A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir

by Lev Golinkin

  My friends scattered. Kyle and Jeff hid behind a giant column, where Kyle used all his willpower to stave off Jeff’s hysterical giggling. Steve just vanished; I have no idea where he went or how he got out, but the next time we saw him, he was outside by the jeep. I trailed Peter, who strolled down the nave, encouraging my friends and me to take in the intricate architecture. Judging by him, one would think we were the only ones in the monastery, if not the entire town. “Look at these carvings—what magnificent stonework!” he exclaimed to the pillar concealing Jeff and Kyle. “Note the pink marble out of Salzburg, that is so, and the frescos on the ceiling. These were crafted by …” On and on our little tour went, pausing by an arch, swinging by a chapel, until we stopped at the main entrance, where Peter admired with delight the panes of stained glass shimmering overhead.

  Waiting for the bride, neatly aligned across the nave, were the groom, the best man, the photographer, the ushers, and Peter and me. Peter at least had on a suit, while I was decked out in my finest Red Sox regalia. The lanky photographer stomped over, a furious look on his face. He was about to open his mouth when Peter turned his pale blue eyes on him and shot him a nod, the kind used to inform an unruly child that loss of TV privileges is imminent. I don’t know how, but with that one little gesture the photographer instantly realized that Peter had come to Sankt Florian with four American visitors and several loaded semiautomatic rifles, that he had come there to showcase Austrian culture to his guests, and that if that meant having to share the basilica with the wedding party, well, Peter was gracious enough to allow them to remain and proceed with the ceremony … as long as they behaved.

  The photographer froze, then slunk back to his post without saying a word. Kyle and Jeff joined Peter and me. By this point Kyle had lost the battle against Jeff’s laughter, and the two of them were convulsing with mirth like a pair of schoolboys after a juicy fart joke. A hush fell over the crowd as the big doors creaked open: the bride stood at the threshold. I have to hand it to her, she was a trouper, recoiling in horror for only the briefest of moments before commencing her walk down the aisle. The photographer crouched and started snapping away. The groom perked up. The bride floated past us. Peter sent her a smile. I turned my head and threw the groom a nod (a pale imitation of Peter’s) to assure him that he had made a good choice and that the blessings of Red Sox Nation went with him on this most special day.

  “It pleases me that you finally saw this beautiful place,” said Peter as we threw open the main doors and made our triumphant exit from the monastery.

  I left Austria without asking Peter about the true extent of his influence on my family’s fate. I thought about it, but in the end I decided to let it be. First of all, I accepted that there was no way I’d get him to disclose anything he didn’t want to, and frankly, after the Sankt Florian experience, I felt the question had been sufficiently addressed. “God does not play dice with the universe,” Einstein famously said, and clearly Peter espoused a similar philosophy.

  WHERE THE WEAK ARE KILLED AND EATEN

  East Windsor, N.J., May 1991

  Dad’s job was in central New Jersey, a land where, according to a popular local T-shirt, “the weak are killed and eaten.” We settled down in East Windsor, a quiet middle-class township where two-story houses mingled with cornfields and strip malls. During summers, echoes of engines from the local racetrack drifted across the woods behind our house; on crisp fall evenings, you could hear the drums from the high school marching band. Upon our arrival Dad proudly showed off his almost-new Ford Taurus painted an interesting violet-red that resembled the ten suitcases we had brought with us from Russia. Grandma spent most of her time looking out her bedroom window at kids racing bikes and adults walking dogs. Mom attempted studying for the medical boards: a year later she tried getting licensed as a nurse, then as an EKG tech, then she became a security guard. She didn’t have the English to do much else.

  Unless an American has been thrown into an utterly foreign environment—not an easy place like Cancún or Madrid, where an English speaker is never far away—they have no idea what it’s like.

