David Bezmozgis - The Free World

The young man kept his cassette player on and Vysotsky, whom the authorities had rightly censored for his cynical anti-Soviet attitude, rasped hoarsely as they, yet once more, unloaded their belongings. Once the truck had been emptied, Samuil went out the front door without a word of explanation and walked in what he determined to be the direction of the beach. He crossed the highway that ran the length of the shore, and removed his shoes and socks on a slab of concrete not far from an array of changing booths. It was the late afternoon on a weekday, if he could remember correctly (the days of the week bore little significance anymore), and the beach was not crowded. At random intervals, often with large gaps between them, people had laid out their towels and staked their umbrellas.

Samuil plunged his feet into the warm black sand, which he found to be pleasant, not scalding as it surely must be at midday, and pressed ahead to the firmer footing at the edge of the surf. A girl and a boy, dressed only in white underpants, crouched not far from him, digging at the wet sand with tin shovels. The boy wore a blue cap; the girl had a pink kerchief tied onto her head. Nearby, Samuil saw the children’s corpulent minder — a triangle of torn newsprint adhered to her nose. She wore a green woolen bathing suit, her stomach balanced like a watermelon in her lap. Substitute the color of the sand, and these same children, this same grandmother, could have been in Jurmala or Yalta. They looked and acted as if nothing had changed for them. One beach, one seashore, was as good as any other. The same sun shone down on their heads and shoulders. What did it matter to them where they were? How were they different from the birds who landed in one place or another, unmoored by allegiances or souls? What troubled them? That they might come home after a day at the beach to discover that there is no sour cream for their sunburned backs? After a life such as mine, Samuil thought, this is where I find myself. Somewhere I went wrong. But where? He looked up from his horned feet, along the retreating peaks of the sea, to the flat line of the horizon beyond which was France or Spain. This was the Mediterranean. From here one could sail to Greece or Israel. His own father and grandfather, trapped and murdered in their Ukrainian shtetl, had only dreamed of such a wonder. He would have gladly gone to his grave without ever having seen it either. After everything I sacrificed, Samuil thought, where did I go wrong? And then he allowed himself to submit to sentiment and grieve: Reuven, Reuven, look how I failed you.

Outside the Joint and HIAS building, a primly dressed middle-aged woman approached Alec and Polina. Alec had watched her and another man circulate through the crowd of émigrés, offering pamphlets.

— Do you speak English? the woman asked.

— A little, Alec said.

— And your wife?

— No.

— Well, perhaps we can be of help. The woman beamed, handing Alec a pamphlet. I am with an organization offering services. Free English classes and assistance with immigration processing, for example.

— What is your organization?

— We are with the Baptist Church.

— What is she saying? Polina asked.

— Jesus Christ wants to solve all our problems.

— That’s a relief.

As the woman filtered into the crowd of émigrés, Alec saw Karl, Rosa, the boys, and his parents advancing down the street. Before they could reach them they were intercepted by the woman’s associate, the other missionary. Shielding her children, Rosa refused his pamphlets and brushed the poor idiot aside. Alec hoped he wouldn’t try his appeal on Samuil. Alec remembered the day in the spring of 1961 when it was announced that Yuri Gagarin had become the first man in space. At nine years old, he’d been dizzied by the thought that a human being had traveled beyond the limits of the sky and, hovering in the blackness, had watched the clean blue globe of the planet rotate below. His father had repeated with great satisfaction Gagarin’s comment that he hadn’t seen any God up there. In his father’s presence, only a fool or a masochist would dare question the nonexistence of God.

— So I see you’re converting, Rosa said when she drew near.

— I’m keeping my options open. Besides, they’re offering free English classes.

— In a church? I’d rather pay.

— Karl might disagree.

— He’s right, I might disagree, Karl said.

— You see, Alec said.

— I think it’s disgraceful.

— I already speak English. I was holding them for you, but suit yourself, Alec said, and let the pamphlets drop to the pavement.

