The Free World

by David Bezmozgis

  —There’s nothing objectionable about the music, Reuven said. It is the legitimate cultural expression of the downtrodden American Negro.

  —But the lyrics are decadent and would have to be changed, Samuil said.

  —To “Mister Marx”?

  —An improvement, Samuil said. But it would require something more to edify the workers and reflect the social ideals of the revolution.

  —And dancing?

  —Why not? Reuven said.

  —So long as every step is to the left, Yaakov said.

  —Naturally, Reuven replied.

  In bed with the enemy, Yaakov would joke. But he knew better than to ask sensitive questions, just as they knew well not to inquire into the activities of his Zionist group. Not once could Samuil remember them arguing about politics; at most they made subtle efforts to persuade and reform one another. Samuil recalled once inviting Yaakov to go with them to a Yom Kippur picnic, an event organized by a number of Jewish socialist groups. Yaakov had declined and gone instead with his father to Gutkin’s Minyan on Stabu Street.

  Before the picnic, Samuil joined a group of provocateurs who interrupted services by flagrantly eating an apple or a boiled egg in the midst of the congregation. Others, who were yet more audacious, pelted the fasting congregants with raisins and crusts of bread. To the congregants’ cries of Pigs! Heretics! the comrades answered with Hypocrites! Exploiters!

  The Yom Kippur picnics, the Red Passovers: he never again saw such unity and purity of doctrine. All the serious, impatient, strident, blustery, desperate Jewish workers. Their need for revolution, their intense, maddening need for change. The endless, demoralizing, profitless toil from morning to night. And the murderous advance of the fascists. Grandiose, strutting Mussolini and his blackshirts. Hitler and his deranged lumpen proletarian thugs. Franco and his gang of reactionaries, confounding the will of the Spanish people. And, in their own country, if not an outright fascist, then the dictator, Ulmanis. They felt their lives, their youth, ticking away minute by minute. How insignificant, how expendable were their pitiful, singular lives. How to describe the nature of that despair? All the times when, for no particular reason, Samuil had been paralyzed by the thought, A life, such a tremendous thing, a life! What right did they have to deny him his life? What made his life, that of a simple worker, less valuable than the life of a factory owner’s son?

  Twenty-five years ago the working classes of Russia with the help of peasants searched for chometz in their land.

  These were the words of the Red Haggadah. Every Passover, Hirsh Kogan would remove it from its hiding place, under a plank in his floor, and they would recite it together in his room, even as they heard, through the wall, the neighbors chanting the ancient liturgy.

  They cleaned away all the traces of landowners and bourgeois bosses in the country and took power into their own hands. They took the land from the landowners, plants and factories from the capitalists; they fought the enemies of the workers on all fronts. In the fire of the great socialist revolution, the workers and peasants burned Kolchak, Yudenich, Vrangel, Denikin, Pilsudskii, Petlyura, Chernov, Khots, Dan, Martov, and Abramovich … This year a revolution in Russia; next year—a world revolution!

  And then, three days after the Nazis rolled triumphant and unimpeded into Paris, Samuil, Reuven, and their comrades, waving red rags and banners, rushed to the tracks near the Central Station to welcome the Soviet soldiers and tank drivers.

  *What time is it, Reuven?

  It is already a quarter after twelve. Why do you ask, Samuil? Are you hungry?

  I feel a small hunger, yes.

  Would you like to eat something?

  To eat a little, yes. I certainly don’t want a big lunch.

  Where shall we go then?

  The café on the corner? It seems to me that it is inexpensive.

  Let’s go there. To tell the truth, I am very hungry!

  14

  Riga was two cities the day the Soviets came. Samuil remembered marching and singing along Elizabetes Street while stony faces gazed down from the windows. Come another year, and these people would be in the streets offering bouquets to a different army.

  How quickly it all happened, and how astounding it seemed, even when the tide was in your favor.

