The Free World

by David Bezmozgis

  —I would be careful, their uncle said.

  —Reuven is doing better. Do you suggest I stop him from going?

  —I suggest you take no chances, their uncle said.

  Once home, Reuven quarreled with their mother and said that he would continue with the lessons. About their uncle he said: If I like something, he doesn’t.

  Samuil sensed that there was something the matter with his brother. At times he felt very close to him; other times he felt as if he did not know him at all.

  Just when he thought his brother wanted nothing more to do with Zionism, Reuven took him to hear Ze’ev Jabotinsky give a speech to a hall full of Jewish youths. On the walls, Samuil saw posters of the one-armed martyr Joseph Trumpeldor, his feet planted firmly on the land of Palestine, his good arm gesturing for the Jewish youth to join in the struggle. At the bottom of the poster were printed his parting words: Never mind, it is good to die for our country.

  He and Reuven had squirmed to the front of the stage. They saw up close Jabotinsky’s jutting chin, stern mouth, and piercing eyes, and they heard his cry: Jewish youth, learn to shoot!

  Afterward, many of his friends quit Hashomer Hatzair and joined Jabotinsky’s Betar. To the songs and the scouting lessons, they now added classes in hand-to-hand combat. A veteran of the Jewish Self-Defense Organization instructed them in the use of “cold weapons.” He had a suitcase filled with brass knuckles, wooden batons, and lengths of iron pipe. In the spring and summer, there were retreats to the countryside where they slept in tents, did calisthenics, and learned how to handle rifles and pistols.

  Reuven became one of the most active members. He attended all of the meetings, gave lectures, and became a crack shot. But, after one year, just as he drifted away from Hashomer Hatzair, he also drifted away from Betar. This time, when Samuil asked him why, Reuven took him aside and confided in him. Samuil was twelve years old—old enough to be trusted.

  When Samuil learned the truth, he was astounded by his brother’s self-discipline.

  After that, Samuil joined Reuven at Eduards’s apartment, where they were given their Latvian lessons from Communist pamphlets. The seeds that had been sown in Reuven in the Pioneers of Rogozna, Eduards cultivated in Riga.

  In his apartment, Eduards had a radio that he tuned to a Soviet frequency. It was at this radio that Samuil listened to the trials of Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Bukharin. And it was at this radio, unbeknown to Samuil at the time, that Reuven had listened to the broadcast of Lenin’s funeral. He spoke of it later to Samuil and their other comrades in a hushed, reverential tone. Though he had only been listening to a radio in Riga, it had seemed to everyone as if he had been much closer to the event—if only because, just listening to the radio, he had been much closer than anyone else they knew.

  When Samuil thought of his brother, he pictured him in Eduards’s apartment. He saw the darkened corner where Eduards kept the radio, with its gilded dial, which, when dormant, rested on an unincriminating Latvian frequency. He saw Eduards’s heavy damask armchair, the haze of pipe smoke, and the faded green rug at the base of the radio cabinet where Reuven and his daughters sat. He saw Eduards lean intimately toward the radio and turn the dial. How weighty and faraway the radio announcer’s voice must have sounded that afternoon. Emerging from the fading strains of the “Internationale,” the announcer had boomed: Stand up, comrades, Ilich is being lowered into his grave!

  In Eduards’s apartment, his brother rose from the green rug and stood solemnly at attention beside Eduards, his wife, and their daughters. A vast primordial quiet descended and hovered like a soul above a body until the announcer’s voice returned and proclaimed: Lenin has died—but Leninism lives!

  11

  Going to see his family felt to Alec like doing penance for any enjoyment he derived from life. They fundamentally disagreed about everything important, and also unimportant. Whenever Alec said anything, Rosa and his father found common cause in his idiocy. Their conversation was a series of digs and ambushes.

  Alec and Polina arrived in the late afternoon and found his family gathered in the small garden behind the house. The Italian owners had provided a table and several iron chairs for tenant use. In among his family, Alec saw a short, one-legged old man with medals pinned to his blazer.

  —I come now and again to disturb your father, Josef said.

  —A guest is never a disturbance, Emma corrected.

