David Bezmozgis - Natasha and Other Stories

Sergei left a deep impression on my four-, five-, and six-year-old mind. There wasn’t much I remembered from Riga — isolated episodes, little more than vignettes, mental artifacts — but many of these recollections involved Sergei. My memories, largely indistinct from my parents’ stories, constituted my idea of Sergei. A spectrum inverted through a prism, stories and memories refracted to create the whole: Sergei as he appeared when he visited our apartment on Kasmonaftikas. Dressed in the newest imported fashions, he brought exotic gifts: pineapples, French perfume, Swiss chocolate, Italian sunglasses. He told us about strange lands where everything was different — different trains, different houses, different toilets, different cars. Sometimes he arrived alone, other times he was accompanied by one of the many pretty girls he was dating. When Sergei visited I was spastic with a compulsion to please him. I shadowed him around the apartment, I swung from his biceps like a monkey, I did somersaults on the carpet. The only way I could be convinced to go to sleep was if Sergei followed my mother into my bedroom. We developed a routine. Once I was under the covers Sergei said good night by lifting me and my little bed off the floor. He lifted the bed as though it weighed no more than a newspaper or a sandwich. He raised me to his chest and wouldn’t put me back down until I named the world’s strongest man.

— Seryozha, Seryozha Federenko!

My father took me with him to the Sutton Place Hotel where the Soviet delegation had their rooms. A KGB agent always traveled with the team, but it turned out that my father knew him. My father had met him on the two or three occasions when he had toured with Dynamo through Eastern Europe. The agent was surprised to see my father.

— Roman Abramovich, you’re here? I didn’t see you on the plane.

My father explained that he hadn’t taken the plane. He lived here now. A sweep of my father’s arm defined “here” broadly. The sweep included me. My jacket, sneakers, and Levi’s were evidence. Roman Abramovich and his kid lived here. The KGB agent took an appreciative glance at me. He nodded his head.

— You’re living well?

— I can’t complain.

— It’s a beautiful country. Clean cities. Big forests. Nice cars. I also hear you have good dentists.

In the hotel lobby, the KGB agent opened his mouth and showed my father the horrific swelling around a molar. He had been in agony for weeks. In Moscow, a dentist had extracted a neighboring tooth and the wound had become infected. On the plane, with the cabin pressure, he had thought he would go insane. Eating was out of the question and sleep was impossible without 1,000 grams of vodka, minimum. But he couldn’t very well do his job if he was drunk all the time. Also, he’d been told that vodka was very expensive here. What he needed was a dentist. If my father could arrange for a Toronto dentist to help him he would owe him his life. The pain was already making him think dark thoughts. In his room on the twenty-eighth floor he had stood at the window and considered jumping.

Using the hotel phone, my father called Dusa, our dentist. A top professional in Moscow, she had not yet passed her Canadian exams. In the interim, she worked nights as a maid for a Canadian dentist with whom she had an informal arrangement which allowed her to use his office to see her own patients, for cash, under the table. The Canadian dentist got fifty percent with the understanding that in the event of trouble, he would deny everything and it would be Dusa’s ass on the line. Fortunately, after months and months of work, there had been no trouble. And several times a week, after she finished cleaning the office, Dusa saw her motley assortment of patients. All of them Russian immigrants without dental insurance. My father explained this to the KGB officer and told him that if he wasn’t averse to seeing a dentist at one in the morning, he had himself an appointment.

As a token of his gratitude, the KGB agent personally escorted us up to Sergei’s room. So long as Sergei appeared at the competition and was on the flight to Moscow with the rest of the team, everything else was of no consequence. We could see him as much as we liked. The KGB agent swore on his children’s eyes that there would be no problems.

At Sergei’s door, the agent knocked sharply.

— Comrade Federenko, you have important visitors!

Dressed in official gray slacks and buttoning his shirt, Sergei opened the door. He hesitated to speak until the KGB agent slapped my father’s back and confessed that he was always deeply moved to witness a reunion of old friends. Then, Dusa’s address in his pocket, he turned and departed down the carpeted hall.

In the hallway, Sergei embraced my father and kissed him in the Soviet style. Next to Sergei, my father — five feet six and 170 pounds — looked big. I hadn’t expected the physical Sergei to be so small — even though I had memorized his records the way American kids memorized box scores and knew that he was in the lowest weight class at 52 kilos.

— That bastard, he scared the hell out of me.

— The KGB, they know how to knock on a door.

— Especially that one. A true Soviet patriot.

Sergei looked down the hall in the direction of the KGB agent’s departure. My father looked. So did I. The man had gone.

Sergei turned back, looked at my father, and grinned.

— I was in the washroom, I almost pissed myself. I thought, if I’m lucky, it’s only another drug test.

— Since when are you afraid of drug tests?

— Since never.

— Do I need to remind you of our regard for drug tests?

In his capacity as Dynamo administrator it had been my father’s responsibility to ensure that all the weightlifters were taking their steroids. At the beginning of each week he handed out the pills along with the special food coupons. Everyone knew the drill: no pills, no food.

— Absolutely not. Keeps the sport clean.

— And, of course, you’re clean.

— I’m clean. The team is clean. Everyone is clean.

— Good to hear nothing has changed.

— Nothing.

Sergei clapped my father on the shoulder.

— What a wonderful surprise.

On our way to the hotel, I had been rabid with excitement to see Sergei, but seeing him in person, I couldn’t speak. I stood behind my father and waited to be acknowledged. It seemed like a very long time before Sergei turned his attention to me. When he finally did, he looked down and appeared not to know me.

— And who is this?

— You don’t recognize him?

— He looks familiar.

— Think.

— It’s hard to say.

— Take a guess.

— Well, if I had to guess, I would say he looks a little like Mark. But he’s too small.

— Too small?

— Mark was much bigger. He could do fifteen, maybe even twenty push-ups. This one looks like he couldn’t even do ten.

— I can do twenty-five! I do them every morning.

— I don’t believe it.

I dropped down onto the red and gold Sutton Place carpet and Sergei counted them from one to twenty-five. Panting, I got back up and waited for Sergei’s reaction. He smiled and spread his arms.

— Come on, boy, jump.

I leapt. Sergei carried me into the hotel room and I hung from his arm as my father called Gregory’s room. Sergei’s competition was two days away and it was decided that he would spend a little time with us the next day and then he and Gregory would come for dinner after his competition.

When my father and I returned from the hotel with the good news, my mother was scrubbing every available surface. Floors, oven, furniture, windows. She presented us with several bags of garbage which we dropped down the smelly chute in the hallway. My father told her that Sergei looked good. As though he hadn’t changed at all in the last five years.