A Replacement Life

by Boris Fishman

  “Where is Lebanon, anyway?” Aunt Lyuba said. “I am always curious now when they are talking about the war on the radio. Is it the same as Libya?”

  “It’s in the Middle East,” Uncle Garik said. “They do make good food, however.”

  “He has this special layering technique with the pita that he learned from Moroccan Jews,” Slava said, trying to steer them to impulses of solidarity.

  “I heard on the radio once that Arabs are famous for their hospitality,” Garik said. “They invite you into the tent for tea, but once you’re inside, they kill you.”

  “I think that’s a legend from long ago,” Slava said. “They don’t live in tents.”

  “Don’t be naive, Slava,” Garik said. “What do you expect, they tell you to put tulips in gun barrels in this country.”

  Vera deposited a serving plate layered with chicken thighs in the middle of the table. Aunt Lyuba shook her head. “My doll, who serves a plate this way?” She removed the plate and began to garnish its edges with sprigs of parsley. “Voilà!” she said a minute later, returning the dish to the table.

  Everyone ate in busy contemplation, the men pushing the food behind their cheeks with their thumbs, Vera wiping her plate with bread. Lyuba was only half seated: more bread, more napkins, more garlic. She’d eat in peace when the men were finished. A flock of shrieks rose outside, the children playing.

  “I think it’s time for lights,” Lyuba said, rising again. “Verochka, tell us about something. How’s work?”

  “It’s daylight outside,” Lazar Timofeyevich said. “You’re wasteful with electricity.”

  “Then you should have bought a house with windows,” Lyuba said.

  “Nothing special,” Vera said. “Fashion boutique on Avenue X. Contest for the radio station.”

  “She works in piar,” Lyuba said. “She connects Russians customers to American business. Isn’t that right, my dove? She earns above fifty thousand dollars a year.”

  Vera blanched. “I connect Russian customers to Russian business,” she said. “I have only one account Russian to America. In this country, Mama, salary is a private issue.”

  “Slava’s one of us,” Lyuba waved her away.

  “Completely senseless,” Lazar Timofeyevich said. “If you need toothpaste, you go and buy toothpaste, I don’t understand why someone has to advertise toothpaste.”

  “They have fifty kinds of toothpaste here,” Vera said. “You need help deciding.”

  “I don’t need help deciding,” he said. “The least expensive one, you buy.”

  “And then your teeth fall out,” Lyuba defended her daughter.

  “They’ve fallen out already,” Lazar said.

  “As if any of the advertisements tell you something truthful,” Garik said. “They just show you a woman throwing her hair around in the shower.”

  “That I have no problem with,” Lazar said. He pointed at the decimated remains of the meal. “Lyuba, please clear. We need to get down to work. We can have tea later. And turn off these goddamn lights.”

  Lyuba put down her fork and rose to clear the dishes. “Go, go,” Lazar dismissed everyone. “Give the men some time to talk.” Slava watched Vera, who was still eating, rise and retreat. She didn’t turn around to look at him. Lyuba would not walk out until all the dishes were piled in the sink. “I want to leave you a clean table!” she shouted in her defense. At last she left, too.

  Lazar was so bent that he couldn’t look at Slava directly. His lips were violet, the face like a field darkening under a cloud. “Twenty-five is a grown-up’s age,” he said agnostically.

  “You want us to be both,” Slava said. “Adults and children, at the same time.”

  “Speak into this ear,” he said, and swiveled. Slava repeated himself.

  “Even as a boy, you wanted, above all, justice,” Lazar said. “You wouldn’t let your grandfather get on the trolley to the beach in Italy without a ticket. When all of us took the trolley to the market to sell, we bought tickets not for the conductor but for you. You would have made a good Communist. Boy, did they hover over you. When you spoke, the whole table shut up. Four adults got quiet so you could speak. That’s a difference between you and Vera. She doesn’t expect the world to be something it’s not.”

  “Let’s talk about the war,” Slava said.

  “We’ll get to that,” he said. “How are things on the personal front?”

