A Replacement Life

by Boris Fishman

  “I’d stay all Japanese,” Garik sniffed. “I understand these things.”

  “Well, of course, you’re in a taxi all day long.”

  “It takes skill,” Garik reminded the older man.

  “Wafers?” Vera intruded. “There are cookies and biscuits as well. And what about ice cream?”

  While the adults talked, Slava counted. He had written twenty-two letters. Twenty-two times two hundred and fifty was fifty-five hundred. A third of the graves. Or was there a sliding scale? Five hundred for some, two hundred and fifty for others. Did Grandfather say, “Lazar, I charge five hundred. But you let my kid get at your pear-assed progeny, and we’ll make it two-fifty. Just do me a favor, don’t let him know. He’s fragile.”

  No. It was Vera who’d done the bribing. She had called Grandfather like an equal: Come over, make peace, and we’ll buy a letter. Slava in this was a marionette. She knew that Slava wouldn’t deny her—was he so obvious, a panting dog?—and with him clearing the way, they would come. She ran circles around him. In public, at Stas and Lara’s, she was his shadow. In private, she achieved what needed achieving. She was as tough as Grandfather—tougher. That’s why he liked her: He saw a kindred spirit. Slava was writing the letters, sure, but the boy was flighty. Slava imagined Vera wearing Grandfather down on the price, the old man charmed by her enterprise. He didn’t want to condescend, however, and made her work for it. They went back and forth: Two hundred. Three hundred. Two-fifty.

  Slava inspected Vera with a contemptuous wonder. She felt his eyes and swiveled to face him. Then she pulled out the white envelope and thrust it at him with the eyes of a parent. He took it.

  By the time he rejoined the conversation, they were hollering like drunk people. And they were. Vera quickly realized her mistake—what biscuits? They needed cognac. They pulled out the best in the Rudinskys’ possession, a bottle of Rémy Martin VSOP someone had gifted a long time before. (Grandfather reminded them that it was he who had gifted it, it was him.) Thimbles were emptied, lemon wedges sucked down, thimbles emptied again. Gallantly, Garik asked to drink for Slava’s grandmother. The noise ebbed and they gazed mournfully into the crystal in their hands. “It’s nice crystal,” Grandfather said. Then they drank. Eventually, Slava excused himself. They became upset. He said he had a letter to write. Then the waters parted as if for a king.

  –12–

  Outside the Rudinskys’, Slava was beset by an urgent desire to flee—to Manhattan, to Arianna’s. Throughout the preceding month, he had retraced back toward Bensonhurst and Midwood every step that he had taken in the opposite direction two years before. It had happened imperceptibly. You do not notice exactly when day becomes night, but you notice night.

  He strode toward the subway. The sun was descending, fluorescent bulbs clicking on and casting a pale blue glow over the pears and lettuces in the bodegas. The heavy-breasted women who supervised the discount-clothing emporia that lined Eighty-Sixth Street wheeled in the enticement racks from the sidewalk, and a grandmother who had been selling lepeshki from a foldout table on Bay Twenty-Second Street sang quietly to herself as she stacked the plastic bins into a shopping cart.

  Slava had taken the first steps up to the station when he saw him. There was no way to miss Israel Abramson—literary aspirant, anti-clericalist, subject of Slava’s second letter—crossing Eighty-Sixth Street. In ninety-degree weather, in his Red Army uniform, faded but crisp, a few medals swinging gently in cadence with his wavering, stiff-jointed lurch.

  Israel took the sidewalk the way he had taken Kharkov during the war: left foot, right shoulder, right foot, left shoulder. He walked through the busiest thoroughfare in Bensonhurst, six lanes if you counted the side arteries where cars pulled off to double-park, as if tugging himself through an empty field. A bus blazed by, messing his hair; he didn’t even look up. Slava’s heart slid from his chest. He set off after Israel, but at a distance. He didn’t want him to die, but he didn’t want to embarrass him, either.

  Crossing Eighty-Sixth, Slava was nearly sideswiped himself, young men staring sunkenly from the windows of an aircraft carrier masquerading as an SUV. “Vot you doo, fahk!” shouted a leery face with smoked-out eyes as the car passed. “I keel you, ha!” As American yearlings, the parents had driven shit-brown Cutlasses and rusty blue Buicks, but now they were able to purchase nice cars for the children.

