The Free World

by David Bezmozgis

  A different kind of story involved a fat man from Lvov traveling with his wife and teenage son, also fat. Upon their settlement into the pensione, the father drew Alec’s colleague, the myopic Oleg, into his confidence and asked how he might avail himself of the services of a reliable surgeon. In Lvov the man had flourished in the underground economy. When it came time to leave, he had been unable to find a means to transport his valuables abroad. Everyone had heard accounts of sealed railcars loaded with expensive goods, and of the astronomical bribes paid to high-ranking border officials. But he had failed to get to the right people. Desperate for a solution, he’d converted a great proportion of his wealth into gemstones and rich foods. In the year leading up to their departure he had himself, his wife, and his son on a strict regimen of eating. He gained forty kilos. His wife and son also put on a lot of weight. When they’d all attained a satisfactory size, a surgeon creatively implanted diamonds and rubies into their bodies. For the man and his son, he made incisions that mimicked appendectomies. For the wife, he created a caesarian scar. Now that they were safely in Rome, they needed someone to cut them open so that they could retrieve their fortune.

  —It reminds me of something I read in Josefus, Lyova said when Alec told the story.

  Besieged from without by Romans and their Arab allies, robbed, starved, and persecuted from within by rival Jewish gangs, scores of ordinary citizens had tried to escape the city. A small minority swallowed gold coins so as to avoid detection by the Jewish guards. One, who made it to the Syrian camp, was found picking coins out of his stool. A rumor spread through the Arab and Syrian camps that Jews were leaving the city stuffed with gold. Immediately, the Arabs and Syrians took to slaughtering the refugees and searching their bowels.

  —A story like that makes you sentimental for the gentleness of the Soviet border guards, Lyova said.

  —We crossed at Chop, Alec said. Not to get into specifics, but those bastards did everything except slice us open.

  —Yes? Lyova said. And did they find anything?

  —The same thing they’d find if they searched me yesterday or today, Alec said.

  The crossing at Chop remained a sore point, one that Alec avoided bringing up. Unlike nearly all other emigrants from Riga, they had had to cross there instead of at Brest.

  Rosa maintained that no comparable horror could have existed at Brest, but Alec had met any number of people who believed that what they had witnessed there was the height of savagery. A man, traveling with his wife and invalid son, described how an inspector had demanded the boy’s prosthetic arm and, in an ostensible search for contraband, splintered it with a hammer. He heard about monsters who interrogated and terrified small children. He heard of an incident involving an old man who’d been denied access to the lavatory, and who’d soiled himself and then sat for hours in his own filth. And recently a woman had described how her son had been detained by the Brest customs agents, roughly handled, and then beaten by the police. Alec had gotten to talking with the woman after he’d taken note of her and her two children at the orientation meeting. Out of every group of new arrivals there were invariably some who caught his attention. Typically, these were attractive girls and women. He gravitated to them and offered his assistance. He wouldn’t have said that it was because he had an ulterior motive, but simply because he saw no reason to repress a natural inclination. No matter how bad life got, the presence of a beautiful woman made it impossible to despair completely. Even Christ, in his crucified agony, had had the solace of Mary Magdalene’s face, which—if the devotional paintings could be trusted—hadn’t been bad to look at.

  But beauty didn’t decide all. In the case of this woman and her children, Alec had been acutely conscious of them while he delivered his rote orientation speech. Would someone else have been quite so drawn to the truculent hoodlum and the dark-haired girl at his side, with the dramatic, arched eyebrows and large, coltish eyes? As he spoke she played a game in which she sought his gaze, peevishly dismissed it, and then commanded it again.

  They were from Minsk, the mother said. It was the three of them traveling together. She was a widow. Her husband had died when the children were still small. The children now appeared to be in their early twenties. The girl introduced herself as Masha, and her brother appraised Alec stonily and gave his name as Dmitri. Given Dmitri’s appearance, Alec wasn’t at all surprised that he’d been detained by the customs agents and then beaten by the police. Like those of Minka, Iza’s albino friend, Dmitri’s hands and neck were festooned with prison markings. It looked like he’d spent a fair portion of his young life behind bars. Alec had noticed that men like him passed through the halls of HIAS in no small number. The Soviet authorities had been only too happy to clear the jails and prisons of Jewish criminals. The unambiguous message from the Kremlin to the Knesset was: You want Jews? Here, take these.

