The Free World

by David Bezmozgis

  And of all the tangled complications, Alec’s mind seized upon the most perplexing. By the third day, he’d seized upon it to the exclusion of everything else. It was much the same as when he’d been a very young boy and his parents had failed to come home on time. Then, too, his mind fastened on the disastrous. No amount of his grandmother’s soothing or Karl’s reasoning had any effect. He could nod and say yes, but his phantasms burned above reason. He recalled his parents’ walnut-veneer clock, and his terror at the barely perceptible creeping of its white, plastic minute hand. Again and again came the fatal automobile collision, with the sudden jolt, flailing necks, and spray of glass. The terror eased only when he heard the clatter of heels in the corridor, the key in the lock, and inhaled the waft of his mother’s perfume as she enveloped him.

  Now as he thought about the worst possible scenario—emigrating and leaving a child behind—the emigration began to feel like an imperative. He pictured himself conscience-stricken somewhere in the abstract West or, conversely, stranded by his conscience in Riga, unwilling to deny his paternity.

  —Screw conscience, Karl had scoffed. Conscience is the least of your problems. You could get stuck here regardless of your conscience.

  By this he meant that if Polina had the child and he was proven to be the father, he’d need her written permission to leave the country. She’d have to sign an affidavit stating that she had no claims on him. That she absolved him of material responsibilities.

  —It goes without saying, Alec declared, that if I left a child behind, I’d send money. Polina would know that.

  —She might or she might not, Karl countered.

  —She’s not vindictive. She’d never cause problems.

  —Have you ever stiffed her with a kid before?

  —She’s not the type. Of this I’m sure.

  —You don’t know, and you can’t know. Even if you’d stiffed her before, there’s no telling how a person will react from one day to the next. There’s only one way to avoid a problem and that’s not to create it in the first place.

  —Well, the problem exists.

  —It does and it doesn’t, Karl said. But wait much longer and it will be finita la comedia.

  —She won’t agree to it.

  —Is this the first time you’ve gotten a woman pregnant?

  —What does that have to do with anything?

  —You charmed your way in; charm your way out.

  —Charming in is a lot easier.

  —Yeah, well, write that on your forehead so you’ll remember for next time.

  —Anything else?

  —What else? You have to take care of it. I can’t do it for you. But if you haven’t got one yourself, I know of a good doctor. Quiet, expert, and clean.

  —Rosner?

  —You’ve used him?

  —Never needed to. Have you?

  —I know him strictly by reputation.

  Apart from recommending a doctor, Karl was of little help. On the subject of what Alec could possibly offer Polina in exchange for her compliance, Karl proposed, as an option of last resort, Alec’s new bachelor apartment. Karl contended that, if necessity demanded, he would have no trouble proposing such a barter. As for whether it was morally reprehensible or not, he wanted to know what could be bartered against a human life that wasn’t morally reprehensible.

  Nothing, Alec thought. That was the trouble. Though a distant runner-up to nothing was another human life.

  As they sat in his tiny kitchen, it felt like Polina had trailed in the chill of the outdoors. It adhered to her like a personal climate and caused Alec to feel as if the temperature in the tiny kitchen were a few degrees colder than the temperature two meters away in what passed for the adjoining room. To warm himself, her, and the space between them, he filled a kettle and set it to boil. He asked Polina if she wanted coffee, tea, or something stronger. In a cabinet he had the greater portion of a bottle of brandy and a brown clay bottle of Balzams, less beverage than unit of exchange. He wanted to forestall, for as long as he could, the unavoidable conversation because—though he couldn’t have articulated it at the time—the conversation promised to be the first serious one of his life. Life, which he’d treated as a pastime, and which he’d thought he could yet outdistance, had caught up with him. And he’d discovered, much as he’d suspected, that once life caught up with you, you could never quite shake it again. It endeavored to hobble you with greater and greater frequency. How you managed to remain upright became your style, who you were.

