The Free World (16 page)

His brother was tireless and liable to appear anywhere, selling anything. On the day of the pope’s inauguration, Alec had expected to see him among the scores of peddlers dotting the streets leading to St. Peter’s Square. He saw other Russians, some familiar, who were taking advantage of the unique fiscal opportunity. As in the case of the papal funeral, there were many religious knickknacks on offer, as well as postcards depicting the outgoing and incoming popes. Their presence was drowsily tolerated by a cordon of green-clad policemen who ensured that the peddlers kept a prescribed distance from the square.

Alec, Polina, and Lyova pressed forward as far as the crowd would allow. Lyova took the lead, banking on Christian goodwill, and tried to plow his way through the Catholics. When someone objected, Lyova pointed to Polina and delivered a short speech in Italian that caused everyone within earshot to gaze at her with a mixture of curiosity and sympathy.

—What did you say to them? Polina asked, when they’d advanced moderately forward.

—That you are pregnant and Russian and that you want to get near the pope so that he might bless your unborn child, whom you have liberated from a godless land.

To his mischievous smile, Polina responded with a grim look that cast a pall over everything. Lyova stopped trying to press ahead. They hit the final marks reserved for them as minor players in the pageant, beside a skinny African priest, four Capuchin friars in their brown robes and knotted sashes, and two Irish girls with plump freckled shoulders against whose earthly allure the Church could never enlist enough priests.

In the end, however, Alec didn’t remember the inauguration for the freckled Irish girls, or Polina’s injured mood, or his pinwheeling thoughts about Masha. He didn’t remember it for the opulence of the ceremony—the censers, and scepters, and the ranks of shuffling clergy. He remembered it for his father’s friend, Josef Roidman, whom he spied in the crowd sometime near the conclusion of the ceremony. Roidman had caught his eye accidentally, only because Alec happened to turn his head at a particular moment. Before he recognized Roidman’s face, he saw the gleam of the Soviet medals pinned to his blazer. From the medals, Alec raised his eyes to see the face. After the slightest pause, they both smiled in recognition. Roidman even waved genially with the top of his crutch.

But by the time Alec gained Polina’s attention, Roidman was no longer there.

—Who? Polina asked.

Alec looked again but didn’t see him. Then he heard a sound, like a collective intake of breath. A second later, he spotted Roidman through the crowd, remarkably on the opposite side of the security barrier, hobbling onto the red-carpeted path that formed a straight line to the pope. Throughout the crowd, various cries rang out. Roidman didn’t slacken his pace. Swinging forward, he reached inside his jacket with his free hand and produced a small Canadian flag on a stick, the kind handed out by the Canadian embassy. He managed to wave it energetically a few times, and to shout something unintelligible, before he was scooped up by the police. He didn’t put up any
resistance, and they carried him off like a little parcel. Just as quickly as he’d appeared, he’d disappeared. The entire incident hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds, and Alec wasn’t even sure how many, of the thousands present, had observed it. Or if it had caught the attention of the pope or of the dignitaries to his left, including the man for whom the display had been intended.

Grinning proudly, Alec turned to Lyova and Polina, and said: Ours.

My dearest Lola,

It’s always sad to see the summer end, but this year more than ever. That’s because it occurred to me that we will have now been parted for an entire season. Compared with a week or a month, an entire season sounds like a lot. Here the very first leaves are starting to turn and so I notice more that you are not around.

I know you want to hear our news, but there isn’t very much to tell. Mama and Papa are about the same. The main difference is that Papa has been given a promotion. Well, I call it a promotion. He isn’t sailing anymore, but he is working at an administrative position within the ministry. So he is home all the time now and we get to see more of him. He’s still getting used to the change, but I think it’s for the best. He wasn’t going to sail forever.