  Efforts were made to divert some of the convicts to places other than Israel. To spread out the criminal element. The criminals were usually more than happy to comply; the immigration offices less so. It wasn’t easy to get the criminals past the interview process. Short of wearing gloves, there was no way for them to conceal their ring tattoos, and one glimpse at these was usually enough to settle the issue.

  —We would like to go to Boston, said the mother, who gave her name as Riva Davidovna Horvitz.

  She was a lean, dark-complexioned woman, once appealing, Alec supposed. Now she had the severity of a person who had been marked by misfortune and did not wish to conceal it.

  While Riva spoke about the rigors of their emigration, Alec found himself constructing fantasies and stratagems about her daughter. Masha had elicited in him the same feeling he’d had when he first saw Olya on Karl Marx Street. In the intervening years, for all his conquests, he’d rarely had that feeling again. There were very few women who possessed perpetual mystery—who revealed less than they knew and remained, at some level, mysterious even to themselves. Occasionally, Alec saw a woman and suspected that she was of this type, only to discover that he’d been mistaken. But there was something about Masha that compelled him. She looked to have what Olya had had—beauty like a long blade, carelessly held.

  Polina’s allure had been altogether different, she had been like the still point at the center of a gyre. He’d seen her, day after day at her desk in the technology department. Beside her was a stern old matron. Every time Alec thought to approach Polina the matron had been at her side, discouraging him with castrating looks. For at least a month he contemplated ways to breach the system of defense and get to Polina. At first, he wanted only a few words, just to see if he could elicit a smile. That was all. Nothing more. Just for a start.

  Then finally, the afternoon he approached her with Karl in tow, her sentinel had vacated her post. Alec had made his silly, brash proposition, and succeeded in getting Polina to join them for a drink. She’d said little that evening; she’d let Alec entertain her. After she finished her drink, she discreetly checked her watch and rose to say goodbye.

  —You can’t leave yet, Alec had said.

  —I can’t? Polina had asked as if allowing that there might be substance behind Alec’s words.

  Alec had looked up at her from his place at the circular café table, hardly big enough to accommodate their glasses and ashtray.

  —You see, Karl said, my brother can’t bear to have a woman leave until she’s confessed that she thinks he’s the most desirable man on earth.

  —Do many women say that? Polina asked.

  —Surprisingly, Karl said.

  —Or not, Alec offered.

  —So this is the reason I can’t leave?

  —Only if you think it’s a good reason, Alec said.

  —Honestly speaking, I don’t, Polina said.

  —Then it isn’t.

  —So what is?

  —There are many. Very important ones. To list them all would take some time. Please sit and I’ll buy you another drink.

  —Your reason to
stay is to hear the reasons to stay? Polina asked.

  —Not good enough?

  She had gone home that night, but Alec had perceived an opening. Not long after the evening with Karl, on the day of the annual Readiness for Labor and Defense Exercises, Alec had finagled his way into Polina’s group. The testing was done according to department, but Alec, in part because of his father’s status, but mainly on account of his own gregariousness, moved fluidly throughout the plant. It raised no eyebrows when his name was included with those of the technology department. Broadly speaking, nobody cared about any of the official and procedural events. Celebrate the workers on the anniversary of the Revolution? Why not? Honor the Red Army on Red Army Day? Who could object? Either was a good excuse to avoid work. Lenin’s birthday? Stalin’s first tooth? Brezhnev’s colonoscopy? Each merited a drink, a few snacks, and maybe a slice of cake. So, too, the Labor and Defense Exercises—only with less drinking and without the cake.