  Israel waddled across Benson Avenue, then Bath, then Cropsey. They were nearly in the ocean before he turned. When he finally stopped, they were in front of a stone building identified by a modest sign out front: Temple Beth-El. Israel regarded unhappily the mountain of steps that led to its heavy wood doors. He leaned on the iron railing that climbed to the doorway, mopped his forehead with a handkerchief, and began his ascent. Left hand clutching the railing, the right foot jerked to the next step, dragging the right shoulder along. Then the left half of him. He paused on every other step, breathing hard.

  Five minutes later—maybe longer; Slava was transfixed—Israel’s shaking fingers waved at the door, trying to hook the handle. He yanked, nearly toppling, and disappeared inside. Slava emerged from the shelter of a heat-addled spruce and followed, taking two steps at a time. Midway up, he slowed. It felt heartless to fly up after what it had cost the older man.

  Shabbat shalom. Inside, Israel was nodding his way down the aisle as he dragged himself toward a small table where memorial candles burned. A man in a skullcap, who stood with the firmness of someone who belonged to the premises, watched Israel with a polite smile, several other worshippers whispering among themselves in a corner. “Shabbat shalom,” Israel said. “Shabbat shalom.” But it was only Thursday night.

  Dust swam in the last light filtering through the stained-glass windows on the balcony level. The panels ran the length of the four walls, like a seating gallery. The ceiling was a soaring cupola. Slava had always thought that this was what churches looked like. He had never been inside a synagogue.

  Israel pulled himself to the table with candles and turned to face the rabbi. The rabbi nodded, opened a bureau, and withdrew a tasseled white cloth lined with blue stripes. He walked up to Israel, opened it with the precision of a soldier unfolding a flag, and draped it gently over Israel’s head and shoulders. When the rabbi stepped away, Israel addressed the table. “Dos ist for mayn wife,” he roared in Anglo-Yiddish. The flame of the candle in his hand met the wick of another. Then he muttered something that Slava was too far away to hear. Israel stood for a minute or two, his head bent over the candles, the edges of the tasseled cloth threatening to slide into the flames.

  When he was finished, he removed the cloth from his shoulders and began to join the ends neatly. The rabbi stood to the side; it was clear that he had tried to intervene before, without use. Shakily, Israel brought the upper ends in to his chest, as if embracing someone. Pinching two joined corners in his left hand, he ran his right between the edges of the sheet, then pinched the other two corners. His fingers shook. Holding the joined ends in both hands, he turned the cloth ninety degrees and brought it again to his chest. He repeated the folding pattern until the cloth was a simple blue and white square barely larger than his palm, like a flag for the fallen. He placed it gently in the rabbi’s hand, kissed him on the cheek, and began the journey toward the door, hauling it open with the whole of himself.

  The rabbi had to call out to Slava a second time. Slava had concealed himself in a corner, where he was pretending to make a careful study of the columns and stained glass.

  “Yes,” Slava answered. “Sorry, yes.”

  The rabbi smiled. “I said, what brings you by? First time in a synagogue?”

  “I saw an interior once from the door,” Slava said. “In Vienna.”

  “The Vienna synagogue?” the rabbi said. He had a light, carefully trimmed beard.

  “I don’t know,” Slava said.

  “Big?” He opened his hands.

  Slava nodded. The aid society, which would not leave the Gelmans alone, had
organized a bus trip to a synagogue.

  “Before the war in Vienna,” the rabbi said, “only a church could stand freely. So when they built that synagogue, they had to connect it to a residential building. And so they also had to make it look similar, I mean aesthetically. So in 1938, when the Nazis were trashing Jewish property, they skipped it. They thought it was a regular old apartment building. Isn’t that a story?”

  Slava nodded, trying to think of a way to extricate himself. His mark was vanishing into the evening.

  “You know that man?” the rabbi said, indicating the doorway.

  Slava shrugged.

  “Comes every week. I’ve tried to show him”—he gestured at the bureau that held the tasseled cloth—“but he likes it his own way. He’s seen more than I’ll ever see, so I leave him alone. Get him a book once in a while or some matzo. We did have his son’s bar mitzvah here. At the ripe old age of thirty-two!”

