—You know I never raised a hand to you. I’ve never raised a hand to any woman.
—So what? You did worse. You caused all of this to happen.
She said nothing more, and turned back to the street, where Alec now noticed the white Fiat 500, with Dmitri at the wheel. He watched Masha climb into the passenger seat and the two of them drive off.
Alec stood on the dark street and contemplated what he might do. He thought to walk around the neighborhood for a while, to allow them all some time to recover, but he couldn’t even do that. In his haste to catch Masha, he had left the apartment without any shoes. He felt the rough, cold pavement through his stocking feet.
The front door to the building had locked behind him, and so he had no choice but to ring the buzzer. Nobody answered, but Alec heard, just as when he and Polina had first come to inspect the apartment, the sound of a door opening inside the vault of the building and the descending pattern of Lyova’s footsteps. Presently, the lock clicked and Lyova opened the door—though he remained in the door frame, a forlorn smile on his face.
—I have no shoes, Lyova, Alec said. I’d like to get my shoes.
—I’ll get you your shoes.
—Is that so?
—Alec, don’t be dim. You think I like any of this?
—You’ll forgive me if I say that I’m not particularly concerned right now with what you like or don’t like.
—I’ll bring you your shoes, Alec. What else do you need?
—My wallet. My jacket. My keys.
Lyova balked at “keys.”
—I need my HIAS keys, Lyova, or I’m sleeping in the street tonight.
—You’re going to sleep in the briefing department?
—Unless you have a better idea, Alec said. By the way, where are you going to sleep tonight?
Lyova drew the door shut behind him and returned a few minutes later with Alec’s shoes, jacket, wallet, keys—and toothbrush for good measure.
—Things will be brighter in the morning, Lyova said.
Alec gathered himself and walked the nighttime streets to Viale Regina Margherita and the briefing department. He had never been inside the building at that hour. There was a light switch on the wall in the entryway but he elected not to press it for fear of attracting attention. He rode the elevator and walked the darkened corridor feeling like an intruder, apt to be arrested. Quietly, he inserted his key into the lock and slipped inside the office. Light from the street-lamps spilled through the windows, casting shadows. He picked his way between desks and chairs to where the large photocopier stood against a wall. Beside the machine were stacks of folders, fat with émigré case files. Alec slid these out of the way to clear a bare patch of floor. He lowered himself onto this patch and lay staring up at the ceiling. He’d kept his jacket on for warmth, so he had nothing to cushion his skull from the hard marble. With his left hand, he reached out and took hold of several file folders and placed them under his head. Like this he tried to sleep, shivering a little from the cold, the Persecution Stories of a half dozen émigrés for his pillow.
10
After Lyova gathered Alec’s belongings, Polina closed the door to the bedroom and turned off the lights. Unwilling to lie down, she sat on the edge of the bed and saw the woeful scene replay itself. It had the grotesque character of a bad dream: the knot of shrillness, violence, and perversity, too strange and horrible to be true. She hadn’t believed everything the girl had said but the simple fact that she was in their apartment proved that there was some underlying substance to it. If nothing else, Alec had allowed himself to become involved with this mixed-up, angry, voluptuous child, and he had brought this ugly scandal into their lives. She recalled Marina Kirilovna’s warning—Alec, a boy with a butterfly net. She had disbelieved her words and disregarded her warning. She’d instead nursed the belief that she saw in Alec what other people failed to see, did not try to see. On the strength of this belief, she had staked her future and her family bonds. Now she was flooded with shame and self-reproach.
Like a swooping bird, the most despicable memory assailed her: when her parents had refused to sign the consent form, she had, in her own hand, written that they were dead. What authority could pardon her for that?
Polina sat stiffly in what felt again like a strange room in a strange city. She saw no way forward with Alec. What options remained for her? If Nadja went, to follow her to Israel? To return to Riga? To venture somewhere else, entirely on her own? The choices made her feel at once captive and terribly adrift. She was dismayed to find herself in this predicament. How can it be, she wondered, to have lived a life that she would have never described as reclusive. To have been loved and nurtured as a child. To have been, at every passage, surrounded by classmates and friends. To have never felt shunned or excluded. To have worked for years amid colleagues—a participant in every party and celebration. To have been twice married. To have been a guest in countless homes, and to have hosted countless guests in return. And after all this, to make a tabulation—sitting in the dark, in tears, in this unfamiliar room—and to discover that you have passed through life like a knife through smoke. That almost nothing has adhered to you. From a lifetime of society, only Nadja, one single wisp.
The prospect of sleeping in the bed, of staying in the room, sickened her. She rose and opened the door. The rest of the apartment was also dark. She had half expected to find Lyova up, reading at the table or in his bed, but she was glad for the darkened apartment. Lyova had drawn the brocade curtain, but Polina brushed it aside and entered his half of the room. She saw the outline of Lyova’s body in his bed. He was facing the wall but, at her approach, he turned toward her. Polina felt that she understood what had brought her to Lyova—the simple wish not to be alone. But she was also aware of another manifestation of this idea: the need to see if she could still act to gratify her desires.
Lyova seemed to wait for her to speak.
