The Free World (7 page)

After some requisite diving and searching, Maxim found Nadja peeking out from under the keel. When they floated back into view, Nadja had her head tipped back and one arm around Maxim’s neck. Her free arm swayed dramatically above her head. My hero, Nadja sighed, her eyes half closed. Maxim endured Nadja’s performance with the consummate face of the adult: distaste subjugated to obligation.

Reason, or its pale ambassador convention, ordered their time together. It extended to everything, including sex. Before Maxim, Polina had had three encounters that had approached but never crossed the line. On two of the occasions she had halted things before they went too far. The other time, at a Komsomol retreat, she had been willing but, at the critical moment, another couple entered the barn and started climbing to the hayloft.

Polina couldn’t say that she was eager to take the next and inevitable step with Maxim, but she did wonder when he would grant himself the permission to do it. During their gropings and fumblings, she felt like a spectator, watching Maxim as he denied himself for the sake of her honor. These preliminary bouts always ended with Maxim apologizing for the liberties he had taken. Polina either pardoned his liberties or said nothing at all. They would then sit or
lie together on a bench in the public gardens, or on the embankment of the river in the industrial quarter, or in the cold, shadowy entrances to public buildings, and share momentous and ostensibly soulful silences. Eventually, Maxim interrupted a bout of groping to ask Polina for her opinion and her permission. She consented with a simple All right, and waited as Maxim scrupulously tore the edge from the yellow paper wrapper she had heard about but never actually seen. Inexpertly, he put the rubber on himself and then spat on his hand and pawed Polina clumsily in preparation. Polina shifted her weight from one hip to the other so as to help him and then put her hands on his chest to resist his weight. She said, Careful, because she wasn’t quite ready and she didn’t know how to explain that to him. It was the only word that passed between them. Afterward, Maxim acted as if something significant had transpired and Polina didn’t contradict him.

From then on, they repeated the act with some regularity. Polina saw that Maxim liked it and wanted it, so she obliged him. What they did, they did with no variation. For Polina, intercourse began when Maxim tore the edge from the yellow paper wrapper. She assumed that it was the same for everyone until she overheard other girls speaking about their experiences with their mainly drunken boyfriends. That was when she learned that most men went to great lengths to avoid having to deal with the contents of the yellow wrapper, and that, despite the risks, most women relented. They rationalized their actions by maligning the quality of Soviet condoms, which were known to rupture or slide off. It made little sense, they said, to put one’s faith in something so unreliable. In Polina’s experience, the condoms had never ruptured or slid off. She also thought the alternative measures the women cited—hot water, wine vinegar, urine—sounded dubious, but several weeks later, when they were alone in Polina’s apartment, her parents having gone with Nadja to attend a choral recital, Maxim found that he did not have any condoms, but Polina insisted that they do it anyway. It was not something she had planned in advance, but neither was it entirely spontaneous. It was the first time she had ever challenged Maxim’s authority, and she
was as aroused by the prospect of luring him into temptation as by the recklessness of what they were doing. Maxim was sitting up on his knees when she told him what she wanted, and he wavered for a few seconds, a look of fear and doubt on his face, before Polina reached out and took him into her. After that, the fear and doubt left his face and were replaced by something insular and fierce. For as long as it lasted, Polina felt florid reverberations, as if from dense and cumbersome things thrown against her body. Gothic thoughts took shape in her mind, some of which momentarily surprised her and then mocked her surprise. Shortly before it ended, Polina hissed in Maxim’s ear that she wanted him to do it inside her. It was a sentence that had been circling malevolently in her head from the moment she had insisted that they have sex. As she said it, she knew it couldn’t have had less to do with a desire for children. And as soon as Maxim finished, Polina slid out from under him and went to the kitchen for a basin and a purple, thin-necked vase from which she had to first remove three of Maxim’s carnations. She returned to the bedroom, set the basin in the middle of the floor, and urinated into it. Carefully, under Maxim’s silent gaze, she transferred the urine from the basin into the vase, spilling several drops onto the floorboards. She then stretched out on the floor, arched her pelvis, and instructed Maxim to pour the urine into her from the vase. What they were doing was disgusting and sordid, and Maxim avoided Polina’s eyes as he carried out her instructions. He was pliable then in a way that he had never been before and never would be again. She had made him complicit in something depraved, and she expected that, in some way, she would be punished for this. Later, when her punishment was meted out, Maxim never once blamed her for what she knew was exclusively her fault.

