A Replacement Life

by Boris Fishman

  The cameraman whom Settledecker was pointing to uncoupled his face from his viewfinder. “The Bronx,” he shouted up to the stage.

  “The Bronx!” Settledecker repeated. The prisoners filed behind him, professional grief in their faces, their bodies tired and slumped. They didn’t know what was being said. Someone had told them that doing this might get them money. In their heads, calculations were being made about what those euros could buy. A new car for the son-in-law. And a limousine medallion. Enough to help the children get a down payment together, because everyone else’s children already owned a home. They would crawl across the dais if that’s what it took.

  “The Bronx is an internment camp, my friend,” Settledecker went on. “Your family—you got a family, sir?”

  “Two kids,” the cameraman shouted. There was a bored practice to his tone.

  “Two kids,” Settledecker said. “And a wife who brought them into the world, I presume?” He paused again for mild laughter. “Well, they are in Camp Bronx. But—last question, sir, I promise—your name?”

  “Joseph Rumana,” the cameraman said. “Junior. You want to know what we’re having for dinner?”

  The other cameramen laughed. Settledecker smiled tolerantly into the microphone. “Thank you, sir.”

  The cameraman cocked a finger at Settledecker and pulled the trigger. He was a plant.

  “The Rumanas are rounded up. But Mr. Rumana—loving husband and father—finds a way for his family to slip out, leaving him alone in the camp. His wife and children spend the next four years wandering the country, living off scraps, fending off attack, suffering the worst kind of humiliation—because by now there are people in Utah and Texas who say, ‘Let them have New York. Then they’ll leave us alone.’ The war is so long, Mr. Rumana’s boys become old enough to join the U.S. Army. In trenches they fight. Mrs. Rumana works twenty-hour shifts in a factory, making munitions.

  “It’s like this for years, ladies and gentlemen,” Settledecker went on. “Years. When it’s over, there used to be eight million in New York. Now there are two. Imagine this city with two million people. I know, I know—room to walk. But I’m serious. Miraculously, Mr. Rumana has survived. He weighs a third of what he used to, he’s sick with things medicine has yet to describe, he’s seen things that none of us can imagine. But he’s alive. For decades, Mr. Rumana must agitate against the German government to have a value put on his suffering. Can it be measured in numbers? That’s not for us to answer.” Settledecker pointed an index finger at the sky. He was warmed up now, swaying.

  “But something that we do have to ponder: German restitution covers only Mr. Rumana. That’s right—everything that his wife and his boys went through, all because New York was invaded by Germans, and they won’t see a cent. Sixty years later! Mrs. Rumana is eighty-seven years old! These are her last days on earth. She has gout, arthritis, glaucoma. From day after day working in the dark, casting artillery shells. But no! The generous German government doesn’t cover anyone who wasn’t—I quote to you from the official documents—‘incarcerated in concentration camps, ghettos, or forced labor battalions.’ Shame, ladies and gentlemen!” Settledecker was thundering, his cheeks quivering. “Shame!” he bellowed, and for a moment it was easy to imagine that there was no act in his speech. He blinked several times, his words echoing. The survivors had finished filing past him. They milled on the other side of the dais, unsure what to do.

  “But why resort to fiction?” Settledecker said quietly, now in the transport of tormented appeal. “Why don’t we hear the facts from the survivors themselves? And then you decide for yourselves. You won’t hear from me again. Decide for yourselves. Decide if you want to petition your congressman, your senator. The choice is in your hands. No one else can help these people, only your word. But who will speak up when they come for me? Yes, please.”

  Settledecker, eyes afire, turned to the pack of seniors and gestured to the woman who had been in the first seat in the corner row. The woman was a cake, concentric tiers of flab from her face to her waistline. But her nails were tidy semicircles, and thick amber earrings hung from her ears. She lolled her head weakly.

