David Bezmozgis - Natasha and Other Stories

As a souvenir, my father surprised me with a poster signed by the Soviet national team. We, in turn, surprised him with his Polo shirt. In the living room, my father and I tried on our new shirts. My father said he couldn’t think of when he would wear it. He had plenty of shirts. I had plenty of shirts too, but I felt as though I had only one.

Along with the poster my father also secured tickets for me and my mother for the next day’s competition. My mother, anxious about preparing dinner, felt she couldn’t go. Even though she wanted very much to see Sergei compete. I had no obligations. The competition was on a Saturday. I had no school, no homework. Nothing that could keep me from watching Sergei perform.

At the convention center dozens of wooden risers had been joined together to create a stage. At one edge of the stage was a long table for the officials. My father had his place there along with the two other judges. A small black electrical box sat squarely in front of each judge. The box was connected by wires to a display board. On the box were two buttons, one button for a good lift, the second button for failure. Before the competition started my father allowed me to sit in his seat and press the buttons. As I sat there Gregory Ziskin approached. I had only faint memories of Gregory, who, unlike Sergei, hadn’t often come to the apartment. He was my father’s friend and business partner, but there was a quality to his demeanor that stressed the professional over the personal. He looked perpetually impatient.

At my father’s suggestion Gregory agreed to take me behind the stage so I could watch the lifters warming up. In Riga it was something my father had enjoyed doing. He always liked the energy of the warm-up room. But now, as a judge, it was unacceptable for him to give even the impression of bias or impropriety. Leaving my father to review papers, I followed Gregory through a heavy curtain toward the sounds of grunting and clanging iron.

Standing in the wings, I watched a scene I recognized as familiar only once I saw it. The warm-up room was very big, the size of a high school gymnasium. There was activity everywhere. In small groups, coaches and trainers attended to their athletes. Teams could be distinguished from one another by the colors of their Adidas training suits. Some of the lifters wore the suits, others had stripped down to their tights. In one corner I watched as trainers wrapped and taped knees, in another corner other trainers had set up massage tables. In the center of the room a large section of the floor had been covered with plywood. Several bars had been set up for the lifters. There were also chalk caddies. I looked on with fascination as the men went through their rituals of applying the chalk to their hands, arms, and shoulders. To handle the perfect white cakes of chalk seemed reason enough to become a weightlifter.

Gregory, who had important matters to attend to, left me with a plastic press pass and instructions not to get into any trouble. I could stick around as long as I liked, or at least until someone told me to leave. I watched him head over to the Soviet delegation, where Sergei was stretching beside a young blond weightlifter. From every corner came the sounds of exertion, of metal striking metal and metal striking wood. Nobody paid me any attention as I wandered around. I finally took up a position near the center of the room and watched men lift heavy things in preparation for lifting very heavy things.

The competition took hours. My father reserved me a seat in the front so that my view wouldn’t be obscured by the heads of adults. Sergei’s weight class was one of the last on the schedule. Until Sergei performed I spent most of my time watching my father. Up onstage with the other judges, he looked very much like his old picture in the IWF passport.

Sergei’s weight class competed in the afternoon. Very quickly it became clear that it was a competition between two men: Sergei and Krutov, the blond weightlifter. Their first lifts exceeded those of the rest of the competitors by several kilos. After that, from attempt to attempt, they performed only against each other. I watched first as Sergei eclipsed his world record in the snatch and then as Krutov matched it. Each one lifting fluidly, in one motion, almost twice his own weight.

When it came time for the clean and jerk Sergei declined the opening weight and watched as Krutov successfully approached and then matched Sergei’s world record. To catch Krutov, Sergei had three attempts. During Sergei’s lifts, Krutov waited silently in the wings. I sat on my hands and watched as Sergei failed on his first attempt, and then, minutes later, on his second. Both times, straining under the bar, he managed to get the weight up to his chest and no farther. Until Sergei’s final lift, it hadn’t occurred to me that he could lose. But as he chalked his hands in preparation for the lift, it not only occurred to me that he might lose, but, all at once, I knew he would. I looked at the people around me and sensed that they also knew it. Sergei seemed to know it too. He paced the stage almost until his time expired. I watched the seconds on the huge clock behind him tick away. Just to stay in the competition, he had to match his own world record. And when he failed to do it, when he was unable to steady the bar above his head, when all three judges’ lights — including my father’s — glowed red, I felt sick. As I watched Sergei embrace Krutov and then Krutov embrace Gregory, I tasted and then swallowed the eggs I had eaten for breakfast.

After the awards ceremony I followed my father over to Sergei. He was standing slightly apart from Gregory, Krutov, and the rest of the Soviet team. When he saw us he forced a smile. My father congratulated him and Sergei held up his silver medal. He took it off his neck and let me hold it. He kept the smile on his face.

— A silver medal. It’s not gold, but I guess you don’t find them lying in the street.

Sergei looked over to where Gregory was standing with his arm around Krutov.

— Don’t forget to congratulate Comrade Ziskin on another great day for Dynamo. Another one-two finish. What difference does it make to him if all of a sudden one is two and two is one?

At home, my mother had prepared a large and elaborate dinner. There were salads, a cold borscht, smoked pike, smoked whitefish, a veal roast, and tea, cake, and ice cream for dessert. She had set the table for five and used crystal glasses and her good china. I wore my clean new Polo shirt. My father told amusing stories about our immigration in Italy. He made an effort to reminisce with Gregory about their old bodybuilding students. The ones who remained in Riga, those who were now in Toronto, others who sometimes wrote letters from New York and Israel. My mother inquired after some of her girlfriends. People in the Jewish community whom Gregory would have known even though he and my mother were almost a generation apart. Even I talked about what my school was like, what sorts of cars my Hebrew school friends had. The only person who didn’t talk was Sergei. He listened to all the conversations and drank. My father had placed a bottle of vodka on the table, and after the requisite toasts, only Sergei continued to address the bottle. With the bottle almost gone, he suddenly turned on Gregory and accused him of plotting against him. He knew that Gregory planned to recommend that he be removed from the team.

— He wants to put me out to pasture. Soviet pasture. The rest of my life grazing in the dust. The only way he’ll get me back there is with a bullet through my head.

Sergei kept drinking, even though it looked like he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open.

— Roman, you did the right thing. You got the hell out of that cemetery. Now you can look forward to a real life. And what do we look forward to? What kind of life, Gregory Davidovich, you KGB cocksucker!