—I can’t sleep in that room, Polina said.
He sat up and, after a moment’s hesitation, said, You can have my bed.
Polina easily imagined a scenario in which Lyova gallantly relinquished his bed, and in which nothing more happened between them.
Without saying a word, Polina knelt on the edge of the bed. If she were mistaken, Lyova could still protest, but he didn’t. Instead, he edged toward the wall, making a space for her beside him. For a few moments, they lay silently facing each other before Polina put out her hand and placed it on Lyova’s ribs. She felt Lyova’s hand slide through the bedsheets and onto her ribs in return. She then felt the press of his mouth on hers, and the contortions to undress—the tangle of clothes with the bedsheets and the blanket. The act itself felt like they were assembling a complicated machine for the first time, with pieces strewn about and then forced into place. In the midst of things, Polina thought of Alec, and how this very disorder must have appealed to him.
Afterward, they lay side by side in the narrow bed.
—What will you do? Lyova asked.
—I’m not sure, Polina said.
—I wish I could offer you some help.
—Don’t concern yourself, Polina said. There’s nothing you could do. I’m just waiting for my sister’s letter. When I get it, I’ll know what to do with the rest of my life.
11
Not long after the girl departed, Samuil left the house and set off for the Ladispoli train station, the late autumn sun bright and bolted high overhead. Emma’s exhortations trailed after him as he pressed forward, disregarding her completely and wishing that she might finally sprout the good sense to quiet down.
Syoma, don’t go alone, she called. Rome is a zoo. What if you get lost? Let someone come with you!
As he reached the foot of Via Italia, he heard Emma’s voice fade to the point of irrelevance. Pocketing this small satisfaction, he headed toward the station. As he went, he attempted to quell his emotions. He did not want to undertake the trip in a state of excitement. As a soldier and as a man
ager—if not always as a husband and a father—his greatest strength had been his ability to maintain his composure. He credited it for his successes, and he tried to invoke it here once again.
The morning’s spectacle had deeply unnerved him. The frantic banging on their door. The girl raving in their kitchen. Spewing her wild accusations. Causing a shameful, disgusting scene in front of his grandsons, his daughter-in-law, and his wife.
When Samuil had heard enough, he had said to her, My son is capable of many things, but not this. Get out of our house.
By the time the train touched off, his anger had subsided. He looked about the train at his fellow passengers—Italians—and, for once, he did not feel estranged from them. He saw people like himself—with a destination, attending to the practical affairs of their lives.
Out his window, he watched the brown countryside unfurl, the fields harvested and tilled. The sky was a flawless blue. Small black birds glided effortlessly across it.
The farms gave way to larger settlements. Samuil saw more pavement and with it more people, more vehicles. Then, curiously, the train slowed, and presently stopped. There was no station, so far as he could see. There was not even a town to speak of. Looking out, Samuil saw a narrow road that ran beside the tracks, he saw scattered houses, low buildings, with many vacant patches between. He turned to regard the other passengers, and saw many of them also peering out the windows. Then a man’s muffled voice sounded over the public address. Even before the man concluded his statement, passengers began to grumble and shake their heads. Some gathered their belongings and made for the doors. Others he saw settling into their seats—some in frustration, some in resignation. Samuil was casting about for another Russian émigré when he caught the attention of a man of his generation, dressed neatly, wearing steel-framed glasses, his eyes gentle, considerate.
The man walked up the aisle to Samuil.
—Non parle Italiano? he inquired.
Samuil shook his head.
—Français? the man asked.
Samuil shook his head again.
—Español?
Samuil shook his head once more and, though his knowledge of the language was spotty, proposed, Deutsche?
It was the man’s turn to shake his head.
—Ruskii? Iddish? Latviesu? Samuil asked for the sake of formality.
The man smiled regretfully and then paused, as if considering one final, doubtful possibility.
—?u vi parolas Esperanton? he said.
Gingerly, Samuil nodded his head.
He saw the man smile, delighted.
—Many years ago, Samuil said.
—Well, let us try.
—Very well.
—You would like to know why the train is not going?
—Yes.
—The engineers have called a strike. All the trains have stopped.
—For long?
—They did not say. It could be for long.
Samuil digested this.
—How far is it to Rome?
—Fifteen kilometers. Perhaps more.
His feet crunching the gravel of the rail bed, Samuil walked the length of the train, feeling the warmth emanating from its sides, like a great horse at rest. He passed the locomotive and saw in its window the engineer, sitting at his console, reading a newspaper. He could feel no resentment toward a worker asserting his rights in a capitalist system. In the Soviet Union, where socialism had been achieved, workers worked. The country hadn’t seen a strike in seventy years. There, if a train had stopped, he would have gone directly to the engineer and demanded: Comrade engineer, what is the meaning of this?
After he passed the locomotive, a broad panorama opened up on all sides, the railroad tracks running down its middle, like a zipper on the mantle of the earth. Ahead of him, he saw a string of figures picking their way along the tracks. He looked behind him and saw dozens more, some empty-handed, some with bundles, and others with young children—women carrying the littlest ones in their arms.
