As dusk began to drift through the hospital and unmoor the world with shadows, he remembered when she had told him of her uncle who taught her to ride a bicycle down steps and of the flowers she used to keep in a basket strapped to the handlebars. She had told him this one summer, the hottest either of them had ever known. They had escaped the sultry, slow pulsation of Paris to a small cottage owned by her grandmother. It was the sort of house that appeared to have risen from the earth. Ivy curled across the stone walls in thick vines, and roses sang their way as high as the upstairs window.
The Loire flowed coolly half a kilometer to the west and changed to a tongue of gold when the sun sank beneath randomly dotted haystacks in distant fields.
One afternoon, beside the velvet slowness of the Loire, they had found a meadow and spread a blanket between fists of wildflowers. Pierre-Yves remembered how she had talked a great deal about when she was a girl. She had explained how when she was very young, she believed that when she stepped in a puddle, a wish was granted. For the slow, lugubrious years after the war, Pierre-Yves never forgot this and would close his umbrella in a rainstorm so he could cry freely as he negotiated a path home.
At that moment, while the hospital ward was dipped in deepest night, he felt a duty to slip away from the meadow and again witness her final moments and the accompanying numbness. Though as the sound of soldiers’ boots began to echo, and the smell of burning stung his eyes, he suddenly became aware of a sweet scent, a compelling bouquet hovering around him. The image of the infamous rue de Vaugirard, which was riddled with bullet holes back then, suddenly withdrew, and she was asleep within his sleep, in the garden behind the cottage—a fan of her hair upon his chest.
He watched the rise and fall, seduced by the mystery and delicacy of her weight against him. As the sky swelled and bruises drifted above the garden casting shadows, he picked a strawberry and held it below her nose. She opened her eyes and bit into it. He sensed something lingering and held her tightly.
As the flowers entered the mouth of the storm and began to shrivel, so did Pierre-Yves. And in the early hours of the morning, as he stopped breathing, a recently married nurse who had been watching him since dawn took a strawberry from the heavy yellow bowl and gently slipped it between his lips. In a dull office overlooking the Seine, the nurse’s husband was thinking about her elbows, and how they make tiny hollows in the grass as she reads.
AS MUCH BELOW AS UP ABOVE
I am sitting on a beach, half on my bodyboard and half on the sand. I am surrounded by people who have made little camps with towels and rainbow-colored umbrellas.
It is quite hot, but a cool wind blows from the north. I am in my bathing suit, sitting on a foam bodyboard I bought at the concession stand in the parking lot. My fat hangs down as though it is trying to escape my body. I should exercise, if not to reduce the size of my belly, then for my heart.
The sea looks different in America, but I am still unable to brave the blind laugh of white foam.
All seas are one sea. Every ocean holds hands with another. Although I have a job in Brooklyn, and I even have a girlfriend called Mina, part of my soul is in Russia. If I can brave the sea one last time—just up to my chest—I know that I may be reunited with myself.
I came out to the beach alone today. Mina thinks I am at work. She only knows half the story of what happened so long ago. I suppose I only know half the story, too, as I am alive today and not in that metal case on the seabed. I can honestly tell you that I haven’t had a solid night of sleep since the accident. I dream they are all still alive down there, and my brain begins to conjure fantastic ways of rescuing them.
A young couple sit down not far from where I am sitting. The young man is carrying a surfboard. He looks over and nods.
“A little cold with that wind, huh,” he says—or asks, because my English is not perfect. I smile broadly and wave as a way of having nothing to say without offending his gesture. You have to do this with Americans because they are friendly, sometimes too much, but this is a noble failing in the culture. I love the summers here and am so white that people must look at me. Mina says I should apply a cream that protects you from the sun, from burning and from the cancer, but I cannot fear something that is not immediately dangerous. Mina calls me a stubborn pig and sometimes she is right, but I am trying to adjust. Sometimes I think my dreams are real memories and my life with Mina must be heaven. Maybe I am in heaven and don’t know it.
The young couple next to me have set out some chairs, and some of their friends have arrived. They all look different and are very kind to one another. They seem very happy to be here. A girl with the tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder has just run down to the sea. She is diving into the waves, which wall up and then crash down upon her submerged body. Some of the young people have smiled at me and I have smiled back. I wonder if they think I am crazy, sitting on a foam bodyboard alone on such a beautiful day. I wonder if they are disgusted by how fat and white I am. I am glad they are close. They distract me from my friends’ hands, which poke out from the waves—not calling me back, but waving me off.
If you can imagine bare mountains and a crisp blue sky, then you can see the view from the bedroom I was born in back in Russia. My father worked in a factory that made doors, and our house had the mountains to the back while the front overlooked the leaf-green sea, which was calm and deep. When my father and I used to row out to sea on bright summer mornings, after a mile or so, he would say, “There is as much below as there is above—so don’t fall in, my little son.”
The farther out we went, the darker the sea became. My father explained how the fish we hauled up from the deep broke the surface like lightning because they had never seen the light. Imagine living in total darkness, until one day you are torn from your world into a beautiful and cold landscape you never imagined existed.