  Style was the difference between him and Polina. On that March afternoon he wanted to approach the problem from the side, circle it a few times, until, sidling over with such roundabout movements, the two of them would discover themselves at the destination as though by happenstance.

  Polina, meanwhile, wanted to get there directly.

  —It was an accident, Alec began, you wouldn’t have planned it this way.

  —How could I plan something I thought impossible?

  —But if you could, would you have planned it like this?

  —No. But what does that matter? It happened. I’m not sorry that it happened. Even if you want me to be, Polina said with controlled defiance.

  —I don’t want you to be sorry, Alec said. I want you to be happy. Will having the baby make you happy?

  She didn’t answer immediately but seemed to carefully consider.

  —It might.

  Gently, Alec tried to enumerate the options he’d hashed out with Karl.

  —Would you be happy having the child with Maxim?

  —If this is where you begin, Polina said, you don’t need to say anything else. I have my answer.

  —I think you’re wrong.

  —Do you want me to have the child?

  —No, Alec said.

  —So I’m not wrong.

  —If that’s the only question, then, no, you’re not wrong.

  —It’s the only question that matters, Polina said.

  —And about what happens to the child and to you?

  —We’ll find our way somehow. We won’t be the first.

  —Here in Riga?

  —I imagine. Where else?

  —Living with Maxim or on your own?

  —Or, in time, with someone else.

  —Yes, there’s that, too. Raising my child.

  —Biologically.

  —That isn’t insignificant.

  —To whom?

  —To me.

  —I’m afraid you can’t have it both ways.

  —It may also not be insignificant to the child.

  —Alec, that is also having it both ways. You can’t claim to care for the feelings of the child you want to abort.

  There was logic in what she’d said, but it didn’t change the fact that Alec felt quite certain that he could care for the feelings of the child he wanted to abort. That is, once the child was born.

  —If I could agree to having the child, I would. If I could be a father to it, I would.

  —I never asked you to be a father to it.

  —So what did you hope I would say?

  —I don’t know. Or rather I do, Polina said, and laughed dryly. It wasn’t what I’d hoped you’d say, but what I’d hoped you wouldn’t say. That’s all.

  A stillness of denouement settled upon her, or she summoned it from within. Somehow the conversation he’d planned had escaped his control. It wasn’t even that he’d misled himself by thinking it would be easy. He’d imagined a thorny path that led, in the end, to a favorable resolution. He pictured Polina’s happiness, gratitude even, at his proposal. But now, in actuality, he feared that he’d misspoken and miscalculated. He feared that she would leave before he could even make his big redemptive offer. The offer that would recast him radically and heroically not only in her eyes but in his own.

  Sensing that his time was short, he rushed ahead and told her that he was leaving Riga.

  He then unfurled his grand plan, like a carpet to a bountiful future
. Polina would divorce Maxim. The two of them would marry. An expert doctor would perform the operation with incomparable care in an atmosphere of total privacy. It would be nothing at all like the savagery of the public abortion clinic. No harm would come to her. She would still be able to conceive. Once they settled somewhere, they could try again properly. This was their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to slip the shackles of the Soviet Union.

  —It’s all very rosy, Polina said.

  —It could be. I think we could make a good life together over there. I truly believe it.

  —Don’t try so hard, Alec, Polina said. Next you’ll tell me you love me.

  With the warning she bracketed a great length of silence, long enough to accommodate everything that had happened or would happen: the abortion clinic, Maxim, Alec’s parents, the private doctor, her parents, their spiteful coworkers, the snarling officials, and the dreadful, sunny day when she would sit on a park bench waiting to say goodbye to her sister.

  4

  One afternoon at the military hospital in Simferopol a number of patient-musicians had put on a small concert. Their singer was a squarely built young Tatar woman, a surgical nurse. The musicians took up their places under a banner that predicted “Victory over the Fascist Invader.” The ensemble played and the nurse sang traditional Russian songs and the popular songs of the day, ballads of heroism, homesickness, love and loss. In the aisles between the beds, comrades paired up and danced together. Samuil had made captain by then, and as there were no able-bodied officers for partners, he had watched the enlisted men dance.

