David Bezmozgis - The Free World

—? u vi parolas Esperanton? he said.

Gingerly, Samuil nodded his head.

He saw the man smile, delighted.

— Many years ago, Samuil said.

— Well, let us try.

— Very well.

— You would like to know why the train is not going?

— Yes.

— The engineers have called a strike. All the trains have stopped.

— For long?

— They did not say. It could be for long.

Samuil digested this.

— How far is it to Rome?

— Fifteen kilometers. Perhaps more.

His feet crunching the gravel of the rail bed, Samuil walked the length of the train, feeling the warmth emanating from its sides, like a great horse at rest. He passed the locomotive and saw in its window the engineer, sitting at his console, reading a newspaper. He could feel no resentment toward a worker asserting his rights in a capitalist system. In the Soviet Union, where socialism had been achieved, workers worked. The country hadn’t seen a strike in seventy years. There, if a train had stopped, he would have gone directly to the engineer and demanded: Comrade engineer, what is the meaning of this?

After he passed the locomotive, a broad panorama opened up on all sides, the railroad tracks running down its middle, like a zipper on the mantle of the earth. Ahead of him, he saw a string of figures picking their way along the tracks. He looked behind him and saw dozens more, some empty-handed, some with bundles, and others with young children — women carrying the littlest ones in their arms.

As a soldier, he had marched with his division along roads and rail lines, at times covering as many as seventy kilometers in a single day. He had walked in every kind of weather: in the mire of the rasputitsa, with the mud pulling at his boots with its ghoulish hands; in the coldest frosts of winter, where comrades made macabre statues out of the frozen German dead; and in the heat of summer, the army crossing the land as a towering pillar of dust.

Compared to all of that, Samuil thought, was he to be deterred by a walk of a mere fifteen kilometers in mild weather? Not to mention that, as a soldier, he had also carried as much as twenty kilos in equipment, ammunition, and kit. Now he was encumbered by nothing other than his blazer. The blazer he removed after fifteen minutes and draped first over one arm and then the other.

From the opposite direction, also along the rail line, he saw other commuters trekking west. He looked, but could not see their train, and, checking behind him, he could no longer see his own. The rail line had snaked and curved, and he had walked a considerable distance. He regretted that he did not have any water with him. There were a few buildings and houses about, but he did not want to stray from his course to appeal to strangers who did not speak Russian. In the time he would lose searching for water, he could gain several kilometers and bring himself closer to the city or the next station.

He walked another half hour. He saw the train that had stopped on the westbound tracks. And he saw, on the horizon, the geometry of some larger settlement, perhaps an outer suburb of Rome. His thirst made his legs feel heavy, his chest tight. The tightness forced him to labor slightly to draw a full breath, and so he decided to rest.

He scrambled down from the rail bed to the dry, weedy embankment. He spread out his blazer and lowered himself onto it. He sat with his knees bent, his hands resting upon them, and his head up and chin raised so as to better draw breath. He gazed ahead, his field of vision incorporating the long stretch of track. The view was bare. Not a soul passed in either direction. Samuil did not know what had happened to the people who had walked before him. He had passed some of them as they rested beside the tracks. Nor did he know what had happened to the people who had followed behind. The people with bundles, the men and women with children. It seemed as if they had abandoned the course. Few had persevered so long and come so far as he had. Samuil thought of his family, of Emma and Rosa, all of them, and how they had misjudged him. How surprised they would be, and how none of them had ever fully appreciated.

Samuil surveyed the scene around him. He saw mindless gravel, railroad, and sky. He thought to rise and continue on his way, but to his consternation he felt as if, rather than diminishing, the pressure in his chest had increased. He tried to rise nonetheless, but felt as if the sky had dropped to prevent him. He inhaled and felt something zealously squeezing his lungs, as if his heart, after biding its time, had finally chosen this moment to revolt. He felt a fleeting panic that quickly turned to rage. His own heart was betraying him, like an enemy inside the walls of his body. He was determined to attack it and bend it to his will. He would wage a battle against it. His treacherous heart would have to wrest the breath from his lips.

At the end of the workday, a man who identified himself as an employee of the Joint appeared at the briefing department looking for Alec. He was in his middle thirties, balding, slightly flabby, and with the typical Russian look of fatigue — acquired in the womb, marinated in that broth of disappointments. He said he had an important message to convey and suggested that they retire to the corridor for privacy. Alec felt his colleagues’ eyes upon him as he followed the man out.

He had been the object of curiosity all day. He’d crept out of the office at dawn and lurked about the neighborhood, reporting for work only when he saw others start arriving. His colleagues reacted with shock at the sight of his face — more shock than he’d anticipated. He’d thought that, after a week, it was no longer quite so ghastly, but based on their reactions it occurred to him that he had simply grown accustomed to it.

In the corridor, the man from the Joint looked at him dourly before speaking. Alec felt a mounting apprehension and imagined what else Masha might have done.

— Is your father Samuil Leyzerovich? the man asked.

— Yes, said Alec.

— I’m afraid I have some sad news for you.

They went by foot from the office to a mortuary where the Jewish Burial Society had brought Samuil’s body. The man opened the door to an antechamber where Alec saw a shrunken old Jew in a yarmulke sitting on a chair and mumbling something from a small black hymnal. At his shoulder was a long table that supported the weight of a body enfolded completely in a white sheet. The little Jew barely looked up from his mumbling as Alec and the man from the Joint entered the room.

— You’ll forgive me, the man said, but we need you to confirm it’s your father.

Alec approached the figure, drew aside the folds, and uncovered a wax replica of his father’s face. He saw the full head of gray hair, the stern brow, the distinguished masculine nose, and the shiny white granules stippling the cheeks. Someone had shut his father’s eyes and removed his dentures. The latter detail had distorted his face, collapsing his mouth and making him seem ancient. Alec’s impulse was to look away, but he resisted out of a duty to see all. He tried to reconcile this pale waxwork with the father who had been such a vital, dominant presence in his life. He felt crushed by the mortal paradox: how it was that his father lay by his side and that his father was no more. He studied his father’s face and understood that there was such a thing as a soul and that it had departed and left behind a corpse.

— Is it him? the man asked.

— Yes, it’s him, Alec answered.

He covered his father’s face and looked to the man from the Joint for further instruction.

— What happens now?

— The funeral. They like to do it as fast as possible. Tomorrow afternoon.