A Replacement Life (40 page)

Authors: Boris Fishman

BOOK: A Replacement Life

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208 The third false Holocaust narrative is a version of a story that became widely known after the war. I learned of it, in addition to other valuable details, from David Guy’s book (
Innocence in Hell: The Life, Struggle, and Death of the Minsk Ghetto
, trans. Nina Genn, self-published, New York, 2004).

224 “[Her eyes] were gray, a shining gray, though they seemed darker because of their thick lashes” is a variation on
Anna Karenina
(Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Penguin Classics, 2004). The original sentence reads, “Her shining grey eyes, which seemed dark because of their thick lashes, rested amiably and attentively on his face . . .”

254 “I am a finished man . . . The sun must be the sun first of all” is from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s
Crime and Punishment
, translated by Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear (Vintage, 2012).

254 “Be true to your own strange kind” is a variation on Louis Simpson’s poem “The Cradle Trap” in
At the End of the Open Road: Poems
(Wesleyan University Press, 1963). The original reads, “Be true, be true / To your own strange kind.”

262 “Better to permit a guilty conscience to keep walking around, to increase the weight of its guilt!”: Dostoyevsky,
Crime and Punishment
.

263 “They say that at Sevastopol, the people were in a terrible fright that the enemy would attack openly and take Sevastopol immediately. But when they saw that the enemy preferred a regular siege, they were delighted! The thing would drag on for two months at least, and they could relax!”: Ibid.

280 The italicized words in “This was what awaited, the
dark collapse
between Vera’s legs said” is from Chang-Rae Lee’s
Native Speaker
(Riverhead, 1996).

281 “If you say there are elephants flying outside your window, no one will believe you. But if you say there are six elephants flying outside your window, it’s a different story” is a variation on Gabriel García Márquez, “The Art of Fiction, No. 69, Gabriel García Márquez,” interview by Peter H. Stone, in
The Paris Review,
no. 82 (Winter 1981). There is no indication who translated the interview. The original reads, “For example, if you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants flying in the sky, people will probably believe you.”

292 “The tea was bitter and he blamed existence” is a variation on Bernard Malamud,
The Fixer
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004). In the original phrasing—“It tasted bitter and he blamed existence”—the “it” does refer to tea.

297 “Slava could have risen and gone four ways at once”: Dostoyevsky,
Crime and Punishment
.

299 “I have read that a good investigator begins from far away . . . And then he jumps like a jaguar!”: Ibid.

311 “Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away” is from Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day” in
New and Selected Poems
(Beacon Press, 1992).

About the Author

BORIS FISHMAN
was born in Belarus and immigrated to the United States at the age of nine. His journalism, essays, and criticism have appeared in the
New Yorker
, the
New York Times Magazine
, the
New Republic
, the
Wall Street Journal
, the
London Review of Books
, and other publications. He is the editor of
Wild East: Stories from the Last Frontier
, an anthology about Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism, and the recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center, among others. He lives in New York City.
A Replacement Life
is his first novel.

www.borisfishman.com

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Credits

COVER DESIGN BY RICHARD LJOENES

ILLUSTRATION © GARY WATERS/IKON IMAGES/CORBIS

Copyright

This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other names, characters, and places, and all dialogue and incidents portrayed in this book, are the product of the author’s imagination.

A REPLACEMENT LIFE
. Copyright © 2014 by Boris Fishman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fishman, Boris, 1979–

A replacement life : a novel / Boris Fishman.—First Edition.

p. cm

ISBN 978-0-06-228787-8 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-0-06-228788-5 (paperback)—ISBN 978-0-06-228789-2 (ebook) 1. Jews, Russian—United States—Fiction. 2. Authorship—Fiction. 3. Identity (Psychology)—Fiction 4. United States—Emigration and immigration. 5. Psychological fiction. 6. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

PS3606.I824R47 2014

813’.6—dc23

2013048444

EPub Edition JUNE 2014 ISBN 9780062287892

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