  He was reminded of it when he heard “Where Are You, My Garden?” played by a very different ensemble at Club Kadima. The man who sang it, Samuil had to admit, was as appealing in his own way as that Tatar surgical nurse of long ago. He was a small, bald man of Samuil’s age, a veteran, who sang and played the accordion. A girl, young enough to be his granddaughter, but a graduate of the Leningrad conservatory, accompanied him on the piano. The third member of the group was a cornetist from Riga, a fellow his sons’ age, who had played in the restaurants. They were an unlikely combination, but quite capable. The main credit had to be given to the singer, who had a sure, soulful voice. His repertoire included Russian and Yiddish songs, and, in either language, he tasted each syllable and didn’t go in for any melodramatic tricks.

  Samuil had attended the concert reluctantly, at the persistent urging of his wife and of Josef Roidman. They had assured him it would be an evening of musical entertainment to suit his taste. Skeptical, he had arrived with low expectations, but the musicians had exceeded them. They had started with the old standard “Uner Erster Waltz,” and treated it not like some confection but like a task of honest work, each note precise as a rivet. This they followed with “Shpiel, Fidl, Shpiel,” performing that, too, as if they were closely aligned with the old feelings.

  The evening had been advertised to appeal to people of their generation, and some two dozen had come. Couples like him and Emma, single men like Roidman, and widows who arrived in the company of other widows. Scattered among them were younger people, though not very many. The friends and families of the musicians, Samuil supposed. Of the older people, few remained seated for long, but reported purposefully to the dance floor. Samuil did his obligatory turn with Emma, taking some pleasure in executing the steps. Around them other couples danced as they did, cohesively, in marked contrast to the modern trend where all thrashed about like epileptics and it was uncertain who was dancing with whom. Was it any wonder, with such culture, that his sons had taken the wrong path?

  But what did it matter in the end? he thought as he danced with Emma, surrounded by their dwindling cohort, who danced the steps from memory and nursed the infirmities of old age. They were all obsolete, a traveling museum exhibit of a lost kind: Stalin’s Jews, unlikely survivors of repeat appointments with death. And if he allowed himself to feel any kinship with these people, what was the good of it? It was a kinship with the past. And a kinship with the past was no kinship for a revolutionary. A revolutionary allied himself only with the future. But as it sickened him to even think about the future, his revolutionary days were over.

  Samuil sat down when the band began “Where Are You, My Garden?” Roidman had requested the honor, and was now hobbling with Emma on the dance floor—one arm around Emma, the other on his crutch.

  When they returned from the dance floor Emma and Roidman were joined by the rabbi. Samuil had noticed the man circulating around the room, approaching guests or being approached. People more than twice his age—people who should have known better—took his hand reverentially, and drew him near to mouth a joke or a confidence, which the rabbi received with the lofty humility of a sage. A Soviet education, the war, and decades of Soviet life, and still the kernel of religious servility hadn’t been eradicated. It had lain dormant, like a suppressed vice—a prejudice or superstition—waiting for an opportune moment to resurface. Now the moment had come, personified by this man with the pale, thin wrists and patchy beard—purveyor of discount chicken.

  Emma led the rabbi to the table. Here was the generous rabbi who had shown such kindness to their grandchildren. He was a gem of a man and a holy person.

  —Every Jew is holy before God, the rabbi said to Emma’s approbation.

  —Rabbi, I am not a believer, Samuil said. This sort of talk doesn’t interest me.

  —I understand, the rabbi said. Your wife has told me. You are not a believer, but you are still a Jew. You carry within you the holy spark.

  —These terms are meaningless to me. I would never speak like this about my origins.

