David Bezmozgis - The Free World

This is what I wanted to tell you. It appears that we are not going to Chicago. Zoya’s cousin can no longer sponsor us. They have to take her husband’s brother instead. That was the reason she gave, in any case. There’s a joke that if you want to make an enemy for life just sponsor a relative. So maybe it’s for the best?

Now we must decide on some other city or country. Igor’s family can’t agree. I don’t see that it matters, wherever we go we will be among strangers.

So you see, I do not know how long we will be in Rome. Even if we are here a short while it will allow enough time for this letter to reach you and for your reply to get back to me. But you will have to write quickly. I’m eager to hear from you. It would make me so happy to receive a letter from you. It’s already been nearly a month since we last saw each other. I think about you every day and wonder how you are getting along and about how Mama and Papa are behaving toward you. So write to me and don’t go off daydreaming and delay. Your sister misses you.

There was more I wanted to tell you, too. I wanted to describe the new apartment — although there isn’t all that much to describe. It’s really just two rooms that we share with a man from Kishinev who has trapped himself in Rome because he doesn’t want to go back to Israel and no other government will take him. In Israel he has his parents, his wife, and a young son. He has been in Rome for more than a year. I don’t entirely understand why he won’t return, but I couldn’t even begin to list all the things I haven’t understood about some of the people we’ve met. But our roommate is otherwise perfectly fine. I think you would like him. We have been warned many times to be wary of people, but he seems honest. Or at least as honest as a person can be under the circumstances …

It was bad enough, Samuil thought, that he’d been forced to listen to Alec voice his decision to take an apartment separate from the rest of the family; it was worse that Emma, after acceding to Alec, underwent a complete and total conversion that manifested itself in a pressing need to see this new apartment. That was the way it was with his wife. She was a simple creature. He had always known this. She had been simple when he married her, but he had attributed her simplicity to the fact that she was hardly more than a girl. However, over the years, rather than acquire shadings and complexities, she had become simpler still. Her brain was in her womb. But if he was to be honest with himself, he hadn’t sought much more in a wife. He had believed that a household should have one head. When Samuil’s division had been driving the Germans from villages around Minsk there had been a woman partisan who had mounted an ammunition crate and harangued the soldiers. You fight as if you fear death more than you love your country! People said such things then. She was a bold and electric woman. In the ensuing battle Samuil had seen her charge a self-propelled gun and not die. But what sane man would want such a woman for a wife? Better Emma, one moment treating their grown son like a boy leaving Mama for the first time, the next gushing as if he were establishing a new home for himself and his bride.

— Of course, while the tsar and tsarina cozy up in their apartment we stay in the pensione, Rosa said during dinner.

— We leave the day after tomorrow, Karl said, not bothering to look up from his plate.

— Boys, Emma said, a dacha near the beach. Just like we had in Jurmala. Do you remember the dacha in Jurmala?

— Will there be bugs in my bed? Zhenya asked.

— Grandmother will make sure that there aren’t any bugs, my dear heart, Emma said.

— There were bugs in my bed in Jurmala, Zhenya said.

— In mine, too, Yury said.

The dacha in Bulduri had cost Samuil plenty. He had had to threaten, to cajole. It was a quarter of a kilometer from the beach, yet all his grandsons could remember were bugs in their beds.

Two days later, one of the Jewish agencies — HIAS or Joint, why bother keeping track? — sent a truck for their belongings. Alec, always an eager candidate for a joyride, volunteered to remain at the pensione to oversee the loading. The rest of them took the train. From the station Karl led them left and right until they reached a street of wooden bungalows and larger apartment buildings. Fruit trees grew in the yards. Hedges were manicured. Samuil had to concede that the street seemed altogether respectable. The apartment buildings were well maintained. On the balconies, Samuil saw potted plants, beach umbrellas, tables, and chairs. Through an open balcony door, he saw a woman contentedly sweeping. Passing them on the sidewalk were not only Italian children on bicycles, but also older Russian men, his coevals, promenading in leather sandals, looking the part of vacationers. They nodded at Samuil in greeting, as though recognizing one of their own.

Karl stopped in front of a bungalow the yellow of rancid butter. He lifted the metal hasp on a chain-link gate and proceeded down a short stone walk to the front door. He knocked and the door was opened almost instantly by his friend Boris the Bodybuilder. Boris looked over Karl’s shoulder at the agglomeration of the family Krasnansky and grinned beatifically, like the world’s master of ceremonies.

— Did I not promise you a suitable place?

The door was pushed open yet further so as to allow a dark-haired Italian woman with a baby in her arms to join Boris and Karl at the entrance. With the least shift of her eyes, Samuil saw the woman make a rapid assessment of her new tenants. Using an inquiring lilt, Samuil heard Boris utter what sounded like the Russian letters veh, beh. The woman nodded and repeated Veh beh, veh beh. She then handed Karl a silver key.

With a sweep of his hand, Boris beckoned everyone inside to acquaint themselves with their new home. The boys darted past Samuil’s legs, competing with one another to be first. The front doors led to a kitchen, with a gas stove and a narrow refrigerator, both of which would have been antiquated by Soviet standards. At the feet of the appliances and at the edges of the room, the linoleum floor bore some kind of pattern or relief, but it was worn smooth everywhere else. Through the kitchen, in the sitting room, Boris was demonstrating how the sofa unfolded to become a bed.

At the doorstep, Samuil observed Karl handing Boris a thin stack of bills. Boris went through the motions of protesting and trying to press the bills back onto Karl before he counted them out, returned one, and pocketed the rest. He then withdrew his hand from his pocket, waved goodbye, and bounded out into the yard.

— Some friend, your friend, Samuil said.

— I gave him what was rightfully his, Karl said. He didn’t ask for it.

— And what did his valuable services cost us? Samuil asked.

— Less than the going rate. But don’t concern yourself. I’ll answer for the money.

— If we both live in this palace, I’ll pay my share. I’ve not sunk so low as to depend upon my children’s charity.

— It has nothing to do with charity. I’ll answer for the money now. When the time comes for us to leave, I’ll find our replacements and get the money back with profit. It’s the way things work.

— Well, if that’s the way things work, Samuil said acidly.

Out on the street, there was the squeaking of brakes and the sound of an engine coming to rest. A truck door slammed and Alec jogged into the house, smoking a cigarette.

— The truck driver, eighteen years old, listens to Vysotsky. He has samizdat some émigrés have sold him and also recordings made in France. Doesn’t understand a word of Russian but sings all the lyrics to “My Gypsy Song.”