David Bezmozgis - The Free World

— If Papatchka offered me life on a silver platter maybe I’d also go around grinning like a defective, Marina Kirilovna had said to Polina when Alec made his first appearance in the technology department.

Marina Kirilovna occupied the desk beside Polina’s at the radio factory. In her mid-forties and a widow twice over, Marina Kirilovna treated men with only varying degrees of contempt. They were sluggards, buffoons, dimwits, liars, brutes, and — without exception — drunks. The tragedy was that women were saddled with them and, for the most part, accepted this state of affairs. It was as though women had ingested the Russian saying “If he doesn’t beat you, he doesn’t love you” with their mothers’ milk. As for her own departed husbands, Marina Kirilovna liked to say that the only joy she’d had in living with them had been outliving them.

Later, when Marina Kirilovna began to suspect Polina’s involvement with Alec, she had admonished her.

— Not that it’s my business, but even if your husband is no prize at least he’s a man.

— It isn’t your business, Polina had said.

— Just know that it will all be on your head. No good can come of it. Believe me, I’m not blind. I see him skipping around like a boy with a butterfly net. And if you think this business might lead to a promotion, then half the women at the factory are eligible for it.

At the word “promotion,” Polina had almost laughed. The suggestion of some ulterior motive, particularly ambition, was risible in a way the widow could not have imagined. First, the mere idea of ambition in the factory was ludicrous. Thousands of people worked there and — with the exception of the Party members — nobody’s salary was worth envying. But, beyond that, if anything had led her to consider Alec’s overtures, it was her husband’s ambition — insistent, petty, and bureaucratic. In the evenings she was oppressed by his plots and machinations for advancement, and on the weekends she was bored and embarrassed by his behavior at dinners with those whom he described as “men of influence.” By comparison, Alec was the least ambitious man she had ever met.

One afternoon, as she was preparing to leave work, Alec had approached. He was accompanied by Karl.

— My brother and I are going out to seek adventure. We require the company of a responsible person to make sure that we do not go to excesses.

— What does that have to do with me?

— You have a kind and responsible face.

— So does Lenin.

— True. But Lenin is unavailable. And, at the risk of sounding unpatriotic, I am sure we would prefer your company.

Even now, with her forehead pressed against the cool window, it was hard to believe that this invitation had led to this humid passageway on a train bound for Rome. Straining to see beyond her own reflection, Polina marveled that the predawn countryside she saw was Italian countryside, the black two-dimensional cows Italian cows, and the geometry of houses Italian houses, inhabited by Italians — and when the train sped past the rare house with a lighted window, it seemed barely comprehensible that, awake at this hour, there were real Italians engaged in the ordinary and mysterious things Italians did in their homes in the earliest hours of the morning. She regretted that she didn’t have a quiet place to sit at that very instant to compose her thoughts and set them down for her sister.

In Vienna she had already written to her twice.

My dear Brigitte,

On our way to an appointment with our caseworker this morning we saw a little girl and her brother vomit in the pensione courtyard. These same two also vomited in the courtyard yesterday morning. Both times, their mother, a woman from Tbilisi who seems incapable of opening her mouth without shouting, raced out into the courtyard, swinging her slipper. This woman comes in from the market every evening with a bunch of spotted bananas roughly the size of a large cat. But you can’t blame her. It takes everyone a few days just to get accustomed to the bananas. They are not expensive, but if you want to economize you can buy ones that are overripe. They are even cheaper than apples. You’d think they grew them in Austria. I can’t begin to describe the pineapples, or the chicken and veal in the butcher’s shops. All the émigrés, including me, walk around overwhelmed by the shop windows. It doesn’t seem quite real, but rather like something in a movie. And considering how little money we have, it might as well be a movie. The second evening we were here, Igor and I explored a street lined with clothing stores. There were stores for men and for women. Austrians were rushing in and out carrying bags and boxes, all of them dressed like the mannequins in the store windows. Compared to them we looked like beggars. I was wearing the pale yellow dress Papa brought from Stockholm. The dress is almost four years old. You remember how excited I was when I got it? I’m embarrassed to think of it now. Wearing it in front of all of those people, I wished I were invisible. That way I could admire everything but avoid people seeing me and the horrible dress. Any single article of clothing worn by the Viennese would be the envy of all Riga. And it isn’t only a question of the latest styles. It is the materials, the quality of the work. Naturally, I expected this. What I hadn’t expected were the colors. There were dresses and blouses in colors I had never seen. How strange it is to think that I had lived my entire life without seeing certain colors. In one display there was a silk blouse of a deep lavender I associated with exotic flowers. I was so taken by it that I lingered too long by the window. Igor encouraged me to go inside and take a closer look, which I didn’t want to do. He teased me and pushed me playfully to the door. This attracted the attention of a saleswoman. She was in her forties, dressed very smartly. I suppose she was amused by us. She spoke to us in German, some of which Igor understands. She wanted to know what it was that had appealed to me. Igor pointed to the blouse and the saleswoman invited us into the store so that I could try it on. She was very kind and wanted to help us but I literally had to wrest myself out of Igor’s grip to avoid going into the store. I wanted to apologize to the woman for my rudeness, but I don’t know how to say even that much in German. She must have thought I was crazy. But all I could picture was trying on the blouse and somehow damaging it. If that had happened, I don’t know what we would have done.

Because she wasn’t accustomed to using the aliases, Polina had had to rewrite parts of the letter two or three times. To refer to Alec or to her sister by a different name still felt ludicrous. It seemed like a children’s game, playing at spies and secret agents. Her sister, however, embraced the game. When she met Polina in Kirovsky Park to say goodbye, she came armed with a list of preferred alternate names.

— I never liked my name anyway. It’s so average. Nadja. It’s the name of a cafeteria clerk.

They had met on a bright Sunday afternoon. Polina had arrived first and claimed a bench under a linden tree, not far from where the men played dominoes. This had been a week before they left. All week, all month, she and Alec had been getting papers notarized, valuables appraised, haggling with the seamstresses who sewed their custom duffel bags, supervising the carpenters who constructed the shipping boxes, and arranging clandestine farewells. All this time she had slept poorly. In the mornings she would open her eyes overwhelmed by the tasks ahead of her. Polina realized, as she sat on her bench, that it had been weeks if not months since she had last had such a moment to herself. The day was warm and cloudless, a rare treat in Riga even in late June. Along the paths, young mothers pushed buggies, and grandmothers shuffled after their grandchildren, trying to entice them with a flavored wafer or a peeled cucumber. All around her were the fellow inhabitants of the city of her birth, each one possessing the individuality and anonymity of a city person. Polina derived pleasure from the sensation that, at least at that moment, she was indistinguishable from them. No one could identify her as a traitor to the motherland, a stateless, directionless person. She smoothed her skirt and looked up through the branches of the tree. Feeling the warmth on her face, Polina considered herself as if from the sun’s perspective. Observed from such a height, she imagined that she could pass for a green leaf among green leaves or a silver fish among silver fish floating in the common stream.