Arianna felt solid and reassuring.

  “It’s Saturday?” he said.

  “I hope you’re right, or I’m late for work,” she said.

  “So you don’t—Shabbat?”

  “To synagogue? Not every Saturday, no. Some Saturdays. My mother’s problem. I pick and choose.”

  “Why aren’t you going today?” he said.

  “Because I’m happy right here.”

  Slava looked up at the ceiling. “Who are you?” he said.

  “I know,” she laughed.

  “Where did you come from?” he said.

  “Los Angeles,” she said. “City out west.”

  “What did you think when you got off the plane that first time?”

  “Well, I’d been here before.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I thought: Here is a place where everything will be different tomorrow.”

  “I think that’s why I dislike it,” Slava said.

  “You don’t know anything except your neighborhood,” she said.

  “That’s why I don’t,” he said.

  “Something tells me that’s not why.”

  “Let’s talk about you,” he said.

  “It was lonely,” she said. “For some reason, I couldn’t talk to anyone in school. Sometimes you feel things very strongly and you need to follow it even if you don’t know why you feel that way. And I didn’t want to talk to anyone. It’s like all this was my secret and I didn’t want to share it with anyone.”

  “You sat on the windowsill and smoked cigarettes.”

  “Yeah. But then it stopped one day. I got tired of cigarettes. I really wanted to be healthy. The day I had that thought for the first time, I went to a yoga class. When I was finished, I went to another one. And when that one ended—”

  “You did a third.”

  “I went to half of a third. In the middle, I was done. I got up and walked out.”

  “You’re enlightened.”

  “Hardly. I just stopped wanting to dig around.” Her dead fingertip indicated the spot between her eyebrows. “I’ll come back to it. There are things I don’t have, and that’s all right. There are things I want that my mother also wants for me, and that’s all right, too. Do you know what I want?”

  “Tell me.”

  “For you to make breakfast.”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Pourquoi?” she said, drawing back. “I thought we’d have the day.”

  “We’ve had the week? I have an errand.”

  “What do you have to do at ten A.M. on a Saturday morning?”

  “Just something,” he said, looking away. “Some of us work on the weekend.”

  “Don’t, Slava,” she said, and rolled off. They lay without speaking as she checked her phone. The crown molding near the ceiling was beginning to peel in one corner.

  “How did you start fact-checking?” he said cautiously.

  She looked over at him. “Why is this so important to you?” she said.

  “Oh, I just hear you every day,” he said. “‘Mr. Maloney, is your bar made of pine or aspen? Can you call the manufacturer?’”

  “Yeah, I guess it sounds strange from the side.”

  “Mr. Maloney’s gone his whole life without knowing is it pine or aspen. When has anyone asked him what that bar’s made of?”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Does it really matter?” he said.

  “I guess,” she said, putting down her phone. “But think about it. Maloney’s is in New Jersey. Let’s say they don’t have aspens in New Jersey. I mean, they do—I checked. But let’s say. Somebody happens to know that, they see that wrong, they say, What else is wrong? They lose trust. You can’t give a reader a reason to lose trust.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But it’s not always an either/or situation.”

  “Meaning?” Her eyebrows gathered.

  “Let’s say Century didn’t hire women. You’d raise hell.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Now, take—I don’t know—an Arab woman. An Arab woman might say, ‘God willing, they will hire women at some point.’ Which strikes you as—”

  “Fear-based naïveté.”

  “Right. She’s . . . unenlightened. But she might not see it that way. She may be happier than you.”

  “Because she doesn’t know better.”

  “But to her it’s a fact all the same.”

  “So you report that American women and Arab women see it differently.”

  “Would you be a stay-at-home mother?”

  “No.”

  “But you aren’t having your direction chosen
for you like the Arab woman? If you have a story that says, ‘Arab women are unfree,’ that may be factually true from an American standpoint. But it’s not true from a Moroccan standpoint. Or at least not a yes/no proposition.”

  “She may be happier than me, but she’s still not free, however you look at it. I don’t want to be a stay-at-home mom, and let’s say it’s a mechanical response to how it was with my mother, but I’m free to choose. I won’t be harassed for it.”

  “Not physically,” Slava said.

  She rolled onto her back. “Slava!”