O
n his third day at the briefing department, standing before the newly arrived émigrés at their cafeteria orientation, Alec felt like a fraud. He felt tempted to confess that, not one week before, he had been sitting in their place, and that he knew no more about Rome than they did. But he was aware that this kind of revelation would only sow panic.

After the orientation Alec made the rounds of the émigrés’ hotel rooms. He distributed U.S. emigration forms, priming people for their Persecution Stories and, if necessary, their Party Stories. Some people came prepared with a vast catalog of grievances that they had been compiling their entire lives; others needed some interpretive assistance.

A couple from Berdichev found the concept particularly boggling. The wife looked at Alec like he was obtuse.

—What do we need this for?

—Nobody’s saying you need it. The Americans need it. You’re claiming refugee status. To be a refugee you need to have been persecuted.

—The entire country was persecuted.

—Did you and your husband attend university?

—Yes. Both of us.

—Was it the university of your choice?

—I was not an exceptional student. I had no grand designs.

—And your husband?

—He has a good head for academics. He had wanted to study history.

—He wasn’t accepted?

—Not into that faculty.

—How come?

—What do you mean how come? Look at his nose.

Alec had landed in the briefing department after a brisk evaluation by Matilda Levy. She had walked him through the HIAS offices while rattling off the various positions and personalities.

—Konstantin is our messenger, Matilda said when they passed the table reserved for the messenger. He is going to Canada. After one month he could find his way without the aid of a map not only in Ostia and Ladispoli, but also in Rome.

At the doors of the transportation department, a room that smelled strongly of body odor, cigarettes, and fried food, Matilda Levy introduced Alec to three of the four men who worked there. They looked up from their particular stacks of documents and submitted to the introduction in a cursory way, disguising not at all their displeasure at having to engage in the formality of greeting a superfluous person. The fourth man, Matilda explained, was at the dockyards coordinating the movement of freight. The slightest mistake and you had disaster—a family lands in New York but their dining room set lands in Melbourne.

—You do not seem to me an imposing man, Matilda said.

—Imposing? Alec asked, not understanding.

—A man to give orders to other men, Matilda said. No, they would eat you alive on the docks.

As neither the docks nor the musty office held any appeal for him, Alec saw no reason to contest Matilda’s perception of him. Besides, she was essentially right. His father was imposing and enjoyed issuing decrees and orders. Karl had this capacity as well, although he
didn’t derive the kind of pleasure from it that their father did. Whereas the only thing Alec detested more than being ordered around was having to order someone else around. Basically, he was of the opinion that the world would be a far more interesting and hospitable place if everyone—genius and idiot alike—was allowed to bumble along as he pleased. “More freedom to bumble” neatly described his motive for leaving the Soviet Union.

—You are the type that prefers the company of women, Matilda Levy said as they stepped away from the Transportation Department. Is this correct?

They stopped in the hallway and Matilda Levy peered boldly into Alec’s eyes, squinting slightly as if in this way to achieve a better vantage into his innermost character.

—Yes, it is correct. I have always preferred the company of women, Alec said and, after hesitating one instant too long, smiled.

The smile, Alec immediately felt, was a mistake. Under Matilda Levy’s peculiar scrutiny and under the demands of a foreign language, he had momentarily been unable to act like himself. He had intended only to deliver a simple statement in the English language and season it with a little charm but had instead, because of the yawning gap between his words and his smile, presented for Matilda Levy’s consideration a man who was either licentious or deranged or some combination of the two.

Matilda Levy seemed to regard him ruminatively.

—Yes, she said, I believe it is so.

