Immigrant City

by David Bezmozgis

  * * *

  At fourteen, in the gymnasium of the Number 4 High School, Kostya and his classmates, stripped to their underpants, had submitted to a series of physical tests administered by the head boxing trainer of the Omsk Spartak Athletics Club. The man had come and examined them; measured the lengths of their arms; with calipers, checked the thickness of the skin above their eyebrows; had them execute the standing broad jump and a complex version of hopscotch. Then, to eliminate criers and bleeders, he had punched each boy in the nose. From a class of twenty boys, he had selected three. Kostya had been one of them.

  That day in the Number 4 High School gymnasium had altered the course of his life. Kostya could trace his few triumphs and his many hardships directly back to that day twenty years previous, and he often wondered what his life might have been like had his nose bled at the gymnasium, or had he quit the training sessions along with his classmates a month into the program. Possibly, he would have applied himself more at school. Maybe he would have entered a technical college and learned a trade. Tradesmen could always find work. He might have become a machinist or an electrician. But the problem was that in the gym, for the first time in his life, he had excelled. The mechanics and the theory of boxing had come naturally to him. There, unlike in the classroom, he hadn’t needed to strain to understand. What’s more, he had been encouraged.

  This was in 1975, one year before the Olympics in Montreal. His trainer, widely known to be the son of an enemy of the people, had invited himself to Kostya’s apartment to meet with his parents. In the communal kitchen, Kostya’s mother served tea and condensed milk. The meeting was very formal, as though important business were being transacted. Kostya’s trainer presented himself using his full name: Emil Osipovich Shtenberg.

  “How would you like it,” Emil asked, “if in five years your son was representing his country at the first Olympics to be held on Russian soil?”

  “The boy’s mother wants to know if he will be hurt,” his father said.

  “I would be a liar if I said he will not be hit, but you have my word he will not be hurt.”

  The discussion did not go much further.

  “My wife and I have never been to Moscow,” his father said.

  “It is a marvellous city,” Emil said. “I am sure you will enjoy it.”

  But though Kostya spent most of the next five years in the gym, his parents didn’t get to go to Moscow. Since the Americans also didn’t go to Moscow, Emil said it was just as well. Any boxer who claimed to be Olympic champion without facing any Americans was a fraud. With this in mind, Emil fixed his sights on the future. For the Los Angeles Olympics, Kostya would be twenty-three, which in Emil’s estimation was the ideal age for a middleweight. And so Kostya had persisted. Emil secured him a job at a furniture plant whose director, a boxing supporter, made generous allowances for Kostya’s training schedule. Kostya received the privileges afforded to athletes: food coupons, a new track suit, occasional trips to cities in Western Siberia and northern Kazakhstan. Over time he also attained a degree of local recognition: girls smiled at him and men slapped him on the back.

  By the winter of 1984, Kostya was middleweight champion of Omsk. Then of Western Siberia. To take the title, he beat a boy from Novosibirsk, opening a gash over his left eye and flooring him repeatedly with straight rights. After the referee stopped the fight, the boy sat on the canvas and wept. On the train back to Omsk, Emil admonished Kostya for showing too much sympathy.

  “He can’t go to his right,” Kostya said, “and his mother has cancer of the pancreas.”

  “Whose mother doesn’t have cancer of the pancreas?” Emil said.

  “I don’t see what’s to celebrate.”

  “In life, any time you win, celebrate.”

  In this sense, Emil had been right. It turned out that fight represented the high point of Kostya’s career. Soon after, he lost a split decision to a fighter from Chelyabinsk and once again failed to qualify for the national team. The fight had been close, but one of the judges had scored it overwhelmingly in his opponent’s favour. When the announcement was made, the referee had had to restrain Emil from assaulting the judge.