For me, it is back to school, of course. Before classes I was invited to attend a meeting of the Komsomol. You will probably not be surprised to hear that the Komsomol leader was very curious to know how you were faring in Rome. He and some of the other comrades enlightened me about the true state of affairs
in the West. They turned out to be remarkably well informed about the conditions in Italy as well as in America. They read me accounts in
Pravda
and from our own local Komsomol newspaper. Naturally, I told them that I was familiar with much of this information, since these were precisely the sorts of articles that Papa has been considerately leaving around the apartment. The meeting concluded on the warmest possible terms. I agreed with them that you had made a dreadful error, and that I, in my capacity as your sister, had failed to dissuade you from making this destructive and counterrevolutionary decision.

As I wrote you before, I have become quite friendly with your mailman. He has introduced me to others like him. I’ve found them all to be very intriguing and energetic. They’ve been kind to me and have treated me almost as if I were one of them. Twice already I’ve spent an evening with them at one of their apartments. Did you know that your mailman sings and plays the guitar remarkably well? I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite like him. He knows by heart literally dozens of songs in Russian and Latvian, but also many others in his native language. Just like our songs, theirs are beautiful and sad—and, if anything, sadder. He’s made an effort to teach me, but as you know, memory has never been my strong suit. He claims that my forgetfulness is no match for his perseverance. I think he may be in for quite a shock.

A
s the saying went, Wonders will never cease, Alec thought.

He’d gone before the dour Riva Davidovna and offered the Karl-sanctioned apartment but she had declined it. The previous day, her son had found them a place in Ladispoli. She thanked Alec for his offer, and mentioned a family from Dnepropetrovsk that was experiencing tremendous difficulties in this regard.

The family from Dnepropetrovsk could burn, Alec thought, and cursed himself for not having acted more swiftly. By the next morning the Horvitzes’ underthings would be part of the Soviet undergarment exhibit, dripping on some balcony in Ladispoli.

Alec had his exchange with Riva Davidovna in the pensione corridor, outside the door to their room. Other émigrés scavenged about the corridor, en route to continue their scavenging elsewhere. As Riva Davidovna prepared to return to her room, her son appeared at the far end of the corridor and skulked balefully over to them. With him was another man, all but recognizable at a distance, and then altogether unmistakable.

—This is the friend of Dmitri’s who helped us find the apartment,
Riva Davidovna said, referring to Minka the thief, who extended his hand for a meaty shake.

—As you can see, Minka said, I am still here.

—You have my sympathies, Alec said.

—I’m sure, Minka replied.

—You know each other? Riva Davidovna inquired.

—We have a mutual friend, Alec said.

—Something like that.

Alec wasn’t sure whose friendship Minka was calling into doubt. Or why exactly Minka had bothered with the clarification at all?

—It’s a small world, Minka philosophized. Take me and Dmitri. It’s been more than three years. When we last saw each other it was on another planet. On that planet, there was no Rome. No Rome and, you could say, not much of Minsk either, eh, Dimka?

—No Rome, that’s for certain, Dmitri said churlishly.

—Yes, Minka affirmed. And now look. Here we are. Two wandering Jews. Searching for a home.

Strictly speaking, this was true, Alec thought. Though with their scarred brows and tattooed arms, their pictures would never grace the fund-raising brochures.

Putting her hand on the doorknob, Riva Davidovna informed her son about Alec’s offer.

—Is that so? Dmitri said. You find apartments for everybody or just us?

—You’re the first, Alec said.

—Yeah, and why’s that?

—Something turned up, and I remembered you.

—Me personally? Dmitri derided.

—All of you, Alec said.

—”All of us,” Dmitri mimicked. I know who you remembered.

As Riva Davidovna opened the door, Minka asked Alec about the apartment. Where it was; how he’d found it.

—Ah yes, your brother, Minka said meaningfully. He’s very adept.

Minka pointed two fingers at Dmitri and continued, in a tone
more menacing than admiring, He and his brother, Dimka, these guys know how to get ahead.

