David Bezmozgis - The Free World

In the fall of 1942, when he was in hospital recuperating from a fractured skull, Samuil had had as his neighbor a young man named Srul Brunstein, a Yiddish poet dying of a lung wound. From his cot, Brunstein would recite his poems. There was one that Samuil remembered very distinctly because it captured his life the year he turned seventeen, after his uncle spat blood, became an invalid, and lost the bindery. He and Reuven went door to door, offering their services to anyone and everyone. They appealed to the relatives of boys they had known in Hashomer Hatzair and Betar. Most listened with half an ear and gazed over their heads. Some made symbolic gestures that consisted of a day or two of casual work, sweeping the floor or delivering packages.

Kh’shlep arum a zak mit beyner, was how the poem went.

I drag around a bag of bones

In the streets to sell

No one, however, wants to buy my wares,

No one.

Sorry, I did encounter a buyer once

But he needs real bones, dead bones.

Not like mine, alive and still in the flesh …

Their uncle was confined first to his bed, and then, for six weeks, to a tuberculosis ward in Kemeri. Their cousins were still children, thirteen, twelve, and ten years old. Their aunt took in laundry, and their mother continued to work at the coat factory. Money needed to be found for food, for their uncle’s medicines and treatments, and for rent.

For two weeks, in winter weather, using their bare hands, he and Reuven cleaned out the charred remains of a burned-down house. At night they returned to their cold apartment, covered in soot, their hands torn and numb, having eaten nothing all day but a piece of black bread. Their mother, herself exhausted from work, waited for them with a basin of water and a bar of soap.

From dawn to dusk, in the worst weather, they managed in thin spring coats. Alongside them worked other members of the Jewish proletariat.

The revolution was coming, nobody doubted this. The only question was when and what form it would take. The Zionist-Socialists believed in one revolution, the Revisionists in another, the Bundists in a third. Reuven and Samuil were careful to keep their views to themselves. They said only that the days of the old order were numbered.

No longer able to afford the rent on two apartments, they moved back in with their uncle. Quarters that had been cramped when they were children were more cramped now that they were adults.

For eight people, there were three beds. Samuil and Reuven shared a bed with Yaakov, their oldest cousin; their mother slept with the two girls, Rakhel and Fania; and their uncle and aunt had a bed to themselves. At one end of the apartment, farthest from the door, a corner was curtained off where a person could attend to his physical needs.

Like cattle, Reuven said. But they knew of comrades who had it worse.

Through one of these comrades, they eventually found their way to Baruch Levitan, who hired them as bookbinders for the workshop that dominated his apartment. Counting Baruch and themselves, there were seven bookbinders, squeezed together amid the Levitans’ beds and household implements. They would arrive for work just after dawn, so as not to squander any daylight. Most workdays lasted twelve hours, the last of which were conducted in near-darkness, since Baruch refused to switch on the electric lights until you could no longer tell Stalin from Trotsky.

They spent no more time at home than was absolutely necessary. Only to sleep and to see their mother. Too proud, their uncle hadn’t reconciled himself to his illness or to his dependence on his nephews. He still tried to assert his control. Nothing they did was right. They did not lay tefillin or join him in morning prayers. They refused to keep the Sabbath, or go to synagogue on the holidays. They broke with Betar. They dropped any pretense of minding him.

Instead, they spent many evenings with their old neighbor, Eduards. Through him they were able to meet non-Jewish workers, Latvian Communists. It was also there, through Eduards’s daughters, that they continued their studies. The same daughter who had tutored Reuven in Latvian loaned them the writings of Thomas Mann, Maxim Gorky, and Romain Rolland. She also schooled them in the international language of Esperanto. She used primers in combination with issues of Sennaciulo, a weekly journal whose title meant “Nationless.”

Later, they continued independent of her, and to the consternation of Baruch Levitan, they practiced the language at work.

Kioma horo estas nun, Reuveno?

Estas jam tagmezo kaj kvarno. Kial vi volas scii, Samuilo? Cu vi malastas?

Mi sentas etan malaston, jes.

Cu vi volas mangi ion?

Mangeti, jes. Mi certe ne deziras grandan tagmanon.

Kien ni iru, do?

La kafejon ce la stratangulo? Sanjas al mi, ke gi estas malmultekosa.

Ni iru tien. Verdire, mi tre malsatas! *

Many nights they slept only a few hours. But such was the life of the revolutionary. In biographical accounts of Lenin, it was said that he rarely slept more than four hours. This idea was reinforced in the speeches they heard given by Max Schatz-Anin, an old Bolshevik tortured and blinded by Denikin’s men during the Civil War. Of the few authentic Bolsheviks in Riga, he held claim to the most illustrious past. There was the torture and mutilation, and there was also his personal acquaintance, not only with Peters and Lacis-Sudrabs, but with Voroshilov and Kaganovich. Sometimes, after a full day of work at Levitan’s, they spent four or five more hours binding books and pamphlets at Schatz-Anin’s publishing house, Arbeter-Heym.

He and Reuven were nearly always together — in the dreary confines of Levitan’s workshop, at rallies, lectures, and cell meetings. They rose together in the morning and retired together at night — often falling into the bed already occupied by their cousin Yaakov. A cheerful young man, blessed with a head for numbers, he’d secured a position keeping the accounts for Vasserman, a successful linen broker. Vasserman paid poorly and rarely said a kind word to Yaakov, but their uncle believed that Vasserman would be Yaakov’s salvation. Vasserman was in his sixties and had no male heir; certainly, their uncle believed, he was grooming Yaakov to succeed him in the business.

Their cousin had little faith in Vasserman’s largesse, but he didn’t particularly care. Whereas Samuil and Reuven rejected Zionism, Yaakov had ardently embraced it. As soon as he was issued a certificate to enter Palestine, he would bid Vasserman, and Riga, and the rest of it goodbye. And though Samuil and Reuven derided Vasserman as the epitome of the preening bourgeois, Yaakov noted the man’s virtues. Once, for Purim, he’d presented Yaakov with a packet of Turkish cigarettes. Another time, he’d given Yaakov a bargain on an old phonograph. Yaakov loved music and, during his military service, he’d picked up the clarinet, just as Reuven had picked up the concertina. Samuil, who possessed no musical talent, had picked up only a high proficiency with the Browning M1919 machine gun.

Both Yaakov and Reuven were partial to American “hot jazz”—chirpy, upbeat music. In a small clearing of floor space in front of the phonograph, Yaakov and Reuven would teach Rakhel and Fania how to execute the modern dance steps. Samuil could still picture them, vivid as life, in the sepia glow of the kerosene lamp, dancing to “Mister Brown,” one of his cousin’s favorite songs. The song was inane, and consisted of only one line, which was repeated by different voices in different accents and registers. Because there was so little to it, it had lodged in Samuil’s mind. For years, the words in the song were the only English words he knew.