Finally I got up and went out. I actually had plenty of time before I had to be at the garage. I knew my village in every single one of its ins and outs, even as it had grown into a town spilling across the valley like a pool of milk toward Bethlehem, and I knew how to travel so as not to run into Fadi. I didn’t know exactly where his mufti lectured, but I knew he wouldn’t be in this direction, because it was probably in the camp or in the Dar al-Qur’an, and anyway, I was going along the eastern edge of town and I intended to keep to the alleys and the backs of houses. Of course people said hello to me, and I said hello back. Salaam! And to you, salaam! How are you? Thanks be to God! And you? Thanks be to God! Little Amir! Greetings to your father! And greetings to you, abu-Mahmed.
At last, I turned the corner and slipped into the yard and hid among the bushes near the windows, which had been opened to let in the afternoon breeze. She had turned up the radio and was sitting, drumming her fingers lazily on the table. She took a last drag on her cigarette and crushed it in the aluminum ashtray next to her Coca-Cola bottle. Immediately she lit another. Her hair was done up with a few pins, but everywhere skeins of it had slipped out, down the nape of her neck and along the front of her ears like the side curls of the Jewish boys. One feathery strand flopped in front of her nose, and she kept blowing it away with her lower lip. She sighed because there was no one to talk to. She was wearing a striped jersey, and it clung to her like honey clings to the lips. It had a scooped neck, which made her look like a swan. Even Nadirah would not dare wear this outside the house. She sighed again: the music was boring her. She blew away the wild hair with a puff of smoke, put the cigarette down, and rested her chin in her arms. I don’t know if she was sad or just thinking of something, maybe she was thinking of Fadi, but suddenly she stood up, marched over to the radio, and fussed with the knob until she found something she liked. A slow song, in English or maybe Italian, I couldn’t tell. Then she picked up her cigarette and put it in her mouth, and it just dangled there, the smoke rising toward her eyes, which she now closed, and then she began to sway, right and left, making lazy circles with her hips, like a hawk with nothing to do but hang all afternoon in the blue sky, her cigarette just dangling in her mouth, her hips just back and forth, her jersey just melting onto her body as she moved inside it, her eyes just closed and never opening, the smoke just rising, the music just singing, and the breeze just passing over my shoulders on its way into the house to cool her face and neck, and the smell of fried eggplant coming from somewhere across the yard.
By now my father would be looking at the clock on the wall above the rack of tires and guessing to himself whether I would be punctual or late as usual, and each time the minute hand dropped another notch, he would feel a slight tremor in his neck. If he was with a customer, he would be smiling and talking with good humor, because that’s how you talk to customers, tell them whatever they want to hear, but even as he promised the carburetor could definitely be rebuilt in two days, with every intention that the carburetor indeed would be rebuilt in two days even though he had six other things to do first and he never fixed a carburetor in two days and never would, his eyes would dart, every few seconds, back to the clock, because what he was really thinking was how unreliable I was, and he would absorb into his bloodstream this insult to himself and to his fatherhood, where it would boil up like hot oil until the top of his head felt like it must explode; and there would be only one way he could think of to relieve this pressure, this insult. Already his hand would be shaking as it touched the buckle of his belt, even as he nodded to his customer and told him to come back in two days, it will be ready without fail. I knew all this, and yet I could not pull myself from Nadirah’s window.
Why did Fadi leave her alone like this? Look at her—so vulnerable, so fragile. Women needed to be controlled, didn’t they? My father had taught me this. You must discipline your wife, he had counseled me, you must keep her from the dark ways.
Nadirah changed the station yet again and now was listening to Egypt, to Ahmed Adaweya singing his sha’abi. She lazily opened her mouth, and his song came to me through her voice, dark, warm, thick with smoke:
My woman has lost her way, you good people.
She is wearing a nylon blouse and a pleated skirt.
As Nadirah sang, her voice grew bolder, her mouth wider, until at last she was dancing with happiness, her arms above her head, her eyes wide with some vision of herself dancing. She spun around, and I had to quickly duck under the windowsill.