These last words Alec barely heard, because the door had been opened and he was looking at Masha. She seemed slightly disoriented, as she smoothed her dark hair and her peach-colored cotton dress. They had woken her. She had been sleeping in the afternoon heat. Her eyes drifted from her mother to her brother to him and finally to Minka the thief. Alec worked to tease out some meaning from the moment her eyes had come to rest upon him. But if he was to be honest with himself, she’d paid him no special regard. If anything, her eyes had brushed quickly over him, and lingered, if anywhere, on Minka.

Tonelessly, Riva Davidovna thanked him again and shut the door behind her. Dmitri and Minka turned for the stairwell with barely a parting glance. Left alone, Alec waited thirty seconds, long enough for Dmitri and Minka to reach the street, before taking the stairs down into the worn-out little room that served as the lobby. He was about to leave and make his way back to Viale Regina Margherita and the briefing department, when he heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Wishful thinking, reinforced by the pace and lightness of the steps, caused him to turn back. Nearing the bottom of the steps, he saw dark hair and a peach-colored dress. Whether she was there by accident or by design, he couldn’t yet tell, but whatever the case, he felt instantly vivified.

Masha reached the bottom of the steps and made it clear that her appearance was not accidental. Looking at him directly, she said, I’m glad you’re still here.

Two émigrés shoved past them coming up the stairs. Above their heads was a squalling of infants to rival a nursery.

—I’m sorry, Alec said, better over here.

He took Masha by the arm and led her to a spot at the base of the banister. She allowed herself to be touched and led.

—My mother said you found us an apartment, Masha said.

—I did, but it seems your brother found you a better one.

—Where is the one you found?

—In Ostia.

—And the one my brother found?

—Ladispoli.

—And why is Ladispoli better?

A strange question, Alec thought, if only because it seemed that all émigrés, including little children, seemed to apprehend the difference almost preternaturally.

—Some people prefer one, some the other, he said.

—What about you?

—What do I prefer?

—Yes.

—Neither.

—So where do you live? —In Rome. —Near to here? —Not really. —How far?

—Do you know the city?

—You think I would know the city if I don’t know the difference between Ostia and Ladispoli?

—I don’t know what you know.

—Not much. But don’t worry, I’ll learn. I’m a quick study. —I don’t doubt it. —So where do you live?

—Across the river from the Jewish ghetto. The neighborhood is called Trastevere. Do you want the name of the street? —Is there anything special about the street? —Other than that I live there? —Yes. —No.

—Who do you live with?

—A guy named Lyova who rents the apartment, and a woman.

—A woman or your wife?

—Both.

The admission didn’t appear to faze her.

—Is your place far from Ladispoli?

—About an hour, depending on how the trains are running.

—And from Ostia?

—About the same.

—If Ostia is so far from you, why did you find us an apartment there?

—It’s the only apartment I knew of.

—And how did you expect we would see each other?

There was no flirtation in the way she’d put the question. It was of a piece with everything else—assertive, declarative, and either extraordinarily candid or extraordinarily cunning. In any case, she’d made the leap and all that remained was for him to follow.

—I imagined I’d take the train, Alec said, precisely as he’d imagined it.

—How often?

—As often as I could.

—The train costs money.

—My work issues me a pass.

—And the time?

—I’d figure a way.

—The same for Ladispoli?

—Ladispoli is a little easier. My parents live there with my brother.

—Easier because of what you would tell your wife?

—Yes.

—How long have you been married?

—A year.

—That’s not very long.

—No.

Alec couldn’t tell if her implication was that a marriage of such short duration warranted a higher or lower standard of fidelity.

Masha didn’t inquire further about his wife. She wanted to know when they would meet again, and then went back upstairs to her mother.

