Valya hooted loudly at this. Lenny looked less entertained.
“For Americans, it’s all or nothing,” Lenny said. “They all love to talk about their freedoms, but they can’t live and let live. I’ll tell you a story: My mother’s first job in New York was in the programming department of Bloomingdale’s. She didn’t know anything about programming; she was just trying to keep her head above water. I got the flu, and she couldn’t take any days off, so my sister stayed home with me while Mama went to work. The school called. Mama told them that I was sick and that my thirteen-year-old sister was staying home to look after me. They sent a cop and a social worker to our apartment, and threatened to arrest my mother if she continued to keep Masha out of school. Didn’t she know she was supposed to hire a sitter in these situations? A sitter! My mother didn’t have money to buy herself new shoes! That was the last time she told the truth to Americans.”
Valya shook her head. “But Mama kept her job.”
“It wasn’t an easy time,” I said. “My first job was in computers too, but downtown. I’d take the subway every afternoon to Sixty-fourth Street, and we’d meet at a Chinese restaurant across the street from the department store, where I’d help her write up her programming code. She’d take it back upstairs to type it. We survived like that for months.”
“What a good husband,” Valya said with flattering affection in her eyes.
“Not a good teacher, though,” Lenny mumbled. “I remember all the yelling.”
“I don’t recall any yelling,” I said, trying to sound good-natured.
“Oh, come on. Truth only at the dacha. You were always yelling at Mom, for being dense, for not picking the programming up fast enough, for not picking up English fast enough. It wasn’t like she’d grown up speaking it.”
I grinned painfully. But Lenny wasn’t done.
“You said so yourself, that Mama probably would have divorced you if she hadn’t been so dependent on you those early years.”
For all his criticism of America, it struck me that Lenny was the most forcibly American one at this table: a gabber, a confessor, an over-sharer. Fishing out desiccated bits of family “dysfunction” from the black holes of memory to vindicate himself. But vindication from what? You child, I thought.
But in the bathroom, splashing water on my face, I tried to put the episode at lunch behind me. The important thing was to get Lenny alone. I was in luck: stepping outside, I found him on the veranda, reclining amid the Turkish cushions. I had rehearsed what I’d say to him: Son, listen, I don’t think it was those friends of yours who landed you in jail….But the words now seemed to possess a grubby hollowness. Observing him among the bright pillowcases, his pale thighs spreading out from his nylon running shorts, I was reminded of the slatternly indifference of a pasha in an opium den. “Have you given some more thought to your exit plan?” I said, sitting down beside him. “If you want, I can go to your apartment and pack your things,” I offered in what I hoped was a softer tone. “I don’t think we should be losing time.”
He looked at me with toil-worn eyes, as if I were the last torment of his afternoon, then propped himself up on his elbows. “You’ve been here, what, a week? And you’re already micromanaging my life?”
“I’m not micromanaging. I’m trying to get you out of danger.”
“Why don’t you let me decide that, okay? I talked to Austin. He had a lawyer look at our end of the deal—I’m completely untouchable.”
Just tell him the truth, I thought. But instead what I said was “Goddamn it, Lenny. Today you’re out, tomorrow you’ll be back in. And lawyers won’t do you any good here. You get on the wrong side of someone and they’ll spare no effort to hunt you down.”
I knew this outrage was camouflage, but my anger felt real. What Lenny needed now was hardness, disciplined talk, not more softness.
“Cool it,” he said.
“I will not cool it….You are being grossly selfish.”
“Selfish?” In his eyes was an expression of chagrin or amusement, or possibly both.
“If you land in jail again, who do you think will bail you out? You want to force me and your mother to mortgage the house? You want to bankrupt us in our old age? Because that’s what we’ll have to do to save your skin.”
Browbeating him, I was so steeped in my pretense that I saw no way out. A confession seemed now like a mistake. Lenny would only add it to the satisfying tally of wrongs I had inflicted on him, and I would lose what little clout I had left.
“Don’t worry: calling you for help would be the last thing on my mind,” he said.