  The morning of the exercises, Alec took his place among the young workers of the technology and transistor radio engineering departments. Dressed in tracksuits and running shoes, they crossed the street from the plant proper to the site of the VEF sports stadium and target range. At the range, .22-caliber rifles awaited them, having already been retrieved from the armory. Members of VEF’s athletic department—the trainers and coaches of the factory’s various sports teams—had already prepared the field for the shot put, the long jump, the high jump, and for the short-distance footraces. The trainers and coaches roamed about with their stopwatches, measuring tapes, and the lists of the norms that had to be met. Somewhere, presumably in the Kremlin, a physical culture expert had determined the basal fitness level young Soviet workers needed to possess to establish their superiority over the Americans and the Red Chinese. Should these foes come spilling across the borders, they would encounter a daunting column ready to repulse them with heroic displays of running, jumping, shot putting, and small-arms fire.

  Before the start of the events, Alec sought Polina out and tried to strike a bargain with her. He told her that he wanted to see her again.

  —You’re seeing me now, Polina said.

  —One more evening, Alec said. All I ask. In the scheme of a life, what’s one evening?

  —Depends who you spend it with.

  —A valid point, Alec said.

  To reach the decision, Alec proposed a contest. If he scored better at the rifle range, Polina would grant him another evening; if she scored better, he would leave her in peace. Perhaps because she was beguiled by the prospect of a game, Polina agreed.

  —I should warn you in advance, Alec said. Last summer, in the officers’ training rotation, I placed eighth in marksmanship.

  —Out of how many? Polina asked.

  —Sixteen, Alec said.

  —That doesn’t sound very good, Polina said.

  —No, it doesn’t, Alec said. That’s the idea.

  —I don’t understand, Polina said.

  —Well, I was specifically trying for eighth place.

  —Why is that?

  —In the army, it’s best to be somewhere in the middle. Trouble usually finds those at the bottom or at the top.

  —So you mean to say that you’re a good shot?

  —Eighth place, Alec said.

  —In that case, I should tell you that last year at Readiness for Labor and Defense, I finished second in my department. They awarded me a ribbon and printed my name in the factory newspaper. My husband pasted a copy of it into an album.

  Alec noticed that Polina didn’t brandish the word “husband” like a cudgel. She seemed to place the same emphasis on “husband” as she did on “ribbon” or “album.” But Alec wasn’t fool enough to believe that she’d included the word innocently. In a sense, since she hadn’t unequivocally rebuffed Alec, anything she said about her husband verged on betrayal. Any information Alec had about him was information he could use against him. For instance, the fact that he was the kind of man who would preserve something printed in the factory’s idiotic newspaper. Then again, it was possible that Polina found such a gesture endearing. It could be that she was implying that this was precisely the kind of man she wanted. A man unlike Alec, who, in his ironical sophistication, couldn’t hope to access or appreciate such pure, sentimental feeling.

  But whatever she meant, she’d tacitly agreed to the contest.

  Refereeing the shooting range was Volodya Zobodkin, one of the company of young Jews with whom Alec and Karl played soccer on the beach at Majori. Zobodkin, like Iza Judo, was a graduate of the Institute of Sport, and now he coached the VEF soccer club. When Volodya distributed the rifles, Alec asked if he could get one with a reliable sight.

  —Who are you, Zaitsev? Volodya chided. This isn’t the Battle of Stalingrad. Just aim in the general direction of the target.

  —Do you have one with an adjusted sight or not? Alec persisted.

  —What’s with you? Volodya asked. Have you been drinking? It’s not even lunch.

  Without much elaboration, Alec told Volodya what he’d arranged. Volodya glanced quickly at Polina, raised an approving eyebrow, and sorted through the stack of rifles for something suitable. He handed a rifle to Alec and then offered to find another, grossly inferior one, for Polina.

  —There’s one here that practically shoots sideways, Volodya said.

  But that wasn’t the kind of contest Alec wanted, largely because he sensed it wasn’t the kind of contest Polina would accept. She seemed like the type who respected rules, including rules that dictated the breaking of other rules.

  Alec shot first. For all his pride at having placed eighth, Alec had to admit that he couldn’t compare the effort required to achieve mediocrity to that required to achieve excellence. Everything naturally flowed toward mediocrity; for this the world needed little in the way of your cooperation. Whereas total incompetence or extreme proficiency demanded some application.