  According to Emil, politics had been at play. Kostya had been persecuted for the crimes of Emil’s father. The authorities had not wanted to advance a fighter trained by the son of an enemy of the people. Fifty years earlier, before Emil was even born, Stalin had accused his father of Trotskyism, shipped him to Norilsk, and Emil had been paying the price for it ever since. Now Kostya was being punished as well. The system was vile and corrupt. Kostya deserved a spot on the national team, and it was only a small consolation when the Soviet Union boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics.

  Under the strictest confidence, Emil told Kostya that he was finished with the Soviet Union.

  “It so happens,” Emil said, “my father was Jewish.”

  Laughing, he added: “Hard to believe that this would bring me anything except more grief.”

  A year later, Emil boarded a train and was gone. He promised Kostya a postcard from wherever it was that he landed. He promised to bring him over to the West, where his natural gifts would be rewarded. Kostya waited for the postcard but it never came. Gradually, he deviated from his training regimen. He spent more time with friends from the furniture plant, went to the banya, drank a little, got involved with women.

  Occasionally, when he felt the urge in his back and shoulders, Kostya returned to the gym, but once there he felt like a guest. People recognized his face but fewer and fewer remembered his name. When he had been at the peak of his commitment, he had recalled seeing certain men come into the gym, men who had formerly been fighters, men who suited up and performed the old routines, but nobody took them seriously. For the most part, these men were easily distracted and did more talking than they did boxing. Even though he was still only in his twenties, Kostya saw that he had become one of those men.

  In this way, like everyone else, Kostya lived his life. He watched the Seoul Olympics on television and felt only a passing sense of regret. When Russia began to change, he hesitated and did not join friends in business. He remained at the furniture plant until it was purchased by a consortium of Germans and Swedes. Afterwards, he took the kind of work available to him: physical labour, often outdoors. It was when he was working on a lumber crew, surrounded by men like himself—the anonymous many who were failing to prosper in the new Russia—that he received the letter from Emil. The envelope bore a Canadian stamp and a Toronto address. In it, Emil apologized for not having written in six years, but offered to make good on his promise to bring Kostya to the free world. The letter included specific instructions and a registered cheque for seven hundred American dollars.

  * * *

  Twelve years later than originally predicted, Kostya rode the train from Omsk to Moscow—only now his destination was not the Olympic Village but a travel agent’s.

  Partly because the Peruvians did not demand a visa, Kostya bought a plane ticket to Lima. Most of his money spent, he turned the remainder over to an old woman who claimed to be Emil’s aunt. She provided him with a pillow and a wool blanket and helped him push a coffee table against the living room wall. Kostya stayed with her for three nights until his flight departed for Peru. On the plane he sat quietly, hoping in this way not to attract attention to himself. Most of the other passengers on the plane were Russians and Kostya wondered how many of them had the same intentions he did. It seemed strange to him that so many Russians would want to go to Peru. To him, almost all of them looked suspicious. He assumed that he looked suspicious as well and feared that one of the passengers or the stewardesses would denounce him to the pilot or some other authority. But when the plane set down for refuelling in Gander, Newfoundland, Kostya was invited to exit along with everyone else.

  To his surprise, everything happened just as Emil had written. He followed the line of passengers down a long hallway and found himself inside the terminal. To prepare himself, he chose a
chair in the remotest part of the concourse and went through the contents of his shoulder bag. At the very bottom he found his sneakers. Doing his best to casually conceal what he was doing, he peeled the insole off his right shoe and palmed the scrap of paper he had hidden there. Then he repacked his bag and walked the floor of the terminal until he saw what he was looking for. Standing near a newsstand was a woman in a uniform. Kostya did not know what the uniform signified but it looked official. Willing himself forward, as though for an irreversible leap into cold water, Kostya approached the woman and read from the scrap of paper in his hand.

  “Ya yem a refugee,” Kostya said.

  Subverting his every reasonable expectation, the woman responded in heavily accented Russian.

  “You want refugee status?”

  “Yes,” Kostya said.

  “Follow me,” she instructed.

