The Wanting

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by Michael Lavigne


  They’d gone to the Tishinksy rynok and brought home all manner of zakusky, fresh parsley, cucumbers, green onions, eggplant. My mother boiled some potatoes and found an ancient bottle of vodka, I think from the time of Khrushchev, from which she was able to eke three tiny glasses and which she doled out like nectar, drop by drop. In the meantime, Collette set down a tablecloth, and the two of them prattled away as if they’d known each other earlier in life, had met by chance at the bus stop on Kutuzovsky, and simply picked up where they’d left off, the years between only a comma in some ongoing conversation. I could not help myself—the glow, which even I had to admit had become tarnished through these months of rejection and jealousy, returned to Collette’s person, filling the kitchen with golden happiness. Her smile, her hands, her hair, her neck, her eyes, the sound of her voice, the sway of her hips, the pleats of her skirt were all too beautiful, too wrenching, for me to hold a grudge.

  “Stop fidgeting,” my mother remarked.

  They went on to analyze which stands in the rynok were the most reliable for green vegetables, where to buy the fattest chicken, the freshest fish, though in fact my mother almost never went to that rynok or any other. Then Mother began to bitterly complain about her neighbors.

  “Oh!” Collette laughed. “I have this Plotkina with her little mutt, Vova. What a pair! I think the dog is smarter than she is. At least he knows where to pee!”

  Then my mother did something I could never have expected. She cleared the dishes, sat back down, and said, “You know, my husband, Lyopa, left us.”

  “It is hard to be left,” Collette replied.

  “You’re too young to say such a thing. Roma, do you remember when Papa left?”

  Under the table, Collette placed her hand on mine, but her eyes remained altogether upon my mother.

  “Lyopa was a brilliant man,” she said, “maybe even a genius.”

  “Yes,” replied Collette, “Roman has told me.”

  “And then gone.”

  “And then gone. I understand.”

  “Roma has already told you?”

  “You tell me. I want to hear. I want to know everything.”

  “I didn’t think so. He doesn’t talk a lot.”

  Collette produced a smile that seemed to say: Yes, that’s how he is. They were talking about me as if I were not in the room, and I could not have been happier. Collette planted two elbows on the table, rested her chin on her two fists, and made it clear that my mother had her undivided and earnest attention.

  My mother then told the story of how we lost my father and at the same time were evicted from the house on Veshnaya and how we came, the two of us, now that Katya was gone, to this apartment and the life we now were leading.

  I was fourteen years old, the age at which I was eligible for Komsomol, and to which, in spite of everything, I yearned to be accepted as early as possible. Everyone of course was always accepted, but that did not ease my anxiety for one moment. I was desperate to be Russian and more than happy to become a devout Communist, if only it would help me to squeeze inside a pair of traditional felt boots. There was only one person who was in my way: Dima Chernapolsky. He was the most popular kid in school, a great basketball player, sang like an angel, his father was a colonel in the KGB, he lived in our building, and he hated me. He hated everything about me, and his main joy in life was to spread rumors about me that often reached the ears of our teachers. I was a thief, I was a homosexual, I was a Zionist, I cheated on tests. But I asked myself, in what way was he superior to me? Smarter? Wittier? Able to write a coherent sentence in history class? He was a party brat and belonged in a party school, and if he wasn’t, there had to be something wrong with him. Probably he was retarded. Yet because of him my popularity had plummeted, and I was isolated and miserable.

  One day, I came upon him laying claim to the hill of garbage that had grown like a Tower of Babel in the no-man’s-land behind the row of garages that lined the alleys off of Bogataya Pereulok.

  Look at him up there, I thought, king of the fucking hill. But it was my hill. I used to climb it many times; I used to reign over that stinky realm.

  A string of curses erupted from my mouth. I would have to bring Dima to his knees. Crush him. Break him. It didn’t matter to me that he towered over me, an athlete, a hero of the school. I wanted him to cry. Because even then I knew, once you cry, it’s all over.

  I stole around to the back of the trash heap and without any warning charged up the hill screaming my head off.