  The morning after the Soviets arrived, posters and handbills appeared across the city. Edicts were announced and meetings convened. In a matter of days, nearly every outward sign of the old regime was eradicated. New names appeared on streets and institutions. Everything that Samuil had considered imposing and intransigent shrank meekly out of sight. The state police, who had for so long pursued and harassed him and his comrades, now themselves scuttled for cover. Usually, to no avail. Measures were taken to eliminate them. The streets were patrolled by new men in new uniforms.

  As for him and Reuven, they joined up with the new militia, the Red Guard. Reuven was twenty-nine and Samuil was twenty-seven. Their revolutionary credentials were impeccable. For patrons, they had Schatz-Anin—installed as editor of a Yiddish newspaper—and Eduards, who was appointed to a position within the Gorkom, the municipal government. Among their tasks, they were entrusted with converting Levitan’s workshop, and others like it, into cooperatives. Politely, in measured tones, they explained to the proprietors how their lives and the lives of their workers would be improved. They went from shop to shop, moving purposefully through the streets, aware of the eyes that followed them and the conversations that died at their approach. The vulgar allure of power was very strong, but they did not succumb to its temptations. In all of their dealings, they were mindful of themselves as representatives of the Party. They were encouraged to imagine themselves as physicians, and the revolution as an organism, beset by toxins and contagions. Some toxins the organism could tolerate and neutralize; others were lethal. These had to be purged. And it was up to them, as the physicians, to distinguish between the mildly disruptive and the noxious, and to err on the side of caution.

  In the first weeks after the arrival of the Soviets, there were very many physicians like themselves, circulating among the population, issuing diagnoses. Goods wagons were prepared at the railway station to expel the contaminants. Among them was their cousin Yaakov. Reuven had seen his name on a list. This, they both realized, was the test of their revolutionary mettle. Samuil remembered how they had discussed the matter between them. They decided that they would be committing no crime by telling their cousin what he was bound to learn anyway in short order. This way, at least, he would be able to prepare himself for the journey.

  That evening, in front of their family, Reuven delivered the news. There were six of them in the apartment then, the girls having married and moved out.

  It was hardly unexpected. Conspicuous class enemies like Vasserman had been rounded up. The Zionist organizations had burned their membership rosters—as though, even without the rosters, everything wasn’t abundantly known.

  Folding his hands on the kitchen table, their cousin said, What’s the point in making a fuss? This is the nature of our times. Samuil and Reuven bet on one horse. I bet on another. My horse lost.

  —Don’t spout nonsense. What a fool you are, their uncle growled. And turning to Samuil and Reuven, he commanded: You two heroes of the revolution, go to your commissar and have him remove Yankl’s name from the list.

  —It’s not possible, Reuven said.

  —You have no idea what is possible, their uncle countered. You think these people are pure as the driven snow? I fought with them and I fought against them, remember. For a liter of spirits they would denounce their own mothers.

  He removed his wedding band and held out his hand for his wife’s. Their mother volunteered hers as well.

  —Here, their uncle said, offer these. Tell them it’s a contribution to the revolutionary cause.

  —If we said that, we would be shot. And with good reason, Reuven said.

  —Then I’ll do it myself, their uncle said.

  —T
hen you’ll be shot. And Yankl will have to say kaddish for you on the train.

  —Can’t you do anything? their mother asked.

  —We can help him pack.

  Their cousin observed the conversation as if it involved someone who was not him.

  —Monsters, their aunt hissed, we took you into our home!

  —Mama, stop it, please, their cousin said, and moved to console her.

  At that moment, Samuil had felt his resolve weaken. Sympathy grabbed him as if by the lapels and thrust him toward his family. It was possible that their uncle was right, and that a word from him or Reuven to the appropriate person could spare their cousin. The temptation was immense. Samuil knew that he had to master it. Not in great battles or debates was the fate of the revolution determined, but in moments like these. The revolution’s success or failure depended upon thousands upon thousands of tiny, individual moral dilemmas. To resolve them properly, clearly, and bloodlessly was the challenge facing every Soviet person.