  Kostya spent two weeks in the refugee shelter in Gander before he was claimed by Father Nikita, a Russian Orthodox priest who operated a halfway house for Russian immigrants in Toronto. When he arrived at the house, Emil was there to greet him, talking immediately about his plans. That same night Kostya moved into Emil’s one-bedroom apartment in the north end of the city. The apartment was in a building occupied mainly by Russians, flanked by other buildings occupied by other Russians. Many of these Russians were also Jews, though Kostya couldn’t particularly tell the difference. On the main street there were Russian delicatessens, Russian bookshops, Russian video stores, and even signs and posters in Russian tacked onto the bus shelters and telephone poles. At the nearby park and at the playground, Kostya heard as much Russian as English. If he needed to go to the supermarket, there was always someone around to translate the labels. For Kostya, the non-Russian world existed only in the various gyms where Emil took him for their workouts. But even there, few demands were made on Kostya to communicate in any but the crudest ways. He learned the English vocabulary of boxing: jab, cross, hook, slip, uppercut. Also useful was the word okay.

  * * *

  Not long after Kostya settled in, Emil drove him to meet their benefactor. They made the short trip over in Emil’s minivan, a van he had been using for years to deliver pizza.

  “Don’t talk unless you have to,” Emil said. “And no matter what I say, don’t contradict me.”

  The man they were to meet was Bomka Goldfarb. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bomka had sold real estate in Toronto, but after the collapse he had returned to his native Kiev and made a fortune dealing in manganese. He was one of the richest Russian immigrants in Toronto.

  Bomka set the meeting not at his offices but at a new Russian restaurant in which he held a partial interest. The restaurant was minutes away from Emil’s apartment, situated in a strip mall. It featured, Emil had heard, a massive fountain in the foyer.

  The fountain, Bomka Goldfarb explained when he greeted them, was a reproduction of one he had seen in Rome. When he had invested in the restaurant, it had been on the condition that it include such a fountain. The fountain was a marble sculpture. It reached almost to the ceiling and consisted of four fish supporting the torso of a powerfully built man. The man appeared to be either drinking from or blowing into a large shell. To Kostya’s eyes, the man’s face bore a resemblance to Bomka Goldfarb’s.

  Bomka directed them to a table near a broad stage that boasted a gleaming white piano. He bade them wait, then returned several moments later accompanied by a thin, pinch-faced man.

  “This,” Bomka said, “is my partner Zyama Karp. The restaurant is his vision.” Bomka took a seat at the table, though Zyama remained standing.

  “Zyama,” Bomka said, “you should be acquainted with these people. Konstantin Petrov, boxing champion, and his trainer, senior Soviet coach, Emil Osipovich Shtenberg.”

  “A boxing champion?” Zyama asked.

  “Very talented,” Bomka said. “Emil came to me and said, ‘How would you like to invest in a boxer?’ I had been thinking about a racehorse. But Emil said, ‘A boxer is cheaper and more interesting than a horse.’ He’ll be fighting at the Trump Plaza, just as soon as we can get his immigration in order.”

  “Where were you a boxing champion?” Zyama asked.

  “In Siberia,” Emil said. “In 1984. He would have gone to Los Angeles if not for the boycott.”

  “Must have been very disappointing for you,” Zyama said.

  “You cannot imagine,” Emil said.

  “I was talking to him,” Zyama said.

  “It was disappointing for both of us,” Emil said.

  “What’s wrong with him? Can’t he speak?”

  “Of course he can speak,” Emil said.

  “When do you become more interesting than a horse?” Zyama asked.

  “What horse?” Kostya said.

  “I like a sense of humour,” Zyama said. “Did Bomka show you the dance floor?”

  Zyama motioned for Kostya to rise and follow him toward the stage. Zyama indicated the floor.

  “Stand here a moment,” Zyama said.

  Kostya stood on a transparent Plexiglas floor roughly twice the area of the stage.

  Through the glass Kostya could see light fixtures, with multicoloured elements. As Kostya waited, Zyama mounted the stage and then stepped into the wings. He projected his voice from around a corner.

  “Now watch,” Zyama said.

