David Bezmozgis - Natasha and Other Stories

— What did he say about the way you look?

— He said I looked good. Canadian. Younger than the last time he saw me.

— If you look young, then I must be a schoolgirl.

— You are a schoolgirl.

— The ambulance comes once a week. Some schoolgirl.

The next morning my father stopped at the hotel on his way to judge events in the middleweight class. Sergei wasn’t competing that day and I took the subway with my father so that I could guide Sergei back to our apartment, where my mother was waiting to take him shopping. As we crossed the lobby toward the elevator I noticed the KGB agent making his way over to intercept us. I noticed before my father noticed. From a distance I had the vague impression that there was something not quite the same about the agent. As he drew closer I saw that his face was badly swollen. With every step he took the swelling became more prominent. It was as though the swelling preceded his face. From a distance he had been arms, legs, torso, haircut, but up close he was a swollen jaw. My father, distracted by his obligations to the competition and nervous about being late, didn’t appear to recognize the man until he was standing directly in front of him. But then, on seeing the agent’s face, my father stiffened and seized me by the shoulder. My God, he said, and simultaneously drew me back, putting himself between me and the KGB agent.

The KGB agent clapped his hands and broke into what appeared to be a lopsided grin. His distended lips barely parted but parted enough to reveal white cotton gauze clamped between his teeth. When he spoke, it was through this gruesome leer, like a man with his jaw wired shut. My father tightened his grip on the back of my neck.

— Roman Abramovich, looks like you really did me a favor.

— She’s the dentist for my family. I go to her. My wife. My son. I swear she always does good work.

The agent’s jaw muscles twitched as he clamped tighter into his grin.

— Good work. Look at me. I couldn’t ask for better. She put in three crowns and a bridge.

— She’s a very generous woman.

— She knows how to treat a man. Anesthetic and a bottle of vodka. I left at four in the morning. A very generous woman. And beautiful. It was a wonderful night, you understand.

— I’m glad to hear you’re happy.

— Roman Abramovich, remember, you always have a friend in Moscow. Visit anytime.

Laughing at his joke, the agent turned, and we proceeded to the elevator and rode up to Sergei’s floor. In the elevator my father leaned against the wall and finally loosened his grip on my neck.

— Don’t ever forget. This is why we left. So you never have to know people like him.

We knocked on Sergei’s door, and after some shuffling, Sergei answered. He was in the middle of his push-ups when he let us into his room. He was wearing an undershirt and his arms were a bold relief of muscles, tendons, and veins. In Italy, during our six-month purgatory between Russia and Canada, I had seen statues with such arms. I understood that the statues were meant to reflect the real arms of real men, but except for Sergei I had never met anyone with arms like that.

As my father was in a hurry, he left me with Sergei as he rushed back out to the convention center. I waited while Sergei dressed.

— So where are you taking me today?

— Mama says we’ll go to the supermarket. She thinks you’ll like it.

— The supermarket.

— The good supermarket. They have every kind of food.

— And you know how to get there?

— Yes. First we take the subway and then the bus. By the subway and the bus I know how to go almost anywhere.

— How about California?

— The subway doesn’t go to California.

— Then maybe we should take a plane.

The way he said it I didn’t know if he was joking or serious until he laughed. I wanted to laugh too but I hadn’t understood the joke. I sensed that I wasn’t intended to understand it in the first place. I was hurt because I wanted very much to be Sergei’s equal, his friend, and I suspected that Sergei wasn’t laughing at his joke but rather at me.

Seeing that he had upset me, Sergei tried to make up for it by asking about the supermarket.

— We sometimes go to another one that isn’t as good. In the other one they don’t have the things they show on the television. But at the good supermarket you can find everything.

On the bus ride home I pointed out the landmarks that delineated our new life. To compensate for the drabness of the landscape I animated my hands and voice. I felt the tour guide’s responsibility to show Sergei something interesting. At the northern edge of the city, home to Russian immigrants, brown apartment buildings, and aging strip malls, there wasn’t much to show. I stressed our personal connection to each mundane thing, hoping in that way to justify its inclusion. There was the Canadian Tire store where I got my bicycle, the Russian Riviera banquet hall where my father celebrated his birthday, one delicatessen called Volga and another called Odessa, a convenience store where I played video games, my school, my hockey arena, my soccer fields. Sergei looked and nodded. I kept talking and talking even though I could tell that what I was showing and what he was seeing were not the same things.

When the bus pulled up near our apartment building I was relieved to stop talking. Sergei followed me into the lobby. I used my key and let us inside. Upstairs, my mother was waiting. For the first time in months she was wearing makeup and what appeared to be a new dress. In the dining room there was a vase with flowers. There was a bowl on the coffee table with yellow grapes. There was another bowl beside it containing assorted Russian bonbons: Karakum, Brown Squirrel, Clumsy Bear. When my mother saw Sergei, her face lit up with true happiness. Involuntarily, I looked away. After so many miserable months I was surprised by my reaction. I had been praying for her to get better, but there was something about the pitch of her happiness that made me feel strangely indecent. I had felt this way once before when I accidentally glimpsed her undressing through a doctor’s office door. Here as there, instinct proscribed against looking at my mother’s nakedness.

From our apartment my mother drove our green Pontiac to the good supermarket and then the mall where Sergei bought blue jeans for himself and for the woman he was dating. Also, on my recommendation, he bought some shirts with the Polo logo on them which were very popular at the time. Against my mother’s protestations he also insisted on buying a shirt for me and one for my father.

— Bellachka, don’t forget, you wake up in the morning, you get into your car, you go to a store, you can buy anything you want. In Riga people now line up just for permission to line up.

I was grateful when my mother didn’t say anything to contradict him, since both she and I knew that the only way we could afford fifty-dollar shirts was if Sergei paid for them.

When my father returned from the convention center that night he was exhilarated. He had witnessed two world records. One by a Soviet lifter he had known. He was energized by the proximity to his former life. He had seen old friends. People recognized him. He had also spent a few hours with Gregory Ziskin and they had been able to have a drink in Gregory’s hotel room. Gregory had filled him in on the Dynamo gossip. Colleagues who had received promotions, others who had retired. The politics with directors. New athletes on the rise. Gregory was proud that, including Sergei, the national team had three weightlifters from Riga Dynamo. There was a new young lifter named Krutov in Sergei’s weight class who showed considerable promise. He had been taking silver behind Sergei for the past year. Having the gold and silver medalists was doing wonders for Gregory’s profile with the ministry. He’d heard rumors of a transfer to Moscow and a permanent position with Red Army.