As a soldier, he had marched with his division along roads and rail lines, at times covering as many as seventy kilometers in a single day. He had walked in every kind of weather: in the mire of the rasputitsa, with the mud pulling at his boots with its ghoulish hands; in the coldest frosts of winter, where comrades made macabre statues out of the frozen German dead; and in the heat of summer, the army crossing the land as a towering pillar of dust.
Compared to all of that, Samuil thought, was he to be deterred by a walk of a mere fifteen kilometers in mild weather? Not to mention that, as a soldier, he had also carried as much as twenty kilos in equipment, ammunition, and kit. Now he was encumbered by nothing other than his blazer. The blazer he removed after fifteen minutes and draped first over one arm and then the other.
From the opposite direction, also along the rail line, he saw other commuters trekking west. He looked, but could not see their train, and, checking behind him, he could no longer see his own. The rail line had snaked and curved, and he had walked a considerable distance. He regretted that he did not have any water with him. There were a few buildings and houses about, but he did not want to stray from his course to appeal to strangers who did not speak Russian. In the time he would lose searching for water, he could gain several kilometers and bring himself closer to the city or the next station.
He walked another half hour. He saw the train that had stopped on the westbound tracks. And he saw, on the horizon, the geometry of some larger settlement, perhaps an outer suburb of Rome. His thirst made his legs feel heavy, his chest tight. The tightness forced him to labor slightly to draw a full breath, and so he decided to rest.
He scrambled down from the rail bed to the dry, weedy embankment. He spread out his blazer and lowered himself onto it. He sat with his knees bent, his hands resting upon them, and his head up and chin raised so as to better draw breath. He gazed ahead, his field of vision incorporating the long stretch of track. The view was bare. Not a soul passed in either direction. Samuil did not know what had happened to the people who had walked before him. He had passed some of them as they rested beside the tracks. Nor did he know what had happened to the people who had followed behind. The people with bundles, the men and women with children. It seemed as if they had abandoned the course. Few had persevered so long and come so far as he had. Samuil thought of his family, of Emma and Rosa, all of them, and how they had misjudged him. How surprised they would be, and how none of them had ever fully appreciated.
Samuil surveyed the scene around him. He saw mindless gravel, railroad, and sky. He thought to rise and continue on his way, but to his consternation he felt as if, rather than diminishing, the pressure in his chest had increased. He tried to rise nonetheless, but felt as if the sky had dropped to prevent him. He inhaled and felt something zealously squeezing his lungs, as if his heart, after biding its time, had finally chosen this moment to revolt. He felt a fleeting panic that quickly turned to rage. His own heart was betraying him, like an enemy inside the walls of his body. He was determined to attack it and bend it to his will. He would wage a battle against it. His treacherous heart would have to wrest the breath from his lips.
12
At the end of the workday, a man who identified himself as an employee of the Joint appeared at the briefing department looking for Alec. He was in his middle thirties, balding, slightly flabby, and with the typical Russian look of fatigue—acquired in the womb, marinated in that broth of disappointments. He said he had an important message to convey and suggested that they retire to the corridor for privacy. Alec felt his colleagues’ eyes upon him as he followed the man out.
He had been the object of curiosity all day. He’d crept out of the office at dawn and lurked about the neighborhood, reporting for work only when he saw others start arriving. His colleagues reacted with shock at the sight of his face—more shock than he’d anticipated. He’d thought that, after a week, it was no longer quite so ghastly, but based on their reactions it occurred to him that he
had simply grown accustomed to it.
In the corridor, the man from the Joint looked at him dourly before speaking. Alec felt a mounting apprehension and imagined what else Masha might have done.
—Is your father Samuil Leyzerovich? the man asked.
—Yes, said Alec.
—I’m afraid I have some sad news for you.
They went by foot from the office to a mortuary where the Jewish Burial Society had brought Samuil’s body. The man opened the door to an antechamber where Alec saw a shrunken old Jew in a yarmulke sitting on a chair and mumbling something from a small black hymnal. At his shoulder was a long table that supported the weight of a body enfolded completely in a white sheet. The little Jew barely looked up from his mumbling as Alec and the man from the Joint entered the room.
—You’ll forgive me, the man said, but we need you to confirm it’s your father.
Alec approached the figure, drew aside the folds, and uncovered a wax replica of his father’s face. He saw the full head of gray hair, the stern brow, the distinguished masculine nose, and the shiny white granules stippling the cheeks. Someone had shut his father’s eyes and removed his dentures. The latter detail had distorted his face, collapsing his mouth and making him seem ancient. Alec’s impulse was to look away, but he resisted out of a duty to see all. He tried to reconcile this pale waxwork with the father who had been such a vital, dominant presence in his life. He felt crushed by the mortal paradox: how it was that his father lay by his side and that his father was no more. He studied his father’s face and understood that there was such a thing as a soul and that it had departed and left behind a corpse.
—Is it him? the man asked.
—Yes, it’s him, Alec answered.
He covered his father’s face and looked to the man from the Joint for further instruction.
—What happens now?
—The funeral. They like to do it as fast as possible. Tomorrow afternoon.
—I suppose, Alec said. I still have to tell my family.
The Free World Page 28