Libra (33 page)

“This is understood. They collect and analyze. It can be helpful to someone in your position if you cooperate. Let’s face it, you are in a cramped position. If I am a Mr. Collings and I see cooperation from an individual who can use and appreciate a better-paying job, then I am inclined to make a call. This happens all the time.”

Lee bounced the child on his knee to quiet her down.

“Also, George, I would like to publish ‘The Kollective.’ ”

“I would advise you no. I would say no, this is not right for you at this time. Let us look at the work. Then we discuss publication. You will be compensated one way or another, I guarantee this. These people have a thousand ways. They reach across the world. It’s amazing. How do you think you re-entered this country? When a person defects, his name is put on the FBI’s watch list. There is a lookout card that is prepared in such cases. But they returned your passport. They let Marina in. They gave you a loan and let you in.”

“They were keeping an eye all that time.”

“They’re still keeping an eye. You’re an interesting individual. I’m sure they would very much like to learn about your contacts in the Soviet Union. We’ll have a nice talk, you and I, in private somewhere, without the baby listening in.”

George laughed. They both laughed.

First Freitag and his partner, now this man Collings. They were swarming all over him like ants on a melon rind.

He looked at Marina. She was standing slightly curled, listening carefully to someone. Even in the heat and smoke she looked wind-scrubbed and fresh. Never love me for my weaknesses, he wanted to say. Never take the blame for me. Never think it is your fault when I am the one. I am always the one.

 

 

He slapped her on the side of the head and she took half a swing at him. He sat down and opened a magazine. She could tell he was turning the pages without really looking. She wanted something to throw. She grabbed a sheet of paper and crumpled it up and threw it at him. It bounced off his arm but he didn’t react. She went to the table and ate some of her dinner, looking at him. She stared hard. She wanted to make him uncomfortable, make it hard for him to read. She felt stupid, throwing a piece of paper.

“No cigarettes,” he said. “I do not want you smoking. That is period, forever.”

“If I want to smoke once in a while.”

“No good for baby. Very, very bad. You could not fill my bathtub? It is too much to come home, for me to expect a warm bath is ready, after a day of noise and sweat.”

“I don’t smoke too much. It is reasonable, what I smoke.”

“Lazy, lazy girl.”

“I make dinner. I scrub on my knees.”

“I scrub on my knees,” he said.

He flung the magazine sidearm, whipped it hard against the wall. The baby started in to cry. He got up and walked over to Marina.

“I scrub on my knees,” he said.

He hit her in the face. She sat in the chair, with leftover food in her plate.

“I scrub on my knees.”

She covered up. He hit her again. Then he went back to his chair and picked up a book. She took the plate of leftovers to the sink and left it there without scraping the food into the little pail. She left it there for him to clean. He would do it too. There was always something lying around after a fight that he would carefully clean.

“You tell those Russians how we live our lives, about our sex, our private lives.”

“This is how friends communicate,” she said.

“Everything is public for you.”

“I trust friends, that they understand how things are. Who else do I talk to? I need these friends.”

“You don’t need to tell our private life. I don’t want them coming here. Keep them out.”

“I must keep your mother out. I must keep my friends out.”

“My own brother told the FBI.”

“It’s no secret where we live. What did he tell? People know where we live. We can’t hide where we live.”

He read the book. She turned on the tap and watched water swirl into the drain. The baby was crying.

“You like your wine,” he said, not really talking to her.

“Teach me English.”

“You wait for them to refill your wine.”

“I never loved you. I took pity on a foreigner.”

“Meanwhile cigarettes.”

“I tell my friends how you hit me. He doesn’t hit so hard. It’s just that I have soft skin. That’s why they see the marks.”

She was standing at the sink with her back to the room. She heard him get up and come toward her. She picked up a sponge and began cleaning the edges of the sink. He hit her in the side of the face. He stood there a moment, deciding whether one was enough. Then he went and sat down and she wet the sponge and worked a stain out of the countertop.

They were unloading across the street. She heard truck engines, men’s voices. She had another bite of leftovers and cleaned the windowsill behind the sink.

“I tell them he is careful of my well-being. He hits very lightly. It’s only my fair skin that makes it look so bad.”

He came over and started pummeling her on both arms. She turned off the tap. He hit her high on the arms, using open hands.

“I tell them it isn’t his fault if I bruise so easily.”

She put her hands to the sides of her head for protection. He kept hitting her on the upper arms like some kid’s game of slap-the-arm. He hit in rhythm, hitting with the right hand, then the left. He worked quietly behind her, one and a-two, breathing through his nose. She could feel the labor of his concentration.

 

 

She lay in the dark and thought of the paper she’d crumpled and thrown. It was lesson number seven. An elderly man in the Russian colony sent her pages in the mail to improve her English. At the top of the first page he wrote in large, large letters, in Russian, My name is
Marina.
She was supposed to write the English words below. Lesson number two,
I live in Fort Worth.
Lesson number three, We
buy groceries on Tuesday.
Each lesson had its own page. She mailed him the finished pages and he corrected them and mailed them back, with new lessons for her to work on. Now lesson seven was crumpled and he would wonder how it happened.

Lee came out of the bathroom and got into bed. She felt how he carefully eased into bed so he wouldn’t disturb her if she was asleep. She was facing away from him, of course.

She thought of Holland again. This was a recent thing, out of nowhere, thinking of Holland, of their train journey across Europe and her surprise at seeing Dutch villages and hearing church bells ring. It is the cleanest country in the world, unbelievably clean, with cozy houses and spotless streets and fences in the meadows that are perfectly straight.

She didn’t want her baby sucking nervous milk.

