David Bezmozgis - The Free World

Samuil remembered well the oddity of their assignment. He and Reuven stood at the mouth of the railroad bridge, the broad, unperturbable Daugava flowing beneath them, and wondered what they might do should the enemy appear.

— Two men with rifles cannot hope to do much against the German army, Reuven said.

— Then why put us here?

— There are always the local saboteurs, Reuven proposed.

They remained at their post for the next three days, during which an unaccountable calm reigned over the city. These were the last easeful hours he spent with his brother, the two of them reclining against the girders of the bridge, smoking cigarettes, watching the trains pass and the men fish on the banks of the river below. Even the weather was calm. Members of the Workers’ Guard were de-ployed at crucial positions, but otherwise the city’s inhabitants continued about their business. On the second day, when the Germans were reported to have taken Vilnius and surrounded Liepaja, Samuil saw the first columns of evacuees trickling east. On the third night, the government made the drastic decision to relocate to the border with Estonia. And the next day, the commander in charge of their Workers’ Guard company ordered them to undertake a more mobile defense.

Walking home they saw, in the more affluent neighborhoods in the center of town, people loading automobiles and hired carts for the evacuation. Among them were many Jews, racing about in a state of agitation. In Moskovskaya, windows and doors were thrown open, and people lowered their belongings onto the street. Elderly men and women sat among the bedding and the battered household items, keeping a lookout for thieves.

At home, they discovered their mother, uncle, and aunt pretending that nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Their uncle was sitting at the window, skeptically watching the havoc below. Their aunt was sweeping the kitchen floor, and their mother was sewing a button onto one of their uncle’s shirts. When Samuil and Reuven came through the door only their mother looked up with a penitent expression.

Reuven inquired why they’d done nothing to prepare for evacuation.

— Because we have no intention to evacuate, their uncle said.

— The Germans could be here tomorrow, Reuven said.

— We had Germans in 1919, their uncle said. They behaved better than your Communists.

— Have you heard nothing about Hitler?

— I’ve heard, their uncle said. He’s no friend to the Jews, but it’s the Bolsheviks he’s after. Everybody who knows me knows how I feel about the Bolsheviks.

Their aunt looked up from her sweeping and said, How can we leave? If we go off into God-knows-where, how will Yankl ever find us?

Their own mother, Samuil still believed, had remained as recompense for Yankl.

— Boys, their mother said. Even if he wanted to go, your uncle, in his condition, could not survive such a trip. And if he stays, I must stay also. The girls have their families and your aunt could not manage to care for your uncle on her own. They need me.

— They, and we? Reuven asked.

Reuven had been thirty years old then, but he had spoken the words as if he were a child.

He and Reuven should have dragged her from that apartment, forced her to go at the points of their rifles. Anything they would have done would have been justified. The condemnation never left him: he had not done enough to save his mother’s life.

That same night they boarded trucks that drove them east to Gulbene. They traveled with the other members of their Workers’ Guard company and also Eduards and his family.

From Gulbene they proceeded on foot, mixed among the columns of dazed and exhausted refugees. Some had already been walking for days, sleeping in the fields, eating whatever they could scrounge.

Without warning, as if for sport, German aircraft would bombard the road. People would scatter and throw themselves into ditches and furrows. When the danger passed, a feral howling would arise from those who discovered their own among the dead and the dying.

The next morning, they reached the Russian border. Several NKVD officers, mounted on horseback, trotted past in a summary inspection. At the border, a cordon of NKVD soldiers passed swift judgment. A clutch of suspects waited under armed guard beside the wooden border station. Others knelt before the NKVD, pleading not to be turned back.

When his and Reuven’s turn came, they presented their documents to the NKVD guard, an older man, easily in his forties, heavyset, with grease stains on the front of his tunic.

— We are Communists, Reuven said, members of the Workers’ Guard.

Reuven’s Russian, like Samuil’s, had remained close to fluent, accented only faintly with Yiddish and Latvian.

— Where from? the guard asked.

— Riga.

— How did you come here?

— A truck to Gulbene. On foot from there.

— You walked with these people?

— Yes, Reuven said.

— They say they were attacked by German aircraft. You see any German aircraft?

— We saw.

— Show me your rifles, the guard said.

They handed over their rifles and the guard peered into the barrels and sniffed the muzzles. He opened the actions and inspected the chambers.

— You have ammunition? he asked.

— What we were issued in Riga, Reuven said, and he extended the box of shells they’d been given to protect the bridge.

— You too, the guard said, and Samuil did the same.

He opened the boxes and counted the rounds.

— All there, he said disdainfully.

— Yes, Reuven admitted.

— You call yourselves Communists, the guard sneered, but you let the German motherfuckers strafe defenseless people without firing a single shot. Who behaves like this? Not Communists, I assure you.

He leveled his revolver at them and pointed in the direction of the border station, to join the others under armed guard.

— Soon enough, we will find out who you really are, he said.

They took their places with the other suspects and waited for several hours. Intermittently, an NKVD officer would select a half dozen men and lead them into a little copse behind the border station. Short moments later there would come a volley of rifle fire.

Samuil understood that the jaws of death had opened to consume them, and would have consumed them if not for Eduards’s intervention. They were at the front of the line, with one foot in the other world, when he came running to the NKVD officer, waving his Party card, his Gorkom identification, and a personal letter he’d once received from Litvinov.

They evaded death again the next morning, or so Eduards contended, when they leaped from the back of an open troop truck. They had boarded the truck in Pskov with Eduards, his family, and some fifteen others. Several kilometers from the border, Eduards saw the driver wave his hat at an NKVD colonel parked by the side of the road in an Emka staff car.

— Jump now! Eduards had commanded.

They’d jumped and the truck had rattled on without them.

Later that same evening he and Reuven evaded death together for the last time. Stukas and Messers dropped from the setting sun and tore up the road. They took cover in a cherry orchard, and watched through the ripening fruit as the planes skimmed so low overhead that they could see the faces of the German pilots. When the attack ended, a convoy of trucks appeared and there was a frenzied call for men to board. Red Army soldiers rushed about, forcing men into the trucks, and in the twilight and the commotion Samuil was pressed into one vehicle and Reuven into another. It happened in an instant. Samuil supposed that they were all destined for the same place, but at some point during the night his truck went one way and Reuven’s went another.