A Replacement Life

by Boris Fishman

  “I think she wanted to close,” Slava said when Vera returned.

  “You just need the charm,” Vera said.

  “You have an effect on men and women both.”

  “Stop talking, Slava. Let’s go.”

  The song was slow. In a blue something. Slava’s arms slid neatly into a crevice in the small of Vera’s back. The bartender lifted her eyes, winked at Slava, and returned to her magazine. It wasn’t the kind of bar where people danced.

  “Do you remember,” Vera said, “when you smacked your face in the window in Vienna?”

  Slava tried to remember, but all he could recall about Vienna was the synagogue, cobblestones, Grandfather. All the other slots in the slide projector showed empty.

  “We were just walking around,” she said. “You stopped because you saw these kitchen pots in a store window. They were very beautiful, with designs on the side in bright color. You started walking toward them because I think you wanted to touch them. And then—bam!” Vera’s palm met Slava’s forehead softly. “The window was so clean, you didn’t understand there was a window there.”

  They both laughed. Slava wanted to remember. He liked being the person who gave her such satisfaction.

  She leaned into Slava’s chest. “You are so serious now,” she said, so quietly that perhaps she didn’t wish him to hear.

  “That’s not true,” he said.

  “Prove it you are not,” she said, looking up at him.

  He pulled away, lifted her, and twirled her in his arms, her skirt making an accordion in the air. She yelped. The bartender looked up and smiled again.

  They walked to Vera’s apartment. The streetlights ticked and buzzed, playing with one another in the cool night. It was practically September. In this neighborhood, Slava had never walked to a home at such a late hour, only from. In the last month, he had spent more nights around here than in the preceding two years, but always he left well before now.

  Slava remembered only one thing clearly about Vienna, from the afternoon he had peeked inside the Vienna synagogue from behind Grandfather’s pants leg, Austrians streaming past them. How could they walk by so indifferently, Slava had thought, if they once wished to exterminate all the people inside? Slava felt shame for the worshippers. He didn’t want to look at them because it would have connected him with their destruction. That was when Grandfather made them disappear with a release of the door, a finger in his temple to say they were crazy. All the knots in Slava’s stomach gave way.

  The Gelmans managed to leave the Soviet Union only because all sides had agreed to pretend that they were going to Israel. The Soviet government wouldn’t release Soviet citizens directly to the United States. But it would release its Jews to Israel, “family reunification” being less humiliating to the USSR as the refugees’ reason for emigration than discontent with socialism. If there was no family in Israel, as there usually wasn’t, it was manufactured. Scribes popped up to supply people like the Gelmans with an Aunt Chaya in Haifa and a Cousin Mumik in Ashdod. These invented Chayas and Mumiks filled out affidavits in the scribe’s hand requesting the Soviet government to release their relatives. The Soviet visa office quietly acquiesced.

  Intermediary countries—Austria, Italy—facilitated the deception; after all the invention, the refugees couldn’t very well fly from Sheremetyevo to JFK. So the Gelmans took the long, slow train to Vienna, a month later another to Italy, several months later the airplane to New York. At every step, everyone had lied about everything so the one truth at the heart of it all—that abused people might flee the place of abuse—could be told.

  Grandfather was already a liar—this kind of liar—when he twirled his finger in his temple that afternoon in Vienna, and Slava was young enough to understand such lies as a better kind of truth. It wasn’t until they’d come to America that the truth started to mean exactly what was said and not something else. The calculus had changed in America. Here you could afford a thirty-two-inch television on a doorman’s salary, as Bart at the front desk kept finding ways to mention. Here you could afford to be decent.

  If you find yourself on one of the lower-alphabet avenues in South Brooklyn—Avenue U, Avenue Z—you are sure to come across a furniture emporium. Russian-owned, Europe-minded. Collezione Eleganza, La Moda, and, to reassure those concerned that Europe-minded means Europe-priced, Discount European Furniture Warehouse. Inside, you will find leather couches with armrests wide enough to serve as ottomans, in elusive shades of tan and ocher. You will find lacquered tables with tapered legs and faux-sapphire inlays; paintings in every color but primary; and curves, everywhere curves.

  Vera’s bookshelves curved. Her lampshades curved. Her fridge would have curved if only the maker obliged. The balcony, where Vera’s tour of the apartment ended, was covered with synthetic grass and additional leather furniture.

  “It doesn’t get ruined when it rains?” Slava asked as they surveyed the neighboring homes, the occasional clothesline breaking the baked tar of the roofs. The ground floors were for dirt, exhaust, and cheap living. It was soundless and cool up here in the clouds.

  “I cover it with plastic every morning before I go to work,” she said.

  “But if you go away somewhere?”

  “I don’t go anywhere.”

  Out of her intimidating freezer, Vera withdrew an ice-encrusted bottle of vodka. The ice on the bottle sparkled like diamonds, and the clear liquid poured from it thickly, a clear honey.

  They clinked, downed in one gulp, and gnawed on frozen strawberries while listening to the quiet. Slava stood at the dark window. On the other side, Brooklyn made the sounds of sleep. The early morning and the night, those were his favorite times, before everything began and after it ended.

