David Bezmozgis - The Free World

Samuil steered them toward the huge board that displayed arrivals and departures, where destinations and times came and went with the synchronized clacking of hundreds of black plastic tiles. People with fixed objectives sped one way and another. Samuil saw stores, cafés, newspaper stands, and bookshops. By the entrance to one of these, a Gypsy woman squatted on the ground in her long skirt. Beside her, a boy no older than ten played a small accordion. Farther ahead, there were steps and an escalator leading to an upper level. Beyond this, the concourse continued, and he could see the possibility of a turn to the left and to the right. Samuil couldn’t recall which way they had gone the last time they’d been at the station. He felt sorely conspicuous because of the medals. People glanced at him as if at some oddity.

For these indignities, Samuil blamed his wife and his son. Emma had insisted on the medals, and Alec, predictably inattentive, had specified a bus number, but not where the bus might be found. In a station like Termini, the size of a small town, such an omission was unforgivable.

Once they found the depot, boarding the bus brought no relief, only the fear of missing their stop. Emma supplicated the bus driver — a young, impassive dullard — babbling and holding the sheet of paper with their directions. She then sat apprehensively at the window, trying to read street names and recognize landmarks, not trusting the driver to call their stop. Though when the time came, the driver barked a word and one of their fellow passengers pointed conscientiously to the door.

The second meeting was worse than the first. They had been assigned to a total incompetent: a young man who did not wear a jacket or tie, but a yellow sweater over his shirt collar. On his table he’d had an open can of soda, from which he drank periodically and unapologetically during their interview. He also smiled, for no evident reason, from hello to goodbye. And when he spoke, it was only to utter some nonsense. Though Emma had admitted to no knowledge of English, the caseworker insisted that she nevertheless try to read several pages from an illustrated children’s book about a polar bear. When she stumbled, which was at every word, he corrected her. To his invitation that Samuil also make an attempt, Samuil declined through the interpreter.

— If it’s to demonstrate my ability, there’s nothing to demonstrate.

— If it’s to demonstrate your willingness to learn … Emma whispered.

— To learn or to be ridiculed? Samuil said.

On the subject of his fitness, Samuil delivered his standard response. He was fit enough for any work.

He believed that he had turned in a blameless effort, in spite of everything.

He’d even suffered in silence while Emma launched into the epic of his wartime service. The caseworker had nodded approvingly at Samuil’s medals and contributed that his own father had seen action in the Canadian military. Here again, Samuil felt that he had responded prudently, and that his behavior had been beyond reproach. He had held his tongue. Instead of inquiring why it had taken the Western powers three years to open up a second front, he had said something complimentary about the Canadian army.

Nevertheless, he could tell that Emma hadn’t been satisfied with how he’d comported himself. She would not admit to it, but her displeasure was immanent.

Returning home, Samuil and Emma occupied two of the last available seats, one behind the other. As they rode, they didn’t have to look at each other or speak. But when the bus came to its inexplicable halt Emma tapped him on the shoulder. The doors had opened and the bus driver had climbed out and lit a cigarette. Passengers grumbled and cursed. Some left and started walking. Samuil heard a word repeated that sounded much like the Russian word for bus driver: “schoffer.” A woman cradling an infant called out to the driver. Samuil saw him shrug his shoulders, not unsympathetically. The woman slid back into her seat, dug an orange out of her purse, and began to peel it. A man standing beside Samuil checked his watch and then turned the page of his newspaper.

They remained on the immobile bus for upward of two hours. The driver went away down the street, evidently abandoning his vehicle and his passengers entirely. When he returned, he climbed back into his seat as if nothing had happened, turned the ignition, and resumed the route.

At eight in the evening, many hours late, they descended from their train at Ladispoli Station. Before Samuil could take five steps, he saw his daughter-in-law and his grandchildren. Rosa was already in motion, issuing exclamations, rushing toward them, pulling the boys along by their hands. At the sight of Rosa and the boys, Emma nearly fell into a swoon of martyrdom and fatigue. It was a reunion for the ages, Samuil thought. Yet another one.

At home, Karl was waiting, the reverse image of his wife. As much as Samuil deplored Rosa’s hysterics, he found that he also deplored his son’s indifference.

— They waited over two hours on a stationary bus, Rosa exclaimed.

— But what did I tell you? Karl said.

— So what? Anything could have happened, Rosa said.

— But what happened? Karl asked.

— Never mind, Rosa said. Look at your mother, she’s half dead.

All that trouble for nothing, Samuil thought. They had dressed him up and dragged him to Rome for this. A farcical interview at the consulate and then a wildcat transit strike: sitting on a bus, going nowhere.

The second time Alec went to Ladispoli to meet Masha, he’d encountered his father walking the paved path along the edge of the beach. Alec was with Masha, going in the opposite direction. Before they drew close enough to speak, Alec had recognized his father’s shape, even in the low light of dusk. His father peered directly and stolidly ahead. Alec thought for an instant to duck into a shuttered beachside café, and hide behind the stacked chairs and umbrellas, but he knew this was idiotic. Though when they approached each other, Alec saw in his father’s eyes a grudging, regretful look — as if he was disappointed that Alec hadn’t had the good sense to duck into the shuttered café, behind the umbrellas and chairs, and spare them both the inconvenience of this meeting.

With no recourse, they stopped and acknowledged each other. Alec saw his father give Masha the briefest glance, no more than a shift of the eyes, after which he didn’t look at her again.

— You’re still here? Samuil asked.

— I’m still here, Alec said.

Hours earlier, when he’d arrived in Ladispoli, he had seen his father, mother, and the rest of his family in the rental cottage. For the duration of Alec’s visit, his father had remained in the living room, poring over a manuscript.

With a stricken expression his mother had said: He writes; he reads; he goes for walks.

Alec had seen the writing and the reading; now he’d seen the whole troika.

— When is the last train to Rome? Samuil asked.

— Ten fifteen, Alec said.

— See you don’t miss it, Samuil said evenly, nodded his head, and resumed his walk.

Alec had deliberately chosen to walk with Masha along a part of the beach that he believed would be the least trafficked by Russians, among whom, first and foremost, he counted his family. They hadn’t seen anyone until they met his father. That he was there, so far from where he should have been, seemed like an act of spite. At the same time, Alec couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, in the austerity of his solitude. He turned and watched his father grow indistinct in the distance and the darkness. His father was becoming a recluse, rejecting everyone and everything, denying himself every pleasure except the pleasure of denial, whereas for Alec, the pleasure of denial — that high, weatherbeaten pleasure — was the one pleasure he didn’t want.