  “Yuri?” Slava said.

  “So you know him,” the rabbi said.

  Shit. “I’m the grandson,” Slava blurted out. From one hole into a deeper. Never a dawdling organ, his heart throttled in his chest.

  “I don’t understand,” the rabbi said.

  “Two marriages?” Slava said, inventing.

  “I had no idea,” the rabbi said, raising his eyebrows. “But I can see the resemblance, sure. Why were you hiding?”

  “You know,” Slava said. “We worry. Crossing the road, things like that. He’s proud, though. Don’t want to embarrass him.”

  “I’m Rabbi Bachman,” the rabbi said, approaching and extending his hand. “I should have introduced myself at the start. Wonderful to meet someone who knows Israel. I’d love to see you here with your grandfather some time. Maybe even”—he raised his hands to indicate that a man could hope for only so much—“a service?”

  “What was he muttering after he was talking about his wife?” Slava said.

  “I’m not sure,” Bachman laughed. “He’s got a language all his own. If I were guessing, blessings. For his children and grandchildren. For you!” He laughed again. “For his son.” The rabbi shifted his feet. “I know they have a disagreement. Israel didn’t even come to the bar mitzvah. But he’s welcome here no matter what; I don’t see the point of pushing people away. Hey, I bet you speak Russian.”

  Slava nodded carefully.

  “I’ve had this idea,” Bachman said. “A Russian minyan. A service in Russian once a week. With commentary. I do the English, someone like you does the Russian. And brings the crowd, obviously. We’ll throw a little Hebrew in, too. Is that something you might be interested in? Talk to some people? Maybe start with your grandfather? The neighborhood’s changed a lot in the last decade.”

  Slava considered the possibility of starting with his grandfather. That day at the Vienna synagogue, he—the real grandfather—had snatched Slava’s hand and slipped away from the group, which had been made to stand waiting for the end of services by their guide, an Israeli in a leather jacket. Slava’s insides knitted in worry. His mother and father had not come on the tour, grateful they didn’t have to. It was only Grandfather and Slava, and they were breaking the rules.

  Holding his hand, Grandfather leaned an ear to the door of the synagogue, on the other side of which a group was praying. “Woo-woo-woo,” Grandfather mimicked, and shrugged. Then he slid his hand inside the handle, as large as a torso, and carefully deposited his nose inside the opening. Slava peeked from behind his trousers, which smelled of wool and naphthalene. Inside, in a room as ornate as a Turkish palace, men lurched epileptically, humming like an apiary.

  Grandfather looked down at Slava. “Woo-woo-woo,” he said again, and turned his finger into his temple. Crazy. “Boy,” he said with a formality that made Slava’s insides twist again. “Of this, we’ve seen all we need to. Time for ice cream. The vanilla one they tie up like a sausage.”

  “But we’re not allowed to leave,” Slava whispered.

  “We, Slavik”—Grandfather leaned down, placing the tip of his finger on his nose—“can do whatever we want.”

  Slava considered Bachman again. No, Rabbi, I won’t be able to provide you with a minyan from the grandfathers, the real or the fake. Their children, perhaps. Their grandchildren, quite possibly. But this—candles, mongreling—was as close as the grandfathers could come. A little foreplay, a forshpeis. Slava was overcome by a desire to hear Grandfather’s voice, the real grandfather’s, as if, like Grandmother, he was going to die and Slava would no longer be able to.

  “I’ll talk to him about the minyan,” Slava said. “I should go now.”

  “I’d like to see you here again,” the rabbi said.

  Slava smiled politely and turned to leave. Halfway to the door, he looked back. “Tell me,” he said. “When is the mourning over after a death?”

  “The shiva?” Bachman said. “There isn’t anything else. Judaism’s not big on stretching out mourning. You mourn hard, so to speak, but then you let go. You light a candle on the yahrzeit, but otherwise you make your way back to life. Why do you ask?”

  “You’re supposed to not think of the person?”

  “Of course you can think of the person. You can think of the person whenever you want. It’s only the rituals that are finished.”

  Slava considered this. It seemed all right. He thanked the rabbi and started again for the door, his steps echoing on the cold churchy stone.

  When Slava thrust open the door, he discovered waiting for him, draped over the stair railing and illuminated from behind by the sun like an arthritic god, Israel Abramson. He looked pink, like a baby.

