David Bezmozgis - The Free World

— It goes without saying, Alec declared, that if I left a child behind, I’d send money. Polina would know that.

— She might or she might not, Karl countered.

— She’s not vindictive. She’d never cause problems.

— Have you ever stiffed her with a kid before?

— She’s not the type. Of this I’m sure.

— You don’t know, and you can’t know. Even if you’d stiffed her before, there’s no telling how a person will react from one day to the next. There’s only one way to avoid a problem and that’s not to create it in the first place.

— Well, the problem exists.

— It does and it doesn’t, Karl said. But wait much longer and it will be finita la comedia.

— She won’t agree to it.

— Is this the first time you’ve gotten a woman pregnant?

— What does that have to do with anything?

— You charmed your way in; charm your way out.

— Charming in is a lot easier.

— Yeah, well, write that on your forehead so you’ll remember for next time.

— Anything else?

— What else? You have to take care of it. I can’t do it for you. But if you haven’t got one yourself, I know of a good doctor. Quiet, expert, and clean.

— Rosner?

— You’ve used him?

— Never needed to. Have you?

— I know him strictly by reputation.

Apart from recommending a doctor, Karl was of little help. On the subject of what Alec could possibly offer Polina in exchange for her compliance, Karl proposed, as an option of last resort, Alec’s new bachelor apartment. Karl contended that, if necessity demanded, he would have no trouble proposing such a barter. As for whether it was morally reprehensible or not, he wanted to know what could be bartered against a human life that wasn’t morally reprehensible.

Nothing, Alec thought. That was the trouble. Though a distant runner-up to nothing was another human life.

As they sat in his tiny kitchen, it felt like Polina had trailed in the chill of the outdoors. It adhered to her like a personal climate and caused Alec to feel as if the temperature in the tiny kitchen were a few degrees colder than the temperature two meters away in what passed for the adjoining room. To warm himself, her, and the space between them, he filled a kettle and set it to boil. He asked Polina if she wanted coffee, tea, or something stronger. In a cabinet he had the greater portion of a bottle of brandy and a brown clay bottle of Balzams, less beverage than unit of exchange. He wanted to forestall, for as long as he could, the unavoidable conversation because — though he couldn’t have articulated it at the time — the conversation promised to be the first serious one of his life. Life, which he’d treated as a pastime, and which he’d thought he could yet outdistance, had caught up with him. And he’d discovered, much as he’d suspected, that once life caught up with you, you could never quite shake it again. It endeavored to hobble you with greater and greater frequency. How you managed to remain upright became your style, who you were.

Style was the difference between him and Polina. On that March afternoon he wanted to approach the problem from the side, circle it a few times, until, sidling over with such roundabout movements, the two of them would discover themselves at the destination as though by happenstance.

Polina, meanwhile, wanted to get there directly.

— It was an accident, Alec began, you wouldn’t have planned it this way.

— How could I plan something I thought impossible?

— But if you could, would you have planned it like this?

— No. But what does that matter? It happened. I’m not sorry that it happened. Even if you want me to be, Polina said with controlled defiance.

— I don’t want you to be sorry, Alec said. I want you to be happy. Will having the baby make you happy?

She didn’t answer immediately but seemed to carefully consider.

— It might.

Gently, Alec tried to enumerate the options he’d hashed out with Karl.

— Would you be happy having the child with Maxim?

— If this is where you begin, Polina said, you don’t need to say anything else. I have my answer.

— I think you’re wrong.

— Do you want me to have the child?

— No, Alec said.

— So I’m not wrong.

— If that’s the only question, then, no, you’re not wrong.

— It’s the only question that matters, Polina said.

— And about what happens to the child and to you?

— We’ll find our way somehow. We won’t be the first.

— Here in Riga?

— I imagine. Where else?

— Living with Maxim or on your own?

— Or, in time, with someone else.

— Yes, there’s that, too. Raising my child.

— Biologically.

— That isn’t insignificant.

— To whom?

— To me.

— I’m afraid you can’t have it both ways.

— It may also not be insignificant to the child.

— Alec, that is also having it both ways. You can’t claim to care for the feelings of the child you want to abort.

There was logic in what she’d said, but it didn’t change the fact that Alec felt quite certain that he could care for the feelings of the child he wanted to abort. That is, once the child was born.

— If I could agree to having the child, I would. If I could be a father to it, I would.

— I never asked you to be a father to it.

— So what did you hope I would say?

— I don’t know. Or rather I do, Polina said, and laughed dryly. It wasn’t what I’d hoped you’d say, but what I’d hoped you wouldn’t say. That’s all.

A stillness of denouement settled upon her, or she summoned it from within. Somehow the conversation he’d planned had escaped his control. It wasn’t even that he’d misled himself by thinking it would be easy. He’d imagined a thorny path that led, in the end, to a favorable resolution. He pictured Polina’s happiness, gratitude even, at his proposal. But now, in actuality, he feared that he’d misspoken and miscalculated. He feared that she would leave before he could even make his big redemptive offer. The offer that would recast him radically and heroically not only in her eyes but in his own.

Sensing that his time was short, he rushed ahead and told her that he was leaving Riga.

He then unfurled his grand plan, like a carpet to a bountiful future. Polina would divorce Maxim. The two of them would marry. An expert doctor would perform the operation with incomparable care in an atmosphere of total privacy. It would be nothing at all like the savagery of the public abortion clinic. No harm would come to her. She would still be able to conceive. Once they settled somewhere, they could try again properly. This was their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to slip the shackles of the Soviet Union.

— It’s all very rosy, Polina said.

— It could be. I think we could make a good life together over there. I truly believe it.

— Don’t try so hard, Alec, Polina said. Next you’ll tell me you love me.

With the warning she bracketed a great length of silence, long enough to accommodate everything that had happened or would happen: the abortion clinic, Maxim, Alec’s parents, the private doctor, her parents, their spiteful coworkers, the snarling officials, and the dreadful, sunny day when she would sit on a park bench waiting to say goodbye to her sister.

One afternoon at the military hospital in Simferopol a number of patient-musicians had put on a small concert. Their singer was a squarely built young Tatar woman, a surgical nurse. The musicians took up their places under a banner that predicted “Victory over the Fascist Invader.” The ensemble played and the nurse sang traditional Russian songs and the popular songs of the day, ballads of heroism, homesickness, love and loss. In the aisles between the beds, comrades paired up and danced together. Samuil had made captain by then, and as there were no able-bodied officers for partners, he had watched the enlisted men dance.