The Free World

by David Bezmozgis

  Now again, all these years later, Samuil found himself regularly visited by his mother and his brother in his dreams. The dreams were like a precious gift and Samuil knew that if he spoke about them it would only cheapen them. Sometimes his mother and brother appeared as they had been when they died, still young. Other times, his mother and brother appeared as if they, too, had aged in the intervening years, looking nothing like themselves and yet remaining somehow intrinsically themselves. The one constant in all the dreams was that Samuil himself never varied. He was always an old man.

  When Samuil started writing the account of his life, it hadn’t occurred to him that this concerted effort at remembering would summon his mother and brother back into his dreams. In many ways, the project no longer resembled the original design. It had become an excuse to immerse himself in the past. There were certain things he wrote down, things that he felt suited the original purpose, but there were many other things that he didn’t write down. These things he simply turned over in his mind.

  He thought of Emma’s grandfather as he’d been in his waning days. Samuil and Emma were then newly married. They were living with Emma’s parents in the small Latgalian town of Baltinava. Emma’s father, Yasha Aronovich, a formidable military man, had been posted there to impose order. Aizsargi, collaborators, Hitlerites, Latvian nationalist rabble camped in the forests, defying Soviet power. Samuil served under his father-in-law, patrolling the streets, fielding denunciations, and leading troops into the forest to flush out the bandits. Meanwhile, Emma’s grandfather, Aron Moiseivich, her father’s father, spent his days at home. Samuil would return in the evening to find him exactly as he’d been in the morning. It seemed that he did nothing but gaze off into space. What are you doing? Samuil had once stopped to ask. Old Aron had languidly turned his head and replied with one word, Remembering.

  How sad, Samuil had thought at the time. What a dreary existence. And now that he’d arrived there himself, he saw that he’d been wrong. Everyone and everything was in the past, his entire life, bustling and crowded with people whom he wished to meet again. What he wouldn’t give just to speak once more to even the supporting players. To see in the flesh a man like Zachar Kahn, Hirsh Kogan, his cousin Yankl, or even Baruch Levitan. How had it happened that the people in the past, all long dead, now seemed to him to be the real people, and the people in the present, including his own children, seemed to him evanescent, so nearly figments that he could imagine passing his hand through them?

  Still and all, the present wouldn’t leave him be. Daily it interrupted his excursions into the past. Always, it seemed, with a new annoyance.

  Under the influence of the Lubavitch rabbi whom his wife so adored, she and Rosa had taken to lighting candles of a Friday night. The rabbi had provided them with a set of flimsy tin candlesticks, a box of ceremonial candles, and a sheet of paper upon which were printed out, phonetically in Russian, the words to the appropriate prayers. Neither his wife nor Rosa understood a syllable of what they were saying, but they gibbered on anyway. The rabbi and his local accomplices also distributed, free of charge, a challah bread and a bottle of kosher wine to complete the spectacle. At first Emma had made the tentative overture to Samuil, but he had categorically refused. She then went down the ladder to Karl. If he was home when the sun set, Karl, for the sake of domestic harmony, consented to wear the yarmulke and mumble the Boruch atohs off the sheet of paper. But if Karl wasn’t there to oblige, Emma and Rosa conscripted the boys.

  —Perfect little yeshiva bochers, Samuil observed.

  —And what would you have them be? Rosa countered.

  She had already gotten them into the traditional costumes. She’d outfitted them with little tzitzis so the fringes peeked out from under their shirts, and with black yarmulkes, too big for their heads. Eagerly, in their singsong voices, his grandsons chirped away in Hebrew, and turned back two generations of social progress.

  —Why stop at the bread and the wine? Samuil said. There are more blessings. There are blessings for everything. God forbid you should skip any.

  —If you know them, by all means.

  —That train left long ago.

  —Very well, Rosa said. We’re doing what we can. We’re only just learning. Look at your Soviet Union. Sixty years and they’re still building communism.

  —Some are building; others are wrecking. Then there are those who will say anything for the price of a kosher chicken.

  Rosa turned to her dinner and knocked her cutlery emphatically against her plate. I do what’s best for my children, she said.

  —You set a fine example, indeed, Samuil retorted.

  —You disapprove, Samuil Leyzerovich, but you have no trouble eating.

  —My dear, these days I have trouble with everything from the moment I open my eyes. What would you suggest I do?

  Everyone had passed the medical examinations except for Samuil. The Italian doctor hadn’t failed to note Samuil’s elevated blood pressure, his arthritic back, the shrapnel wounds to his shoulder and side, and the scarring in his lungs from the tuberculosis he’d contracted either from his uncle or at boot camp in 1941. His passport gave his age as sixty-five, but his time at the front had added at least another decade. Soldiers in their twenties went gray in a matter of days. Sometimes, it seemed, overnight. Only those who fell immediately died young. In the end, Samuil believed, fast or slow, the war took them all.

  —Your son works for HIAS, Roidman had said when Samuil told him what had transpired. In his position, I’m sure he can find a route.

  —You don’t know my son, Samuil said.