  Amazing to me in that moment, and to this day, Dima Chernapolsky collapsed almost immediately and in no time at all was weeping. He begged me to stop hitting him. And finally I did, but not before I kicked him down the hill and watched, laughing, as he lifted himself up and limped away. Only when he was gone did I grow quiet and contemplate the magnitude of my victory. I could go to school again with my head held high. Dima was mine! I owned him. I took myself to an ice-cream stand to celebrate.

  As soon as I got home, however, my parents accosted me. “Where have you been?” “We were worried to death!” “Look at you!” “What happened?” “Your clothes are filthy!” In the living room, the rest of the family was waiting, a single accusatory, disappointed look animating every face: Uncle Maxim, Aunt Sophie, Katya, my cousins Julia and Danka, and probably the ghosts of my grandparents and great-grandparents on every side. They all stood in the same forlorn posture, wringing their hands as if waiting to be shot.

  Then my mother yelled at me, “What have you done to us, you stupid, silly boy?” She clutched my filthy shirt between her fingers. “Who made you this way?”

  “All right,” I heard my father say from somewhere that seemed very far away. “Enough.”

  But my mother shook me violently. “You!” she cried, “you!” And then, for the only time that I can remember, she slapped me, hard across the face, and I fell backward against the telephone table. “We did not raise such a child!” she screamed at me. “We don’t know this child!” She spun around, addressing the walls, the ceiling, the windows, “Not our fault! Not our fault!”

  Finally, my father emerged from the circle of family. He looked me in the eye—a look I shall never forget, a look that squeezed me into a ball and shot me into the most profound darkness—and then, without a word, he turned to my mother, held her firmly by the shoulders, and forced her to sit. “Calm down,” he said to her.

  Behind him, my illustrious uncle Max was about to speak, but my father lifted his hand. “Roman,” he said evenly, “do not say a thing. We already know everything. Colonel Chernapolsky has already been down to see us. He gave us a letter. Shall I read it?”

  I cannot recall his words exactly, but the charges were laid out like a denunciation in Pravda. Dmitry Valerivich (no longer Dima, but Dmitry Valerivich) had been brutally assaulted, to such an extent the police should be brought in to investigate. Such an instance of hooliganism must not be tolerated; the influence of a boy such as myself on the students of Moscow School Forty-two could only lead others into degeneracy and error, clearly the result of Western music and the Guttman habit of listening to the BBC, which, by the way, was well known. How, Colonel Valeri Chernapolsky asked himself, can a boy who has been given every possible chance, every possible advantage of our Soviet system, a free education, a universal education, and unequivocally the very best education in the world, a boy who is a Young Pioneer and a candidate for Komsomol, who in any other country would most likely be a pariah but here is treated 100 percent as an equal, even more than equal in the opinion of many, how could such a boy turn his back on those who nurtured and cared for him, those who taught him and tried to instill in him Soviet values and a clean, wholesome Soviet spirit—how could such a boy victimize the innocent and terrorize his schoolmates? Because he is an agent of terror! Because he is a reactionary bully! Because he is a Zionist hooligan!

  “They’re going to have us kicked out of the apartment,” my mother bawled. “And you,” she said to me, �
��you’ll end up working in a factory.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” my father said. “It’s just an argument between two boys. No one is getting kicked out of anywhere. Even Chernapolsky wouldn’t go that far.”

  “Of course he would!” she cried. “You will go down and speak to Colonel Chernapolsky yourself. And you will speak to his wife, too. Because believe me, she’s behind this. You will get down on your hands and knees and you will beg for mercy. You will say, Marta Gregoryevna, on behalf of my son, I beg mercy.”

  “Are you crazy? I’ll do no such thing. I was once considered for membership in the Academy of Science, for heaven’s sake. The highest honor!”

  “I’m crazy? I’m crazy? Don’t you see, you stupid Lyopa, what’s happening here?”

  “I’m telling you, calm down,” he said.