  “Yes, yes,” Settledecker confirmed, dribbling his head. “Now, please.” He lowered the microphone. The cake shrugged and separated herself from the crowd. Panting, she climbed the stairs, Settledecker lifting her by the elbow. The wind had stolen several strands from the golden fog of her hair. They fluttered around her face like streamers, so light in the sun that it was easy to imagine what she looked like as a young woman. In 1941, to this woman, as to Grandmother, the world must have felt like the final version of itself. Nothing could make the lives they were living seem obsolete. After the war, Grandmother would pretend to agree with the neighborhood: Grandfather was unsuitable, a hooligan. But she no longer had parents or grandparents, and in her mind, Grandfather was like a rock against whom even the worst things might break.

  Had Grandfather told Slava this, or had Slava made it up?

  Slava’s father, when he came to court his mother, was also unsuitable, only for the opposite reason. He was shy and hid behind his wife. Mother pretended to agree with her parents that he was unsuitable, but in her mind, he was a rest from rock-Grandfather’s dictations.

  What was Slava’s place in this sequence? Would the woman he wanted to marry have to lie to her parents about the kind of person he was? In the historical pattern, he was supposed to repeat Grandfather, a rock.

  On the dais, the woman, unlike Settledecker a genuine technological novice, leaned in so closely that her lips touched the microphone. “I’m sori, pliz,” she said. “I no spik English.” She looked over at Settledecker. His face was a rictus of exasperation and rage. He wheeled around and blinked at the crowd. Finally, he found whom he needed. He began to snap his fingers.

  The young woman who had saved Devicki with Turtle-Face began pardoning her way through the crowd. Slava could see her in profile, her makeup glittering in the sun. From the side she looked like a painted doll, the pear of her ass swaying in a tight skirt. She mounted the stairs and turned to face the crowd. Now Slava could see her face in full.

  “Hello, everyone,” she said. “My name is Vera. I will translate.” Then she turned to the older woman and whispered in Russian: “Speak.”

  The seniors piled their mesh satchels with diagonally sliced halves of southwestern turkey wraps. They worked with a martial exactness, words rarely passing between them. Sima, syuda. Dai sumku. Net, te bez myasa. (Sima, over here. Give me the bag. No, don’t bother, those don’t have meat.) The husband removed the stones keeping the napkins in place, the wife plucked open two napkins, the husband nested the sandwich between them. Those without spouses worked with friends, neighbors, new partners.

  “So this is the Russian-to-American account,” Slava said when Vera had finished a row of interviews at Settledecker’s side.

  “The one,” she said, nodding. “I thought maybe you’d come to this.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Slava said.

  “It’s no big deal,” she said. “It’s not like what you’re doing.”

  He spun around and counted the television crews. She shrugged.

  “It’s so hot,” he said. “Why is everything outside?”

  “We tried. The museum didn’t like the prisoner trick. They wanted an association, yes, but they said outside only. Doing it on the lawn was the bargain. Off the record, okay?”

  “You have to say that first,” Slava tried to joke.

  “You’re the professional,” she shrugged.

  “This was your idea, not his, wasn’t it?” Slava said.

  She nodded.

  “You’re good,” Slava said.

  “Are you surprised?” she said. She pulled uncomfortably at her blouse. It was too coarse for the weather, but it outlined her chest handsomely; probably Settledecker had made her wear it. For ten minutes after the ceremony, the cameras interviewed Vera while Settledecker steamed beside
the dais. Though he wanted the attention, he knew that he was getting what he wanted with her in front of the cameras.

  “Slava, why are you doing what you are doing?” she said.

  Slava looked away. “I don’t know anymore. Truthfully.”

  “So maybe you don’t know everything,” she said. “Your head can be a watermelon sometimes. A lot of juice but a lot of water. You know, you could have asked me at the house what were the scrapbooks with the Halloween costumes. But you were not interested. You like to put us down. I don’t care, Slava, for your information. But them? They are old, Slava. They are in a place they don’t understand.”