  —So what will you do?

  —It’s of no consequence to me. My existence will be the same wherever we go. But my sons have become fixated on Canada. Two months ago they hadn’t even considered it, and now they’ve convinced themselves that it is the only place on earth. And, if not for me, they could be there tomorrow. Naturally, they’ve forgotten that they started this mess. They did this to their father and now he is a weight around their necks.

  —I’m certain it will turn out for the best, Roidman said.

  —On what do you base this certainty? Samuil asked.

  —On nothing, Roidman said, his eyes twinkling. I’m an optimist. A short, old, one-legged, stateless Jewish optimist.

  Roidman did look particularly optimistic that morning. Under his blue blazer he wore a freshly laundered shirt. There was a smart crease in his trousers, and the fold at his missing leg was neatly and precisely pinned. Over his left breast gleamed every one of his medals and ribbons.

  The occasion, Roidman explained, was a trip he was making into Rome.

  —An immigration interview? Samuil presumed.

  —Bigger, Roidman said, rising with the word. Recently they held the funeral for the old pope, alav hasholem. Today, they crown the new one. As your son said, many important people will attend. Mondale with Carter’s wife. The king of Spain. Waldheim of the United Nations. The duke of Luxembourg. And our friend Trudeau. I want to see if he will recognize me.

  —Trudeau?

  —Who else? From the crowd I will wave with my crutch. “Pierre, I am here; it is me, Josef Roidman. Perhaps you remember my case?”

  —You’re an unusual man, Josef.

  —These are unusual times.

  And when had the times not been unusual? Samuil wanted to say. But he could see that Roidman was eager to get to his train station and his funeral.

  Only in the summer of 1940, when the Soviets annexed Latvia, had he thought that the world was getting sorted out. Caught up in the spirit of the times, he and Reuven had assumed noms de guerre. In their new Soviet passports they were no longer Eisner but Krasnansky, the name chosen by Reuven because of its evocation of the Communist color.

  —The Krasnanskys make the revolutions but the Eisners pay the bills, their uncle had sneered.

  Within the Party they were trusted and respected, but at home they were held in contempt. Their uncle and aunt wouldn’t lo
ok them in the face, and their cousins spurned them. They never forgave them for Yankl.

  —Explain to me Ribbentrop-Molotov, their uncle said. Has Hitler stopped using your Communists for target practice?

  —There are higher considerations that we do not understand, Samuil said, though he had asked almost exactly the same question at a Party meeting.

  —It is a painful sacrifice, Reuven said, but Stalin has a plan. It is possible that the fascist invasion of the capitalist countries will inspire the masses to rise up.

  —If you believe in such nonsense, Hitler will be on our doorstep tomorrow, their uncle said.

  Samuil had thought their uncle a fool. Then, one Sunday, they attended a regular meeting of the Komsomol, where a Red Army major informed them that Hitler and his fascist vermin had, that very morning, mounted an unprovoked attack upon the peaceful citizens of the Soviet Union. The shameless, cowardly enemy had advanced into eastern Poland and was pressing the offensive into the Baltic republics. The German gains, the major assured, were temporary, the result of their criminal and underhanded tactics. In a matter of days, the forces of the Red Army would counterattack and force the enemy to retreat. Nevertheless, preparations needed to be made for the defense of the city.

  That same night he and Reuven were each issued a rifle and a box of rounds, and posted to guard the entrance to the rail bridge over the Daugava.

  Samuil remembered well the oddity of their assignment. He and Reuven stood at the mouth of the railroad bridge, the broad, unperturbable Daugava flowing beneath them, and wondered what they might do should the enemy appear.

  —Two men with rifles cannot hope to do much against the German army, Reuven said.

  —Then why put us here?

  —There are always the local saboteurs, Reuven proposed.

  They remained at their post for the next three days, during which an unaccountable calm reigned over the city. These were the last easeful hours he spent with his brother, the two of them reclining against the girders of the bridge, smoking cigarettes, watching the trains pass and the men fish on the banks of the river below. Even the weather was calm. Members of the Workers’ Guard were de-ployed at crucial positions, but otherwise the city’s inhabitants continued about their business. On the second day, when the Germans were reported to have taken Vilnius and surrounded Liepaja, Samuil saw the first columns of evacuees trickling east. On the third night, the government made the drastic decision to relocate to the border with Estonia. And the next day, the commander in charge of their Workers’ Guard company ordered them to undertake a more mobile defense.

  Walking home they saw, in the more affluent neighborhoods in the center of town, people loading automobiles and hired carts for the evacuation. Among them were many Jews, racing about in a state of agitation. In Moskovskaya, windows and doors were thrown open, and people lowered their belongings onto the street. Elderly men and women sat among the bedding and the battered household items, keeping a lookout for thieves.

  At home, they discovered their mother, uncle, and aunt pretending that nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Their uncle was sitting at the window, skeptically watching the havoc below. Their aunt was sweeping the kitchen floor, and their mother was sewing a button onto one of their uncle’s shirts. When Samuil and Reuven came through the door only their mother looked up with a penitent expression.

