David Bezmozgis - The Free World

Lyova named a figure and Karl accepted it without haggling.

— If you want to wait around, Karl said, I’ll have Valera do it after he finishes with the Alfa. Or if you don’t feel like waiting, you could leave it here overnight.

— If I leave it overnight, what are the chances it will be here tomorrow? Lyova grinned.

— I suppose anything could happen, Karl replied blankly.

— Anyway, it’s our means back to Rome, Lyova said. I don’t want to speak for Alec, but I’ll wait.

— No problem, Karl said. I’d keep you company, but there are some things I need to do.

They spent the rest of the afternoon, several hours, in and around the garage. They had another drink with the idle Angelo. They rested their chairs along the rear wall of the house — as far from the dust and the fumes as possible — and watched the activity. Nobody paid them any mind. Dmitri and his partner finished painting the Renault, and Dmitri drove it out of the garage. A Ford Escort sedan pulled in, and its driver, another Russian, fetched several wooden packing crates out of the trunk. Karl greeted him at the back door of the house and helped him carry the crates inside. At the same time, two uniformed policemen dropped by to have a drink with Angelo. The afternoon ticked by.

Alec and Lyova made peace with the two kids out front, and periodically joined them to have a smoke and kick the ball around.

Eventually, Valera swapped the panel on the Alfa with another that he drew from a stack of body parts stored at the far end of the workshop. He then turned his attention to the van.

— It’s some operation your brother’s running here, Lyova observed.

— Is it? Alec asked, not because he didn’t have a sense of its illicitness but because he found it hard to believe that the proceeds could compensate for spending so much time in such squalor.

— I’m sure I don’t understand half of it, Lyova said, but the half I understand is no joke. To pull this off, he’s got to be involved with serious people.

— Even so, Alec said, I haven’t seen a sty like this since our fiasco at Chop.

Lyova had also crossed at Chop. His experience had been bad, but he’d freely admitted that Alec and his family had been subjected to a more diabolical order of humiliation.

The fact was that, one night, in July of 1978, in a small, dingy booth at the Chop railway station, a scrawny Russian customs inspector, who reeked of tobacco and looked like a prime candidate for cirrhosis, had said to him: Bend over and hold your balls and your cock. I don’t want them swinging in my face. Clutching a flashlight in one hand, he had tried to force the rubber-gloved finger of his other hand into Alec’s rectum. And when Alec’s body had instinctively resisted, he had barked: Don’t play the virgin and open your ass! I didn’t have this trouble with your father.

They had all been subjected to this same violation. Samuil had gone first, followed by Alec and Karl. A matronly female customs inspector had taken charge of the women. First Emma, then Rosa and Polina. In a neighboring booth, equipped with a gynecological table, the customs inspector had done her work with the aid of a speculum. For long minutes after they emerged from the booth, they all averted their eyes and didn’t speak. Even the boys, who were not spared, came out this way.

When the customs inspector had tried to take them, Rosa had shrieked with the ferocity of a jungle creature, They are children! Seven and five! What kind of monster would do this to a child? Karl had silenced her with a searing look. In a level tone, he had said to the customs inspector, There is nothing on the boys. The inspector remained unmoved. He took Yury by the wrist. Karl said, What will it take to leave the boys? The customs inspector leered and said, We have our regulations. As the inspector tried to pull Yury in the direction of the booth, Karl clapped a hand on his son’s shoulder and shot the agent a withering look. Their mother goes with them, Karl said, or, I swear to God, I will tear your throat out. The inspector regarded Karl for an instant — long enough to gather that Karl wasn’t the type to issue idle threats — and relented.

Resentful thoughts, like a flock of bats, wheeled around them. Alec tried hard not to blame Samuil. His father’s stubbornness had incited the first customs agent to single them out for the cavity searches, because h e had refused to part with his brother’s letters from the front, or even to allow the customs agent to lay hands on them. The agent had already confiscated his father’s medals. They had only a very short amount of time to clear customs before their train left for Bratislava. If they missed the train, they would be stranded overnight in Chop, a closed border city, without passports or permits, where they could easily be arrested. Alec felt the likelihood of this increasing as his father brandished one letter after another, taking pains to unfold them and display first one side and then its obverse. It was a ludicrous exercise. It seemed like every letter was written in Yiddish, in an alphabet the customs agent couldn’t pretend to understand. Behind them, other families stirred impatiently.

In the end, after Zhenya, the last of the boys, had been searched, they already knew that they had missed their train. They were stranded in the station amid jumbled belongings. They now appeared very conspicuous. The customs agents who had impeded their departure eyed them darkly. And Alec felt other sinister characters in the station taking their measure.

We have to get out of here, Karl said. Rosa had looked despondently at their pile of baggage and asked, How?

At that moment one of the sinister characters, a Gypsy, detached himself from a pillar and sidled over to them. He was squarely built, unshaven, with a greasy forelock, shabby trousers, dingy canvas shoes, and an impressive red silk shirt. Missed your train? he asked, scanning them all, but gravitating intuitively to Karl. What’s it to you? Karl said. If you’re in a bind, I can help, the Gypsy said.

From the station they walked three kilometers to the outskirts of Chop, an area of partially constructed panel apartment houses. The Gypsy and his fourteen-year-old son had helped them load most of their belongings onto a cart harnessed to a lethargic donkey. The cart was large enough to accommodate all their belongings, but Karl and Alec elected to carry some things to allow the boys and Emma to ride instead of walk. Emma had confessed to feeling weak and lightheaded, symptoms she attributed to nervous exhaustion.

The Gypsies brought them to a clearing set back behind one of the apartment sites. The ground was rife with weeds and strewn with windblown trash. Lodged in the middle of the field, like a dinosaur egg, was the rusted drum of a concrete mixer. There was a large shanty at one end of the clearing, and a larger structure at the rear edge, abutting a little wood. The Gypsies deposited them and their belongings in the shanty, and retired to the other building. They’d arrived in early evening and had only a few hours to adapt themselves to their quarters. The shanty was derelict and dark. It had two windows, both thick with grime. The walls and floor were of plywood and infused with mold. Vodka and beer bottles were littered throughout the place, and along one wall were three stained mattresses, two of which were outfitted with crumpled, and equally stained, sheets. The place smelled heavily of rot, tobacco, urine, and debauch.

Where have you brought us? Rosa asked Karl. A question he disregarded. How do I put the children down in this place? They are wearing their good suits, she persisted. We have all of our shit with us, Karl said. We have sheets, pillows, blankets, all kinds of crap. You’re their mother. Improvise.