David Bezmozgis - The Free World

The pleasure he did want was Masha. A pleasure much closer to the ground. In pursuit of this he’d gone to the apartment she shared with her mother and her hoodlum brother. He spent more than an hour eating dinner with them. Masha had told him to be on time, so that they could all eat together before her brother left for work. When Alec arrived, Riva Davidovna acted as if he were a favored and long-standing suitor. Even Dmitri, whose attitude couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than hostility, wasn’t hostile in the same way. Previously, his hostility had seemed a type of suspicion, now it seemed more seasoned — as if he’d known Alec for many years and had long held a negative opinion of him.

A place was set for him next to Masha. Riva Davidovna served, ladling out vegetable soup, inquiring if he wanted one or two spoonfuls of sour cream. She asked after his parents and after Karl and Rosa. A casual web of acquaintance connected them. Riva had seen Rosa at Club Kadima painting and posting her signs; she’d seen his mother at Piazza Marescotti tending to the boys; and evidently Karl had a stake in the auto body shop where Dmitri had found work. The impression created was of a respectable, industrious family, with Alec as the bachelor son. Facts inconsistent with this impression Riva willfully ignored — for instance, where exactly Alec went when he went home.

After the meal, Riva allowed him to take Masha for the unchaperoned walk. Just walking with her, he felt an almost ungovernable desire. He hadn’t experienced anything like it in years. Not since he’d been a teenager and spent entire evenings with an erection straining against the fly of his pants. That was when he’d gone to dances to seek out girls who would chat breezily or look blankly over his shoulder while they returned his pressure with their hips and thighs. Alec had almost forgotten how exciting that had been, testing the limitations. A few years later, nobody took the limitations seriously anymore and everything changed. He certainly hadn’t missed the limitations. But now that he’d encountered them again, he believed that they added to Masha’s appeal. She was eighteen years old, of less than average height, with dark hair and eyes, and a figure that seemed to strain the laws of physics, like a glass filled past the brim. Had she been a deranged nymphomaniac, Alec imagined he’d be similarly hooked, but he preferred her this way: coy rather than wanton.

When he was alone with her, he felt the need to always be touching her. On their unchaperoned walk, Masha rested her head against his arm and he held her around the waist. Whenever his hand slipped down, she let it linger before she guided it back to its original place. And when he stopped to kiss her, she behaved like the dance partners from his teenage past and let him press his groin against her abdomen. The pleasure of it traveled the length of his body and resolved like a high note in his jaw.

Things didn’t go too much further: she trapped his hand between her thighs; he stroked her breasts; she traced a line with her fingertips.

She was toying with him; her excuse, that she was a virgin and inexperienced.

— I see it’s hard for you to believe, Masha said. Other women you’ve known are different, right? All you have to do is ask.

— Not always.

— No?

— Sometimes there’s no need to ask.

To Alec, it didn’t matter what they said to each other or even if they meant it. The thrill was in saying the words and having someone say them back. The conversation was always the same anyway. You repeated at twenty-six what you’d said at sixteen. And, if you were lucky, you got to repeat it again at fifty-six and ninety-six. To see yourself through admiring eyes, to tell a woman what you wanted — what could be better? How could you tire of that? Emigration had already spoiled too many pleasures and hadn’t granted many new ones in return.

This was why he was so happy to have found Masha. With her, he was back on familiar ground. It was like Riga before the whole convoluted saga of the emigration. He’d seen a girl, become smitten, and pursued her. For the first time in a long time, the demands of emigration were peripheral. And as for Polina, he believed that one thing had nothing to do with the other. Masha was a complement, not a competitor, and so he felt altogether good, to the point of satiety, like a man who had everything.

On the ride back to Trastevere, as Alec was rocked into a near dream state by the iron drone of the rails, the dark fields in the window leaping up to become dark towns, an apparition of Masha’s father filtered into his thoughts. He’d never so much as seen a photograph of him, but he’d assigned him a face: and this face was looking at him. A bald head, a strong brow, intense black eyes, lean cheeks, and a growth of stubble. It was the face of a man in late middle age, though Alec knew that Masha’s father hadn’t been forty when he’d died. Alec examined the face to see if Masha’s father approved or disapproved of him. He wanted him to approve, but the father’s features were grim, foreboding. Alec sensed that he neither approved nor disapproved — he didn’t care. In his eyes, Alec was insignificant, not worth a moment’s consideration. Masha’s father was consumed with weightier matters. He stood accused of a commercial crime, a capital offense. He was an astute man. He knew what awaited. His wife, a widow, would be put out in the street. His children would grow up without a father, stigmatized and humiliated. His boy was three, the little girl, one. They wouldn’t remember him. His son would become a violent criminal.

Alec saw the face of a man condemned to hard labor in a uranium mine. He saw him pry a gold tooth out of his mouth and bribe a guard. He saw him swinging by his belt in his jail cell.

The bells at the Vatican were ringing the evening Polina and Alec took the train to Ladispoli to attend the Rosh Hashanah pageant. Pope John Paul had died completely unexpectedly, having served for barely one month; but at Club Kadima the principal topic of conversation was that the Israeli parliament had approved Begin’s peace agreement.

Chairs had been arranged to accommodate the absolute maximum number of spectators. Alec’s parents arrived in advance and occupied seats two rows away from the stage. Emma held three seats, two for them and one for Karl. As Polina and Alec squeezed into their seats a woman raised her voice, challenging Emma’s right to save so many seats. The woman, in her fifties, her face red with heat and indignation, charged Emma with effrontery. The woman’s husband glared in stern, wordless support of his wife. He was scrawny, cerebral, with inordinately bushy eyebrows under a sky blue cap. The woman was also saving a seat. Emma drew her attention to the hypocrisy. They sniped back and forth, taking umbrage, invoking their credentials. The woman was an economist; her husband was a physicist. Emma retaliated with her medical degree, Samuil’s managerial position, his war record. The woman eyed Polina and Alec as accomplices to the crime. As she became more emphatic, the woman took to leaning over Polina, as if she were of no consequence.

— To save more than two seats is vulgar.

— Where is this written?

— Written? Where is it written not to spit, not to root around inside one’s nose in public? It is common knowledge for any cultivated person.

— My grandchildren are in the pageant. Their mother, my daughter-in-law, is in the choir.

— Mazel tov! So you think this gives you special privileges?

— If I want to save seats for my two sons and my other daughter-in-law — who don’t live around the corner but had to take the train in from Rome — I don’t need your permission.