David Bezmozgis - The Free World

But whatever she meant, she’d tacitly agreed to the contest.

Refereeing the shooting range was Volodya Zobodkin, one of the company of young Jews with whom Alec and Karl played soccer on the beach at Majori. Zobodkin, like Iza Judo, was a graduate of the Institute of Sport, and now he coached the VEF soccer club. When Volodya distributed the rifles, Alec asked if he could get one with a reliable sight.

— Who are you, Zaitsev? Volodya chided. This isn’t the Battle of Stalingrad. Just aim in the general direction of the target.

— Do you have one with an adjusted sight or not? Alec persisted.

— What’s with you? Volodya asked. Have you been drinking? It’s not even lunch.

Without much elaboration, Alec told Volodya what he’d arranged. Volodya glanced quickly at Polina, raised an approving eyebrow, and sorted through the stack of rifles for something suitable. He handed a rifle to Alec and then offered to find another, grossly inferior one, for Polina.

— There’s one here that practically shoots sideways, Volodya said.

But that wasn’t the kind of contest Alec wanted, largely because he sensed it wasn’t the kind of contest Polina would accept. She seemed like the type who respected rules, including rules that dictated the breaking of other rules.

Alec shot first. For all his pride at having placed eighth, Alec had to admit that he couldn’t compare the effort required to achieve mediocrity to that required to achieve excellence. Everything naturally flowed toward mediocrity; for this the world needed little in the way of your cooperation. Whereas total incompetence or extreme proficiency demanded some application.

To his credit and mild surprise, Alec shot well. Volodya called for cease-fire and presented Alec with his perforated target, a cluster of holes grouped reasonably close together, reasonably close to the bull’s-eye. Even if Polina shot better, Alec felt that he’d performed well enough to warrant the date.

— Is this how you shot in the army? Polina asked.

— I’ve never shot so well in my life, Alec said. But then I’ve never had such motivation. As my teachers used to write in my school reports: Alec is personable and shows signs of intelligence, but is lazy, inattentive, and lacks all motivation.

For the sake of equity, Polina shot with the same rifle Alec had used. Alec watched her assume the prone position and take careful aim, the rifle’s stock pressed correctly against her cheek, its butt in the crook of her shoulder. As she shot, Alec stood behind and slightly to the side and used the opportunity to evaluate her in a way he hadn’t been able to before. Unchallenged, he let his eyes linger on her small lobeless ear, the creases at the corner of her squeezed-shut eye, the strong, sculpted tendons of her neck, and the fine symmetry of her profile. He watched her shoot with steady regularity, squeezing off a shot and then sliding the bolt to chamber the next round. It looked to Alec as though she were shooting to win, which he couldn’t but construe as a bad sign.

Later, when things between them were better defined, Polina explained that she had shot the way she did not because she wanted to avoid seeing him again but because she couldn’t perform otherwise.

— The graveyards and songbooks are full of people like you, Alec had remarked, a fact she had not disputed.

After Polina had finished shooting, Volodya collected her target and compared it against Alec’s. Polina had shot well, but there was no doubt that Alec had shot better.

— Imagine that, Alec said, feigning bashfulness.

— Maybe it’s not too late, Polina said. You could still make general.

— There’s a disturbing thought, Alec said.

After this they ran, jumped, hurled the shot put, and killed time un-til the exercises were finished. As Alec was leaving the stadium, Volodya caught up to him and congratulated him again on his great triumph. He wanted to inform Alec that his shooting performance had earned him more than the date with Polina. It had earned him first place overall. As the top shooter, Volodya explained, Alec would be in line for a commendation as a Voroshilov marksman, and this would include official recognition at the Young Communists meeting and special mention in the factory newspaper.

— Come on, Vovka, Alec said, don’t spoil the day for me. Write I came in eighth and give the honor to some other schmuck.

— Next in line is your girl, Volodya said.

— Perfect, Alec said. Her husband likes to paste articles from the factory newspaper.

The following week, when Polina’s name was printed, an acquaintance spotted it and told Maxim. As before, he asked for a copy.

Polina described to Alec how she’d had to watch Maxim paste the silly article into the album. If only he weren’t so foolish, Polina had told Alec, which he took as no ringing endorsement of his own appeal as a lover. But Polina always spoke plainly. If only Maxim weren’t so foolish, she’d said, she would have remained faithful to him, never taken up with Alec, and lived a regular, quiet life.

It was at the front that Samuil had become aware of the intersection between the dreamlife of the living and the afterlife of the dead. When he stole a few minutes of sleep under an artillery barrage, his fallen comrades had visited him. Later, when he had abandoned all hope of seeing his mother, uncle, and aunt alive again, they appeared too. For a time he couldn’t sleep without encountering their ghosts. After he’d received notice of Reuven’s death, he couldn’t close his eyes without meeting his brother. In these dreams, Reuven was sometimes whole, the way he’d been when Samuil saw him last; other times he was disfigured, wounded in the legs or with a shattered face. But no matter what shape he was in, his brother seemed calm, at peace, either unmoved by or unaware of the fact that he was no longer among the living. Nights Reuven or his mother failed to materialize, Samuil felt disconsolate. To think that he would never see them again, not even in his dreams, filled him with sadness and apathy. He had known better than to share these feelings. He’d seen many of his fellow soldiers succumb to the same bleak and despondent feelings. These were men who’d received bad news in the field post — confirmation of a relative’s death or of a wife’s inconstancy. He saw his comrades mutilate themselves, commit suicidal acts in combat, attempt desertion, and make defeatist, ill-conceived statements. More than once Samuil referred these offenders to the NKVD and the military tribunals, having no illusion about the fate to which he’d consigned them.

Now again, all these years later, Samuil found himself regularly visited by his mother and his brother in his dreams. The dreams were like a precious gift and Samuil knew that if he spoke about them it would only cheapen them. Sometimes his mother and brother appeared as they had been when they died, still young. Other times, his mother and brother appeared as if they, too, had aged in the intervening years, looking nothing like themselves and yet remaining somehow intrinsically themselves. The one constant in all the dreams was that Samuil himself never varied. He was always an old man.

When Samuil started writing the account of his life, it hadn’t occurred to him that this concerted effort at remembering would summon his mother and brother back into his dreams. In many ways, the project no longer resembled the original design. It had become an excuse to immerse himself in the past. There were certain things he wrote down, things that he felt suited the original purpose, but there were many other things that he didn’t write down. These things he simply turned over in his mind.

He thought of Emma’s grandfather as he’d been in his waning days. Samuil and Emma were then newly married. They were living with Emma’s parents in the small Latgalian town of Baltinava. Emma’s father, Yasha Aronovich, a formidable military man, had been posted there to impose order. Aizsargi, collaborators, Hitlerites, Latvian nationalist rabble camped in the forests, defying Soviet power. Samuil served under his father-in-law, patrolling the streets, fielding denunciations, and leading troops into the forest to flush out the bandits. Meanwhile, Emma’s grandfather, Aron Moiseivich, her father’s father, spent his days at home. Samuil would return in the evening to find him exactly as he’d been in the morning. It seemed that he did nothing but gaze off into space. What are you doing? Samuil had once stopped to ask. Old Aron had languidly turned his head and replied with one word, Remembering.