  “I can’t tell,” he said, “if this is real or it’s because you and I cut vegetables out of construction paper together in Italy. Because you remember things about me that even I don’t remember. Because when I say ‘Grandfather,’ you think the same thing I think.”

  “That is what means it is real,” she said from the sectional.

  “We cut vegetables out of construction paper and made our parents pay in real money. Your grandfather with the secondhand market in Italy. My letters, your press conference. All we do is lie. Germans make Volvos, at least. We lie.”

  “Volvos are from Sweden,” she said, and asked him to join her on the couch.

  He continued to look out the window. “They know about the letters,” he said at last. “Where the applications go.”

  “What does that mean?” she said, her voice stern. “Look at me, please.”

  “Someone ratted,” Slava said, turning around.

  She was squinting against the light, trying to get this new lay of the land. Her shoulders fell. “One of ours did it?” she said. Her worry was convincing. Was it expert? Was she acting, covering up for her mother? He hated himself for the thought, but was it unreasonable? He had seen her in action.

  Slava sat down next to her. He smelled the vodka on her tongue, mixed with strawberries. Every part of her had a different scent, like departments in a department store.

  “I don’t know,” Slava said.

  “Anybody else knows?” she said.

  Slava shook his head.

  “So . . .” Her head hung forward as she tried to understand.

  “If I tell them which ones I faked, they will quietly take those out. As if they never came in. That they can do.”

  “And if you don’t tell them?”

  “They have no choice but to make a public statement. Make it an official investigation.”

  Vera exhaled slowly and fell back.

  “If I deny everything,” Slava said, “that’s kaput for Settledecker’s plan, too. If they have to go public, there’s no way anyone’s approving an expansion of eligibility requirements.”

  She sat up. “Slava.” Her hand clasped his arm. She was sober, conspiratorial, in control. Lazar Timofeyevich was right about his granddaughter. “Y
ou need to say you have no idea what they are talking about. I know how this works. They’re not going to do press conference. No way. They will just make private investigation inside by themselves. They’re saying it to do the guilt to you. It’s— What do you call it? With cards.”

  “Bluffing.”

  “Exactly. If they can’t make you confess, they will not risk press conference. Think about it. If no Claims Conference, no job for them, no salary. They’re never gonna go for that. They will bury it. You start saying yes to anything, and you’re guilty of— It’s not going to end. Don’t be a pioner. Boy Scout.”

  She studied Slava’s face to see what he thought, her attention resting on him like a mother’s. A vein came through her temple, steady and unruffled, a blue valley. Slava knew every bend here.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said. “I promise you. I will make.” Her hand rose to his cheek and playfully scratched the stubble. His hands answered her—her face, her neck, her shoulders. She wore a V-neck silk blouse, dark blue except for black bands at the hems of the sleeves. The knobs of Vera’s shoulders were as round as her face, thick and solid. As she shimmied out of her skirt, a Soviet woman’s coarse panty hose remained, and then nothing. In three years at Century, Slava marveled viciously, he had made no advance, but this bounty was his just weeks after meeting Vera again. She was like the language they shared: He had done nothing to earn it, but it was his. He resented her for accepting him so easily. But these were the perks he could expect. If Slava gave up his mysterious objections, this was what awaited, the dark collapse between Vera’s legs said.

  His hands stopped.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He made himself look at her.

  Her eyes became frightened and uncomprehending. Then came a look of loathing and disgust, as if he had failed a manly duty. He gave her an ugly, meaningless smile.

  “You are a sad example, Slava,” she said finally. “A puddle. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  “Vera”—he tried to hold her arms, but she recoiled—“you don’t want this.”

  “So you are doing me a favor,” she expelled.

  He started to speak, but she raised her hand. Go now, please.

  He tried to gather his things, though nothing would move quickly, their clotheslessness grotesque. He felt her eyes on him. Eventually, she busied herself with her phone, the awkwardness like a third person.

  Outside was warm and stuffy after the chillbox of Vera’s air-conditioning. Slava considered dialing Vova the cruiserweight, the admiring nod Vova would give upon pulling up at the address he knew so well, but Vera would correct the record the next time she saw Vova anyway. No, Slava wanted away from all that.

  He flagged down an ordinary livery cab. Ninetieth and West End in Manhattan? The driver was incredulous at this kind of fare at this time of the night. As they bumped through the taciturn streets, Slava thought about Israel—the scratchy voice, the desert throat sending up coughs, the eyebrows leaping and waving. About his own grandfather. Where were you, old men, when your instructions were needed? But it was three a.m., the streets were empty, and there was no answer.

  By now, Arianna’s night doorman knew Slava’s face, and even though he hadn’t seen Slava in several days, his hailing from Bratislava inclined him to give Slava the benefit of the doubt, the inauspicious fate of the Czechoslovaks under the Soviet yoke notwithstanding. Which left him with a predicament now because it was three o’clock in the fucking morning, and Slavic brotherhood encountered its limits at the shoals of Western decorum.

  “Ring her, ring her,” Slava said, reading his face.

  The Bratislavan pressed pause on a personal video with great fanfare. “It’s late time,” he observed.