I tried to steady my breathing. “Lenny, I know it’s not easy to put so much of yourself in a plan that doesn’t turn out the way you want. I lost seven years working on a dissertation that they never gave me any credit for. But you know what I thought when I got denied? I thought, It’s better than losing those years in the camps, like my mother.”
There was a pinch in his brow when he said, “Baba Flora didn’t regret her life. And neither do I. She had a front seat on history.”
I thought my jaw might drop. “Is that what she called it?”
“She always said, ‘The only way to learn who you are is to leave home.’ ”
“Did she, now? And who are you?” I stared at him. “Do you have any idea?”
Lenny stared back at me. “I do, actually. Not that you’d understand.” The chagrined expression had deepened the groove between his eyes. “You act like my time here has been a big waste. You think I regret not having spent all these years sitting in a cubicle with four dudes in monkey suits, looking like a diagram of the Chain of Evolution? Dreaming about how I’m going to retire at forty-five, stash away my cash in a T-bill at seven percent, move to a Tahitian island, and have sex on Viagra for the rest of my life? ’Cause that’s how the guys I know in America live. No, thanks. I’ve been part of something bigger here.”
“History?” I said, more mockingly than I’d intended.
“My life’s been an adventure, is what I’m saying. I know that doesn’t mean much to you, but I can honestly say I’ve experienced things about myself—”
“Adventure?” I said. “That’s what they call it when everyone comes back alive. Otherwise it’s called a tragedy. That’s what my father’s life was—a tragedy. And my mother’s, too, for that matter.”
“Yeah? She didn’t seem to think so.”
“That’s because she was a narcissist, Lenny,” I said. “She didn’t think about anybody but herself. She was a grade-A delusional narcissist. Like you.”
These last two words, uttered by mistake, fell hard on the planes of his face. For a moment I thought he might cry. But he only looked at me with bitter, laughing eyes. “I get what you’re trying to do, Pa. You think if you can make me feel small enough you can put me in your suitcase and take me home.” He stood up. “You think this is the first time I’ve been threatened? You think it’s the first time I’ve been thrown in jail? It wasn’t. Trust me, I’ve learned to withstand worse than the shit you’re flinging.”
This came as a surprise to me. I was shocked that Lenny had been able to keep something like this private. But what I said was “Well, you’ve really become a Russian, then. In love with your suffering.”
He stood up. His face, above me, looked merely disappointed, nothing more. “Like I said, I don’t expect you to understand.”
“You’re right. I don’t understand.” I couldn’t stop myself now. “I can’t understand it, because this ‘pioneer of human experience’ business is not a model for being a man, Lenny. It’s not a model for leaving a mark on the world. What you’re describing is just a recipe for”—I couldn’t help thinking of my mother again—“for being a leaf on the ripples of life!”
How oddly satisfying it felt to say this, even as it undercut any progress I’d hoped to make with my son. How grimly triumphant, like kicking myself in the groin.
Lenny was at the screen door, his eyes still gliste
ning with indignation, when Valya appeared on the porch. Had she been standing there all along, in the shadows? “Well, what’s happening here? Not more politics, I hope. The dacha is for relaxing, not for solving world problems. That’s our rule.”
I was again at eye level with her mighty, yeomanly thighs, which her blue sweatpants, far from concealing, only demonstrated as capable of overpowering even the loosest of clothes. I watched my son go inside and felt an ancient sadness. Valya held a zinc bucket with that morning’s mushroom crop, and over her shoulder was slung a bag through whose plastic netting I could see the outlines of apples, cheese, pickle jars. “I’m off on a walk to Aprelevka to bring some food for a friend,” she said. “You wanted to see the damage, didn’t you? I wouldn’t mind some help.” She handed me the canvas bag of food without waiting for an answer. “A walk is good for our old bones.”