  Reuven inquired why they’d done nothing to prepare for evacuation.

  —Because we have no intention to evacuate, their uncle said.

  —The Germans could be here tomorrow, Reuven said.

  —We had Germans in 1919, their uncle said. They behaved better than your Communists.

  —Have you heard nothing about Hitler?

  —I’ve heard, their uncle said. He’s no friend to the Jews, but it’s the Bolsheviks he’s after. Everybody who knows me knows how I feel about the Bolsheviks.

  Their aunt looked up from her sweeping and said, How can we leave? If we go off into God-knows-where, how will Yankl ever find us?

  Their own mother, Samuil still believed, had remained as recompense for Yankl.

  —Boys, their mother said. Even if he wanted to go, your uncle, in his condition, could not survive such a trip. And if he stays, I must stay also. The girls have their families and your aunt could not manage to care for your uncle on her own. They need me.

  —They, and we? Reuven asked.

  Reuven had been thirty years old then, but he had spoken the words as if he were a child.

  He and Reuven should have dragged her from that apartment, forced her to go at the points of their rifles. Anything they would have done would have been justified. The condemnation never left him: he had not done enough to save his mother’s life.

  That same night they boarded trucks that drove them east to Gulbene. They traveled with the other members of their Workers’ Guard company and also Eduards and his family.

  From Gulbene they proceeded on foot, mixed among the columns of dazed and exhausted refugees. Some had already been walking for days, sleeping in the fields, eating whatever they could scrounge.

  Without warning, as if for sport, German aircraft would bombard the road. People would scatter and throw themselves into ditches and furrows. When the danger passed, a feral howling would arise from those who discovered their own among the dead and the dying.

  The next morning, they reached the Russian border. Several NKVD officers, mounted on horseback, trotted past in a summary inspection. At the border, a cordon of NKVD soldiers passed swift judgment. A clutch of suspects waited under armed guard beside the wooden border station. Others knelt before the NKVD, pleading not to be turned back.

  When his and Reuven’s turn came, they presented their documents to the NKVD guard, an older man, easily in his forties, heavyset, with grease stains on the front of his tunic.

  —We are Communists, Reuven said, members of the Workers’ Guard.

  Reuven’s Russian, like Samuil’s, had remained close to fluent, accented only faintly with Yiddish and Latvian.

  —Where from? the guard asked.

  —Riga.

  —How did you come here?

  —A truck to Gulbene. On foot from there.

  —You walked with these people?

  —Yes, Reuven said.

  —They say they were attacked by German aircraft. You see any German aircraft?

  —We saw.

  —Show me your rifles, the guard said.

  They handed over their rifles and the guard peered into the barrels and sniffed the muzzles. He opened the actions and inspected the chambers.

  —You have ammunition? he asked.

  —What we were issued in Riga, Reuven said, and he extended the box of shells they’d been given to protect the bridge.

  —You too, the guard said, and Samuil did the same.

  He opened the boxes and counted the rounds.

  —All there, he said disdainfully.

  —Yes, Reuven admitted.

  —You call yourselves Communists, the guard sneered, but you let the German motherfuckers strafe defenseless people without firing a single shot. Who behaves like this? Not Communists, I assure you.

  He leveled his revolver at them and pointed in the direction of the border station, to join the others under armed guard.

  —Soon enough, we will find out who you really are, he said.

  They took their places with the other suspects and waited for several hours. Intermittently, an NKVD officer would select a half dozen men and lead them into a little copse behind the border station. Short moments later there would come a volley of rifle fire.

  Samuil understood that the jaws of death had opened to consume them, and would have consumed them if not for Eduards’s intervention. They were at the front of the line, with one foot in the other world, when he came running to the NKVD officer, waving his Party card, his Gorkom identification, and a personal letter he’d once received from Litvinov.

  They evaded death again the next m
orning, or so Eduards contended, when they leaped from the back of an open troop truck. They had boarded the truck in Pskov with Eduards, his family, and some fifteen others. Several kilometers from the border, Eduards saw the driver wave his hat at an NKVD colonel parked by the side of the road in an Emka staff car.

  —Jump now! Eduards had commanded.

  They’d jumped and the truck had rattled on without them.

  Later that same evening he and Reuven evaded death together for the last time. Stukas and Messers dropped from the setting sun and tore up the road. They took cover in a cherry orchard, and watched through the ripening fruit as the planes skimmed so low overhead that they could see the faces of the German pilots. When the attack ended, a convoy of trucks appeared and there was a frenzied call for men to board. Red Army soldiers rushed about, forcing men into the trucks, and in the twilight and the commotion Samuil was pressed into one vehicle and Reuven into another. It happened in an instant. Samuil supposed that they were all destined for the same place, but at some point during the night his truck went one way and Reuven’s went another.

  18

  One afternoon in late August, on his way home from picketing the Israeli embassy, Lyova witnessed the election of the new pope. After five hours of circular and monotonous marching, he’d stopped and set his sign down at the edge of St. Peter’s square.