Immigrant City

by David Bezmozgis

  * * *

  Wolf Shulman was buried at the “new” Jewish cemetery on Shmerle Street. An older cemetery, from before the war, could be found in the Moskovsky farshtat, a traditionally poor, working-class neighbourhood behind the train station. Before the Nazi occupation the neighbourhood had been predominantly Jewish and, during the Nazi occupation, it had served as the ghetto. Ilya said there wasn’t much to see there but, if Victor liked, Ilya would show him around. The municipal courthouse, where Ilya worked as a prosecutor, was only a few minutes away by foot.

  From Ilya’s apartment Victor caught a bus that let out at the base of Shmerle Street. Shmerle, a winding tributary off the main road, rose to the cemetery and beyond. A concrete wall, painted a pale orange, encircled the cemetery. Victor followed the wall to the gates, where three old Russian women, wearing babushkas and wool socks, minded a wooden flower stall. Business appeared less than brisk, but as Victor neared the entrance, he saw a young couple select a bouquet of yellow carnations and so he did the same. He then passed through the gates and located the small stone building that served as the cemetery manager’s office. Inside, the office was one single room, with dusty casement windows, a desk for the cemetery manager and a lectern upon which rested a thick, leather-bound book. Upon entering, Victor saw a short, heavy-set man wearing faded jeans, a pink cotton sweater and a black yarmulke examining a slip of paper that had been handed to him by the young couple with the yellow carnations. Victor heard the man ask, “Berkovitz or Perkovitz?” and the young woman reply, “Berkovitz. Shura Efimovna Berkovitz.” “Berkovitz, Berkovitz,” the man repeated, and shuffled to the lectern and opened the large book. “Year of death?” he inquired and, given the year, flipped pages and ran his finger down a column of handwritten names.

  Once he found the name, the manager wrote down the section and row and pointed the young couple in the appropriate direction. For his service, and for the upkeep of the cemetery, he drew their attention to a container for donations. In a practised appeal that included Victor, the man said, “We have more dead than living. And the dead don’t donate.”

  When the young couple left to seek Shura Berkovitz’s grave, Victor introduced himself to the manager. For the second time that day, he was surprised to be so effortlessly recognized. Using the same words Salma had used earlier that morning (though without the rancour), the manager said, “Yes, I know who you are.”

  Flipping more pages in the book, the manager looked for Wolf Shulman.

  “Remind me, what year did he die?”

  “1978.”

  “There. Shulman, Wolf Lazarovich,” the manager said, and copied the information.

  “And is everything ready for the new gravestone?”

  “The grave is there. It’s always ready. When the stonecutter brings the new stone, he’ll also remove the old one. Very easy. Tik-tak.”

  “Is he here today?”

  Ilya had told Victor that sometimes, particularly on Sundays, the stonecutter could be found at the cemetery. He also added that Victor would be well advised to speak to him as soon as possible because the stonecutter could be a difficult man to track down. Sander had expended no small amount of energy dealing with him.

  “I’ll call him at his shop,” the cemetery manager said, and dialed the number.

  Within seconds he was speaking to the stonecutter. He spoke partly in Yiddish and partly in Russian. After a very brief exchange, he hung up. Victor, trying to suppress his irritation, explained that he had wished to speak to the stonecutter himself.

  “He said he can see you tomorrow morning. He’s very busy right now, but he’ll be able to speak to you then. He keeps an office at the Jewish Community Centre. He’ll be waiting for you at 10:30.”

  “I understand. But, you see, I’m only here for a short time and I want to be sure there are no miscommunications.”

  “You shouldn’t worry. I know of the matter. He knows of the matter. There will be no miscommunications. You’ll see him tomorrow and everything will be just as you wish.”

  Victor paused, assumed an expression he often employed when dealing with obdurate lawyers and clients, an expression intended to imply sincere deliberation, and then said, “Nevertheless.”

  The cemetery manager raised his palms in a sign of surrender. He scribbled a number on a piece of paper.

