Enchantment (3 page)

All of Ruth’s family came to the airport at Rochester to see him off, and so did Father. But Mother wasn’t there, and that made Ivan a little angry and a little sad. All these years, he had thought that Mother’s amused smile was because she was secretly smarter than Ivan or Father. But now it turned out that she was superstitious, troubled by dreams and folktales. He felt cheated. He felt that
Mother
had been cheated, too, not to be educated better than that. Was that something she picked up from her Jewish grandparents? Or was it deeper than that? Not to see her son off on a trip that would take at least six months—it wasn’t right.

But he had other things to worry about. Being jovial with Ruth’s mother and father, saying good-bye in restrained and manly fashion to his father, and then prying Ruth away as she clung to him, weeping, kissing him again and again. “I feel like I’ve died or something,” he said. She only cried harder. That had been a stupid thing to say, as he was about to board a plane.

After all her mother’s remonstrances and her father’s patient instructions to let the boy
go
, it was Ivan’s father who was finally able to lead her away so Ivan could get on the plane. He loved Ruth, yes, and his family, and her parents, too, but as he walked down the tube to the plane, he felt a burden sliding off his shoulders. His step had a jaunty bounce to it.

Why should he feel like that, suddenly lighter, suddenly free? If anything, this journey was a burden. Whatever he was able to accomplish in his research would be the foundation of his career, his whole future. When he came back, he would become a graduate and a husband, which meant that his childhood was truly over. But he would still be hanging fire until he became a professor and a father. That was when his adulthood would begin. The real burdens of life. That’s what I’m beginning with this trip to Russia.

Only when he was belted into his seat and the plane pulled back from the gate did it occur to him why he felt so free. Coming to America, all the burden of his parents’ hopes and dreams had been put onto his shoulders. Now he was heading back to Russia, where he had not had such burdens, or at least had not been aware of them. Russia might have been a place of repression for most people, but for him, as a child, it was a place of freedom, as America had never been.

Before we are citizens, he thought, we are children, and it is as children that we come to understand freedom and authority, liberty and duty. I have done my duty. I have bowed to authority. Mostly. And now, like Russia, I can set aside those burdens for a little while and see what happens.

3

Chasm

In these heady days of revolutionary change, it was hard for Ivan to concentrate on his research. The manuscripts had been sitting for hundreds of years in the churches or museums, the transcripts and photocopies for decades in the libraries. They could wait, couldn’t they? For there were cafés springing up everywhere, full of conversations, discussions, arguments about Ukrainian independence; about whether Russian nationals should be expelled, given full citizenship, or something in between; about the low quality of the foreign books that were glutting the market now that restrictions had eased; about what America would or would not do to help the new nation of Ukraine; whether prices should remain under strict control or be allowed to inflate until they stabilized at “natural” levels; and on and on.

In all these conversations Ivan was something of a celebrity—an American who spoke Russian fluently and even understood the Ukrainian language, which was patriotically being forced into duty even in intellectual discussions that used to be solely the province of Russian. He had the money to pay for coffee, and often paid for stronger drinks as well. He didn’t drink alcohol himself, however—as an athlete, he had ostentatiously
not
acquired his father’s vodka habit. But no one pushed it on him; he could drink or not drink as he pleased, especially when he was paying.

Not that these conversations were at a particularly high level. They were just neighborhood chats and gossip and rants and diatribes. But that was the point. At the university, he would still be his father’s son; in the cafés, he was himself, listened to for his own sake.

Or was it for the sake of his money? Or his Americanness? Or just good manners? Did it even matter? After enough weeks of this, Ivan began to weary of the constant conversation. No one’s opinions had changed, nothing important was being decided, and Ivan was sick of the sound of his own voice, pontificating as if being American or a graduate student gave him some special expertise.

He began to spend more time with the manuscripts, doing his research, laying the groundwork for his dissertation. It was a mad project, he soon realized—trying to reconstruct the earliest versions of the fairy tales described in the Afanasyev collection in order to determine whether Propp’s theory that all fairy tales in Russian were, structurally, a single fairy tale was (1) true or false and, if true, (2) rooted in some inborn psychologically true ur-tale or in some exceptionally powerful story inherent in Russian culture. The project was mad because it was too large and included too much, because it was unprovable even if he found an answer, and because there probably was no answer to be found. Why hadn’t anyone on his dissertation committee told him that the subject was impossible to deal with? Probably because they didn’t realize it themselves. Or because,
if
it could be done, they wanted to see the results.

And then, in the midst of his despair, he began to see connections and make reconstructions. Of course his reconstructions might be merely a projection of Propp’s thesis onto the material, in which case he was proving nothing; but he knew—he
knew
—that his reconstructions were not nonsensical, and they did tend to coalesce toward the pure structure Propp had devised. He was onto something, and so the research became interesting for its own sake.

