Boris Fishman - A Replacement Life

“Leave me alone, you rascal,” Aunt Lyuba said, beaming. “Slava, how old are you now?” She started setting dishes with faux-Greek fretting in front of the men. “Same as Vera?”

“Twenty-five,” Slava said. “My birthday’s next month.”

“I was already swaddling that one when I was twenty-five,” Aunt Lyuba said. “Now look at her.” They all investigated Vera. She adjusted her dress, her hoop earrings bouncing.

“You can’t compare life over there,” Uncle Garik said. “At twenty-five, you had every question answered already.”

“Are we eating tomorrow, not today?” Lazar Timofeyevich bawled.

“I’m doing it, I’m doing it,” Aunt Lyuba shouted. “I have only two hands. Verochka, my princess, you think you might want to do something?”

Vera pulled down the hem of the dress. “Chicken thighs?” she said.

“Yes, please. Use that knife in the drying rack.” Aunt Lyuba turned to Slava. “I expected you a little later, Slava. But there will be a lamb to make you forget your name. Just so you know, Vera can cook something, too, once in a while, if she wasn’t so busy with work. Frankfurters and mashed potatoes for now, but we’re working on it.”

“There’s a little place near where I work,” Slava said. “The guy makes lamb like it still breathes.”

“One of ours?” Uncle Garik said. “Central Asian?”

“No,” Slava said. “Lebanese.”

“Oh,” Garik said. “Ali Baba.” He raised his palms and swiveled in imitation of a dervish.

“There is only one solution to that problem,” Lazar Timofeyevich said.

“Kill them all!” Vera yelled a little hysterically, obviously repeating something she had heard around the dinner table. Slava watched her fingers work through the chicken thighs, flecks of grease decorating her wrists. With her teeth, she notched up the sleeves of her dress.

“I never said ‘kill,’” Lazar Timofeyevich said. “Please don’t put words in my mouth. I said ‘remove.’ Just give them money and please go someplace else. Our people have not suffered enough, they have to deal with this, too? Just leave us alone.”

“Where is Lebanon, anyway?” Aunt Lyuba said. “I am always curious now when they are talking about the war on the radio. Is it the same as Libya?”

“It’s in the Middle East,” Uncle Garik said. “They do make good food, however.”

“He has this special layering technique with the pita that he learned from Moroccan Jews,” Slava said, trying to steer them to impulses of solidarity.

“I heard on the radio once that Arabs are famous for their hospitality,” Garik said. “They invite you into the tent for tea, but once you’re inside, they kill you.”

“I think that’s a legend from long ago,” Slava said. “They don’t live in tents.”

“Don’t be naive, Slava,” Garik said. “What do you expect, they tell you to put tulips in gun barrels in this country.”

Vera deposited a serving plate layered with chicken thighs in the middle of the table. Aunt Lyuba shook her head. “My doll, who serves a plate this way?” She removed the plate and began to garnish its edges with sprigs of parsley. “Voilà!” she said a minute later, returning the dish to the table.

Everyone ate in busy contemplation, the men pushing the food behind their cheeks with their thumbs, Vera wiping her plate with bread. Lyuba was only half seated: more bread, more napkins, more garlic. She’d eat in peace when the men were finished. A flock of shrieks rose outside, the children playing.

“I think it’s time for lights,” Lyuba said, rising again. “Verochka, tell us about something. How’s work?”

“It’s daylight outside,” Lazar Timofeyevich said. “You’re wasteful with electricity.”

“Then you should have bought a house with windows,” Lyuba said.

“Nothing special,” Vera said. “Fashion boutique on Avenue X. Contest for the radio station.”

“She works in piar ,” Lyuba said. “She connects Russians customers to American business. Isn’t that right, my dove? She earns above fifty thousand dollars a year.”

Vera blanched. “I connect Russian customers to Russian business,” she said. “I have only one account Russian to America. In this country, Mama, salary is a private issue.”

“Slava’s one of us,” Lyuba waved her away.

“Completely senseless,” Lazar Timofeyevich said. “If you need toothpaste, you go and buy toothpaste, I don’t understand why someone has to advertise toothpaste.”

“They have fifty kinds of toothpaste here,” Vera said. “You need help deciding.”

“I don’t need help deciding,” he said. “The least expensive one, you buy.”

“And then your teeth fall out,” Lyuba defended her daughter.

“They’ve fallen out already,” Lazar said.

“As if any of the advertisements tell you something truthful,” Garik said. “They just show you a woman throwing her hair around in the shower.”

“That I have no problem with,” Lazar said. He pointed at the decimated remains of the meal. “Lyuba, please clear. We need to get down to work. We can have tea later. And turn off these goddamn lights.”

Lyuba put down her fork and rose to clear the dishes. “Go, go,” Lazar dismissed everyone. “Give the men some time to talk.” Slava watched Vera, who was still eating, rise and retreat. She didn’t turn around to look at him. Lyuba would not walk out until all the dishes were piled in the sink. “I want to leave you a clean table!” she shouted in her defense. At last she left, too.

Lazar was so bent that he couldn’t look at Slava directly. His lips were violet, the face like a field darkening under a cloud. “Twenty-five is a grown-up’s age,” he said agnostically.

“You want us to be both,” Slava said. “Adults and children, at the same time.”

“Speak into this ear,” he said, and swiveled. Slava repeated himself.

“Even as a boy, you wanted, above all, justice,” Lazar said. “You wouldn’t let your grandfather get on the trolley to the beach in Italy without a ticket. When all of us took the trolley to the market to sell, we bought tickets not for the conductor but for you. You would have made a good Communist. Boy, did they hover over you. When you spoke, the whole table shut up. Four adults got quiet so you could speak. That’s a difference between you and Vera. She doesn’t expect the world to be something it’s not.”

“Let’s talk about the war,” Slava said.

“We’ll get to that,” he said. “How are things on the personal front?”

“Quiet,” Slava said. “Let’s talk about the war. I know you weren’t in a ghetto or camps, but tell me something anyway. It’ll help.”

“I was in a labor battalion, digging trenches. Then they conscripted me into infantry. Fought at Stalingrad. Lost half my hearing. End of story.”

“Say more. Details help.”

“How can they help if you can’t put it in?” Lazar slapped the table. “If you were in the ghetto, you get funds. If you had three limbs amputated at the front, you get nothing. I can’t tell you what the ghetto was like, I wasn’t there.”

“Tell me something else, then.”

“Into this ear!”

Slava repeated himself, shouting.

“Okay, I’ll tell you something else,” Lazar said. “I’ll tell you a story, though I don’t know if you know what to do with it. This was in the fifties. Fifty-two, right before that maniac died. It was getting real bad if you were a Jew. My brother Misha was walking home one night, and these drunks start yelling: ‘Kikes, kikes, one grave for all the kikes.’ Misha’s not one to keep quiet — he and your grandfather would have something to talk about. He took one of their eyeballs clean out. Bam.” Lazar Timofeyevich flicked his finger near Slava’s eye with a sudden energy. “That sort of thing gets you ten years in the clink,” he said. “So what did his older brother do? I had a friend with a military uniform from the Revolution, a collector’s item. Borrowed that. Another friend of mine was in a marching band; I told him to get in his uniform. And off we want to Eyeball’s house. You follow?”