C
ompared with what he saw around him, Alec believed that he might have had the most honorable of marriages. It had been founded on an act of kindness, whereas boredom, impulsiveness, and desperation seemed to be the foundations of too many others. Too many wives and husbands acted as if they wanted to annihilate each other. Incidents began as early as Vienna, with tales of wives running wild, abandoning their husbands. And in Ostia and Ladispoli, there were the common occurrences of one man leaving his wife for that of a friend. This was then typically followed by threats and imprecations and the obligatory loopy fistfight—the whole sorry spectacle played out before somebody’s distraught five-year-old.

Some couples would have divorced years earlier if not for the complications inherent in divorcing and then leaving the Soviet Union. They’d remained together just long enough to get to the free world—whose freedom they’d defined in no small measure as freedom from each other. Their stories, at least in spirit, were the negative impressions of his own.

When he started seeing Polina, he had no thought of leaving Riga. It was the summer of 1976, and most of the people leaving Riga
were Zionists. These were the sorts of people who organized surreptitious Hebrew classes. They were the ones who took jobs baking matzoh in Riga’s last remaining synagogue, and who demonstrated at Rumbuli and Bikerniki forests—gathering on the anniversaries of the massacres to collect and bury loose bones, recite prayers, and sing the Israeli national anthem. Alec had joined them once, out of curiosity—his grandmother was among the dead, her bones jumbled anonymously somewhere under the stiff November grass. This was a fact that Samuil had never tried to conceal from him and Karl. He laid flowers twice a year. He never spoke about it except to say that he was going—once to mark the anniversary of his mother’s death, and again on the anniversary of the death of his brother, whose actual grave, deep in Russia, was too far away to visit. Besides the fact that they were dead, Alec knew almost nothing about them.

It wasn’t much of a surprise to Alec that the one time he had attended the memorial service, organized by the putative Zionist agitators, the information had gotten back to his father. When the KGB didn’t send uniformed officers equipped with megaphones to disperse the participants, they sent plainclothes officers to take photographs and record names. Or just their informants.

If he’d expected sympathy—and in truth, he had—Samuil granted him none. In one motion, Samuil had opened and shut his case. Alec was a fool for gambling with his future.

—Tell me, how is it that you still haven’t learned that there is a right way and a wrong way to do things?

To listen to his father, someone might have thought that Alec was an ideologue or an activist, whereas such things didn’t interest him at all. In 1972, he was twenty, the same age as some of the conspirators who’d participated in the failed hijacking plot: a Soviet plane from Leningrad to Sweden—and from there, somehow, to Israel. He’d even known one of them, Zalmanson, an ordinary Jewish kid from Riga. When he’d read about the incident and listened to the accounts of the cartoonish show trial, he’d had a difficult time understanding the hijackers’ motivations. To him it sounded like histrionics. Was
life for a Jew in Riga so intolerable? He was a Jew; he lived in Riga; granted, it was far from perfect, but he managed all right. He certainly didn’t feel the need to hijack a plane.

Other than the one time at the memorial in Rumbuli—and three years at the synagogue for Simchas Torah—Alec didn’t involve himself with so-called dissident activities. Then again, going to the synagogue for Simchas Torah didn’t, to his mind, entirely qualify as a dissident activity. It was more like a riotous party that incidentally happened to take place at a synagogue and involved some prancing around with a torah. Jews pranced, but so did Russians and Latvians. Those who feared the KGB took the precautionary measure of doing their dancing across the street—even if, on so narrow a street, the concept of “across” was merely semantic. Those who were more daring, or more seriously committed to getting a drink, danced in the synagogue’s courtyard. And the boldest of all invited statutory perdition by taking the scrolls for a spin.

In September of ‘76, not long after the fiasco in Karl’s apartment and several months into his and Polina’s affair, Polina let Alec sweep her into the hora in the synagogue’s courtyard. Two bearded Jewish youths and a tall, burly Latvian had whirled in the middle of the circle—with the Latvian, full of drink, raising the velvet-covered torah in exuberant protest against the Soviet occupiers. At the synagogue that day had been many of the familiar faces, the fixtures of his life in Riga. Both brothers Bender had been there—Syomka still recovering from the devastation of Lilya Gordin’s betrayal. Rosa’s parents and brother, who had already applied for an exit visa, were there too.