  “During the war,” Slava said, “my grandfather ran away. World War II. When he turned conscription age, he had his identity card revised down by a year. Then he got on a train and ran off again, even farther east. If he hadn’t, he would probably be dead. And I wouldn’t be here. Which would make you less happy.” He peered over at her, but his attempt at levity failed. “Is he a hero or a coward? Which is it?”

  “I don’t know. A bit of both, I guess. A hero to you, a coward to somebody else. A hero to me.”

  “Pick and choose,” Slava said.

  “Why not.”

  “When does ‘pick and choose’ become ‘ignore inconvenient facts’?”

  “When you’re trying to get at me.”

  He waved her away. After a moment, he said, “I don’t get it. The witness in the box has put his hand on the Bible, so everything that comes out of his mouth is treated as fact unless there’s proof that he lied? Talk about naïveté! Because he’s put his hand on the Bible? Now lightning has struck and all of a sudden he’s unable to lie?”

  “You can still check that a woman has two children, not three,” she said. “This village was founded in 1673 but that one in 1725. Chickens lay eggs. We landed on the moon. There’s video!” She stared at him. “You have to see the limit of your point.”

  He shrugged and watched the fan spin above them. Arianna did not have air-conditioning. Outside, the sun dimmed under passing clouds.

  “Maybe it’ll be cooler today,” he said.

  “You’re actually going to talk about the weather.”

  “It’s the stuff of poetry,” he said bitterly. The cat cocked its head, sensing an opening.

  “This is nice,” she said. “It isn’t for real until you’re fighting. Why is it you can’t make me breakfast?”

  “I have to run an errand,” he said flatly. Then he added: “For my grandmother.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Sure. I’m sorry. You’ll come back here after?”

  “No, I need to go home.”

  “Okay, I can come there later.”

  “Arianna.”

  “Day apart,” she said. “Got it.”

  “Not that I—”

  “It’s okay. You’re right.”

  “Tomorrow—”

  “Just give me five minutes.”

  She cantilevered her left leg over his right and lifted herself above him. He could feel on his groin the thin thread of hair between her legs. Even soured by sleep, her breath was fragrant—soap, musk, sunflower seeds. She cradled him in her hand as her lips descended on his. Quickly, he was hard, and she lowered herself on top of him, closing her eyes. She rocked above him steadily, as if he weren’t there. As she neared orgasm, she leaned forward until their chests touched, both sweating. The pallor of her breasts was translucent against his chest. Coming close, she placed her palms around his head and began to thrust herself into him. He had never been fucked that way before. He had never been fucked.

  She didn’t open her eyes until she had come. Then she kissed him on the forehead and said, “Thanks, honey.”

  He rode home with Arianna drying on his legs. He showered for a long time, just thinking. The violent creak of the stair door as he headed back out roused Irvin from a reverie of Albanian vineyards.

  “Hello, Mr. Gellma,” he sighed. “Valk?” He walked two fingers through the air. “A little raining.” He pointed at the ceiling, frowning.

  “I think it’s clearing up,” Slava said.

  Irv, to which the doorman’s name had been reduced by some of the tenants, nodded with the enthusiasm of an Albanian spotting a Serb in his garden. You fockin moron, you could be relax at home on day off, but you go walk in rains. “Vait, pliz,” he said. He opened the delivery closet and rifled through coats. He withdrew a long, sturdy umbrella with a carved handle of a zebra hanging its head. “Mr. Seetrick forget,” he said. “But Mr. Seetrick Saturday is dinner come out only—you bring back, okay?”

  “Thanks, Erv.” In deference to liberal values or immigrant solidarity, Slava insisted on calling the Albanian by his actual name, and often wondered if the doorman heard the subtle distinction. On this matter, Erv/Irv kept Slava in suspense, which led Slava to try harder in ever more deformed ways, so that he ended up addressing the doorman by some variation of “Aaaairvvv . . .” The latter’s mystified distaste in reaction to this was clear, though he did not feel entitled to correct a tenant. America had suffered him greater indignities.

  “Vait, vait, vait.” Irvin held up a hand. “Vait.” He disappeared under the podium and emerged with half a loaf of bread in a plastic bag. He banged it against the podium. “For birds,” he said. “You give.”

  Slava hesitated. “Maybe you do it, Erv.”

  “They hungry now,” Irvin said, disappointed. “Afternoon—hungry.”

  Slava obeyed and took the loaf.