  —No, no, Samuil grumbled in a noncommittal way.

  At the back of the garden, Yury was kicking a pink rubber ball at his brother, who was playing goal, defending the garden gate. A hollow resinous twang accompanied each kick.

  —Boys, come over and say hello to your uncle and aunt, Emma called.

  —Did you bring us anything? Zhenya asked.

  —Greetings from the late pope, Alec said.

  Polina extracted a small bag of caramels from her handbag. They had melted in the heat and needed to be refrigerated. She gave them to Emma to give to the boys.

  —For later, Polina said.

  —How very thoughtful, Emma said.

  —Yes, thank you, Rosa added.

  —Afterward, Emma said, when they sing the songs they learned in the Hebrew choir we’ll give these as a reward.

  The boys, Rosa explained, had been going daily to Club Kadima to learn songs for the High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Rosa, who actually possessed an excellent singing voice, was part of the adult choir. Karl, regrettably, was not. He was a true bass, and they could have used him. In Riga, Rosa said for the enlightenment of the one-legged Josef Roidman, Karl had belonged to a choir. It was where the two of them had met.

  As Rosa spoke, Alec glanced at his father, who sat stonily in his chair.

  —Normally, they don’t accept children so young, but the boys learned the Hebrew very fast, like a mother tongue.

  Alec could only imagine his father, at his most saturnine, his eyes like mineshafts, enduring the Hebrew singing of his grandchildren.

  Rosa mentioned the date of the concert.

  —Of course they will come, Emma said.

  —They have a very capable conductor, Roidman volunteered. It promises to be a very memorable show.

  —Maybe it will sell out? Alec asked.

  —Don’t you worry, Rosa said. Nobody who wants to come will be turned away.

  —Very good. Alec smiled. We’ll come, so long as it doesn’t conflict with the inauguration of the new pope.

  —Well, naturally, Rosa said, you have your priorities.

  Since they had already started in this direction, Alec said that he and Polina had in fact gone to St. Peter’s, where Pope Paul VI was lying in state.

  The excursion had been Lyova’s idea. At first, Alec hadn’t been enthusiastic about it.

  —I prefer to remember him as he was in life, he’d said.

  —You saw him in life? Lyova asked.

  —I saw pictures.

  —You don’t want to go?

  —I’d just as soon not go out of my way to see a corpse. Even a famous one. In the end, every corpse has the same face: your own. It’s depressing. My policy is to think about my own death as little as possible.

  —Did you know this about your husband? Lyova asked.

  —Not in so many words, Polina said.

  But in the end he had come along and joined the line of mourners. Some were interlopers like themselves, others fingered rosaries and murmured prayers. There were those who wept quietly. The crowd numbered in the thousands and flowed forward at a surprisingly brisk pace. Unsentimental Roman policemen shouted, Andare! Andare!

  They shuffled forward and through the doors of St. Peter’s Basilica, where the pope was stretched out on a catafalque, under the cathedral’s towering cupola, designed to reduce a man before God’s grandeur. Mourners were instructed to pass four abreast. Alec, Polina, and Lyova formed a group with a bald Roman man who remembered an act of kindness this pope had performed during the war when the Americans bombe
d San Lorenzo.

  Two fans rotated above the catafalque, where the pope lay draped in purple velvet. A black-robed attendant stood at his side, his face composed for the occasion. Candles and incense burned, but not sufficiently to cloak the scent of rot. Alec heard people gasp in shock. Some crossed themselves and averted their eyes. When his time came, Alec looked upon the pope’s ghastly face. It should have come as no surprise in such heat, but he, too, had expected that, for the pope, death might take the form of a benevolent hand, leading immaculately into heaven. As they moved away, a fly settled on the pope’s forehead, which the attendant immediately and impassively brushed aside.

  The world’s multiplicate attentions were now focused on this one corpse. Presidents and potentates would fly in from all over the globe for the official funeral.

  —What kind of presidents? Roidman asked. Carter? Trudeau?

  —Possibly, Alec said.

  Roidman waggled his head appreciatively.