  “And what do you want?” he said.

  “I want them to have comfort.”

  “You, you,” he said irritably. “Not them.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  Slava looked away. The woman who had been calling for Sima earlier shouted to find out if Sima had found the cake. Sima replied that she had, Fanechka, thank you.

  The wind had won a temporary reprieve from the heat and, added to the shade they had found, was actually pleasant. You could imagine the world cooling down.

  “I earn half as much as you do,” he said. “And I want away from all this. Why would your parents want us to be together?”

  “For someone who wants to go away, you spend a lot of time in the neighborhood.”

  “It’s temporary.”

  “You sure?” she said. She watched the camera crews folding up. “You used to be different. They think it’s a phase.”

  “And you agree with them.”

  “You’re still one of us, Slava. A strange you is still better than an American. They can understand you.”

  “Do you know what I think?” he said. “You don’t want this. They want this.”

  She lifted a palm to his cheek. “You talk and talk,” she said. “You make everything so complicated. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “What’s tomorrow?” he said.

  “At your grandfather’s?” she said. “Everyone’s getting together. The applications are due the next day.”

  “I know when the applications are due. No one told me.”

  “They came up with it at our place last week. Your grandfather didn’t tell you? I think he’s a little afraid of calling you. But it’s not like you’re not invited. You are the author.”

  “My grandfather invited people to his house?” Slava said. She had to have mixed something up.

  “It’s a nice idea,” she said. “Really an excuse to spend time together. Our old people are lonely.”

  His grandfather was going to have over the Katznelsons, the Kogans, the Rubinshteins? Whose grave inconsiderations he had borne with an unspeaking pride all these years? But six weeks ago, an evening hello from an investigator for the Claims Conference also would have seemed far-fetched.

  Slava peered past Vera at Peter, skulking around the seniors, strands of Yiddo-English rising into the air. Slava wouldn’t bother trying to file a piece for Century. Peter would get only the cream of the story, but he would write about what had actually happened: the survivors’ agenda, their quotes. It was far better for these old people to have Peter Devicki file a piece. His was far likelier to see print.

  He turned back to Vera. Of course he would be there.

  –16–

  Otto Barber had a professor’s wild, unkempt hair, its loose gray strands billowing mildly in the line of a fan thrumming from above the bar. All around Otto, young people were working through liter-size pitchers of lager, but the German had ordered in the European manner, .3 liters. Lifting the glass, he barely wet his lips. Watching from the doorway, Slava was reminded of a walk he had taken with his father in Italy. After many aimless turns, they stopped, Slava not sure why, at the window of a café like a hundred others. This one had only a single customer, sidled up to the copper-top bar. It was the lunch hour; he was in his postman’s uniform. He ordered a juice—Slava’s father, of lesser eyesight and lesser Italian, asked Slava what kind it was, and Slava proudly said, reading the label, pera, grusha, pear. The barman retrieved the potbellied bottle from a fridge, followed by a lowball from a rack. He deposited a small square napkin on the bar, on it the empty glass. Then he tipped the bottle of juice over the glass. The two men continued to talk while the barman poured. He poured for a minute. The final drops slid from the neck of the bottle with torturous slowness. Finally, the bottle was empty, the glass filled to its neck. The two men spoke for another minute before the post

  man reached for the glass, as if his thirst were not pressing. Once he had taken a sip, the juice barely touching his lips, the barman vanished, the bar the postman’s alone. He unfolded a newspaper, and both Slava and his father thought they could hear the snap of its crease before it landed next to the juice. Slava’s father looked down at his son and smiled in a resigned, fatal way.

  “Mr. Gelman!” Slava heard through the noise of the bar. Otto was barreling toward him like a castaway. “Well, it is you,” he said proudly on reaching Slava.

  “You can call me Slava,” Slava said.