—
I CARRIED THE BAG while Valya played the role of tour guide. We were walking down a seventeenth-century road, she said. Peter the Great had given all this land to the Demidov family in reward for manufacturing his army’s weapons. Valya pointed off to the right, where one of the dilapidated Demidov mansions still stood, its Arcadian grandeur reduced to a redbrick crumble. Wild growth had reclaimed the rows of classical columns. Slender maples and a riot of saplings sprouted from the roofs of the ancient serfs’ barracks. Rain-soaked pornography and green beer bottles littered our path through the woods. “Supposedly, this is all being preserved as a national landmark, but, as you can see, our mentality…” Valya nodded at the trash. Farther down the road, we met the “monstrosities” she’d warned me about, new mansions whose enviable views of the forest were blocked by the enormous security walls erected to guard them. I could see only the upper stories of these novostroiki, no different from the typical American McMansion except for one detail: they had what looked like garage doors cut into the brick. It took me a startled moment to realize that these were security gates, rolled down over enormous windows.
“It’s thieves who are most afraid of other thieves,” Valya expounded. “We call these Houses for the Poor. Homeless Shelters. You should be here on a Sunday morning after one of their parties. They stand around, hung over, glancing at everyone who passes like a dog they want to kick. Like ‘Kto ty takoy? Who the hell are you to look at me?’ They’ve got that look like in our army: ‘We’ll punish you.’ ”
“No less punishing than the Party bosses of the old days.”
“Oh sure, now everyone lambastes ‘the Party.’ What was the ‘Party’? It was thousands of people. Millions of people in the Party. If you wanted to do something, be an activist, improve things, you could find channels through the Party. Now a handful of old KGB-ists run everything. Vladimir Vladimirovich and his judo partners have everyone in a chokehold.”
We walked onward with our loads. On our left were the novostroiki with their mounted security cameras, and on our right, the old log dachas—faded yellow, peeling green, guarded by yapping, mangy dogs. To our left, paranoid New Russia; to our right the decomposing Soviet Union.
“In 1948, Stalin gave all this land to the army general staff,” Valya informed me. “After they’d won the war for him. The generals each got a full hectare. The division commanders got a half-hectare, and so on down the line. Fifteen years ago the developers started buying the big plots and doing four-part splits. If we’d held out, we would have gotten even more for our land. But what we got was enough to buy my house. This friend we’re going to see—her family divided the land up long ago among themselves and sold it, but she’s the last holdout. Oh, she’s gotten offers, of course. But she refuses—only because she’s got nowhere else to go, poor soul. I’m surprised no one has set her house on fire yet. Don’t look shocked. That’s the way ours do it around here. When they rip up the old fencing and put up their horrible walls, they toss the wire and pickets right into her yard. You’ll see for yourself.”
—
“YOO-HOO! INNA IVANOVNA!” VALYA called when we arrived. She let herself in through the open door while I waited on the front steps and observed the sad sight of the yard. Splintered wood and wire lay about as if after a tornado. Mold-rotted bricks protruded from the foundation like teeth from decayed gums. A bathtub with broken feet collected rainwater beside a rusted old kanistra of the sort once used to store gasoline. Aside from a meager vegetable garden and some gnarled apple trees, the yard was overrun with weeds.
Descending the steps, Inna Ivanovna finally emerged: a tiny babushka with shorn hair, and hands as arthritic as her apple trees. She wore a ratty gray sweater, sweatpants, and felt slippers.
“Inna Ivanovna, I hope you don’t mind us stopping by like this—we were just passing through. This is my friend Yuliy Leontevich. He’s come here all the way from America.”
“Please, come in—just step over that,” Inna Ivanovna said, motioning to the piles of cotton insulation littering the floor. She seemed not to care whether I was from America or the moon.
“Some mushrooms for you, from our forest, and berries to make a compote,” said Valya, then set out everything, including the cheese, pickles, and vegetables, on the old woman’s rickety kitchen table.
“Oh, Valya. You didn’t need to.”
“We’re leaving Sunday, and all this is just going to spoil during the week,” she said, though anyone could see the food was fresh from the store.
“Come, come; please, don’t mind this mess.” The old elfin creature kicked another pile of insulation from the door. “My son brought this over so I could winterize that side of the house. It gets so cold.”