  “Here is the number. Please. I wouldn’t want you to think I am interfering. I was only trying to help you. The stonecutter is one of those men who, when he is busy, doesn’t like to be disturbed.”

  Victor took the number and dialed. After a short while he heard a man’s terse hello. Before Victor could finish introducing himself, the man barked, “Tomorrow, 10:30,” and hung up. Victor replaced the phone and turned reluctantly to face the cemetery manager’s obsequious grin.

  * * *

  The cemetery at Shmerle had been hewn from a forest, but enough trees had been spared so as to retain a sense of the arboreal. Different types of trees—birch, elm, maple, ash—provided texture and shade and resembled in their randomness the different species of gravestones—marble, granite, limestone—that sprouted from the ground as naturally as trees. Other than being arranged in sections and rows, no other order had been imposed on the gravestones and so large dwarfed small, traditional opposed modern, and dark contrasted light. The only commonality between them was that each stone featured a photograph of the deceased and that in each photograph the deceased possessed the same grudging quality of expression. Soldiers, grandmothers, engineers, mathematicians: all stared into eternity with a face that declared not I was alive, but rather, This was my life. After walking some distance, Victor found his grandmother and grandfather wearing this same face.

  Until he saw his grandmother’s grave, Victor had at some level forgotten about it. That he carried only one bouquet reminded him of the extent to which he had forgotten. His grandmother had died when he was still an infant and so he had no memory of her at all. Somewhere there was a picture of the two of them together: a baby in the arms of a stout, prematurely old woman. Her gravestone confirmed what little he knew of her. “Etel Solomonovna Shulman, beloved wife, mother and grandmother. Died before her sixtieth birthday.” This information, along with her photo, was etched onto a thick, rectangular slab of black granite. And this slab, almost three feet high, towered over a limestone monument one-third its size, already weather-worn and tilting slightly backwards. Seeing the two gravestones side by side, and having seen the other stones in the cemetery, Victor could understand his father’s anguish. What was left for Wolf Shulman appeared insufficient and unjust. It seemed a slight against a man whose solemn face—due to the backwards tilting of the stone—appealed vaguely heavenwards with an expression that could also be interpreted as: Is this all I deserve?

  After taking some pains to divide his bouquet into two equal halves, Victor paused and contemplated his grandparents’ graves. The graves evoked in him a peculiar timbre of grief—grief over not what he had lost but over what he had never had. A baser, more selfish form of grief. The kind that only permitted him to mumble a self-conscious goodbye before turning back up the path. He then retraced his steps through the cemetery, stopping at times to appraise certain gravestones, look at pictures and read names and dates. There were other members of his family buried here, and he discovered the grave of a great-uncle as well as some other graves with the last name Shulman—although he couldn’t be sure if they were definitively his relations. The only other name he recognized appeared in a section occupied by more recent graves. On a reddish marble stone, he read the name Rabinsky and saw a picture of a woman who could only have been Ilya’s mother. The picture, like all such pictures, was not of the best quality, but Victor could discern enough to draw the obvious conclusion. And beside this grave was another, still lacking a stone, but with a small plastic sign pressed into the soft earth on which was stencilled the name S. Rabinsky.

  It was only noon when Victor left the cemetery and, though he felt the s
luggishness of three days without sleep, he decided to take a tour of the city. He caught a bus back into the vicinity of Ilya’s apartment and then walked to the heart of medieval Riga. The city had been established in the twelfth century and had, throughout its history, been the subject of every Baltic power. Poles and Swedes had tramped through its cobblestone streets. In the twentieth century alone—but for a brief spell of interwar independence—it had belonged to the Tsar, the Kaiser, Stalin, Hitler and then Stalin once more. But although it had been repeatedly contested over two world wars, it had never been the site of any major battle. Occupiers marched in, retreated, were replaced by other occupiers who then retreated, firing a few parting shots but effecting little damage. And so Victor was able to observe the baroque architecture, pass through winding alleyways and visit the Domsky Cathedral, home to a world-famous organ. Later, by leaving the old city, he was also able to find many examples of art nouveau buildings, with their elaborate stucco figures and faces. However, not being particularly interested in architecture, Victor saw just enough to get a sense of the place. And after he’d acquired this sense, he took a seat at an outdoor café and ate his lunch in view of pedestrians, vendors, drunks, policemen and bus drivers. In its constituent parts the city displayed itself and seemed, with its imported cars and Western fashions, none the worse for fifty years of Soviet rule.