  Under Kostya’s feet, the lights ignited and spun in their housings.

  “Not even in Moscow or New York will you find something like this,” Bomka said.

  Kostya felt a mechanism engage with a hydraulic drone. Then, slowly, the floor began to elevate and a dense, white mist spread across its surface. The floor continued to rise until it came to a stop flush with the stage.

  Zyama emerged from the wings, very satisfied, looking as though he had done more than spent money and pressed a button.

  “Normally, I do not allow people to stand on the stage when it is activated. And only the performers of our Vegas-style show are permitted to use it. But I thought, for a boxing champion, I would make an exception.”

  The meeting ended with Bomka’s renewed pledge to expedite Kostya’s immigration process. In his employ, he had top lawyers. They were extremely well-connected. If asked, they could get asylum for Stalin.

  On the drive back home, Emil was in very high spirits. More than once he volunteered that he was pleased with the results of their meeting.

  “You made a good impression,” Emil said.

  “Why did you say I was a champion?”

  “It’s a word someone like Bomka Goldfarb understands.”

  “He’ll be disappointed. I’m not the fighter I was six years ago,” Kostya said.

  “You’re better than you think,” Emil said. “Most American boxers aren’t fit to tie your boots.”

  “But if you had written me six years ago,” Kostya said.

  “Six years ago I was delivering pizzas. And when I wasn’t delivering pizzas, I was guarding the lobby of a condominium. So what was I supposed to write you? ‘Dear Kostya, I have no money. The boxing establishment treats me like a nuisance. Nobody here cares if I live or die.’ What would you have done with this kind of letter?”

  Kostya thought that he would have liked such a letter. It wouldn’t have changed anything but, thinking about the letter, he could see it on the tidy kitchen table, where his mother would have left it. He could see himself, in the evening, after the factory, sitting with the letter in his hands. He felt himself as though in that past. It was good to hear from Emil, to read about his troubles. It was good to think that, in a distant country, he had a friend who remembered him.

  * * *

  Ivetta never met Emil, but she had an opinion of him. She also had an opinion of Bomka Goldfarb and Skinny Zyama. It angered her that such people would deceive Kostya, and it angered her that he would allow himself to be deceived.

  About Bomka and Skinny Zyama, there was nothing Kostya could say, but he felt obligated to defend Emil. Ev
en if he had been deceived by Emil, it was only because Emil had himself been deceived.

  “Bomka gave assurances and the lawyers gave assurances. Emil trusted them and I trusted Emil,” Kostya said.

  “Who in their right mind would trust a person like Bomka Goldfarb?”

  “He paid Emil to bring me over. He sent a cheque each month for rent and expenses. We thought: Why would he do that if he wasn’t serious?”

  “Last month I bought a pair of shoes. Even at the store I wasn’t sure I wanted them. But they were only sixty dollars. I wore them once. Long enough to become bored with them. Now they’re in the back of my closet.”

  “It’s true,” Kostya said. “It’s always good if you can afford to buy.”

  But if you couldn’t afford to buy, things were different. And the nature of the difference could not be explained to someone like Ivetta, who had forgotten what it was like to be deprived. Ivetta would say that there are always choices, but after a certain point—even when looking back—Kostya could not see the choices. Would he have been better off in Siberia if he had declined Emil’s offer? Should he have returned to Moscow with Emil? Could these be considered legitimate choices? To his way of thinking, confronted by the available options, he had always just pursued the least unpromising.

  The same applied with respect to Bomka Goldfarb. Both he and Emil had been subject to Bomka’s whims. Given the circumstances, what were their alternatives? Bomka had told them to sign papers, and so Kostya had signed papers. Bomka had told them to wait, and so they had waited. Occasionally, Emil made phone calls to ascertain the progress. He made the calls from behind his closed bedroom door, but the apartment was not large and the door was hardly soundproof. First, Emil had called the lawyers. Later, he had called an associate of Bomka Goldfarb’s. Then, when the associate became unreachable, Emil left messages with a secretary.