David Bezmozgis - The Free World

Their mother took a job as a seamstress in a coat factory. He and Reuven were enrolled in a Yiddish school and in the Zionist youth group, Hashomer Hatzair. In the evenings, after their studies, their uncle took them to the bindery and showed them the trade. When they were older, he planned for them to join him.

— Books are the future, he said. Even the lowest peasant is learning to read. Novels, poems, textbooks, manuals: someone has to bind them all.

Samuil had liked the bindery. He liked the acrid, moldering smell of paper and glue — the smell of knowledge. In one corner of the shop sat two old bookbinders, pious Jews, who bound and repaired Hebrew holy texts. Everywhere else were books in Yiddish, Latvian, German, Hebrew, French, English, Russian, and Esperanto.

Sometimes their uncle would bind an extra book for himself. In his apartment, he kept a small library. He encouraged Reuven and Samuil to read these books, and it was the only one of his uncle’s prescriptions that Reuven accepted willingly.

For a long time, Samuil did not understand why Reuven behaved the way he did. He excelled in his studies, he had many friends, but he never seemed happy. One time, after Samuil had won a prize for reciting a Hebrew poem, Reuven scolded him. Samuil had been too self-satisfied. As they walked home, Reuven asked if he knew what day it was.

— No, Samuil had said.

— Today is three years since the Whites murdered Father and Grandfather.

Samuil fell silent with shame.

— Do you remember how Grandfather said the Shema when they killed him?

— No, Samuil said weakly.

— A Hebrew poem never saved a Jew from a pogrom.

After that, Reuven came less and less to the Hashomer Hatzair club. He said he was having difficulty learning Latvian and he couldn’t spare the time from his lessons. Samuil went alone to the meetings. It was the last time they were apart until the war separated them permanently.

Reuven took his lessons at their next-door neighbors. They were a Latvian family, headed by a tall, bald, friendly man named Eduards. Because their mother was without a husband, Eduards offered to help with masculine chores. When he drew water from the well, he also filled a pail for them. In winter, he went with Reuven and Samuil to bring up their coal. And his eldest daughter, a schoolteacher, tutored Reuven in Latvian at no cost. Samuil would watch Reuven gather his books to go across the hall, promising their mother that he would behave himself and decline politely if they offered him treyf food.

One time, their uncle was at their apartment as Reuven prepared to leave.

— What do you know of these neighbors? he asked their mother.

— Only that they have been very generous.

— Where did the man learn to speak Russian?

— I don’t know, their mother replied. But his wife barely speaks a word.

— I would be careful, their uncle said.

— Reuven is doing better. Do you suggest I stop him from going?

— I suggest you take no chances, their uncle said.

Once home, Reuven quarreled with their mother and said that he would continue with the lessons. About their uncle he said: If I like something, he doesn’t.

Samuil sensed that there was something the matter with his brother. At times he felt very close to him; other times he felt as if he did not know him at all.

Just when he thought his brother wanted nothing more to do with Zionism, Reuven took him to hear Ze’ev Jabotinsky give a speech to a hall full of Jewish youths. On the walls, Samuil saw posters of the one-armed martyr Joseph Trumpeldor, his feet planted firmly on the land of Palestine, his good arm gesturing for the Jewish youth to join in the struggle. At the bottom of the poster were printed his parting words: Never mind, it is good to die for our country.

He and Reuven had squirmed to the front of the stage. They saw up close Jabotinsky’s jutting chin, stern mouth, and piercing eyes, and they heard his cry: Jewish youth, learn to shoot!

Afterward, many of his friends quit Hashomer Hatzair and joined Jabotinsky’s Betar. To the songs and the scouting lessons, they now added classes in hand-to-hand combat. A veteran of the Jewish Self-Defense Organization instructed them in the use of “cold weapons.” He had a suitcase filled with brass knuckles, wooden batons, and lengths of iron pipe. In the spring and summer, there were retreats to the countryside where they slept in tents, did calisthenics, and learned how to handle rifles and pistols.

Reuven became one of the most active members. He attended all of the meetings, gave lectures, and became a crack shot. But, after one year, just as he drifted away from Hashomer Hatzair, he also drifted away from Betar. This time, when Samuil asked him why, Reuven took him aside and confided in him. Samuil was twelve years old — old enough to be trusted.

When Samuil learned the truth, he was astounded by his brother’s self-discipline.

After that, Samuil joined Reuven at Eduards’s apartment, where they were given their Latvian lessons from Communist pamphlets. The seeds that had been sown in Reuven in the Pioneers of Rogozna, Eduards cultivated in Riga.

In his apartment, Eduards had a radio that he tuned to a Soviet frequency. It was at this radio that Samuil listened to the trials of Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Bukharin. And it was at this radio, unbeknown to Samuil at the time, that Reuven had listened to the broadcast of Lenin’s funeral. He spoke of it later to Samuil and their other comrades in a hushed, reverential tone. Though he had only been listening to a radio in Riga, it had seemed to everyone as if he had been much closer to the event — if only because, just listening to the radio, he had been much closer than anyone else they knew.

When Samuil thought of his brother, he pictured him in Eduards’s apartment. He saw the darkened corner where Eduards kept the radio, with its gilded dial, which, when dormant, rested on an unincriminating Latvian frequency. He saw Eduards’s heavy damask armchair, the haze of pipe smoke, and the faded green rug at the base of the radio cabinet where Reuven and his daughters sat. He saw Eduards lean intimately toward the radio and turn the dial. How weighty and faraway the radio announcer’s voice must have sounded that afternoon. Emerging from the fading strains of the “Internationale,” the announcer had boomed: Stand up, comrades, Ilich is being lowered into his grave!

In Eduards’s apartment, his brother rose from the green rug and stood solemnly at attention beside Eduards, his wife, and their daughters. A vast primordial quiet descended and hovered like a soul above a body until the announcer’s voice returned and proclaimed: Lenin has died — but Leninism lives!

Going to see his family felt to Alec like doing penance for any enjoyment he derived from life. They fundamentally disagreed about everything important, and also unimportant. Whenever Alec said anything, Rosa and his father found common cause in his idiocy. Their conversation was a series of digs and ambushes.

Alec and Polina arrived in the late afternoon and found his family gathered in the small garden behind the house. The Italian owners had provided a table and several iron chairs for tenant use. In among his family, Alec saw a short, one-legged old man with medals pinned to his blazer.

— I come now and again to disturb your father, Josef said.

— A guest is never a disturbance, Emma corrected.

— No, no, Samuil grumbled in a noncommittal way.

At the back of the garden, Yury was kicking a pink rubber ball at his brother, who was playing goal, defending the garden gate. A hollow resinous twang accompanied each kick.

— Boys, come over and say hello to your uncle and aunt, Emma called.