David Bezmozgis - The Free World

— Tell me, how is it that you still haven’t learned that there is a right way and a wrong way to do things?

To listen to his father, someone might have thought that Alec was an ideologue or an activist, whereas such things didn’t interest him at all. In 1972, he was twenty, the same age as some of the conspirators who’d participated in the failed hijacking plot: a Soviet plane from Leningrad to Sweden — and from there, somehow, to Israel. He’d even known one of them, Zalmanson, an ordinary Jewish kid from Riga. When he’d read about the incident and listened to the accounts of the cartoonish show trial, he’d had a difficult time understanding the hijackers’ motivations. To him it sounded like histrionics. Was life for a Jew in Riga so intolerable? He was a Jew; he lived in Riga; granted, it was far from perfect, but he managed all right. He certainly didn’t feel the need to hijack a plane.

Other than the one time at the memorial in Rumbuli — and three years at the synagogue for Simchas Torah — Alec didn’t involve himself with so-called dissident activities. Then again, going to the synagogue for Simchas Torah didn’t, to his mind, entirely qualify as a dissident activity. It was more like a riotous party that incidentally happened to take place at a synagogue and involved some prancing around with a torah. Jews pranced, but so did Russians and Latvians. Those who feared the KGB took the precautionary measure of doing their dancing across the street — even if, on so narrow a street, the concept of “across” was merely semantic. Those who were more daring, or more seriously committed to getting a drink, danced in the synagogue’s courtyard. And the boldest of all invited statutory perdition by taking the scrolls for a spin.

In September of ‘76, not long after the fiasco in Karl’s apartment and several months into his and Polina’s affair, Polina let Alec sweep her into the hora in the synagogue’s courtyard. Two bearded Jewish youths and a tall, burly Latvian had whirled in the middle of the circle — with the Latvian, full of drink, raising the velvet-covered torah in exuberant protest against the Soviet occupiers. At the synagogue that day had been many of the familiar faces, the fixtures of his life in Riga. Both brothers Bender had been there — Syomka still recovering from the devastation of Lilya Gordin’s betrayal. Rosa’s parents and brother, who had already applied for an exit visa, were there too.

Each time he and Polina were together, Alec suspected that it might be the last. Whenever he neared her, he saw something guarded in her eyes, like a failure of recognition.

Through the summer and fall they carried on the affair. At times they saw each other quite regularly, other times weeks might pass between their meetings. Polina had her marriage to Maxim, and when she wasn’t available, Alec took what life cast his way.

All this time, unbeknown to them, the train of their departure was approaching. At first distant and barely audible, but gaining momentum with every passing week.

Until, on a blustery afternoon in March of ‘77, after Karl had expressed his desire to emigrate, and shortly after Alec had moved into a small bachelor apartment, Polina had come to see him. Cold, and drenched from the rain, she sat down at the kitchen table and let the water drip from her hair and the hem of her coat. They exchanged all the questions and answers. Was she sure? Yes. How could she be sure? She was sure. And then the more delicate, unpleasant questions which he couldn’t restrain himself from asking. And she was sure? Almost certain. But not certain? As certain as she could be. Did he want her to go into details? To provide a tally? She could do it. It wouldn’t take long. No, he didn’t want that. They could wait until it was born, then they could run the tests. Was that what he wanted? No, he didn’t want that either. So what did he want?

As gently as he could phrase it, he’d told her what he wanted.

— I did that once, she’d said. I swore I’d never do it again. Not that I believed I’d ever be faced with the choice.

He’d been unable to think clearly. His mind had raced erratically, seeking a way out. It hadn’t helped that in her condition, soaked and chilled, her lips nearly drained of color, Polina had cast an image of injured, poignant beauty.

Afterward, he’d consulted with Karl and there had been the agonizing enumeration of options.

Did he want to marry her and raise the child?

Did he not want to marry her but let her raise the child?

Alone or with her husband?

Did he want to leave Riga? And what then? Marry her? Bring a pregnant woman along? Or an infant? Emigrating was hard enough without that added burden. Karl knew of happily married women who’d aborted their pregnancies when they received their exit visas.

And what were her designs? What did she want? What could be done about her?

Even if men did it all the time, Alec had said, he didn’t want to leave his child behind. He didn’t think he could simply forget. It would always trouble him.

But what alternative did he have if she wouldn’t agree to an abortion?

Three days after she’d delivered the news, Polina came back. The day was cold but clear, and Polina arrived this time in a very different state. Instead of martyred, clinical. Under her coat, she wore a heavy, gray wool turtleneck, whose collar rose to the line of her chin. She matched this with a long navy skirt and high black boots. Except for her face and hands, she was darkly, thickly covered. The clothes seemed chosen to negate her body, to discourage any sensual thoughts, in him or in anyone else. What other reason could there have been for such an overtly shapeless outfit? Not to conceal the pregnancy. The tiny being that had latched on inside her was less than three months old. Alec imagined it having the size and vascular translucence of a gooseberry. He pictured it in the red convection of the womb, growing, thriving, and encroaching upon his life. He’d tried to think of it in other, more positive terms, to envision it as a source of happiness. Why not? Many people were glad to have children. He also wasn’t categorically opposed to someday having a child. At some future time, he could see himself surrounded by children, horsing around with them, walking them to school, putting them to bed. Only not like this. Like this he foresaw only a tangle of complications.

And of all the tangled complications, Alec’s mind seized upon the most perplexing. By the third day, he’d seized upon it to the exclusion of everything else. It was much the same as when he’d been a very young boy and his parents had failed to come home on time. Then, too, his mind fastened on the disastrous. No amount of his grandmother’s soothing or Karl’s reasoning had any effect. He could nod and say yes, but his phantasms burned above reason. He recalled his parents’ walnut-veneer clock, and his terror at the barely perceptible creeping of its white, plastic minute hand. Again and again came the fatal automobile collision, with the sudden jolt, flailing necks, and spray of glass. The terror eased only when he heard the clatter of heels in the corridor, the key in the lock, and inhaled the waft of his mother’s perfume as she enveloped him.

Now as he thought about the worst possible scenario — emigrating and leaving a child behind — the emigration began to feel like an imperative. He pictured himself conscience-stricken somewhere in the abstract West or, conversely, stranded by his conscience in Riga, unwilling to deny his paternity.

— Screw conscience, Karl had scoffed. Conscience is the least of your problems. You could get stuck here regardless of your conscience.

By this he meant that if Polina had the child and he was proven to be the father, he’d need her written permission to leave the country. She’d have to sign an affidavit stating that she had no claims on him. That she absolved him of material responsibilities.