  “We’ll be out on the street, all of us, and why? Because of your son. You and your academy. What academy? The Academy of Idiots? In your dreams there may have been an academy for you, but not in this life! Who made him like this? A fighter! A hooligan! A monster who refuses to listen to anyone! He thinks he knows everything! You know everything, don’t you, Roman? I suppose I taught him this! It was you! You! You stupid, stupid Lyopa! Who walks away from the academy? Who turns his back on the university? No wonder he couldn’t get into special school! No, Lyopa, you will go down there and you will beg. You will get down on your hands and knees. You will do whatever they ask. You will do whatever they want.”

  “My name is Leopold,” he said. “You will call me Leopold.”

  “Go, Lyopa!” she cried.

  “Tatyana,” Uncle Max said.

  My father was still standing in front of me, but suddenly he smiled and placed his hands on my head as if he were about to recite a blessing.

  “Lyopa, go!” she commanded.

  My father seemed not to hear her. Or perhaps he did not need to answer because he had already decided to go, for it seemed to me then that a yes had fallen upon his shoulders.

  “Lyopa!” she demanded.

  “Yes, all right,” he muttered, still smiling at me. One could not call it a happy smile or even, as often happens between couples, a smile of familial contempt. Only now can I say with any certainty what that smile might have been—it was the smile of the ibex in the moment of flight. It was the smile of the leopard, unaccustomed to daylight but driven by starvation, that flashed through his eyes.

  Then, so unexpectedly, he bent down and kissed my cheek. “Don’t worry, Roma, my darling, everything will be all right. The morning shall come, just as always.” He stood to his full height, looked around the room and into the eyes of his brother, Max, and walked out the door.

  He did not return home that evening, and it was a very long time before I saw him again.

  My mother was right, by the way. We were all to be removed from the apartment on Veshnaya. But Uncle Max being Uncle Max came to an accommodation with the colonel, and only my mother, sister, and I had to leave. At first we were compelled to live in a horrible place—with some distant cousins in Volgograd—but somehow Max, using what little pull he still possessed, and greasing the palms of those who knew someone who knew someone who perhaps could manipulate the waiting list for housing, in other words, po blatu, found us the apartment on Tishinskaya where my mother was now sitting at the kitchen table, lost in conversation with Collette Chernoff. Max spent a fortune on us, maybe everything he had, but never said a word about it. And as it turned out, my mother was much happier in this apartment than she ever was in Veshnaya. And why not? It was a small, cheerful building constructed with simple, decent lines, roomy balconies, and a friendly disposition: it seemed delighted to be sitting on its little tree-lined street. Plus there was considerably more room for the three of us, and it had all the modern conveniences, and the only complaints my mother had to suffer were her own.

  My mother now concluded her tale to Collette, which, by the way, was completely different from the one I just told you—different in every detail. I believe my memory is more correct than hers—in hers, I am not even a part of the story; the loss of the apartment had nothing to do with me; my father had a mistress, maybe more than one; and he was an alcoholic, though he was clever and hid it very well; the entire family was against her because she declined to go along with his every whim; he did not beat her, but sometimes she was afraid he might; he called her night and day wanting to come back to her; when Max refused to change the locks, she packed our bags, stuffed Katya and me into a taxi, and left Veshnaya forever. In her memory there is only misery, injustice, and a final gesture of righteous vindication. In mine, a shield of bitter wisdom descended upon my father, and he, in turn, imparted to me a secret of life.

  In any case, the table was finally cleared, the dishes were washed, and I at last could suggest it was time to take Collette home. They kissed good-bye, like mother and daughter. Collette and I sailed down the stairs in silence. As we passed through the door she quietly took my hand. Her hips had slid close to mine, and her head was slightly inclined, almost resting on my shoulder. This was the walk I had always dreamed of from the moment I’d laid eyes on her. At the corner, she faced me, cupped my hands in hers, rose on her toes, and kissed me. Her taste was almost like toasted bread. She leaned on her heels and studied my face. The glimmering hair was falling from her pins in long, fragrant rivers and her skin was a kind of living marble. Her mouth, thick red with cherry lipstick, was unbearable, and I began to kiss her again.