Alec wasn’t sure what she meant: What was so? He had temporarily lost track of what they had been talking about. Matilda Levy appeared before him transformed, as though she had stepped out from behind some scrim that had been obscuring a more vital Matilda Levy. Alec sensed that she was now differently disposed to him. They were no longer administrator and prospective employee, but rather woman and man—with complementary desires and bodies. For Alec’s consideration Matilda Levy presented the physical Matilda Levy: hips, breasts, legs, hairdo—adorned with nylons, necklaces, bracelets, bulky rings, and lipstick.

Saying nothing further, Matilda Levy swept around and, wielding her bosom like a prow, sailed down the hall, to the stairwell and beyond. Alec followed in her wake. It had been a long time since he had found himself in this position. More often, he led the way. Other times, the act of seduction was performed in a spirit of mutuality. Nobody led. Hand in hand, both tumbled together. But Alec couldn’t imagine himself tumbling hand in hand with Matilda Levy. He could imagine other scenarios, though these, even cast in the most favorable light, were either comic or absurd. Nevertheless, as Matilda reached the bottom of the stairwell and crossed four lanes of traffic, Alec felt that he had to seriously consider the possibility. Could it be that his job with HIAS was conditional upon becoming Matilda Levy’s lover? Far stranger things happened with astounding regularity. His mother’s cousin, raided by the police, once tried to swallow an inventory list. When one of the officers attempted to pry it out of his mouth, he bit off the policeman’s finger. Compared with that, sleeping with Matilda Levy for a middling job at HIAS seemed perfectly reasonable. And with every successive step Alec took he asked himself: Should I do it? The answer, of course, resided in the question. If you asked yourself if you should do it, you shouldn’t do it.

Matilda Levy inserted a key into the lock of a nondescript building and stepped inside the shadowy lobby. She did not look back to check whether Alec was behind her. She pressed ahead with implacable resolve, as if everything was foregone and settled, as if she and Alec had come to an agreement. Alec supposed that maybe he had agreed to more than he’d suspected. Between a man and a woman, the merest look has sexual implications. For all he knew, Matilda Levy could have taken his smile for a marriage proposal. He thought to say something, to clarify his position in some diplomatic way, to alter the tone, but Matilda Levy’s silent determination discouraged talk.

In spite of all this, Alec found himself inspecting the lobby for suitably concealed corners where the act could be consummated. This was purely reflexive, a consequence of Soviet privation. It was one thing to attract a woman, quite another to find a place where you
could be together undisturbed. One time, in a bind, he had convinced a girl to climb up onto the broad bough of an oak tree. She’d feared falling, tearing her dress, losing a shoe. He’d had to reassure her, and also hoist her up on his shoulders. She was not a large girl but neither was she a natural climber. “What are we, squirrels?” the girl had complained. “If only,” Alec had said.

But this was the way it was with any human endeavor, great or small: one had to be blessed with a skill for it. Some people were good with numbers, others never forgot a face, others still had perfect pitch—as for himself, he could usually find a decent, serviceable place to copulate. Naturally, if you had such a skill, you couldn’t simply turn it off. In this respect it was like being a thief or a spy, habitually taking stock of your surroundings. Even in the presence of Matilda Levy, Alec still couldn’t help but notice that there was, to the left of the mailboxes, a narrow hallway that branched off at an obtuse angle and led to only two apartments. In his estimation, at this time of day, that hallway represented better-than-average odds. And, like a thief or a spy, Alec felt the nagging temptation to try his luck just to see if his instincts were still sharp.

Matilda Levy stepped to the elevator and pressed the call button. An instant later, a light blinked, and Matilda pulled open the iron accordion door. She waited imperiously for Alec to join her. Once he was inside, she dropped a coin into the mechanism and pressed a button for the fourth floor. The door glided back into place, clicked shut, and the elevator crept dramatically up. As it made its slow ascent, the compartment grew dense with Matilda Levy’s cosmetics and perfume. The air became constricting, intimate, and glandular. The elevator felt less like an elevator than like Matilda Levy’s laundry basket. Just standing there, Alec felt compromised. In his mind, in spite of himself, he began to envision it happening. He unclasped her necklace, unbuttoned her blouse, asked her to stand at a short remove, and watched her unzip her skirt and step clear in garters, nylons, and heels.

At the fourth floor, the elevator lurched to a halt and Matilda Levy reached out and retracted the door.