  It begins simply. You have to return a sweater at the mall. You’ve studied some phrases from your little ESL worksheets with large print and helpful cartoons of Enrique, the exchange student from Santiago, meeting Sally, the coed from Delaware. You step up to the register and open with the introductory sentences you have prepared, but the clerk says something you don’t understand, or fires off something different from Sally’s response to Enrique. “Sorry, excuse me,” you say, “excuse me” and “sorry” being the two most important phrases in your lexicon, because you’re going to have a lot of apologizing to do in the future. And while you’re excuse me–ing and trying to process what the clerk has said, he says something else, and now you’re three sentences behind. Ever speak to someone on the phone and get the repeat echo, where you hear yourself back on a two-second delay? Scrambles your thoughts. Drives you insane. Multiply that by twenty. And now you’re completely out of the conversation, and the clerk is waiting. By this point, Enrique and Sally have had a fulfilling exchange and are making plans to hang out. You need another apology.

  Maybe the clerk understands what you’re going through, but chances are, he doesn’t. And now’s no time for empathy: there are three customers behind you. Ever feel the stares when you’re at the register and your credit card doesn’t work or you realize you forgot your wallet in the car? The moment when your whole existence shrinks to you being the asshole holding up the line? Multiply that by twenty. Now you’re the asshole holding up the line and you don’t even belong there to begin with.

  Most people get impatient. Some get angry. Some begin speaking louder—as if that’s the problem—or attempt to mitigate the awkwardness with kindly smiles, and you want to tell them that you’re neither deaf nor a child, but by this point you’re too anxious, angry, hurt, embarrassed, and the mumbling gets worse. And then you panic. You don’t understand why they can’t understand—you’re repeating what the ESL book told you to say, but it’s not working. Enrique and Sally already went to the movies, Enrique’s got his hand up Sally’s skirt, and life is good. You no longer care if you have to keep the damn sweater, or if you’re getting ripped off, or if you’ll have to come back later and you’ve just wasted your afternoon. You just want the embarrassment to end and you slink out of the store.

  And that was a normal exchange, as far as exchanges go. The bad ones are where someone screams at you, or kicks you out, or tells you to leave their country, or calls you a fucking idiot. Or calls the cops. Those are the worst. You’re already terrified of the police. You were terrified of them back when you could speak their language.

  It makes you look forward to the next errand. Makes you look forward to going to the doctor, or a job interview. Makes you so nervous you’re forgetting Enrique’s ESL phrases before you even begin to make an ass of yourself. Except “excuse me” and “sorry”; you’ll never forget those.

  Then you realize this is it. This is not a vacation; this is forever. This is what it will be like. You’re expected to learn the language, except you’re also working a menial job, maybe two menial jobs, because you just got to this country and you have no money. And you’re raising a family. Forget English: by the time you get home and put the kids to bed, your brain barely functions in your native tongue. Most Americans don’t learn a foreign language in high school, when they’re young and have nothing to do but learn. You’re already old. You will never work in your field again. Find something you can do with your hands, something that doesn’t require anything beyond a few words’ comprehension. You will never be seen as anything more than an immigrant, or a moron, or a child. For the rest of your life it’s you, your family, and a world of impotence at your doorstep. You no longer have opinions. You don’t have jokes, or consolations, or conversations, or amusements, or experiences, or perspectives built over a lifetime. They’re useless, like you. How are you going to share
them? With whom? You are an animal, mooing and mumbling and excuse me–ing your way through the smallest chore, the most inconsequential grocery store errand.

  And that’s how the language barrier works.

  I’m in awe of my parents’ strength, throughout my childhood, both in Austria and in Russia. Dad was a machine, plowing through obstacles. Failure was the signal to double his efforts; success was another brick upon which to build more success. Mom wasn’t as relentless. She’d get discouraged, she’d nurse doubts, but simmering underneath was this daring that flared up when we needed it most. She was the one who forced the final decision to flee the Soviet Union. She was the one who guided us through the exit visa gauntlet in the fall of 1989, when we were racing the deadline to be in Austria. Now, in the States, I watched the hope of being a doctor leech out of Mom, along with her confidence and optimism. I didn’t blame America, and I still don’t—I believe that immigrants must learn English or pay the price. Instead I blamed Mom, I blamed her security company, her blue shirt and black pants with blue stripes, her little tin security officer badge that looked like the Junior Detective badges cops hand out to ten-year-olds during D.A.R.E. workshops. I lashed out when she’d return home and catch us up on her work shift, and of all things I’ve done to be ashamed of, ridiculing my mother for trying to contribute to her new society is one that hurts the most.