Each time he and Polina were together, Alec suspected that it might be the last. Whenever he neared her, he saw something guarded in her eyes, like a failure of recognition.

Through the summer and fall they carried on the affair. At times they saw each other quite regularly, other times weeks might pass between their meetings. Polina had her marriage to Maxim, and when she wasn’t available, Alec took what life cast his way.

All this time, unbeknown to them, the train of their departure was approaching. At first distant and barely audible, but gaining momentum with every passing week.

Until, on a blustery afternoon in March of ‘77, after Karl had expressed his desire to emigrate, and shortly after Alec had moved into a small bachelor apartment, Polina had come to see him. Cold, and drenched from the rain, she sat down at the kitchen table and let the water drip from her hair and the hem of her coat. They exchanged all the questions and answers.
Was she sure? Yes. How could she be sure? She was sure.
And then the more delicate, unpleasant questions which he couldn’t restrain himself from asking.
And she was sure? Almost certain. But not certain? As certain as she could be. Did he want her to go into details? To provide a tally? She could do it. It wouldn’t take long. No, he didn’t want that. They could wait until it was born, then they could run the tests. Was that what he wanted? No, he didn’t want that either. So what did he want?

As gently as he could phrase it, he’d told her what he wanted.

—I did that once, she’d said. I swore I’d never do it again. Not that I believed I’d ever be faced with the choice.

He’d been unable to think clearly. His mind had raced erratically, seeking a way out. It hadn’t helped that in her condition, soaked and chilled, her lips nearly drained of color, Polina had cast an image of injured, poignant beauty.

Afterward, he’d consulted with Karl and there had been the agonizing enumeration of options.

Did he want to marry her and raise the child?

Did he not want to marry her but let her raise the child?

Alone or with her husband?

Did he want to leave Riga? And what then? Marry her? Bring a pregnant woman along? Or an infant? Emigrating was hard enough without that added burden. Karl knew of happily married women who’d aborted their pregnancies when they received their exit visas.

And what were her designs? What did she want? What could be done about her?

Even if men did it all the time, Alec had said, he didn’t want to
leave his child behind. He didn’t think he could simply forget. It would always trouble him.

But what alternative did he have if she wouldn’t agree to an abortion?

Three days after she’d delivered the news, Polina came back. The day was cold but clear, and Polina arrived this time in a very different state. Instead of martyred, clinical. Under her coat, she wore a heavy, gray wool turtleneck, whose collar rose to the line of her chin. She matched this with a long navy skirt and high black boots. Except for her face and hands, she was darkly, thickly covered. The clothes seemed chosen to negate her body, to discourage any sensual thoughts, in him or in anyone else. What other reason could there have been for such an overtly shapeless outfit? Not to conceal the pregnancy. The tiny being that had latched on inside her was less than three months old. Alec imagined it having the size and vascular translucence of a gooseberry. He pictured it in the red convection of the womb, growing, thriving, and encroaching upon his life. He’d tried to think of it in other, more positive terms, to envision it as a source of happiness. Why not? Many people were glad to have children. He also wasn’t categorically opposed to someday having a child. At some future time, he could see himself surrounded by children, horsing around with them, walking them to school, putting them to bed. Only not like this. Like this he foresaw only a tangle of complications.

And of all the tangled complications, Alec’s mind seized upon the most perplexing. By the third day, he’d seized upon it to the exclusion of everything else. It was much the same as when he’d been a very young boy and his parents had failed to come home on time. Then, too, his mind fastened on the disastrous. No amount of his grandmother’s soothing or Karl’s reasoning had any effect. He could nod and say yes, but his phantasms burned above reason. He recalled his parents’ walnut-veneer clock, and his terror at the barely perceptible creeping of its white, plastic minute hand. Again and again came the fatal automobile collision, with the sudden jolt, flailing necks, and spray of glass. The terror eased only when he heard the clatter of
heels in the corridor, the key in the lock, and inhaled the waft of his mother’s perfume as she enveloped him.