—Your hand, please, Matilda said at the threshold of the open door.

The elevator had stopped some thirty centimeters short of the landing, creating a visible, though far from insurmountable, obstacle. It was, in actuality, no higher than a normal step, but Matilda Levy stood arrested before it, with one hand outstretched, awaiting assistance.

Alec wondered if they had now reached the decisive point at which, in no uncertain terms, the sexual proposal was slapped down on the table like a fish. It was when one person asked the other to do something unnecessary. For instance, to leave a party, to climb a tree, to gratuitously lend a hand out of an elevator.

But what to do? Alec thought. He couldn’t tell Matilda Levy that he believed she could get out of the elevator by herself.

Alec gave her his hand.

—The machine is not perfect, Matilda said, but what it lacks in function it makes up in character.

Using Alec’s hand for support, Matilda Levy climbed out onto the landing and took several steps down the corridor and again waited for Alec.

With every apartment they passed, Alec resigned himself more and more to the inevitability. It would be a charitable act, no crime against Polina. Behind the door of the first apartment, Alec heard the voice of an Italian broadcaster either on the radio or on television. The next apartment they passed was silent. Behind the door of the third, he heard the clink of plates. Matilda Levy stopped at the fourth door and withdrew her keys. From the beginning, Alec had considered it oddly coincidental that she would have her apartment so close to the HIAS offices. On the other hand, it was quite possible that this was not her primary apartment. Unlike Riga, Rome had no municipal commissions dictating how many residences a person could have. It was a free country. A person could have as many residences as he could afford. It was completely within the realm of possibility that Matilda Levy might keep an apartment across the road
from HIAS for the sole purpose of conducting trysts with Russian émigrés.

Matilda Levy turned the key and opened the door. Alec looked inside, expecting to see one thing, but saw, instead, several young Italian women reading documents, organizing files, and using a large photocopier. Among them were two middle-aged Russian men, one of whom wore impressively thick eyeglasses.

—This is the briefing department, Matilda Levy said, responsible for intake and processing. The work done here is very important. Most people consider it a desirable position. But the last man we hired was very rude to the girls. He had some kind of complex. A very difficult character. I don’t tolerate rudeness to the girls. They are sweet girls and work very hard. But I don’t expect such a problem with you. I can see that already. A woman knows. Now, as for what you need to learn, ask Oleg in the glasses or Lucia in the white skirt.

The office looked fine, and the prospect of working with ten Italian girls was pleasing, but mainly Alec felt like a man reprieved. The day’s report would remain unblemished.
What happened today? Nothing bad.
Which was the way of the world, between misunderstandings, bankruptcies, and stomach cancers.

—Matilda is right, Oleg said later, peering through the ophthalmological achievement of his glasses, the job is desirable. It also presents certain opportunities. But I do not advise pursuing them. At least not without great circumspection.

It was these very opportunities that precipitated Iza Judo’s appearance outside the briefing department building two days later. When Alec bounded out the door, Iza reacted as if he were the unsuspecting beneficiary of a happy accident. The look on his face was intended to convey simple, good-natured incredulity: there he’d been, Iza Judo, innocently taking a break from the heat in front of some random building, when who should emerge but his old pal Alec Krasnansky!

—You wouldn’t believe it, Iza said.

—Is that right? Alec said.

—Not five minutes ago, I was telling Minka here about you, Iza said, motioning to a young man leaning against the wall. The man was very fair, practically, if not clinically, an albino. His gray T-shirt exposed arms that were liberally adorned with prison tattoos.

—I believe it, Alec said smiling.

—He believes it. What a guy! Iza crowed. Minka, didn’t I tell you he was sharp?

—That’s what you said, Minka affirmed, looking up and shielding his eyes from the sun.

—The sun’s murder, Iza said, how about we find a shady place for a drink?

—I’m expected across the street, Alec said.

—Your job, right? Iza said. I understand. But what’s fifteen minutes here or there? Carter won’t change the immigration policy because you stopped for a coffee with a friend.

—And for a beer? Alec said.

—He won’t change it for a beer either, Iza said, putting his arm around Alec’s shoulders and propelling him down the street toward a place with an awning.