  “My assistant says it’s a name with great meaning,” Otto said. He pumped Slava’s hand and even bowed slightly. “She’s also a Soviet émigré,” he hastened to explain. “Lyudmila. Please, Mr. Gelman—Slava, excuse me—let us not stand here like guests.” He extended his arm toward the back of the bar, where the bartender had placed a coaster over Otto’s glass.

  “What is your poison?” Otto said as he lowered himself in his chair. “Did I say it correctly? As promised, I am buying.”

  Slava looked up at the bartender, but he was experimenting with the foam on a Boddington and had no interest in their conversation. Not to prolong matters, Slava asked for the Boddington, but in his nervousness, he elbowed it onto the bar. When he looked up apologetically, the bartender only shrugged. “I’ll practice the perfect Boddie till kingdom come,” he said. “You’ll have to pay me again, though.”

  “I will pay,” Otto shouted. The bartender, mopping up the spill with a dirty towel, looked up at the odd pair before him. Otto waved him away. “Mr. Gelman, I will tell you a story,” he said. “One time my father and I met for tea. I had just finished university—I was struggling to find a direction for my life. It is a problem for all men at twenty-two, but in our country, with a father like mine—you understand. He was a serious man, a strict man, but in the most positive sense, and he believed that the value of going around without a goal, well, it was nil. Better to file the same bolt over and over at the motor factory, not that he was a great admirer of such things, than wander the streets and drink coffee and think about—what?

  “Anyway, we met for tea. I was wearing yellow running shoes! Oh, it was the 1970s, and I imagined myself an adventurous person, but how foolish to meet your father for a discussion about the direction of your life in yellow running shoes!” Otto slapped the bar, delighted at his callowness.

  “Anyway, I was so nervous. The waitress brought over the tea in these two very attractive small pots, and what did I do? I spilled the whole pot in my lap. All over my yellow shoes, all over my jeans, so it looked like—excuse me—like I went to the bathroom.” Otto hiccuped from the beer and apologized.

  “I think it is taking all of my father’s power not to shake his head. I excused myself and went to the bathroom to wash up. And in that time the waitress had brought a new pot of tea—for free, I would like to add, Mr. Bartender, ha-ha! No, I am joking, it is okay. And what happened then, Mr. Gelman? Can you guess?” Otto’s eyes sparkled with anticipation.

  “You spilled the tea all over again,” Slava said grimly.

  “That is correct!” Otto shouted. “That is so very sadly correct. You see? You are a storyteller. You know how it ends. But also it doesn’t end that way!” He wagged his finger. “My father rose from the table, and I thought, He is going to walk away in disgust. I could see the waitress laughing behind the bar. But he took me by the shoulders. And he s
aid: Ich bin fertig aber dir gehört die Welt. Sei dir selbst treu.” Otto gleamed at Slava as if they spoke the same language. Finally, he relented and translated: “‘I am a finished man, but you have the world. Be true to your own strange kind.’ It was lines from literature. Did I think my father read a single page of literature in his life? No!” Otto looked off and recited: “‘I am a finished man . . . But you are quite a different matter: God has prepared a life for you . . . Become a sun and everyone will see you. The sun must be the sun first of all.’”

  He turned back to Slava. With bewilderment, Slava realized Otto was waiting for an assessment of his performance. Slava mumbled a compliment. Otto nodded demurely.

  “Mr. Gelman, my position is, how do you say”—Otto made the motion of cuffed wrists—“but at sixty-five, you are free. With a nice state pension. I will not say this even to my wife, but I will say it to you: There is a book inside me. Maybe there is some advice, even, you can give me. Isn’t this the biggest task of them all? To organize these thoughts running around inside us, to stop the river of time just one second?” He shook his head tragically.

  “I can hardly help you if I have no idea what’s going on,” Slava said, trying to sound casual as he delivered the line he had practiced so many times. What he really wanted to know was why he was sitting there if he wasn’t the accused, and how Otto knew so much about him, but that he couldn’t ask. He counseled himself patience.