  On the drive back to Jurmala, Victor allowed himself to drift off. It was the deepest sleep he had experienced since leaving Los Angeles and, when his cab reached the hotel, a tremendous effort was required for him to rouse himself. He wanted nothing other than to sleep until morning, but back at the front desk, there were messages waiting for him from his father and from Ilya. So, tired as he was, Victor began by calling Ilya and recounting the episode at the cemetery manager’s office. The incident, according to Ilya, was consistent with the man’s character.

  “But you have to consider how many others are practising his trade. The man has no competition and so, unfortunately, he’s become arrogant.”

  Ilya wished Victor luck and then invited him to come to the courthouse after his meeting with the stonecutter. He framed the invitation in collegial terms. As a fellow jurist, Ilya imagined that Victor possessed some professional curiosity.

  “This way,” Ilya said, “you will be able to see the fabulous workings of the Latvian legal system.”

  Victor then placed his call home. This time Leon answered, after hardly a single ring, as though he had been sitting, primed, by the telephone. Whatever reservations Victor harboured about the cemetery manager and stonecutter, he knew better than to reveal them to his father. To Leon’s detailed questions, he responded honestly but without elaboration. Yes, he had gone and seen Sander’s son. Yes, he had been received cordially. Yes, he had given the child the present and the child had been pleased. Yes, he had been to the cemetery, seen his grandparents’ graves and left flowers. And yes, he had also spoken with the cemetery manager and with the stonecutter—the latter of whom he had not seen personally but would the very next morning.

  After the conversations with his father and with Ilya, Victor discovered—to his frustration—that he had lost his overwhelming need for sleep. However, the prospect of another sleepless night was unbearable, and so Victor drew the blinds, climbed into bed and resolved to nurture even the slightest vestige of fatigue. It was still quite early, a little after six o’clock, and he thought that if only he could fall asleep, he would be able to remain blissfully unconscious until his wake-up call at seven the next morning. But once again, like the previous night, his body refused to co-operate. He slept only fitfully, waking up disoriented, sometimes because of voices in the street, other times because of some malformed thought. At one point he found himself bolt upright, unsure whether or not he had indeed requested a wake-up call. He then spent what felt like an eternity torn over whether or not to call the front desk and confirm yes or no. Later, he lost the better part of an hour recreating the scene at the cemetery manager’s office and formulating alternate scenarios in which he didn’t come off looking like an idiot. Eventually, in despair, he turned on the television and watched an American action movie dubbed in Latvian with Russian subtitles.

  At five in the morning, Victor was back among the sweepers on Jomas Street. The sky was cloudless and approaching full daylight. Victor made a circuit of Jomas, covering its entire length, and then turned north and walked the few blocks to the beach, which, like the streets, was largely deserted. Narrow and white, it stretched from east to west, seemingly to infinity. The tide was still high and sandpipers skittered neurotically at the fringes of the waves. A short distance up the beach from him, two middle-aged women in bathing suits were balancing against each other and advancing gingerly out into the Baltic. They had already progressed about fifty yards but the water was not yet to their waists. The sight triggered Victor’s first memory of his Soviet childhood: stepping out into a dark-blue sea, conscious of danger but feeling as though he could go a great distance before he had anything to fear.

  * * *

  To find the Jewish Community Centre, Victor crossed a large municipal park and looked for the spire of a Russian Orthodox church. As he was extremely early, he trolled past the community centre, made sure he was in the right place, and then sat and waited in the park until he thought it was reasonable to go and look for the stonecutter.