Russia was different when I was a child, and I thought I would work in the same factory as my father. You may not believe me, but to a child, the factory was a beautiful place because there were always thousands of different kinds of doors sitting out in the sun, waiting for the trucks from Moscow.
I used to think when I was very young that each door led to a different village and to a different life. I wondered how many souls would pass through my father’s doors in their lifetime, and later, as a teenager, I imagined couples closing the doors and then making love in moonlit rooms.
I was proud of my father’s job because it was work for the good of the people. Once I had a dream that I was on an American beach not unlike the one I am on now. In the dream I fell asleep on the hot sand, and when I awoke, the people had all been replaced by my father’s doors. Imagine that—a beach with no people, just a thousand doors, all freestanding in their frames.
When the government in Moscow changed, the factory closed, my father died, and I joined the Russian navy.
I think I’m going to ask my girlfriend Mina to marry me. She was born in Florida. She likes to hear the stories about my father, because her own was no good. I think she will say yes, but I shouldn’t assume that, because I am gruff with her sometimes, and I find it hard to tell her my true feelings. Out of everyone in the whole world I believe she is the most important person.
The young men next to me are in the water, and the girls are watching. The onshore waves are as big as wardrobes, and I can see that some of the young men are frightened. The girls are frightened, too, but the scene still takes place.
During my first five years in the navy, I was taught how to fire missiles from a submarine. It was exciting because the submarine would shudder with each launch. It was quite an important job because everything had to be perfectly synchronized or the missile would not reach its intended target. On firing days, none of us dared sneak vodka into the launch room.
It wasn’t a bad life. I remember having some very nice experiences with my friends in different ports. There were always girls who liked our uniforms more than they liked us. I was so young and no
where near as fat as I am now. When my submarine was to be decommissioned we were all quite sad. It was our workplace, after all, and we had grown quite fond of it.
I met Mina at a Russian restaurant in Queens where I was a bartender. She was there with her friends for a birthday party. They seemed like very nice American girls, and I enjoyed having their laughter within earshot. I was fired from my job as a bartender at the restaurant on the night I met Mina. It was actually because of an incident with Mina’s friend, but I didn’t mind because Mina had written her telephone number on a piece of paper and then looked at me with eyes as big as teacups.
It is strange how some of the Russians I know don’t like Americans but choose to live here. I think that their bitterness has more to do with themselves and that if they were back in Russia, they would find something there to complain about.
As Mina and her friends drank more and more wine, they became louder and even knocked a glass off the table. But they were such a jovial bunch that I didn’t mind—it actually reminded me of the long nights with my comrades, when our K-159 submarine was the pride of the Russian navy.
When one of the Russian men at the bar began to talk about Mina’s group, I tried not to listen. Mina’s friends were not the only people in the restaurant drinking heavily that night. When the girls ordered coffee and chocolates, one of the drunken men at the bar began saying sexual things in Russian about Mina and her friends. I went into the back and washed glasses and tried to forget it because all men become pigs when they drink.
As the restaurant emptied I went back to my bar and started tidying up for the night. One of Mina’s friends wanted one last drink, which I gave to her on the house, because I liked them and hoped they would come back.
As she turned around and started back to the table, the man at the bar who had been saying things took hold of her arm and she spilled the drink. He then began to say terrible sexual things in Russian, but in a smiling way so the woman thought he was being friendly. As she smiled and tolerated his drunkenness, I could not believe what he was saying to her. I poured two drinks and set them down on the bar loudly. I told the man in Russian that he should let her go. He looked at me stupidly, as though he wanted to say something but couldn’t remember what.
He knocked back the drink, and then as the woman reached for hers, he grabbed it and tipped its contents down the front of her dress.
He was a grisly man, but remember—I had been in the Russian navy for over ten years, so I picked him up by his throat and dragged him outside. As I was doing it, I remember feeling intense pity for him, but when I went back into the restaurant and saw the woman crying, those feelings went away.
The man shouted things from the street, then went home. He was a friend of the owner, and within ten minutes, the owner himself telephoned and told me to take what I was owed from the till and to never come back. As he shouted through the telephone, about how I was a criminal and a disgrace, I lit a cigarette and watched the prettiest girl of the bunch approach my bar, say thank-you, and begin to write her telephone number on the top of a matchbook. I was reluctant to take it at first, because in the navy I had met many girls who were attracted to violence and they all turned out to be crazy. It was when she looked at me with those teacup eyes that I felt as though she would have given me her number anyway.
Two South American men worked at the restaurant as waiters, and I was friendly with them. They cleaned up the mess, patted me on the back, and said they would have done the same thing. The remaining men at the bar pretended to ignore everything and talked among themselves in hushed voices. They had laughed at the terrible things the man had said and were probably ashamed.
Despite all the fights and heroic acts I performed as a soldier in the Russian navy, I cannot bring myself to take this cheap foam bodyboard and step into the ocean. I am also very thirsty and have a headache. The young men are all back safely from the surf, and because of this I am trying my best not to start weeping—right here on the beach in front of everyone.