  —What is this to us? Rosa interjected. We have our own problems. There is more important news in the world.

  —For instance, Karl said, Christina Onassis, the world’s richest woman, married a one-eyed Russian and plans to live in a cooperative apartment in Moscow.

  —For instance, scolded Rosa, Begin said he will meet Sadat in Washington.

  —She has five hundred million dollars. He has a glass eye, Karl said.

  On their way home, to reward themselves for having made the trip, Alec took Polina to the Ladispoli movie theater that showed pornographic films. Ladispoli had only one, although there were a number of them in Rome, mainly in the vicinity of Termini Station. Lyova, a connoisseur of all things Roman, had been the first to introduce Alec to the theaters.

  —Something else communism denied us, Lyova said.

  Together they had gone to one of the theaters near Termini to catch a show. Lyova had extended the invitation to Polina as well, but she had demurred. So they had gone without her one evening, and sat with other men in a theater half filled. Lyova didn’t distinguish particularly among the movies showing, and just picked one he hadn’t seen before. The lights went down, immersing the theater in total darkness—a darkness so complete that it was no longer possible to see the person sitting beside you. Then the screen came to life, flashing images of a beautiful young woman in an urbane setting. Some American dialogue followed and soon the woman was naked and being licked and caressed by two other naked women, a Negress and a Chinese. Already, this exceeded Alec’s expectations. For all his experience with sex and women, he was seeing on the screen combinations, situations, and acts that he’d never before seen, engaged in, or even conceived of. Images of happy, coy, compliant women were projected. The camera traveled languorously over breasts, buttocks, and open thighs. A man dropped his pants and the leading actress readily took his cock into her mouth. The screen filled with her bobbing head and her big, intent eyes. Later, on a huge, gleaming, candlelit dining-room table, she was ravaged simultaneously by two men and another woman. To a syncopated soundtrack, they squirmed around and inserted fingers, tongues, candles, and cocks into every available orifice. When it ended, Alec grasped the full extent of Soviet deprivation. If Russian men were surly, belligerent alcoholics it was because, in place of natural, healthy forms of relaxation, they were given newspaper accounts of hero-worker dairy maids receiving medals for milk production.

  The afternoon Alec took Polina, a French film was playing at the theater in Ladispoli. The film was already in progress when they arrived. The theater was as dark as the one in Rome and they were able to find their seats only with the help of a dreary-looking usher. On the screen, as they sat down, was a scene in the countryside, where the leading actress was being mounted from behind by a strapping country lad, who was naked but for a pair of leather riding boots. Standing obliviously behind them, nibbling the occasional clump of grass, was a muscular white horse. The actress was blond and very attractive, but what aroused Alec wasn’t so much the way she looked but the sounds she made. To hear her cry out using her French words and inflections heightened the experience. Silent, she could have been any woman. But crying out, she became a Frenchwoman. Sexual pleasure resided in adjectives. Nobody ever just fucked a woman. Fat, skinny, young, widowed, rich, poor. Or, more resonantly: Armenian, Kalmyk, Estonian, Gypsy, Polish. Watching this one Frenchwoman, Alec felt as if he had been given carnal insight into all Frenchwomen. In fact, into the entire French nation. If he ever traveled to France he would no longer be intimidated by the culture. He now knew the French. He reached over and slid his hand under Polina’s skirt. She didn’t rebuff him, but clenched briefly to assert her personality, before parting her legs and letting him do what he wanted. Then, as if interpreting the pulsing signal of his hand, Polina reached across the armrest and lowered her hand into his lap. Instantly, Alec was reduced to the part of him that existed under the play and pressure of her fingers. Around them, the darkness assumed the geometry of a chamber that separated them from the others in the theater, who occupied their own dark chambers.

  It was like this, in the clandestine darkness of a Riga movie theater, that Alec had, at the age of twelve, entered into manhood. That time, not Frenchmen but Hindus had been on the movie screen and the girl beside him was Olya, Karl’s ostensible girlfriend. Karl had decided he wouldn’t go to the movie and forever changed Alec’s life.