  “Privet, mal’chik,” Israel said. Hello, boy. “You took your time in there. What were you discussing, the soul of man? I thought you might want to walk together, help me down these goddamn stairs. They build stairs like they’re sitting in heaven.”

  Slava blinked, adjusting his eyes after the interior’s dimness. Maybe Slava was imagining him.

  Then Rabbi Bachman opened the door of the synagogue and emerged into the sunlight.

  “Hava-yoo, Ravvin!” Israel shouted, raking the air with his paw.

  Slava felt sweat on his back.

  “Israel,” the rabbi acknowledged.

  Slava was about to speak when Israel pointed at him and spoke first. Slava closed his eyes as if to shield himself from the blow. But what Israel shouted was: “Grensun!”

  You, world, always make new mysteries.

  Rabbi Bachman smiled. “I know! We spoke. He’s going to help me with a project. Maybe.” The rabbi spoke with the extra volume with which Americans speak to those who don’t speak English.

  Slava turned to Israel. “He says—” he started in Russian.

  “Nais, veree nais!” Israel answered with the Soviet immigrant’s indifference to comprehension as a primary objective of dialogue. “Bai-bai, Ravvin!” He twirled his crooked fingers.

  Rabbi Bachman returned inside, and Israel stuffed his arm into the crook of Slava’s. “See these, mal’chik?” He pointed to the medals on his uniform. “Reconnaissance, ’44 to ’45. I had you as far back as Eighty-Sixth Street. Big deal you are—you can barely cross the street. My heart was in my feet, looking at you back there. Let’s go.”

  “Why did you tell him I was your grandson?” Slava said.

  “What are you, embarrassed?”

  “No,” Slava said. “No.”

  “So why are we talking about this, let’s go.”

  Slava took the steps at Israel’s stride. Up close, it was worse. Each step cost him something dear. At home, he had looked sturdy, nearly athletic, in his gym trousers, but the arm that leaned on Slava now was flabby as dough, the left hand trembling in an eternal so-so. Ahead of them, the descending disk of the sun spread a tired lemon glow.

  “Let’s take a break,” Slava said when they had reached the bottom of the stairs. “Let’s sit down.”

  “You can’t sit down on concrete, you’ll catch cold,” Israel said.

&n
bsp; “It’s a hundred and fifty degrees,” Slava said. “Sit down and rest.”

  “If I sit down here, I’ll never get up,” he said. “Look how low to the ground.”

  “Can you lean against the railing? I am going to sit down.”

  “What are you, a pensioner? Let’s go.”

  “For just a moment,” Slava said. He made sure that Israel was attached to the railing and lowered himself. The step was inches from the pavement. Was it simply performing the ritual of sitting on a low place in honor of the deceased that mattered, or were you also supposed to feel something? Slava waited, but he didn’t feel anything. The people who covered mirrors, sat on low stools, lit candles, how did they come to feel what they felt? Did you have to be born into it? What was the trick?

  There was a terrible rumble next to him. Israel had deposited himself a step above. “If we’re resting, we’re resting,” he said.

  “It doesn’t bother you to go in there?” Slava said.

  Israel blew his nose, a thumb at each nostril. “Where else would I go if I want to sing a song for my wife? The mosque on Eighty-Sixth Street? Masjid Shmashid? No, I am a Jew. I don’t go up there, you think that will make him come back? I take what I can.”

  “Pick and choose,” Slava said sourly.

  “I guess so,” Israel said. “Except I didn’t choose for my son to become a fanatic and run off to Israel. All the same, I’d rather he was happy without me than unhappy with. Do you think he might have done that because he was unhappy? Unhappy with me and my wife?”

  Slava turned to look at Israel. The old man’s face was pinched at the thought. Slava waved him away. “They have studies about this sort of thing,” he lied. “I mean atheists who come and convert. It’s other factors. It’s not family. Weren’t you his family in the Soviet Union?”

  “Maybe it’s something in this place,” he said weakly. He looked on the verge of tears.

  “Maybe,” Slava said.

  Israel nodded, the forehead folded. Slava withdrew the white envelope from his jeans pocket. Palmed by many hands, it was acquiring a foxed edge. He extended it to Israel.