  “Small pieces, give small pieces,” Irvin said, joining his thumb and index finger. “Bon appétit.”

  Slava valked. He valked to the river, closed his eyes, and sniffed at the salt in the air. He was an object of indifference to the one thousand pigeons hopping around the pavement, but when he opened Irvin’s plastic bag—after ten minutes of trying to unwork the impossible knot, uttering an obscenity, and finally tearing it open—their feelings changed. Following Irvin’s instruction, he tore off small pieces and scattered them gently. The pigeons wobbled toward the bread and pecked, bopping one another.

  In Arianna’s bed an hour before, he only wanted to leave, but now, without her, he longed for her, as if he had a question and she could answer it. Had he just argued with her because he really disagreed or because he resented receiving instructions? If she claimed to find him interesting, why did she forget to ask his opinion? And when she did, she argued against him. In frustration, he chucked the loaf at the railing. It thudded to the ground, scattering the pigeons. They regrouped and stared at him resentfully. He gave them the middle finger and walked off toward the library.

  The Yorkville branch of the New York Public Library swam in lazy yellow light. The children’s section was full of toddlers crawling on the mats and shrieking occasionally to protest their confinement while their mothers murmured over the baby-size tables. Slava found the reference librarian and asked for good books on the Holocaust in the East. Books with dates, numbers, street names. Books to make an invented claim letter read like a beautiful woman who could cook, too, if Israel Abramson were the judge.

  “You sure you don’t want Baby Einstein?” the librarian said. He cast a destructive look in the direction of the hollering children. “Research project?”

  “Fiction,” Slava said.

  The librarian nodded. “That’s all the fashion now.”

  Dusk was beginning to settle by the time Slava dialed Israel. Listening to the ring, he watched a man and woman work at a kitchen counter in an apartment across the courtyard, strains of brass in their stereo. Briefly, the music swelled, and she bumped his rear end with hers.

  “Hello?” Israel said again.

  Slava snapped to. “You’re wrong,” he said.

  “Those were my son’s favorite words.”

  “I’m sitting here with half the library, Israel. Minsk ghetto—formed date such-and-such.” Slava peered at his notepad. “July twentieth. A hundred thousand inmates. Largest ghetto in German-occupied territory in the Soviet Union. Et cetera.”

  “Okay. Very good.”

/>   “First of all, someone applying for restitution is not a historian. The people who wrote these books know how many inmates there were. The people in the ghetto didn’t get a fact sheet.”

  “Okay, but they know when it started, they know where they lived.”

  “You ever apply for anything, Israel, Yuri ever apply for a scholarship? You’re the guy reading the claims—every claim is going to say it started on July twentieth, we lived at such-and-such an address. But you can’t give him an address. They have records for that. You’ve got to—I don’t know—distract him. You’ve got to make him not care that there’s no address, that there’s actually no verifiable detail. That’s how they check facts, I told you. I know from someone who knows. Tell a story they’ll forget it’s a story. That’s our best chance.”

  “Slavchik, my bird, we’re not trying to get into Harvard here. We want to have a boring little story about poor Jews in the Holocaust.” Israel cleared his nose. “Another old Jew, pity, let’s give him a penny. He starts reading Anna Karenina, he’s going to have questions. Babel is dead, my friend. All the best Jews got killed. It’s the boring Jews who got left. Let’s give them a penny. You follow?”

  “You’re wrong,” Slava said. “I think.”

  “You want to hypnotize him. You want to tell him a nice fairy tale.”

  “Something like that.”

  There was a pause. “I don’t know,” Israel said. “We’re following you now, Gogol. Do what you think.”

  “By the way, Gogol was an anti-Semite,” Slava said.

  “And you think Jews are a heap of luck?”

  Slava hung up with the pyrrhic satisfaction of a child getting his way. The problem remained. For all the history he read, he couldn’t insert his grandmother into it. Pushing off the endless small-font paragraphs in the books the librarian had given him, he could smell the rain-soaked canvas of the trucks that transported prisoners to their workdays breaking concrete outside the ghetto, but he couldn’t smell her. What kind of brain was it that could run so effortlessly with one thing but not with another? He needed something to start him, but he couldn’t figure out what. No matter what notes Slava made on one of the legal pads he had stolen from the office, the exercise ended in him staring at the wall or at the couple across the courtyard.