  She pushed me away.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Don’t take any of this to mean anything,” she replied. “I just felt like kissing you. I only came to her because I wanted to see where you lived. Your mother is crazy, by the way. I don’t know how you live with her. She’s a monster.” Collette’s eyes turned hard. “Maybe that’s what you think we have in common. Our fathers. Maybe that’s why you hang on my apron like a little puppy. But it’s a ridiculous comparison. My father never drank. He never had women. He was never cruel. My father was an angelic man. He was killed for his beliefs. He was a poet. Oh, don’t look so stung, like the little boy who got a bad grade on his homework.”

  “But the way you kissed me.”

  “I’m in a strange mood today,” she said. “None of it means a thing. Who knows why I do these things?”

  She ran to the station, and I slouched back to my mother’s house.

  After this, Collette became frantic about leaving the Soviet Union. She applied again for permission to emigrate, was again rejected. Normally, one was not allowed to reapply before six months had passed, but she did anyway, and they accepted her papers. She saw this as a good sign, an excellent sign, a miracle, in fact.

  “They’re tired of me,” she said. “They want me out.”

  But this was no different from every other time she applied, first securing an invitation from invented relatives in Israel and then collecting signatures from her place of work, her local committee, her building committee, all of whom were required to give their individual permission for her to emigrate. She had, as always, to prove she owed no obligations, no debts. At the end of all this, when she brought her dozens of documents to OVIR, they looked at her with great exasperation and explained as to a pet dog: “Haven’t we told you before? You need to have your father’s signature, too.”

  “He’s dead,” she reminded them, “you know that. You accepted my application the last time, and the time before that.”

  “Well, then, produce the death certificate,” they said.

  So she went to organize the death certificate, something her grandfather had failed to do and which she herself could not bear to do either, but now she had no choice. However, when she arrived at the Registrar of Vital Statistics, she was told it was not possible to execute her request at this time. Other documents were needed. She explained that her father had been arrested in 1953.

  “And?” they said.

  “And we haven’t seen him since.”

&
nbsp; “How do you know he didn’t just leave? Lots of men abandon their families. Maybe he knew what you would become.”

  “He was arrested,” she repeated.

  “You saw him arrested?”

  “No, obviously. I was an infant.”

  “But you have witnesses?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then we suggest you apply to the police or to the Bureau of Prisons.”

  “What are they going to tell me?”

  “You have to ask them.”

  Of course there was no such thing as the Bureau of Prisons. And the local militia either had no records or was not willing to share them. She applied to her local Soviet and received a formal letter explaining that it was not the appropriate authority in such matters. She went several times to the reception room of the Main Directorate of Corrections at the Ministry of Justice, but there was never anyone there to meet with her, though she had arranged one appointment after another. Finally she declared she would go to the KGB itself. “Why not? They’re the ones who killed him.”

  I told her, “Enough. No one will tell you anything. They were just playing with you. You should know by now, they have no intention of letting you go.”

  But there was no reasoning with her. She went with signs and posters to the Lubyanka. The guards threw her to the ground. She came again the next day. They pushed her, threatened her, kicked her. One of them began to arrest her but then, unaccountably, didn’t. On the third day there appeared one or two reporters from Western magazines and a TV crew from Spain. She was briefly detained, then let go. After that, nothing more happened, but from that time on she was well known in the West, and prominent people began to visit her from America and England, bringing religious items for which she had no use, but also things she could sell, like miniature tape recorders and blue jeans. She was adopted by a large number of families in different towns in America, and people wore stainless-steel bracelets with her name on them, and the Council on Soviet Jewry opened a case file on her, and the State Department of the United States of America raised her name a bit closer to the top of their list, and Hadassah did an ad in the New York Times about refuseniks and one of the larger photos was of Collette. All of these things came to be known to us through emissaries or through her friend Charlie, who often brought people to see her. But none of this assuaged her. She feverishly wrote to American politicians. She made videos of herself appealing for help and smuggled them to Jewish organizations. And though she knew that her every move was watched, noted, recorded, and analyzed, she began to disappear for long stretches. She had new friends, of whom I knew nothing. She bought herself a chalkboard by which she could speak to people in silence, but she never used it with me. “Don’t be silly,” she would say, “what do you and I have to hide?” But she would return sometimes with notes in her pockets, which she would burn in the ashtray or tear into little pieces and flush down the toilet.

 

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