  “Quiet,” Slava said. “Let’s talk about the war. I know you weren’t in a ghetto or camps, but tell me something anyway. It’ll help.”

  “I was in a labor battalion, digging trenches. Then they conscripted me into infantry. Fought at Stalingrad. Lost half my hearing. End of story.”

  “Say more. Details help.”

  “How can they help if you can’t put it in?” Lazar slapped the table. “If you were in the ghetto, you get funds. If you had three limbs amputated at the front, you get nothing. I can’t tell you what the ghetto was like, I wasn’t there.”

  “Tell me something else, then.”

  “Into this ear!”

  Slava repeated himself, shouting.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you something else,” Lazar said. “I’ll tell you a story, though I don’t know if you know what to do with it. This was in the fifties. Fifty-two, right before that maniac died. It was getting real bad if you were a Jew. My brother Misha was walking home one night, and these drunks start yelling: ‘Kikes, kikes, one grave for all the kikes.’ Misha’s not one to keep quiet—he and your grandfather would have something to talk about. He took one of their eyeballs clean out. Bam.” Lazar Timofeyevich flicked his finger near Slava’s eye with a sudden energy. “That sort of thing gets you ten years in the clink,” he said. “So what did his older brother do? I had a friend with a military uniform from the Revolution, a collector’s item. Borrowed that. Another friend of mine was in a marching band; I told him to get in his uniform. And off we want to Eyeball’s house. You follow?”

  “No,” Slava said.

  “Don’t be naive, please,” Lazar said. “We were pretending to be policemen. So we get to Eyeball’s house, and we stick out two little address books like they’re IDs. ‘Esteemed citizens: We are here on orders of the precinct commander to ask you to drop the charges against Misha Rudinsky and permit the authorities to deal with this hooligan on our own terms. We promise to avenge your son in an appropriate way, if you catch our drift. If you go through the official channels, in prison this kike will have a square meal every day. If you leave him to us, we’ll make sure he never walks again. One less pair of Jewish feet trampling the ground.’”

  “Did it work?” Slava said.

  “No,” he said sourly. “They shut the door in our faces.”

  “Oh.”

  “You think I stopped there? I got our lawyer to get the case judge to come to our house for dinner. I am twenty-six years old at this point, Slava, basically five minutes older than you. We’re toasting to the health of the motherland and all that, and khop—I slip him a white envelope. Five large. And my little Misha got three years instead of ten. And I got to pick him up from the prison once a month and take him home for a home-cooked meal and a haircut.”

  Slava nodded politely. All of a sudden, their twilight upon them, the old men of his old neighborhood were willing to talk about their valorous actions. Initially, they held back so as not to trouble the children with the frightening truth about life. But now, in the last lap, they were frantically unloading, like thieves dumping gold, pursued by the one collector from whom no reprieve. Finally, they had met something more fearful than the prospect of disturbing the sleep of their children.

  Lazar Timofeyevich closed his eyes, so slowly and heavily that Slava could imagine the lids never rising again. When he opened them, he said: “You think I am telling you all this to stroke my dick one last time? I am telling you this so you can understand the difference between your own and not your own. Who is your best friend?”

  “I’m so
rry?”

  “You’ve got a best friend?”

  Slava thought about it. The only answer that came was Arianna. “No,” he said.

  “I had ten best friends back home,” Lazar said. “Boys who would slit someone’s throat for me. All Jews. Every last one of them Jews. Now, whoever your closest friend is, would he do that for you?”

  “I don’t know,” Slava said. “I don’t have—that many friends.”

  “That girl,” Lazar said, pointing at the stairs, “will stand behind you like a tank, Slava. And you need it, with your head in the clouds. She may not know who Sakharov was, but she knows life, loyalty. You get caught doing what you’re doing? She would take the fall for you. That’s what I mean by your own. You name me one American person who will do that for you, and I will end this conversation. We brought you here, but that means we are Americans all of a sudden? Do you scoop from a box of cherries at the store without looking? No, you pick the good ones. Just because we are here, we have to live a thousand miles apart and call once a week to say hai-hava-yoo? Get a nice job, buy a big house—but you don’t have to take any more from this place.”