She thought they would have a life that was not unusual in any way. Simple moments adding up. They had matching scars on the arm, which meant they were marked by fate to meet and fall in love.

She thought of walking the aisles of Montgomery Ward. She went in out of the heat to piped-in music and little ringing bells. The floors were polished. The aisles were immensely long, bordered with cosmetics in display cases and counters full of shiny handbags, with dresses spreading into other rooms. Fragrances drifting everywhere.

He wanted to go to college at night and take courses in politics and economics. But there was the need to make a living which interfered.

She saw him from a distance even when he was hitting her. He was never fully there.

Mamochka bought her modest shorts, pleated, with deep pockets. This was a difference of opinion.

She knew he was trying to sense if she was awake. He was on the verge of saying something or leaning over to touch. He would probably touch, rise on an elbow and touch her on the hip with his hand curled soft. She felt his desire like an airstream in the dark. It was absolutely there. He was waiting, thinking if this was the time. His own wife and he had to think.

She thought of Holland again.

She thought of landing in New York. One night in a hotel in the middle of cascading neon. Rivers and lakes of neon.

He is someone you see from a distance.

Fragrances. The floors remarkably clean. She stood in an area with TVs stacked everywhere. She watched TV half the morning, five different programs side by side. She walked the aisles. It was cool and peaceful. Nobody talked to you unless you asked a question or made a purchase and she didn’t have the means of doing either.

He went out to find food and she was alone with the baby in New York, an old hotel, and she took a washcloth and cleaned the grime off the venetian blinds.

She sensed he was going to touch, he was making up his mind to touch, after the beating, after everything they’d said.

They were brought together by fate but she wasn’t sure who he really was. Sharing the bathroom she wasn’t sure. Making love she didn’t know who he was.

When she learned English he would be less distant. It was absolutely true.

We buy groceries on Tuesday.

They made love, when they did, in a tender way, full of honest forgiving.

 

 

There is a broadsheet plastered crookedly to a wall near their bungalow.

THE VATICAN IS THE WHORE OF REVELATION.

Lee translates for Marina.

 

 

Marguerite was calm. She stood at the ironing board running the iron over her uniform blouse. She faced the living room, which had a sofa with a mound of bright pillows, two comfortable chairs, a writing desk and TV set and a decorative stand with ivy twisting out of a long pot. She ironed the uniform every chance, keeping it crisp and fresh. She worked in other people’s homes, by word of mouth, some of the best homes in Fort Worth, taking care of babies of the rich.

And I mentioned to the woman that it is two weeks to Lee’s birthday and he doesn’t have work clothes, so she said, “Mrs. Oswald, what build is he?” And I told her. And he was about the same build as her husband. And she got out the work clothes her husband didn’t want, some worn-out pairs of pants, she wanted me to pay, for ten dollars. Here is a woman, she knows I make a hard living, she knows they are a young couple starting a home in a new country. This is being rich in Fort Worth, asking payment from a nurse for used clothing. I am calm about it today, your honor, but this to me is very strong in my mind, that here is another instance of a troubled situation. Because from the very first day I looked in his face and saw a different boy. And I was like, What have they done to my boy over there? Because his skin was not fair and smooth as previous. Because his face was drawn, a tint of sand to a tint of ash gray. Because his hair was kinky out of nowhere. Because his hair was coming out, which he says himself, from a full head of hair to badly thinning in front that you could practically see his scalp. We had him bend his head down, Robert and I, to where we could actually look at the top of his head in a bright light. Judge, this is a family where the men have always displayed full heads of hair and he is still a boy. He said it is the cold of Russia. I thought to myself it is shock treatments. This is my conclusion, his being an agent of our government and lost for a year. There are many ways this figures out, remembering the incident where we sat watching the television in my apartment on West Seventh Street after she came home with a cancan petticoat and some hose that Lee bought with a few dollars from Robert and me, and we sat watching the television and she said to me, “Mama, it is Gregory Peck,” and I looked at the movie and it was Gregory Peck sitting on a horse. Now, about my suspicions does a foreign girl know movie stars? I think it is frankly something to examine. I know I have not traveled abroad but when I think of Minsk and the frozen cold, where are the movie magazines in this city? Where are the theaters that show our American West? I am a person who plunges straight into things and this is an incident that shows the character of what I am trying to bring out. Who is this girl and what is she doing here? Is this girl trained to know more than she lets on? I try to talk to Lee about is he happy, does she run a proper household, because there are a lot of Russian friends who are established, with cars and homes, that have publicly interfered. They could not see this Russian girl do without. She pictured America in her mind and these people seem to think she should not be disappointed. I am calm about it today but I am the one who bought her a little longer shorts. The Lord would know me for a liar if I said I stopped bringing things after he told me to stop, but it was only the shorts and the parakeet, and the parakeet was just to give a touch of color because it was bright green, to color up a home in a new country.

He freed the parakeet. He opened the cage and let it go. The boy who adored animals, judge.

But about the shorts it is, “No, Mama, I no like.” And I said, “Marina, you are a married woman and it is proper for you to have a little longer shorts than the younger girls.” But it is, “No, Mama, this no good.” And I am strongly saying that this girl was not home. And this man was working. And I saw myself that this man came home and didn’t have any supper in front of him. This couple does not have a maid to give this workingman his supper. We are a family that has struggled to stay together. His daddy collected insurance premiums right up to the moment he went down on the lawn, mowing the lawn in a raging heat. It is Marguerite and Lee ever since.

 

 

A family expects you to be one thing when you’re another. They twist you out of shape. You have a brother with a good job and a nice wife and nice kids and they want you to be a person they will recognize. And a mother in a white uniform who grips your arms and weeps. You are trapped in their minds. They shape and hammer you. Going away is what you do to see yourself plain.