They had gathered at the office that morning to present themselves before a caseworker. The Joint would not furnish them with their stipend if they didn’t file papers for a destination. Rosa continued to agitate for Israel, even though two days before, Begin had officially rejected Sadat’s latest peace proposal. While in Beirut, the Syrians were shelling the Christians, and Israel was massing troops on its northern border. Alec, having successfully avoided the worst of Soviet military service, wasn’t aching to go from Ben Gurion Airport to boot camp. Getting killed or maimed in Lebanon, or Egypt, or wherever the bullets were flying, seemed to defeat the whole point of leaving the Soviet Union. Karl felt the same way and Rosa knew it. But when a man nearby loudly opined that Begin was allowing himself to be led down the garden path, that even Brezhnev would never be played for such a fool, Rosa interrupted and deflected the conversation onto the subject of the Shcharansky show trial.

— While the rest of the world condemns Brezhnev for Shcharansky you dare to compare him to Begin?

— One has nothing to do with the other, the man said.

— What are Shcharansky’s crimes? Being a Jew. Wanting to go to Israel. Tell me how the two are not related?

— He wants to go to Israel not because of Begin’s ridiculous peace with Egypt. If you want my opinion, he is willing to go in spite of it. He’s a true believer. If Israel was run by a group of half-wits who bayed at the moon — so long as they were Jewish — Shcharansky would go.

— Are you suggesting that Begin is a half-wit?

— Show me the proof he isn’t.

— Brezhnev is an anti-Semite. Begin is a Jewish hero.

— Tell me, please, if you’re such a patriot, what are you doing in Italy? As I recall, the plane for Tel Aviv departs from Vienna.

— My reasons are my own.

— All right, fine, the man said. Shalom aleichem.

In the crowded HIAS waiting room, Alec stood with Polina until he heard the name Krasnansky pronounced once and then a second time above the din. Alec looked around and saw Syomka Bender stepping over feet and picking his way through the room. Syomka wore a denim jacket, clearly a recent acquisition, but was otherwise unchanged. His face, intelligent and reserved, allowed the trace of a smile.

— I saw your name on the list, Syomka said, and got myself assigned to your file.

— I forgot, Alec said, Iza told us you worked here.

— That’s right, Syomka said, you saw my brother.

— We did.

— The less said about that the better, Syomka said. Follow me into the hall; it’s impossible to talk in here.

— Just me or all of us? Alec asked.

— All of you is probably best, Syomka said.

Karl and Alec had both been friendly with Syomka in Riga. They came across him at parties and at the beach in the summer. For a long time Syomka had dated the same girl. She was from a good family and was studying piano at the conservatory. There was general consensus that the two were ideally matched. At parties, everywhere, you never saw one without the other until it became impossible to imagine them apart. They shared the same disposition, quiet, clever, vaguely aristocratic. Even to each other they spoke little and yet seemed, as if by telepathy, to communicate and agree. More than once Alec had met them after a movie or a play and, just by the measured way in which they listened and considered what he said, he became convinced that they had understood the movie or the play at a level far deeper and better than he. Alec would walk away from these encounters slightly embarrassed but basically full of admiration. Almost everyone held the same opinion of them. Which was why their breakup, unremarkable for any other couple, acquired the level of scandal. Nobody could have predicted that Lilya Gordin might be discovered, unapologetic, in the arms of a cellist two years her junior. For two days afterward it was said that Syomka trailed the cellist. He didn’t confront him or say anything, he just waited outside his building and then shadowed him like a KGB agent. Alec never spoke of the breakup to Syomka. He didn’t know anyone who did. Syomka continued to show up at parties and at the beach, sometimes with his brother. Women treated him with kindness and uncertainty; his longtime unassailability and his eminent devastation conferred upon him the aura of the exotic. A girl explained that it was as if there was something monastic or virginal about Syomka, profoundly magnetic. But Syomka seemed to keep to himself until, very late one night, at Dzintari, after much drinking, a girl wanted a swimming partner and Syomka brushed the sand off his pants and volunteered. After that he was no different from anyone else.