  “She’s expecting me,” Slava lied.

  The Slovak eyed Slava distastefully. Slava lied again, despising it: a late flight, delayed arrival, an exchange of phone calls with Arianna around midnight, she’d go to bed but leave dinner under saran wrap. It was the saran wrap, the specific detail, that got him. Otto was right about you have to mention the shoes had been yellow. If you say there are elephants flying outside your window, no one will believe you. But if you say there are six elephants flying outside your window, it’s a different story.

  Bratislava made his calculations. Of course, he would rather have let Slava go up than be responsible for having woken the tenant. Slava needed to push a little bit more, he saw. “What’s your name?” he said.

  “Bujnak,” the Slovak said. “Vladimir Bujnak. Vlado, you can call.”

  Slava extended his hand and said his name. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking at the stairs he was about to mount. “Sorry.”

  Slava stood before Arianna’s door a long time. Then he stood another long stretch after he had rung the bell. He had to ring it several times.

  Finally, she called out in a worried voice. Slava told her who it was, putting a note of apology into it. He knew the Bratislavan was listening up the staircase. She opened the door wearing a T-shirt that Slava had left.

  “Where have you been?” she said, her voice full of sleep. Slava only smiled dumbly. Suspicion and fear streaked her face. He tried to meet her eyes and not give way to tears. The cat, stirred from its slumber, minced curiously at her feet, skeptical and alert.

  “Come to bed,” she said. She left the door open and retreated down the hallway, holding her head. Slava heard the opening of cabinets, the clinking of glasses, the glugging of alcohol into a tumbler.

  Slava walked in after her, the cat watching the arc of his legs. Before Slava could close the door, it hurtled out into the hallway, and Slava had to turn around and retrieve it, the animal’s hind paws dangling helplessly in the air, disdain on its snout.

  “Vodka?” she said.

  “Everybody’s drinking vodka tonight,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah?” she said. “Who’s everybody.” The cat rubbed its scalp against Slava’s ankle.

  “Before the war,” he said, “there was a boy named Pavlik Morozov. He really took Communism to heart. His father was forging some kind of documents. So Pavlik turned in his father. Can you imagine? Guess what happened next.”

  She shook her head wearily. “I have no idea, Slava.”

  “They murdered the kid. The family murdered him.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” She poured herself another glass, shorter this time.

  “Because I can imagine myself as the person who’s forging. But I can also imagine myself as the person who turns in the forger. How can that be?”

  “I don’t know, Slava,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m not interested in finding out right now. Can we go to bed?”

  “Her name was Vera,” he said. “The one drinking vodka tonight.”

  Arianna considered him helplessly. She sank into one of the kitchen chairs, too tired to wedge her legs under the table. She covered her face with her hands and moaned. Then she opened slits between her fingers. “I wondered was it something like that,” she said. She laughed nastily. “And then I thought, no. What a cliché.”

  “Nothing happened,” he said. “That’s the truth.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she said, still wearing a foul expression.

  “It’s not where I was all those nights.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she said again. “So where were you?”

  He answered her truthfully. He told her everything. From his mother’s call, and the funeral, and the funeral dinner, and what Grandfather asked, and Beau, and Vera, and Otto, and the rest, the words tumbling out without any through line. At this late moment, he couldn’t tell a good story.

  She lost herself in his narrative all the same because, frankly, it was unbelievable. She forgot to remove her fingers from her face, and she sat listening this way, latticed against him. When he finished, she said, “I am actually wishing it was only that you were fucking somebody else.” Her fingers finally move
d away from her face and she dislodged a hysterical laugh. “He works on the sly, this one!” She went to drink again, but her glass was empty. “I’m too tired for this,” she said, and covered her face again.

  When she opened her eyes, he was on the kitchen floor, next to her legs. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “What are you apologizing to me for,” she said in a desultory way.

  “To you, to you,” he said. He tried to slide into her embrace.

  “Don’t,” she said, lifting her elbows away from him. He withdrew but remained sitting on the floor like a drunk. They sat without speaking, the clock ticking at them from the wall. “I am counting how many times you had to lie in the last month,” she said at last. “You might be better than anyone I’ve met. And I’ve met some talented liars.”

  “I didn’t lie about this.” He gestured from her to himself.

  “Somehow, I know that’s true. Remarkable. They do studies about people who won’t face the facts.”

  He pulled himself up and rested his palms against the table. He waited until she was looking at him. “You are unlike anyone I’ve met,” he said. “I know you feel the same way. But often we are not happy with each other. And not because of what I just told you.” As he said it, he knew it was persuasive because it wasn’t servile. It was also the truth.

  She didn’t respond.

  “I would like to try,” he said. “I would like to be the kind of person who loves someone like you.”

  “Just be the person who loves me,” she said. In retrospect, it would occur to him, she was merely correcting him. At the moment, however, her words sounded like reluctant forgiveness.

  He lowered himself to the floor again. This time she let him rest his head on her thigh.

  “What am I going to do with you,” she said, her fingers in his hair.

  “I have to tell the truth,” he said, looking up at her.

  She took his face in her hands. “You have to tell the truth,” she said.

  –18–

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2006