Boris Fishman - A Replacement Life

“No,” Slava said.

“Don’t be naive, please,” Lazar said. “We were pretending to be policemen. So we get to Eyeball’s house, and we stick out two little address books like they’re IDs. ‘Esteemed citizens: We are here on orders of the precinct commander to ask you to drop the charges against Misha Rudinsky and permit the authorities to deal with this hooligan on our own terms. We promise to avenge your son in an appropriate way, if you catch our drift. If you go through the official channels, in prison this kike will have a square meal every day. If you leave him to us, we’ll make sure he never walks again. One less pair of Jewish feet trampling the ground.’”

“Did it work?” Slava said.

“No,” he said sourly. “They shut the door in our faces.”

“Oh.”

“You think I stopped there? I got our lawyer to get the case judge to come to our house for dinner. I am twenty-six years old at this point, Slava, basically five minutes older than you. We’re toasting to the health of the motherland and all that, and khop —I slip him a white envelope. Five large. And my little Misha got three years instead of ten. And I got to pick him up from the prison once a month and take him home for a home-cooked meal and a haircut.”

Slava nodded politely. All of a sudden, their twilight upon them, the old men of his old neighborhood were willing to talk about their valorous actions. Initially, they held back so as not to trouble the children with the frightening truth about life. But now, in the last lap, they were frantically unloading, like thieves dumping gold, pursued by the one collector from whom no reprieve. Finally, they had met something more fearful than the prospect of disturbing the sleep of their children.

Lazar Timofeyevich closed his eyes, so slowly and heavily that Slava could imagine the lids never rising again. When he opened them, he said: “You think I am telling you all this to stroke my dick one last time? I am telling you this so you can understand the difference between your own and not your own. Who is your best friend?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’ve got a best friend?”

Slava thought about it. The only answer that came was Arianna. “No,” he said.

“I had ten best friends back home,” Lazar said. “Boys who would slit someone’s throat for me. All Jews. Every last one of them Jews. Now, whoever your closest friend is, would he do that for you?”

“I don’t know,” Slava said. “I don’t have — that many friends.”

“That girl,” Lazar said, pointing at the stairs, “will stand behind you like a tank, Slava. And you need it, with your head in the clouds. She may not know who Sakharov was, but she knows life, loyalty. You get caught doing what you’re doing? She would take the fall for you. That’s what I mean by your own. You name me one American person who will do that for you, and I will end this conversation. We brought you here, but that means we are Americans all of a sudden? Do you scoop from a box of cherries at the store without looking? No, you pick the good ones. Just because we are here, we have to live a thousand miles apart and call once a week to say hai-hava-yoo? Get a nice job, buy a big house — but you don’t have to take any more from this place.”

“So we are supposed to be foreigners here?” Slava said. “It wasn’t enough for you to have to be a foreigner back there, now you are choosing to be a foreigner here? They have psychopathic classifications for this kind of behavior.”

“We will become Americans, Slava, don’t worry,” Lazar said. “Your children will be almost Americans, and then their children will watch the shampoo commercials without understanding what could be different. It has to happen on its own timetable. You can’t rush the facts.”

“Life is long,” Slava said.

“Life is not long,” Lazar said. “At the front, twenty-five was a senior citizen. Lyuba was swaddling at twenty-five, very nice for her, but at twenty-five, I was commanding a Red Army platoon. That’s one thing I have to give those crazy medievals next door. They have five kids, six kids, seven kids. We are so small, Slava. We are always in danger of disappearing because of one thing or another.”

“Has anyone asked Vera what she wants?” Slava said.

“You have to speak into this ear,” Lazar Timofeyevich said impatiently.

“You are willing to give away your one granddaughter to someone who earns half her salary?”

“What?” Lazar whined. Slava wondered if the hearing impairment had been invented for deployment as needed. It had caused notably less interference at dinner.

“It’s not important,” Slava sighed. “I have to go, Lazar Timofeyevich. Long trip back.”

The old man shrugged, too weary to continue. He rose somberly and shuffled off to a corner cabinet. From it he withdrew a sealed white envelope, thick, and dropped it on the table in front of Slava. Then he lowered himself back into his chair. “Make it good,” he said.

“What is this?” Slava said.

“Your fee. Two hundred and fifty.”

“Thanks,” Slava said. “I don’t need a fee.”

“Your grandfather said not to give it to you, but you’re the one who deserves it.”

Slava felt warmth in his cheeks.

“Lazar Timofeyevich, you should have waited until they came,” Lyuba said reproachfully from the doorway. Garik was next to her, two eavesdropping children.

“Wait till who came,” Slava said.

“Who, who,” Lazar said, an old owl.

The doorbell rang, a slow tick-tock that banged around the tiled halls for eternity. They stood sealed to their places. On the elders, it dawned that Slava had no idea what was happening. Why had he been kept out of it? Well, he kept his distance now, they had heard. Fucking children, God pardon their speech: You give and you give and they spit in your face. Why were they so set on pairing Vera with Slava? That was the only reason they’d said okay when the Gelmans asked to come over. It wasn’t the kid’s fault that the parents — the grandfather — was a high-nosed prick. But what, the apple falls far from the tree? The kid was a strange one, too — in his own way, but strange all the same. All this flashed through the minds of the elder Rudinskys.

“Must be them,” Garik said.

“Who,” Slava said, a mild hysteria entering his voice. He knew the answer, but prayed to be wrong.

“Them, them,” Lazar said impatiently.

Lyuba disappeared into the hallway. Slava jumped from his chair, Lazar following at lesser speed. When Lyuba opened the door, the three men were bunched in the hallway behind her, wearing pained expressions: Garik because he didn’t know what to expect from this encounter — in some ways, he felt responsible for the estrangement, because his need for the limousine seed money had started it, though for the same reason, he also felt the most aggrieved and unprepared to reconcile, though of course he would do it for the children; Lazar because he was halfway to the next world and therefore understood, as only his granddaughter did, the imbecility of such estrangements; and Slava because he was bewildered, one that his grandfather had been charging for the letters, and two that, very likely, there were Gelmans on the other side of that door. Above their heads, Vera’s feet pressed the carpeted stairs. She was still wearing her goddamn arousing heels, the stilettos pricking the soft carpet.

The door opened to reveal, indeed, two Gelmans — father, daughter — and one Shtuts. Slava’s grandfather wore a white guayabera and an expression of disdain. His daughter was in a multiflowered tunic. Her husband was tidy in a short-sleeved shirt. They held chocolates, cheap champagne, the weight of the world.