  To his credit and mild surprise, Alec shot well. Volodya called for cease-fire and presented Alec with his perforated target, a cluster of holes grouped reasonably close together, reasonably close to the bull’s-eye. Even if Polina shot better, Alec felt that he’d performed well enough to warrant the date.

  —Is this how you shot in the army? Polina asked.

  —I’ve never shot so well in my life, Alec said. But then I’ve never had such motivation. As my teachers used to write in my school reports: Alec is personable and shows signs of intelligence, but is lazy, inattentive, and lacks all motivation.

  For the sake of equity, Polina shot with the same rifle Alec had used. Alec watched her assume the prone position and take careful aim, the rifle’s stock pressed correctly against her cheek, its butt in the crook of her shoulder. As she shot, Alec stood behind and slightly to the side and used the opportunity to evaluate her in a way he hadn’t been able to before. Unchallenged, he let his eyes linger on her small lobeless ear, the creases at the corner of her squeezed-shut eye, the strong, sculpted tendons of her neck, and the fine symmetry of her profile. He watched her shoot with steady regularity, squeezing off a shot and then sliding the bolt to chamber the next round. It looked to Alec as though she were shooting to win, which he couldn’t but construe as a bad sign.

  Later, when things between them were better defined, Polina explained that she had shot the way she did not because she wanted to avoid seeing him again but because she couldn’t perform otherwise.

  —The graveyards and songbooks are full of people like you, Alec had remarked, a fact she had not disputed.

  After Polina had finished shooting, Volodya collected her target and compared it against Alec’s. Polina had shot well, but there was no doubt that Alec had shot better.

  —Imagine that, Alec said, feigning bashfulness.

  —Maybe it’s not too late, Polina said. You could still make general.

  —There’s a disturbing thought, Alec said.

  After this they ran, jumped, hurled the shot put, and killed t
ime un-til the exercises were finished. As Alec was leaving the stadium, Volodya caught up to him and congratulated him again on his great triumph. He wanted to inform Alec that his shooting performance had earned him more than the date with Polina. It had earned him first place overall. As the top shooter, Volodya explained, Alec would be in line for a commendation as a Voroshilov marksman, and this would include official recognition at the Young Communists meeting and special mention in the factory newspaper.

  —Come on, Vovka, Alec said, don’t spoil the day for me. Write I came in eighth and give the honor to some other schmuck.

  —Next in line is your girl, Volodya said.

  —Perfect, Alec said. Her husband likes to paste articles from the factory newspaper.

  The following week, when Polina’s name was printed, an acquaintance spotted it and told Maxim. As before, he asked for a copy.

  Polina described to Alec how she’d had to watch Maxim paste the silly article into the album. If only he weren’t so foolish, Polina had told Alec, which he took as no ringing endorsement of his own appeal as a lover. But Polina always spoke plainly. If only Maxim weren’t so foolish, she’d said, she would have remained faithful to him, never taken up with Alec, and lived a regular, quiet life.

  17

  It was at the front that Samuil had become aware of the intersection between the dreamlife of the living and the afterlife of the dead. When he stole a few minutes of sleep under an artillery barrage, his fallen comrades had visited him. Later, when he had abandoned all hope of seeing his mother, uncle, and aunt alive again, they appeared too. For a time he couldn’t sleep without encountering their ghosts. After he’d received notice of Reuven’s death, he couldn’t close his eyes without meeting his brother. In these dreams, Reuven was sometimes whole, the way he’d been when Samuil saw him last; other times he was disfigured, wounded in the legs or with a shattered face. But no matter what shape he was in, his brother seemed calm, at peace, either unmoved by or unaware of the fact that he was no longer among the living. Nights Reuven or his mother failed to materialize, Samuil felt disconsolate. To think that he would never see them again, not even in his dreams, filled him with sadness and apathy. He had known better than to share these feelings. He’d seen many of his fellow soldiers succumb to the same bleak and despondent feelings. These were men who’d received bad news in the field post—confirmation of a relative’s death or of a wife’s inconstancy. He saw his comrades mutilate themselves, commit suicidal acts in combat, attempt desertion, and make defeatist, ill-conceived statements. More than once Samuil referred these offenders to the NKVD and the military tribunals, having no illusion about the fate to which he’d consigned them.