And then, bent like a little old man, I ran out of the courtyard and all the way to my father’s garage.
I hear Nadirah’s song even now, and my heart breaks in my own throat. But when I open my eyes, it is still Dasha Cohen I see—and in my ears nothing but her tortured breath. Is this your song, Dasha Cohen? Is this your dancing? Around her bed are all kinds of shapes and chimeras, jinns and demons, strange sea creatures and spirits, dim and sickly, like blighted wheat. And the whole world seems to me cast in shades of ocher, as if I am looking through a window whose shade is drawn.
Chapter Fourteen
“I WANT TO GET UP, I WANT to go,” I cried out, but perhaps I’d only exhaled, because I could not actually hear my own voice. I tried to sit up, but when I raised my head I was attacked by a terrible vertigo, and I collapsed back onto the bed. I heard scampering and realized that several young girls had been standing in a corner watching me, and now they ran out. Abdul-Latif came in and sat beside me.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked.
I nodded.
“We’re not like Bedouins. We have real beds.”
“Why … are you … helping me?” I asked in what voice I had.
When he made out my words, he laughed. “You’re my only customer today.”
“I … have … to go.”
“I can barely hear you. I can’t understand what you’re saying. Don’t move around so much.”
“Let me call,” I wheezed.
“We don’t have a phone.”
“Mobile phone? Do you know … anyone … mobile phone?”
“No.” He stood up. “My friend, you will be well here, if only you drink some water. It was at least forty-five degrees out there. You did not drink then, and you do not drink now. I press water on you, and you spit it out. I made you drink a few drops when you were sleeping, but you need more, much more. What, do you want to die? Rest a few hours, then you will drink, and you will be on your way.”
Did you call a doctor? I wanted to say.
“Rest, my friend. Rest.”
Through the tiny window I could see only a bit of sky. Where the sunlight hit a table or a chair, or me for that matter, it cast long, moody shadows against the whitewashed walls of the small room. It seemed to me a kind of sign. With the passage of time, the shadows we carry take on a stronger reality, outlining us in the black chalk of our sins, until finally we and our shadows merge into a single, impenetrable, absolving mist.
And so, against the screen of my eyes, that sacred play, whose chorus was the Judean wind and the bleating muezzin, held me down upon that bed as if with pins of iron.
In that time, I came to Collette every day; if she was not yet at home, I waited for her outside her apartment. The neighbors came to know me, and though I suspected they pitied me, I didn’t care. I would listen for the elevator, and each time it was called down, I was filled with hope. When finally she did arrive, she would say, “Oh, Roman, it’s you. Have you been waiting?” I would answer, “No, not long.” This is how it went for weeks on end.
Then, suddenly, an idea began percolating in me; one night, I lay awake in the apartment I shared with my mother on Tishinskaya, seeing shapes upon the ceiling while my mother snored away in the room she’d taken over after Katya left to live with her husband near Moscow University. It was the first time in her life that my mother had a room of her own.
So I began by thinking about mother and her bedroom. From this, I wandered back to the house on Veshnaya,
where we moved when I was four and from which we were so painfully evicted. Why did I think of this? Because I had conceived the idea of building a house, a house for Collette—and myself, too, of course—and that led me to thinking about Uncle Max, who owned a dacha where I could build my new house, and thinking about Uncle Max led me to recall the sleeping arrangements at Veshnaya. Here’s how it went: my parents slept in the living room, sharing it with Babushka and Dyedushka, giving Katya and me and my cousins Julia and Danka the one bedroom, and Uncle Maxim and Aunt Sophie the other. Why did Uncle Maxim and Aunt Sophie have their own room instead of my grandparents or my parents? Because it was Uncle Maxim’s apartment. All of us were there because of him.
And why did he have this apartment? It was part of the family lore and its legacy of impossible accomplishments.