  “So we are supposed to be foreigners here?” Slava said. “It wasn’t enough for you to have to be a foreigner back there, now you are choosing to be a foreigner here? They have psychopathic classifications for this kind of behavior.”

  “We will become Americans, Slava, don’t worry,” Lazar said. “Your children will be almost Americans, and then their children will watch the shampoo commercials without understanding what could be different. It has to happen on its own timetable. You can’t rush the facts.”

  “Life is long,” Slava said.

  “Life is not long,” Lazar said. “At the front, twenty-five was a senior citizen. Lyuba was swaddling at twenty-five, very nice for her, but at twenty-five, I was commanding a Red Army platoon. That’s one thing I have to give those crazy medievals next door. They have five kids, six kids, seven kids. We are so small, Slava. We are always in danger of disappearing because of one thing or another.”

  “Has anyone asked Vera what she wants?” Slava said.

  “You have to speak into this ear,” Lazar Timofeyevich said impatiently.

  “You are willing to give away your one granddaughter to someone who earns half her salary?”

  “What?” Lazar whined. Slava wondered if the hearing impairment had been invented for deployment as needed. It had caused notably less interference at dinner.

  “It’s not important,” Slava sighed. “I have to go, Lazar Timofeyevich. Long trip back.”

  The old man shrugged, too weary to continue. He rose somberly and shuffled off to a corner cabinet. From it he withdrew a sealed white envelope, thick, and dropped it on the table in front of Slava. Then he lowered himself back into his chair. “Make it good,” he said.

  “What is this?” Slava said.

  “Your fee. Two hundred and fifty.”

  “Thanks,” Slava said. “I don’t need a fee.”

  “Your grandfather said not to give it to you, but you’re the one who deserves it.”

  Slava felt warmth in his cheeks.

  “Lazar Timofeyevich, you should have waited until they came,” Lyuba said reproachfully from the doorway. Garik was next to her, two eavesdropping children.

  “Wait till who came,” Slava said.

  “Who, who,” Lazar said, an old owl.

  The doorbell rang, a slow tick-tock that banged around the tiled halls for eternity. They stood sealed to their places. On the elders, it dawned that Slava had no idea what was happening. Why had he been kept out of it? Well, he kept his distance now, they had heard. Fucking children, God pardon their speech: You give and you give and they spit in your face. Why were they so set on pairing Vera with Slava? That was the only reason they’d said okay when the Gelmans asked to come over. It wasn’t the kid’s fault that the parents—the grandfather—was a high-nosed prick. But what, the apple falls far from the tree? The kid was a strange one, too—in his own way, but strange all the same. All this flashed through the minds of the elder Rudinskys.

  “Must be them,” Garik said.

  “Who,” Slava said, a mild hysteria entering his voice. He knew the answer, but prayed to be wrong.

  “Them, them,” Lazar said impatiently.

  Lyuba disappeared into the hallway. Slava jumped from his chair, Lazar following at lesser speed. When Lyuba opened the door, the three men were bunched in the hallway behind her, wearing pained expressions: Garik because he didn’t know what to expect from this encounter—in some ways, he felt responsible for the estrangement, because his need for the limousine seed money had started it, though for the same reason, he also felt the most aggrieved and unprepared to reconcile, though of course he would do it for the children; Lazar because he was halfway to the next world and therefore understood, as only his granddaughter did, the imbecility of such estrangements; and Slava because he was bewildered, one that his grandfather had been charging for the letters, and two that, very likely, there were Gelmans on the other side of that door. Above their heads, Vera’s feet pressed the carpeted stairs. She was still wearing her goddamn arousing heels, the stilettos pricking the soft carpet.

  The door opened to reveal, indeed, two Gelmans—father, daughter—and one Shtuts. Slava’s grandfather wore a white guayabera and an expression of disdain. His daughter was in a multiflowered tunic. Her husband was tidy in a short-sleeved shirt. They held chocolates, cheap champagne, the weight of the world.