Did she really spend the winter in this place? I did not want to believe it. I could not explain how a house like this could remain standing, let alone stay warm. Its walls were water-damaged, its plywood partitions warped. Above the kitchen table hung a round cardboard frame lamp of a sort I had not seen in four decades. The cloth stretched over it like a pair of old bloomers. The wiring that fed it was ancient ceramic-coated circuitry, pinned with staples to the walls because inside the walls the wires would surely catch fire. Inna Ivanovna sat watching Valya put the food into a knee-high refrigerator, her back pressed against an ancient wood-fired wall oven. Was it possible she still used it? Above a low cupboard, like an icon, hung a portrait of young Pushkin.
“How long are you staying in our posyolok?” Inna Ivanovna inquired kindly.
Valya answered for me. “Yulik is flying back to America next week. He lives there. He’s Lenny’s father.”
“Who?”
“Lenny. Katya’s young man.”
“Katusha is a sweet girl,” the old woman said, smiling at me.
“Yes,” I averred.
—
“HOW CAN THAT WOMAN’S CHILDREN let her live in that death trap?” I asked on our way home.
“Her son lives in her apartment in Moscow. He’s a nihilist. That’s my diagnosis.” Valya snapped her thumb and forefinger against her throat in the sign for a drinker. “Owes everyone money. Makes just enough for a smoke and a bottle.”
“I guess even being the grandson of a division commander can’t rescue someone from that fate.”
“No, it can’t. Look at our Alyosha! Didn’t lack for anything growing up. Piano lessons, tutors. Ninochka was flying all over the world with her delegations, but there were four grandparents, and just one little miracle between them.”
“So what happened?”
“The nineties were hardest of all on Alyosha’s generation. Everything collapsed just as they were getting on their feet, and the foreign companies only wanted to hire kids right out of university—before they’d been spoiled by our Soviet system. The ones like Alyosha, who were in their thirties and forties when it all fell down—it was discouraging to watch some of them flounder.”
“You’re older,” I said, “and you’ve done all right.”
“I’d do all right anywhere.” And I knew this was true.
It occurred to me that what Valya had in
herited from her high-Soviet upbringing might be what my son lacked: a sense of discretion, an instinct for keeping her mouth shut. I decided to risk it and ask if among the people she knew there might be a worker at the FSB archives.
“That little place on Neglinnaya?” Valya said, raising a brow. “What do you need there?”
“I want to find my parents’ dossiers.”
“That’s right—weren’t they ‘enthusiasts’?”
Lenny had clearly briefed her on our family history.
I told her about the trouble I’d run into. “I leave Tuesday morning,” I said.
“You can always ask your son to get them on your behalf, can’t you? Just go to a notary.”
She certainly knew the rules of the place, but it wasn’t the response I was hoping for. I didn’t want to tell her that I still held out hope that Lenny would be out of the country before I was.
“I don’t need to burden him with another task,” I said. “He’s too busy for that sort of thing. He won’t even inform us when he plans to come home for a visit.”
“Uh-hm.”
Perhaps I did protest too much, because Valya said, “Or maybe you don’t want him snooping around what he won’t understand. People didn’t exactly show their best side in those interrogation rooms, did they?”
I smiled.
“Understood,” she said. “Aren’t you worried that I’ll read them?”
“I’d expect nothing less. What honest Russian wouldn’t read someone else’s file?”
“You’re a mean one. Give me your letter; I’ll inquire.”
“I’ll see that you won’t take a loss on it,” I said, gratefully.
For a while we walked in pleasant silence. And soon, with the sun low but the evening still bright, we were back on the road that led to the house. “I like you, Yuliy,” she said, when we passed the sign announcing Alabino, “so I’ll be frank. Lenny told me what you’ve come to talk to him about. It’s none of my business, but I know how these arrangements work. If he leaves, it’ll be the end of him and Katya. I’m not very objective, I know. I don’t want my niece’s heart broken. She’s a good girl.”
The Patriots Page 38