The Wanting (31 page)

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.”

“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.

I was no longer invited along to her soirees or rendezvous. If Charlie came by, they would go for long walks, and though he was always polite, he no longer showed any interest in me. Sometimes they got into his car and drove as far as Peredelkino, got out, and walked in the woods where they might hear the crunch of leaves of anyone who might be tailing them. Once or twice I drove with them, seated in the back. It was clear I was to wait in the car while they walked, which I did, saying nothing on the long return home. But mostly I watched them drive off from the kitchen window.

So why did I stay? Who knows? But if I were not there when she arrived home, she would phone me angrily. She would not allow me to spend the night, but also would insist I stay until two or three in the morning. She cried frequently, and would vacillate between fits of temper and fits of laughter. “You must sleep,” I said.

“How can anyone sleep in this country?” It went on this way for weeks.

From time to time I still saw my old friends, but it was not the same, especially with Irina, Marik’s wife, whom I used to love. One day she telephoned me.

“Roman, you must listen to me for once.”

“Why? What?”

“What are you doing with this woman? She’s poison for you.”

“How dare you!” I said.

“I dare,” she replied.

“You don’t understand. She’s different. She understands things we don’t. Her soul is—”

“What, better than yours?”

“Yes.”

“What nonsense. She lives in her own world—anyone but you can see that. She makes things up. She has you wrapped around her finger. It’s disgusting.”

We fell into a weary silence.

Finally, I said, “Irina, why do you even care?”

“Idiot!” she said, and slammed down the phone.

Then, in the first terrible days of August when the air was thick as blood and the sun burned the sidewalks white, Collette telephoned me.

“All right, I’m coming right over,” I said.

“No,” she said, “I don’t want you to. I don’t want you to come here anymore.”

“But why not?”

“I don’t want to see you again,” she said.

“But why not?”

“Don’t be a baby, Roman. I don’t need you anymore. Please stay away.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m perfectly serious.”

“I don’t understand.”

Finally she said, “Pascal is back. He’ll take care of me now.”

“Pascal? You said that was over.”

“How could it be over? If you knew me at all, you would know that. How can you love someone in the way we love each other and it be over? If you think that, you don’t know what love is.”

“You’ve been waiting for him all this time.”

“Of course.”

“You’ve been writing to him, haven’t you?”

“Roman,” she said, “what is there to discuss anymore?”

“You said it was over” was all I could think of to say.

I wanted to get drunk that night, but it was impossible for me to get out of bed. I couldn’t lift an arm or move a foot.

Now that I had stopped seeing Collette, I quickly finished the engineering specs for my dream house, which I had to simplify almost out of existence because hardly any of the materials I wanted were available, and I went down to Zagoryanka, towing Fima Dragunsky along with me. Together, we tore down the old place. It came apart with a few blows of the sledgehammer and a few turns of the crowbar. When it was all in a huge heap, my uncle Max, who had acquired it for us in the fifties, unexpectedly showed up at the gate, having taken the train on some perverse impulse. He had been very happy to have the dacha torn down and a new one built. But now he sat on the upturned soil and wept.

After he left, we cleared the rubble and laid out the boundaries of the new foundation. We dug our corners, set the frame, leveled it, and waited for Lonya to arrive with the bags of concrete. I became impatient. A sort of desperation took hold of me. Fima reminded me that Lonya undoubtedly had to go through many steps to secure the concrete from his various sources, and on top of that he had to finagle a truck and scam some guys into loading it, and he probably had to find some extra vodka or cigarettes at the last minute to ease some complication or pay off some fifth wheel.

“Has Lonya ever failed you?” he reminded me.

But I hated Lonya at that moment. I yearned only for the icy scent of poured concrete gurgling over the lip of the wheelbarrow. From its smooth, ripe surface my house would blossom, and I could not wait another minute. But what could we do? We sat down on the tattered velvet couch that we’d set up near the overgrown vegetable garden and smoked our cigarettes. Fima produced two
apples. He ate his very deliberately; I gobbled mine down. Then we smoked again, and when Lonya still hadn’t arrived, Fima dug into his bag and came out with two bottles of Baikal. When this was consumed, and still no Lonya, Fima sang something from the Beatles.

“I think I do it well,” he said.

At last, we heard the truck lurching up the road with the blood-curdling cry of rusty gears and the rattle of side rails hanging on for dear life. We charged up the path and went around to unload the cargo. But the truck bed was empty. I tore open the cab door where Lonya sat glumly, still clutching the steering wheel.

“What happened?” I said. “Where’s my concrete?”

“Roma,” he replied, “I have something to tell you.”

“What? Those assholes want more vodka? I told you I’d pay for it. I know they have the fucking concrete, because I saw it myself.”

“Let me out,” he said.

“What is it they want? Just tell me. I’ll get it. I don’t care what it is.”

“I didn’t even go there,” he said. “Let me out.”

“You didn’t go there? What did you do? You drank all my fucking vodka with your fucking Communist friends and their whores!”

“Jesus God!” He flung open the door, pushed me to the ground. He shook his fists at me. “Collette’s been arrested.”

“What?”

“Please don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

“But I didn’t know. I don’t know anything.”

Lonya leaned down ominously, his glass eye so close to my face I could see the scratches in it. “You swear to the God of this shit-fucked universe that you don’t know anything. On Lenin’s head!”

“I swear to you.”

“Ah, Romka,” he sighed. “For Christ’s sake, it’s all over Moscow. She tried to hijack a plane.”