  Karl was sixteen then, as was Olya. It was a Sunday afternoon and Karl had simply changed his mind. He’d already seen the movie with her and he didn’t want to see it again. Instead, he said he would stay home and study. But since Olya had no telephone and lived in the center of town, he had no way of contacting her.

  —Hey, dimwit, Karl had said, what are you doing?

  And, just like that, Alec was riding his bicycle to the center of town to inform Olya that Karl couldn’t make the movie.

  Karl told him to look for Olya outside her building where Krisjan Baron met Karl Marx Street. Alec had never seen her before, he’d only heard Karl mention her in passing. But since Karl wasn’t one to bare his soul, the only thing he knew about her was that Karl had described her as a little nuts. When Alec asked how he might recognize her, Karl said that it would be easy. She would be the only girl on the street wearing an Indian sari.

  —What’s a sari? Alec had asked.

  —It’s like a sheet. All wrapped around. You can’t miss her.

  True, as Karl said, Alec spotted her immediately as he coasted down Krisjan Baron. It was a warm spring day and, even though there were very many people out on Krisjan Baron, Olya was conspicuous among them. It wasn’t only because she had wrapped herself elaborately in a red sheet, but because Alec noticed that she was very pretty. She had dark hair down to her shoulders, fair skin, a thin, straight nose, and green eyes the color of bottle glass. As he rode toward her, he tried to think up a reason that would allow him to remain longer in her presence. He was still trying to come up with something when he brought his bicycle to a stop beside her. Olya was scanning Krisjan Baron and Karl Marx Streets and didn’t immediately grasp that the boy on the bicycle had stopped beside her deliberately. She retreated half a step to let him pass, but when he didn’t budge, she fixed him with a wry smile, as if she knew better than he did what he was up to. As she regarded him, Alec gazed wordlessly back. He felt neither nervous nor awkward, only content. This was love. It was his first experience and he was certain that the feeling would never abate. There was nothing he wanted to do except look at her. And he knew that as soon as he opened his mouth and delivered his message he’d have to stop looking and pedal home.

  —Didn’t your mother teach you it’s not polite to stare? Olya said.

  —I’m Karl’s brother, Alec replied.

  —You don’t look alike, Olya said, which, though he knew it to be true, Alec was nevertheless disappointed to hear.

  —Some people say there’s a resemblance.

  —No, not at all. You’re completely different. The shape of your fa
ce, your eyes, the nose, the mouth. Look at your eyelashes. You’re like a little doll compared to him.

  —Karl sent me to tell you that he can’t come to the movie, Alec said brusquely, to show that he was no doll.

  —Oh, Olya said, with a swell of sadness that caught Alec by surprise.

  A quaver entered her voice that made her sound not like a sixteen-year-old goddess but like a little girl.

  —Why couldn’t he come? she inquired.

  To spare her feelings, Alec lied and said that Karl was sick. He had a temperature.

  —Oh, Olya said again, only this time with an upward lilt in her voice.

  She seemed satisfied with the excuse. In an instant, as quickly as she’d been devastated, she recovered and showed no trace of having been hurt. She fingered a thin gold chain around her neck. It was fairly long, and it dipped into the folds of her sari and down between her breasts. Suspended from the chain was a small golden locket. Olya plucked it up and opened its case. Inside was a miniature clock face.

  —The movie starts in ten minutes, Olya said.

  She snapped the case shut and let the locket fall back down into her sari. Alec expected that she would go on her way and leave him, but she looked at him in an enigmatic way.

  —Do you like movies? Olya asked.

  —Sure, Alec said.

  —Do you like Indian movies? Olya asked.

  —I like every kind of movie.

  —Have you ever seen an Indian movie?

  —Of course, Alec said, lying instinctively.

  —Which one?

  —I don’t remember the name. But it was full of Indians.

  —Did it have Raj Kapoor?

  —Maybe.

  —Nargis?

  —Who?

  —Nargis. She’s the most glamorous Indian actress.

  —Well, then, probably, Alec said.

  Olya cocked her head and flashed that same skeptical, amused expression.

  —You’re not a very good liar, she said.

  —I’m not lying, Alec protested.

  This only caused her to laugh.