THE CHILD TAILOR OF PILNIK
My uncle Maxim was born in the town of Pilnik—well, who in their right mind would call it a town? It consisted of a small market square, a baker who mostly just rented his oven for the use of the village women, a shul, a threadbare Russian Orthodox church, a small Russian grammar school, an even-smaller Jewish school, a post office, a general store, a barbershop with a makeshift tavern in the back, a doctor who was also the veterinarian, and a tailor. Little Pilnik! Once upon a time, you would find it approximately one hundred kilometers southeast of Kharkov, in the part of Ukraine that, on maps, resembles the snout of a pig. It was nothing but a mud hole into which farmers dropped once a week to barter a few vegetables and sell their cheese and honey. Pilnik, however, did have one specialty: the traveling salesman, the wandering tinker, bookseller, ragman, haberdasher. From little Pilnik these pilgrims spread far and wide along the countryside—up as far as Kiev and down all the way to Odessa and to every town, village, and farm in between—to sharpen your knives or mend your plow, sell you the latest dress from Warsaw or the finest shoelaces from Saint Petersburg. Jews and Gentiles, tall and short, swarthy and fair, they all went forth from Pilnik as if their main occupation was to get as far away from it as possible. Each and every time, they left with the same high hopes, and each and every time returned empty-handed, having sold their goods too cheaply, spent too much along the way, or simply found themselves robbed, pickpocketed, or liberated of their meager profits by the police, whose time-honored custom of levying fines and extorting bribes was simply the price of breathing air. Such a life, such a town, cannot fail to leave its mark upon its children. And thus it was with my uncle, Maxim Guttman. His father was one of the few men who did not march out each season. He was the tailor, whose shop was next to the post office. In fact, for as long as anyone could remember, the tailor was always named Guttman. But, of course, all this was to end.
First came the Great War and, even before that was over, the revolution. Maxim was but seven years old when the Bolsheviks took control. His father, my grandfather, was a socialist, and so the new regime was his cup of tea, though I doubt he guessed what was in store for good Bolsheviks in the coming years. In fact, I’m not sure he ever quite understood. His dying wish was to be buried wearing his medals. In the meantime, though, little Uncle Maxim kept himself busy in the tailor shop. No one was surprised he had learned his craft at such an early age. What was surprising was how quickly he outstripped his father in the quality of his stitching and the beauty of his patterns. This was a good thing, because it did not take long before his father, my grandfather, made himself a heavy vest, a woolen cap, a decent pair of warm trousers, and went off to join the Reds, leaving Maxim in charge of the shop, his mother, and his baby brother, my father.
Ukraine was running with blood, but Pilnik was so far off the beaten track, and had so little to offer—no government building to commandeer, no storehouses to raid, no political activists to either enlist or shoot—that both sides left it in peace. Occasionally, soldiers did pass through for a drink at the barbershop or the hospitality of the three prostitutes who did business in a shack behind the post office; they would also sometimes stop at the tailor and have a sleeve mended or a button reattached. If little Maxim was afraid of them, he didn’t show it, and both sides delighted in coddling him. “Stay and take care of your mama,” a Cossack once told him. Another time, a young Bolshevik whose elbows needed patching declared, “Soon your poverty will end! And when you are old enough you will join the party.” As soon as they left, everything returned to normal, and Pilnik remained as it had always been.
It was 1920. The leaves had long since turned amber and decayed into mulch, knee-deep on the forest paths. The annual chill had swung down from the northeast, and the quiet of winter descended on Pilnik, as it had every year since Maxim could remember. One morning, however, this repose was broken by the thunder of animals, men, and machines. Into town they roared, pulling up on their horses, beating the mules that lugged the heavy mortars, screaming orders, cursing anything that got in their way. At the end of this terrifying parade, a small armored car with a large red star nailed to its grille and two red flags frozen solid atop each fender rattled down the road and screeched to a halt in front of the shop. A driver, two officers, and a man dressed in the gray quilted jacket of a factory worker got out and lit their cigarettes.