  Samuil presumed that Reuven was waging the same battle and arriving at the same conclusion, but his brother looked at their uncle, aunt, and cousin and said, They will come for him tonight. If he’s here, they’ll grab him.

  Nobody mistook his meaning.

  —What’s the use? Yaakov said. Where will I go? The Germans are one way, the Russians the other. And in the woods, the Aizsargi and other nationalists.

  —Never mind that about the nationalists, their uncle said. I fought side by side with them in 1919. We embraced each other like brothers.

  —It’s no longer 1919, Yaakov said.

  That evening, they helped him pack his things. Their mother and aunt stripped the shelves bare and also appealed to the neighbors for dried fruit, tinned fish, and bread. Samuil and Reuven made a bundle of their warmest clothes—a wool sweater, a hat, gloves, and Samuil’s one pair of sturdy boots. Whatever money was in the house they turned over to Yaakov, much of it sewn into the lining of his summer jacket.

  Once they were finished, nobody went to sleep. They sat and waited for the guards to arrive.

  —I leave you my phonograph and records, Yaakov said to Reuven, and added wryly, Play them at your peril.

  Around three in the morning they heard footfalls on the stairs and then the knock on the door. Two comrades, a man and a woman, vaguely familiar to Samuil, delivered the order. They showed no surprise to find everyone awake, and their quarry packed and ready to go. After a brief exchange, Reuven succeeded in gaining their permission to accompany Yaakov to the rail depot.

  —He is ours; we will take him, Reuven said.

  That night, as the first tint of color seeped into the sky, they drew up to the railway depot, where the goods wagons stood waiting. Even before they reached the site they heard the susurrus of countless, unintelligible voices. At the depot, they saw a horde of thousands, massed together in disarray. Dozens of armed NKVD guards and members of the local Communist militia encircled them. Occasionally, there was the bark of an order. Samuil and Reuven watched carefully to make sure that their mother, aunt, or uncle did not get lumped together with the condemned. Samuil knew it could easily happen. There were, among the thousands, many women, children, and old people. If one looked, one could find many mild and careworn faces. The uninitiated might presume them to be innocent. Their cousin also appeared mild and innocent, yet he was a Zionist, a dangerous element. The same applied to the others. Latvian nationalists, capitalists, bourgeoisie, members of the former government, priests, rabbis, Hebrew teachers: every one a potential threat.

  Because their aunt and uncle refused to leave while the train remained in the station, Samuil, Reuven, and their mother also stayed. They lost sight of Yaakov immediately after he took leave of his parents, and they didn’t see him again until shortly before the train was set to move. As people were being forced up into the wagons, there was a loud confrontation at one of the doors. Samuil looked over in time to see Vasserman protesting something to an NKVD officer. Swinging his rifle butt, the officer knocked Vasserman down. Standing beside the fallen Vasserman was Yaakov. Samuil watched his cousin help Vasserman to his feet, and then into the wagon. When Vasserman was on board, Yaakov pulled himself up behind him. The NKVD officer bolted the door and Samuil never saw his cousin again.

  15

  On her first day at work, Giovanni and Carla, his wife, gave her posterboard and multicolored markers and gestured at the assorted merchandise. She composed signs in Russian and arranged them in the window display. That same afternoon she made her first sale to a young man from Mogilev. He and his wife came into the shop and wandered cautiously between the narrow aisles.

  —His whole life he’s had one dream, the wife said.

  —A brown suede blazer, the man said.

  Polina barely knew her way around the store, but she found a rack of suede blazers, some of which were brown, and one of which fit the man from Mogilev. They went through the motions of haggling; Polina conferred with Giovanni and Carla; the Italians wrote a figure on a piece of paper; and the man from Mogilev realized his life’s ambition.

  —That’s it, now he can die, his wife said.

  —If I die, bury me in it, he said.