  Dad worked nonstop, just as he had back in Russia, turbines and rotors dominating his brain. His starting salary did not truly permit us to live in a house or in nice, middle-class East Windsor. Dad was constantly juggling old debts and acquiring new ones, but my troubles in Kharkov led both of us to associate apartments with violence, and he didn’t want to jeopardize what was left of my childhood. “Let me worry about the money,” he’d say during twilight walks we took around our safe neighborhood. “You worry about the A’s: that is your job.” I felt guilty because I knew we should move, but I shuddered at the thought of leaving the suburbs, so I said nothing and concentrated on the A’s.

  Dad maintained a detailed record of my job performance in a green folder with a yellow dragon on the cover, which he got at a parent-teacher conference at my East Windsor elementary school. Crammed inside the folder, which Dad keeps to this day, are eleven years of my life, from fifth grade through my junior year of college. Everything is there: report cards, semester transcripts, yearly volunteering statements from Princeton Hospital, student of the month awards, SAT scores, SAT II scores, college acceptance letters, college rejection letters, and college wait-list letters. There are class pictures from high school and middle school, 8 × 10s, and 4 × 6s, and lots of wallet-sized ones. There are multiple copies of them. Dad wanted them taken—I refused to look at any of it—so Dad stored them in the green folder. There are multiple copies of everything; Dad always made copies. I kept presenting, and Dad kept filing, and the folder expanded until the cover ripped off, and still I offered, and still Dad archived, and still the folder grew.

  * * *

  And within three years of coming to New Jersey, the four of us had abandoned all pretenses of being religiously and culturally Jewish. I did get my Bar Mitzvah, at Dad’s insistence: my grandfather Lev had one, Dad’s opportunity had been stolen by the Soviet Union, and Dad viewed my ceremony as a symbolic reversal of our cultural castration. I endured the process for Dad, but the day after the ceremony I brought him my tallis, yarmulke, and prayer book. “I don’t know if you know this, but becoming Bar Mitzvah means you’re a man and can make your own decisions. Here you go.” I handed him the Jew paraphernalia. “I’m never going back to the synagogue.”

  Dad stored the items somewhere near the green folder. He had no room to argue, since he did not attend services himself: the temple had a membership fee we couldn’t afford, and even though the rabbi continually assured us the fee would be waived, the offer remained unaccepted. “I’ve had enough of being a charity case. I’ll come back when I can afford it,” Dad promised the rabbi, although I suspect charity wasn’t the sole issue. I’d seen Dad flounder through my Bar Mitzvah practice, mimicking prayers, moving his lips to blend in with the worshippers, like a D-student lost in an honors class. Jewish observances remained alien to us, and shortly after being divested of their illegal allure, Yom Kippur, Hanukkah, and all the rest became convenient days off, that’s all. The only vestigial remnant surfaced during Passover, when Dad bought matzah (from a supermarket, not an underground dealer) and munched on the crackers with as much ceremony and meaning as he did back in Kharkov.

  The closest we came to exploring Jewish rituals and holidays was during our nine months in Lafayette. In December 1990, Dad wanted to get a New Year’s tree, but we were told that was a Christian thing, handed a menorah, and instructed to celebrate Hanukkah instead (apparently all those New Year’s family gatherings we had in Russia were meaningless, sacrilegious affronts to our culture—who knew?). So we used the menorah, but once we moved to Jersey, the New Year’s tree came back. For a couple of years we lit the menorah alongside the tree, but soon enough it found a home on a bookshelf ledge among Dad’s renewed knickknack collection. And there it remained, next to two moldy boxes of CVS Hanukkah candles.