The factory worker was squat, round, piggish, with a stout face and a nose like a turnip. His cap was pushed back high on his forehead, revealing sharp peasant eyes and broad cheeks. Instead of stopping for a drink at the barber’s or taking his turn lecturing the prostitutes (as the Bolsheviks liked to do), he scurried across the ice directly into my uncle’s shop. My uncle Maxim jumped from his perch near the window and rushed over to his table, quickly taking up a piece of old cloth. The truth was, there was not a scrap of material in that shop that hadn’t been stitched and restitched a dozen times before. In fact, in the past year, only one customer had ordered anything at all—a White colonel who, in spite of being chased all over the countryside by Bolsheviks, ordered Maxim to make him a dress coat of white silk with golden epaulets and braided cuffs in the Cossack style, fitted in the waist and ballooning gracefully to just below the knees, with fourteen brass buttons and a green velvet collar. Maxim had managed to find some material—not at all what the colonel had ordered—and finished the coat in just a few days, which was all the time the colonel had before he was forced to flee again. Maxim was paid in tsarist notes.
Now the door swung open, and the fat little peasant strolled in. He smiled broadly, showing one golden tooth.
“Ah!” he cried. “At last!”
“Hello,” Maxim replied softly, commanding his hands to keep steady.
“Hello! Hello!” bellowed the other. He inspected a pair of dusty trousers hanging in the corner. “So! You are the tailor of Pilnik! Our dear Lenin would be proud to wear these! You see this coat?” he said, holding out his ragged cotton jacket. “It’s finished. It’s done. And,” he confided, “it’s a piece of shit anyway. I froze to death last year.”
The man seemed to be about twenty years old, but he already wore the red armband of a high-ranking political officer.
“You would like a new jacket?” Maxim asked him.
“Would I like a new jacket? Hah! That’s good! And why, young tailor of Pilnik, do you think I’ve come all this way? I’ll tell you why. May I sit? Do you have any tea?”
Maxim made his way to the samovar, which was lit with a few tiny scraps of charcoal.
“But I’ve no sugar,” he said.
“No sugar? Here!” The man reached into his pocket and brought out a large block wrapped in waxed paper. He pulled a massive knife from his belt and sawed off a thick slice of sugar. “This is for you,” he said. “And this,” he cut off a minuscule piece and stuck it between his teeth, “is for me.” He drank a few loud sips of tea and then looked up and smiled, the golden tooth sparkling with moisture.
“So,” he exclaimed. “Where were we? Well, I’ll tell you. I ran into this fellow—he was wearing a coat. It was magnificent. White with green collar, gold braiding. Long. Elegant. Y
ou remember it?”
Maxim did not reply.
“This fellow had long mustaches and wore the Order of Saint Catherine on his chest—no? Don’t remember him?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, to be honest, I killed him, I shot him in the head—but before I did I asked where he got his coat.”
Maxim went back to his sewing.
“And he said”—the peasant in the quilted coat placed one stubby finger directly on Maxim’s nose—“you!”
Maxim did not look up from his sewing. “My father is with Gavrilov,” he remarked in his small voice.
“Ah! A good unit! An excellent unit! I know this unit.” And suddenly he jumped up and down. “But who cares about politics at a time like this? You, my young friend, are not about politics! You are about pants! Jackets! Suits! You are a great talent stuck away in this little corner of the world that barely exists, this town with a name no one knows and no one will ever know. Vasily!” he suddenly called. The door opened a crack, and the driver poked his head in. “Get the package!”
Vasily disappeared and returned with a large bundle braided with twine. He set it upon the sewing table.
“Open it,” the officer said to Maxim.
With great care, the boy tailor untied the knots and unfolded the burlap sack.
“Look at that!” the peasant cried. “Is that not the finest leather? And this—is this not a most beautiful wool? Don’t even ask where it came from! I’ll tell you—from the closet of a decadent capitalist in Kharkov, may he rest in peace! Believe me, he would have dressed himself like a king—if only he had a tailor as talented as you! So!” he concluded. “Can you make me a jacket, a leather jacket, lined … with felt or whatever you think—just plenty warm, all right? And from this, some woolen trousers and a pair of warm gloves? Can you do that for me?”
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