Now as he thought about the worst possible scenario—emigrating and leaving a child behind—the emigration began to feel like an imperative. He pictured himself conscience-stricken somewhere in the abstract West or, conversely, stranded by his conscience in Riga, unwilling to deny his paternity.

—Screw conscience, Karl had scoffed. Conscience is the least of your problems. You could get stuck here regardless of your conscience.

By this he meant that if Polina had the child and he was proven to be the father, he’d need her written permission to leave the country. She’d have to sign an affidavit stating that she had no claims on him. That she absolved him of material responsibilities.

—It goes without saying, Alec declared, that if I left a child behind, I’d send money. Polina would know that.

—She might or she might not, Karl countered.

—She’s not vindictive. She’d never cause problems.

—Have you ever stiffed her with a kid before?

—She’s not the type. Of this I’m sure.

—You don’t know, and you can’t know. Even if you’d stiffed her before, there’s no telling how a person will react from one day to the next. There’s only one way to avoid a problem and that’s not to create it in the first place.

—Well, the problem exists.

—It does and it doesn’t, Karl said. But wait much longer and it will be
finita la comedia.

—She won’t agree to it.

—Is this the first time you’ve gotten a woman pregnant?

—What does that have to do with anything?

—You charmed your way in; charm your way out.

—Charming in is a lot easier.

—Yeah, well, write that on your forehead so you’ll remember for next time.

—Anything else?

—What else? You have to take care of it. I can’t do it for you. But if you haven’t got one yourself, I know of a good doctor. Quiet, expert, and clean.

—Rosner?

—You’ve used him?

—Never needed to. Have you?

—I know him strictly by reputation.

Apart from recommending a doctor, Karl was of little help. On the subject of what Alec could possibly offer Polina in exchange for her compliance, Karl proposed, as an option of last resort, Alec’s new bachelor apartment. Karl contended that, if necessity demanded, he would have no trouble proposing such a barter. As for whether it was morally reprehensible or not, he wanted to know what could be bartered against a human life that
wasn’t
morally reprehensible.

Nothing, Alec thought. That was the trouble. Though a distant runner-up to nothing was another human life.

As they sat in his tiny kitchen, it felt like Polina had trailed in the chill of the outdoors. It adhered to her like a personal climate and caused Alec to feel as if the temperature in the tiny kitchen were a few degrees colder than the temperature two meters away in what passed for the adjoining room. To warm himself, her, and the space between them, he filled a kettle and set it to boil. He asked Polina if she wanted coffee, tea, or something stronger. In a cabinet he had the greater portion of a bottle of brandy and a brown clay bottle of Balzams, less beverage than unit of exchange. He wanted to forestall, for as long as he could, the unavoidable conversation because—though he couldn’t have articulated it at the time—the conversation promised to be the first serious one of his life. Life, which he’d treated as a pastime, and which he’d thought he could yet outdistance, had caught up with him. And he’d discovered, much as he’d suspected, that once life caught up with you, you could never quite shake it again. It endeavored to hobble you with greater and greater frequency. How you managed to remain upright became your style, who you were.

Style was the difference between him and Polina. On that March
afternoon he wanted to approach the problem from the side, circle it a few times, until, sidling over with such roundabout movements, the two of them would discover themselves at the destination as though by happenstance.

Polina, meanwhile, wanted to get there directly.

—It was an accident, Alec began, you wouldn’t have planned it this way.

—How could I plan something I thought impossible?

—But if you could, would you have planned it like this?

—No. But what does that matter? It happened. I’m not sorry that it happened. Even if you want me to be, Polina said with controlled defiance.

—I don’t want you to be sorry, Alec said. I want you to be happy. Will having the baby make you happy?