All the young men beside me are back safe, and the girls have wrapped them in towels.
A few months after our submarine was decommissioned, we were ordered to tow it out to a given location and then to sink it. By that time we had resigned ourselves to the loss and wanted to get it over with so we could move on to something else. The captain had told us that he was trying his best to keep us together as a unit wherever we were sent. Some of the other units had been sent to fight in the Chechnyan campaign. We had heard rumors of the horrors that were taking place on both sides, but our attitude remained positive: as long as we remained together, we were invincible. There were eight of us in total who drove and fired the submarine. About a hundred other sailors joined us for official cruising, but the eight of us were able to operate it without support. When we had to take the submarine for maintenance, each of us would bring whiskey or vodka down into the metal belly and we would drink a little en route. The captain turned a blind eye. We were one of the only units who could single-handedly operate a sub over short distances. The maintenance men used to call us “a skeleton crew.”
I remember the morning of the accident very clearly, so clearly, in fact, it seems strange that I can’t intervene and try and stop what happened. The sky was a cold, deep blue, and we could look out to sea for miles. It was freezing cold. We had fish for breakfast. Awaiting orders, we huddled together and smoked.
Dimitri—my best friend—had told us he wanted to get married, and we all thought he was crazy. Several men in yellow overalls waved to us from a tugboat moored a few hundred yards out to sea. They were going to tow us to the given location and, after the sub was sunk, bring us back on their boat. We were supposed to pilot the old sub while it was towed and then climb onto the tug before they detached the line. Even though it was strictly forbidden to drink while on duty, we had several bottles of vodka hidden in our packs so we’d be able to drink a toast to the old boat as it made its way to a watery grave.
As we lined up and were inspected by our superiors, the captain said, “We need a man on the tug to help with the lines.” I remember this so clearly.
As I was on the end of the line, he pointed to me and said, “You—go down to the water—there is a boat that will take you to the tug.”
I did as I was told, despite my bitter disappointment at being deprived of the last voyage and the farewell drinking.
The men on the tugboat were as tough as any of us. We shook hands and smoked, then watched my friends climb into the sub. It may seem strange, but as the hatch was closed, I felt a tingling at the bottom of my spine, the same feeling I felt as I watched my father—drunk as anything—row out to sea and never come back.
Four hours into our journey, the tugboat bolted ahead violently. I was standing at the front watching the bow cut through the icy black water. When the tug lurched forward, I fell back into some ropes, and although I didn’t know it at the time, my arm snapped in two places. When I heard shouting from the stern of the boat, I rushed back, and as I looked out to sea, I saw the towline floating on the surface of the water. After a few minutes of chaos, the captain told us to sit down, that there was nothing we could do, that by now the K-159 was at least a mile deep and still sinking.
I shall never forget the faces of the men on the tug as we all smoked and waited for orders from our superiors. When they looked at me, it was with a softness I had never seen before in men, other than in my father’s eyes when I’d wake up in the middle of the night to find him standing over my bed with a candle.
I shall never forget the terrible shame I felt sitting on the tug as my closest friends sank at a terrifying speed.
As if sensing my desire to fall into the sea, two of the tug men came over and placed themselves on either side of me. They gave me vodka and didn’t say a word.
As we waited for orders, the captain tried to maintain radio contact, but something must have damaged the equipment, and he only picked up static. Sometimes, when I am drivin
g alone in my car at night, I’ll pull off the road into an empty parking lot and tune my car radio to static.
The newspapers claimed the tragedy was simple and nobody was to blame. The line by which the sub was attached had snapped, and the disabled sub had not the power to climb to the surface of the water.
The British sent help almost immediately, but a storm made any rescue attempt impossible. It’s hard for anyone to say how long they survived. It would have been pitch-black and freezing cold. The worst thing is that they all would have known that a rescue was impossible.
I wonder what they thought about. I know they mentioned me and were glad I wasn’t with them. I wonder if any of them secretly wished that they had been at the end of the line and picked to help on the tug. I bet that Dimitri, my best friend, thanked God for sparing my life. I know he kept a photograph of his girlfriend with him at all times, and I can bet he held it close as he perished.
I’ve often lain awake while Mina sleeps and prayed for Dimitri to give me a sign that he is okay; perhaps, like the fish my father and I used to yank up from the dark sea, he has found himself reborn in some bright place. I wonder if they drank the vodka—I suppose it would have helped to keep them warm. For Dimitri’s funeral, his girlfriend and I, along with his parents, chose some of his personal effects and buried them along with photographs. His mother had watched me throughout the service, which included full naval honors. I know why she looked at me, because I still asked myself the same question.
After the funeral, I told Dimitri’s girlfriend what he told us on the morning we set out—that he was going to ask her to marry him. She slapped me and has never spoken to me since. Whatever I did wrong, I hope I can be forgiven.
Mina knows that my best friend was killed back in Russia, but not the whole story. I will tell her one day, and if she holds me tight and thanks God, then I’ll know I should definitely marry her and will probably ask her right then and there. I think we can have a nice life together in Queens or on Long Island.
The Secret Lives of People in Love Page 2