  She made her second sale not long after to an older Italian man, squarely built, dressed like a laborer. Carla greeted him familiarly and Giovanni saluted him from behind the cash register, but the man explained that he wished to speak with Polina. Polina didn’t immediately understand what was being asked of her. There was an uncomfortable moment when everyone seemed ill at ease, but then the man addressed Polina in Russian and relieved the tension. He apologized for imposing upon her, and for his shaky Russian. Twenty-five years earlier he had been a university student in Leningrad. Since then, he’d had few opportunities to practice the language.

  —I was there a long time ago, the man said. I was there when Stalin died.

  He recalled the ranks of people in the street, old women and schoolchildren in tears. For the modest privilege of speaking to her in Russian, the man bought a belt and a pair of sandals.

  Before he left, the man shook hands firmly with Giovanni, and Polina noticed two things that had previously escaped her. One was the collage of photographs and newspaper clippings that Giovanni had tacked onto the wall behind the cash register: a posed photo of a soccer team, above a small maroon and orange banner; newspaper clippings showing the faces of smiling men, whom Polina took to be politicians; other clippings showing grainy snapshots of younger men, whom Polina took to be either criminals or victims; and framed portraits of historical eminences. Of all these, Polina recognized only MarxEngels, the stern two-headed deity of her girlhood imagination.

  The other thing Polina noticed was that the outer three fingers on Giovanni’s right hand were misshapen, as from an industrial accident.

  Back at the apartment, when she mentioned these things to Lyova, he explained that Giovanni and Carla were active in the Italian Communist Party. Communists and merchants—in Italy, the two were not mutually exclusive.

  About his fingers, Giovanni told her himself. After she had worked at the store for several weeks, he saw her looking at his hand; he lifted it, turned it back to palm, and declared, Fascisti.

  There was no other talk of politics. The Russian signs in the window drew people; others came from word of mouth. Polina and her employers settled into a comfortable rhythm. The hours blended together. She felt a contentment she hadn’t known in a long time. Walking to and from work, she seemed for the first time to see the city. Details came to her peripherally, when she wasn’t looking. Now when she came home she told Alec about a marble hand incorporated into the brickwork of a wall in San Lorenzo, or the statue of a king tucked under a palm tree in the Giardini Quirinale, or the graffiti on the store facing theirs that read Hitler Per Mille Anni.

  16

  After a day at the briefing department, Alec would also come home and recount one or another of the day’s oddities for Polina and Lyova. One was a story a
bout the man from Cherepovets who’d arrived with his wife and young daughter during a thunderstorm. As soon as they’d been assigned to their room, the man had gone in search of a HIAS representative. In the corridor, he’d stopped Alec. He insisted that he had to go immediately to the U.S. embassy because he had highly sensitive information to impart. Outside, the rain was coming down in torrents. Not bothering with an umbrella, the man raced out into the street, Alec trailing after him, calling out which way he should turn. By the time they reached Via Veneto, the man was drenched, his eyes glaring urgently, and his scalp, through sparse black hair, showing obscenely white. He looked like a lunatic, which explained why the marines held him at the door, one of them drawing his club. Alec did his best to speak for the man, but the marines cut him off. The sergeant lifted the receiver from his desk, and then they hustled the man upstairs. Three hours later, he emerged: dry, his hair combed, and with an American flag pin on his collar.

  Another time, a commotion had erupted in the pensione after the arrival of a new batch of émigrés. Members of the briefing department hurried over to quell the uproar. At the door to one of the rooms, an old woman was shrieking at her neighbors—an elderly couple. The angry woman’s adult son and daughter tried to calm her, but to little effect. Remarkably, it turned out that the old man was the woman’s errant husband and the father of her now grown children. During the war, this man had been wounded at the front and discharged. At the time, his wife and two young children, having wisely evacuated from the Ukraine, were living in a kolkhoz in Uzbekistan. The man traveled there to reunite with them. Also living in the kolkhoz was the wife’s cousin and her family. Depending on which version one believed, either the cousin seduced the husband or the husband seduced the cousin. Either way, the result was the same. One night, the two lovers vanished. They disappeared into the vastness of the Soviet Union, not to be heard from again. Until now, when, after all these years, fate had conspired to make them neighbors in a Roman pensione.