  —But are these not your origins?

  —You’re interested in an account of my origins?

  —If you wish to tell me.

  —I was born in 1913 in the town of Rogozna in the Kiev region. My father managed a woods and owned a general store. I am Jewish by nationality. I did not complete my higher education. When I was six years old, my father was murdered by the Whites. After his death, my mother became a seamstress, and remained a member of the proletariat until her death at the hands of the German fascists. At the age of fourteen I was trained by my uncle as a bookbinder. I worked at this trade until the war. At age sixteen I was a member of a Communist cell. In 1940, when the Latvian SSR was established, I joined the Party. During the war, I volunteered for the front and rose to the rank of captain in the Red Army. After demobilization I was finance director of the VEF radio-technical factory. Until six months ago, I was a member in good standing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. I was never expelled from the Party and never had any Party penalties assessed. I have the following awards: Order of the Red Star, Order of the Red Banner, medal for bravery, and medal for Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War, 1941 to 1945. You will notice that I make no mention of any spark, soul, or God.

  —Syoma, don’t get upset, Emma said. The rabbi means well.

  —He means what he means, Samuil replied, and I mean what I mean.

  —Your husband is right, the rabbi said. It is a shame that we mean different things. But I respect your husband as a man of his convictions. Samuil Leyzerovich, if you had applied the strength of your convictions to the torah, I don’t doubt that you could have been a great rabbi today.

  —Nonsense. Had I applied myself to your torah, I would not be here today. The NKVD would have put me on a train, or the Germans in a pit.

  —All the more reason to return now to the torah. Wouldn’t you say? Out of respect for our martyrs.

  —There were many kinds of martyrs. You honor yours; I’ll honor mine.

  Samuil excused himself and went outside. The rabbi had switched topics and begun to speak about Israel and the peace negotiations with Egypt. He spouted drivel about the age of redemption. For the first time since the destruction of the Second Temple, the Jews were once again masters over Greater Israel, the portion that the Almighty had promised to Abraham. All of this portended the imminent arrival of th
e messiah. Thus it was absolutely forbidden for Begin to surrender any of the sacred land to the Arabs. God’s covenant inhered in every stone and every shrub.

  Outside Club Kadima, Samuil walked away from the building and leaned against the low wrought-iron fence. The security guard, a beefy middle-aged émigré, tossed a casual remark about the humidity inside the club. Samuil didn’t bother to reply. He rested his hip against the fence and waited for the coolness and quiet to act upon his thoughts. The rabbi’s remarks had agitated him too much and caused his blood pressure to spike. He’d become flushed and lightheaded and he’d noticed Emma appraising him. He’d felt a tremendous urgency to get free of both of them.

  Alone in the street, he calmed down. The talk of religion, martyrs, and Begin led him to think of his cousin. Begin was in America meeting with Carter and the Egyptian Sadat. The entire civilized world attended his every move. But who was Begin? A simple Jew from Brest, a Betar activist and disciple of Jabotinsky. Like Yankl, he’d been deported to Siberia in the summer of ‘41. A year later, he was pardoned and allowed to join the Polish army. It was possible that Yankl had met with a similar fate. And so it was possible that he’d survived the war and found his way to Palestine. His biography, up to a point, was sufficiently similar to Begin’s or to those of many of the other Israeli leaders of the same generation. Ordinary Jewish activists like him had founded their country and were now international statesmen.

  Samuil recalled his cousin’s words from the final night. He had bet on one horse, while Samuil and Reuven had bet on another. That night it had seemed that Yankl’s horse had lost. Nearly forty years later, this was no longer so. Now it seemed instead that Yankl had prematurely conceded the race. But the race had continued. The horses went around and around the track indefinitely, switching places. The race was never lost or won. All that happened was that, in the interim, men died. The trick was to die at the right moment, consoled by the perception of victory. More likely than not, Yankl had died too soon. As for himself, Samuil thought, he would die too late.