  “From New Jersey, they have graced us with their presence,” Lyuba said. She was aiming for playfulness, but the words came out scornfully.

  “What are you keeping them outside for?” Garik said. “You’re wasting air-conditioning. Come in, people, come in.”

  “It’s Slava,” his mother said, as surprised to see him as the Rudinskys.

  “He’s on this side of the door already,” Lyuba said coquettishly.

  The person in question examined his grandfather with blazing eyes.

  “I’m so happy you’re here,” cried Vera, and ran down the remaining stairs into the hallway. She began to relieve the Gelmans of their bags and setting out house shoes from the closet. Massed in the foyer, the Gelmans obediently began to shed their footwear.

  “I’ve cleared the table from dinner already, I just have to set out the china,” Lyuba said.

  Grandfather’s nostrils flared. He was always being invited for coffee and cake after a dinner to which he had not been invited.

  Dumbfounded, Slava searched out Vera’s eyes, but she avoided him. “Why don’t we sit in the living room?” she announced, and ran into the kitchen to gather provisions. Slava followed her, though he could only stare.

  Her hands were deep in a cabinet. She stopped rummaging and looked over at him. “Are you going to help or not?”

  “You’re joking, right?” he said. The adults trooped past the kitchen doorway en route to the living room. Lyuba was about to come in, but Vera waved her away. “The good china,” Lyuba hissed from the doorway and winked at Slava, an accomplice.

  “Why can’t you let them settle it themselves,” he said to Vera.

  “Because they’re children, that’s why,” Vera said.

  “I’m leaving,” he said.

  “You’re not leaving,” she said. “Help me.” Her expression softened. “Please.”

  “He’s charging people,” Slava exclaimed. “Behind my back.”

  “I’m sure it’s for you.”

  “I don’t want the money!” Slava yelled.

  “What’s the matter in there?” they heard from the living room. Vera and Slava stopped to listen. Their bickering had given the adults a subject of conversation. Someone even laughed. “You see?” Vera said to him through her teeth.

  The children appeared in the living room carrying two trays of gold-rimmed plates and teacups. Stiff with silence, the adults were wedged into a sofa and love seat, thighs against thighs. The appearance of the ch
ildren gave them a subject.

  “What’s for sale today?” someone asked.

  “What does the tea cost?” a second added.

  “Just like old times,” someone announced, because it wasn’t like old times at all.

  “Today we have a special,” Vera said playfully. “Open house at V and S Alimenti. Free snacks and tea.”

  “Hooray,” Slava’s mother said tentatively.

  Slava wished violence on all of them. After he set his tray down, he reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the white envelope. Stepping over Garik’s feet, he thrust it in his grandfather’s face. The conversation stopped. His grandfather looked up at him, fearful and mocking.

  “I think this is for you,” Slava said. The white envelope hung between them like a poisonous sun. It anchored a galaxy of fat Russians.

  “Can we skip business talk this one time, please?” Vera broke in. She snagged the envelope from Slava’s hands, folded it in half, and wedged it housewifeishly inside her décolletage. “Looks like I’m getting a shopping trip out of all this.” Everyone laughed.

  “It’s so nice that you wanted to come,” Lyuba announced when everyone had settled down.

  “We wanted to come?” Grandfather said.

  “Vera said—” Slava’s mother began.

  “Oh, what difference does it make!” Vera cried. “You me, me you . . . we’re together. We’re together for the first time in almost twenty years.”

  “Well, everyone, you look the same,” Garik said, and again they laughed.

  “What the fuck did we get ourselves into,” Lazar said, not much hilarity in his voice. He meant America.

  “Do you know that some people just stayed in Italy,” Slava’s mother said. She pulled at her tunic.

  “If I did it again, I’d stay in Italy,” Garik said. “Do you remember these two?” He pointed at Vera and Slava. “They’d be speaking Italiano by now.”

  “But we’re doing well,” Lyuba interjected. “We have almost no mortgage on this house.”

  “They have a Nissan Altima and a Ford Taurus,” Grandfather announced, pointing to his daughter and her husband.