  The community centre, contrary to Victor’s expectations, was a substantial building—four storeys tall and designed in the art nouveau style. Though it had a fairly dark and dreary-looking lobby, a broad stone stairway led to the upper floors, all of which benefited from an abundance of natural light. Not knowing whom to ask or where to look, Victor climbed the staircase and roamed the hallways, hoping to stumble upon something that would announce itself as the stonecutter’s office. He wandered for what seemed like a long time, finding no explicit sign of the stonecutter—though, instead, he found an adult choir practising Hebrew songs in a rehearsal room, a grand theatre with crumbling plaster and a seating capacity of hundreds, the locked doors of “The Latvian Jewish Museum,” and a tribute dedicated to a handful of Latvians who had protected Jews during the war. He found these things, but he found little in the way of assistance until a young Latvian woman emerged from an office and cheerily informed Victor that the stonecutter did indeed use a room in the building but that he kept no regular hours and she hadn’t seen him that morning. However, keen to help, she led Victor down one floor and pointed out the stonecutter’s door. She even knocked, waited and then apologized profusely, as if she were personally responsible for the stonecutter’s absence. There was a phone in her office, she said, if Victor wanted to call the stonecutter, and also magazines, if he felt the need to occupy himself while waiting.

  Seeing no other recourse, Victor followed the woman to her office and made the pointless phone call. The stonecutter was admittedly only fifteen minutes late, and the fact that he did not pick up the phone could actually be construed as a good sign—the man was on his way—so there was, in essence, no logical reason for despair. And yet, each unanswered ring reinforced Victor’s suspicion that the man was simply not going to show up. The stonecutter wasn’t going to show up and Victor would nevertheless have to wait for him. What choice did he have? He would wait an hour, maybe an hour and a half, and make intermittent phone calls to the stonecutter. And then, when the man still refused to appear, Victor would trudge to the municipal courthouse and suffer through some insipid Latvian hearing and then appeal to Ilya like a helpless child.

  Victor put down the phone. Beside him, the woman looked on with a doleful expression, and Victor dreaded that, at any moment, she was going to repeat her offer of the telephone and the magazines. He couldn’t recall if he’d seen a payphone down in the lobby, but he was quite sure that he had seen one at the park. Calling from the park would require that he go somewhere and make change, and then walk the two blocks from the community centre to the park every time he wanted to make a phone ca
ll—thereby introducing a risk of missing the stonecutter in the event that the man made a brief appearance at his office—but all this still seemed preferable to remaining, for even one second longer, the object of this woman’s sympathy.

  Once again, Victor walked up and down the staircase. He listened to the choir and then descended to the lobby, where he found a handful of elderly Jews convened at a table, speaking Yiddish, chewing sandwiches and playing cards. Victor stood for a few moments debating whether or not to go outside until a man brushed past him, hunched, bent under the weight of some psychological burden. He wore an ancient raincoat, a beaten fedora and carried a briefcase. The man made his way for the doors of the public toilet and Victor heard him muttering to himself: “If only to go and shit like a human being.”

  Victor decided to go outside.

  Sitting in the park—having run the same coin through the payphone for the third time—it struck Victor as funny that there had been a time when the purpose of his vacation had had absolutely nothing to do with Latvia. That at some point he had conceived of a relaxing trip with friends, touring parts of the UK he had been unable to see as an exchange student. And, when the idea of the trip to Riga had been introduced (or, rather, imposed), he had treated it only as a minor deviation. A filial duty quickly and easily dispatched. But now, feeling slightly delirious with exhaustion—but also too nervous and preoccupied to be able to sleep—he felt it was inconceivable that he would ever reunite with his friend and see Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Such a trip was a dream, a ridiculous joke. Totally unavailable to him because his fate was to be perpetually trapped in Latvia pursuing a stonecutter, thinking obsessively about gravestones. In short, becoming his father.