  Truth is, I can’t imagine it happening any other way. I can’t imagine a reality in which Dad races home in time for sunset and Mom lights the Shabbat candles. But what did shock me is that shortly after beginning to research the last wave of Jewish emigration out of the Soviet Union, I learned that my family’s experience was far from unique. Our rejection of the opportunity to embrace (or at least sample) Jewish religion and culture was reflected over and over again as part of a massive national pattern manifested across an entire generation. The ultimate irony of the experience of Soviet Jews in America is that the people who fled to the States in search of cultural freedom adopted irreligious, secular lives, eschewing community and synagogue alike. The vast majority of ex–Soviet Jews did not, to put it bluntly, want to be Jewish.

  This phenomenon culminated in widespread frustration and disenchantment for the American Jews who had fought so hard for their oppressed brethren. “They came to us for help,” one Jewish Federation leader confided in me, “for food stipends, rent money, all of that. They took what they could, and after they no longer needed us or there was nothing more to be had, they left and we never saw them again. And these were the people we spent four decades trying to liberate: organized rallies, marched on Washington … As you can imagine, it didn’t leave the community with a warm feeling.” After all the lobbying, the welcoming, and the funding, the ex-refugees rose to their feet and found themselves facing their liberators across a deep cultural chasm. One side saw a Jew, the other a zhid. In that, the Communists had succeeded.*

  The four-decade campaign to free the Soviet Jewry was an inspiring victory for HIAS, for Joint, for everyone who marched, pledged, and donated; a victory that reversed the fortunes of hundreds of thousands of people. Forty years is a long time, especially in an age when causes pop up and fade away as quickly as next week’s headlines. The fact that American Jews, individuals dwelling in safety, grappled with the Soviet colossus in the name of complete strangers and persisted in that fight for forty damn years is a testament to both human rights and the Jewish people. But many Soviet Jews could not be grateful in the way their American benefactors desired, could not bring themselves to celebrate what had for so long been nothing but a dangerous liability. Overcoming our ethnicity was a matter of preservation; it had been branded onto our souls, become instinctual, and instincts, as American Jews had discovered, run deeper than inalienable rights.

  The Joint administrator Amir Shaviv once told me a story about attending a conference with Joint officials, American Jewish leaders, and the handful of Soviet immigrants who could be persuaded to appear. “The community leaders were understandably disillusioned, and one exasperated man finally asked: ‘Why don’t you want to be Jews?’ ” said Shaviv. “This one fellow stood up and said, ‘Listen, back in the Soviet Union I was a
roach, I was a zhid, and I couldn’t stop being a zhid for the life of me. I don’t want to be a zhid anymore, and I am in America now, and I can be Mr. No One. I’m sick of being a zhid, and if you don’t like it that’s too bad—it’s a free country.’

  “I thought that was a good answer.”

  * * *

  Every immigrant expects something from America. People don’t scale fences, trudge through deserts, abandon careers, friends, loved ones, the graves of their parents, risk their lives without hope of something waiting for them on U.S. shores. Here’s what waited for me: America wiped away concerns for clothing, food, shelter, warmth, and I loved it from the start. I loved the freedom, choice, personal space, I blessed the land where I didn’t have to cringe at the idea of going to school or walking outside. The red-violet suitcases had been packed away in the attic; the lumpy brown turtle statuette I had rescued at the last moment from the Kharkov apartment was resettled on one of Dad’s bookshelves. I no longer needed the wax soldiers I had meticulously crafted from cheese wrappings in Nondorf, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away, so I rolled them into a softball-sized ball and put it in my closet. And since I started eating more, I also started growing, and soon enough the black bomber jacket from Eva’s was donated to a coat drive, replaced with a warm New York Rangers coat. We had made it.