Bleary-eyed, he would rise from the table when the library or museum closed, stuff his notebooks and notecards into his briefcase, and walk home through the dark streets, the gathering cold. He would collapse into bed in his tiny room, sublet from a professor of Chinese who never intruded on his privacy. Then he’d rise in the morning, his eyes still aching from the concentration of the day before, and, pausing only for a hunk of bread and a cup of coffee, return to the museum to resume again. The harder he worked, the sooner he’d be done.

That was how the autumn passed, and the winter. Shortages of coal and oil made the bitter cold even harder to bear, but, like Bob Cratchit, Ivan simply bundled up and scribbled away regardless of the chill in every building in Kiev. He was so immersed in his work that sometimes he didn’t even read his mail from home—not from Mother, not from Father, not from Ruth. It would sit in a pile until finally, on a Sunday when the library opened later, he would realize how long he’d gone without contact from home and open all the letters in a binge of homesickness. Then he’d scribble hurried and unsatisfactory answers to all of them. What was there to say? His life was within walls, under artificial lights, with row on endless row of Cyrillic characters in old-fashioned handwriting shimmering in front of his eyes. What could he possibly tell them? Ate bread today. And cheese. Drank too much coffee. A dull headache all day. It was cold. The manuscript was indecipherable or trivial or not as old as they claimed. The librarian was friendly, icy, flirtatious, incompetent. The work will never end, I wish I could see you, thank you for writing to me even when I’m so unfaithful about writing back.

And then one day it wasn’t cold. Leaves were budding on the trees. Ukrainians in shirtsleeves flooded the streets of Kiev, taking the sun, carrying sprigs of purple lilacs with them in celebration of spring. How ironic. Just when the season was about to make life in Kiev worth living again, Ivan realized he had accomplished all that he needed to do in Russia. Everything else could be worked out on his own, without further reference to the manuscripts. Time to go home.

Funny, though. As soon as he thought of going home, it wasn’t Tantalus he thought of, or the shores of Lake Olya, or his mother’s face, or sweet Ruth’s embrace.

Instead he thought of a farm in the foothills of the Carpathians, with wild forest just beyond the cultivated fields. The face he saw was Cousin Marek’s, and what his body yearned for was not the loving embrace of a woman, but rather to hold the tools of the farm and labor until sweat poured off him and he could fall into bed every night physically spent, and rise in the morning to face a day filled with a thousand kinds of life.

Even as memories of the place flooded back to him, Ivan realized that there was key information he had never known as a child. The name of the town where he would have to transfer from train to bus, and from bus to whatever ride he could get on the road to . . . what village? He had no idea how to tell a driver his destination. He didn’t even know Cousin Marek’s last name.

Oh well. It was just a whim.

But it was a whim that wouldn’t go away. After months of barely writing to them, it was absurd to call his parents over this unscheduled side trip. But he picked up the phone and talked and waited his way through the half hour it took to make the connection.

“You want to go back
there
?” asked Father. “What for?”

“To see the place again,” said Ivan. “I have fond memories.”

“This must be a new meaning of the word
fond
. I still have backaches from that place. The calluses haven’t healed yet.”

“Mine have,” said Ivan. “I wish they hadn’t. Sometimes I think I was freer on that farm than . . . well, no, I guess not. Anyway, I haven’t spent that much on food or whatever, so I’ve got plenty of money left for a trip. Does Marek have a phone?”

“Not that I know the number anymore,” said Father.

“Then ask Mother, you know she’ll have it squirreled away somewhere.”

“Oh, yes, I’ll love that conversation. ‘So, Vanya is all done with his research but he’s not coming home, he’s going to visit his cousin while his mother languishes. What should I expect from a son who doesn’t write to his parents? We can’t force him to love us—’ ”

Ivan laughed. “Mother’s not a whiner, Dad.”

“Not to
you
,” said Father. “
I
get a solo performance. And Ruth, she’ll be glad to hear that you
can
wait to see her—because you have to say hello to some cows.”

Ivan laughed again.

“You seem to think I’m joking.”

“No, Father, I just think you and Mother are funny.” Wrong thing to say. Father didn’t like to think he was amusing. “Sometimes,” Ivan added.

Unmollified, Father replied, “I’m glad to provide you with entertainment. Our ratings are low—one viewer—but the reviews of our performance are good enough maybe we’ll be renewed for another season . . .”

“Come on, Father, I want to pay a call on Cousin Marek. He took us in when we needed help, should I be this close and not make the effort?”

“Close?” said Father. “As close as New York is to Miami.”

“You’ve got the scale wrong,” said Ivan. “More like from Buffalo to Syracuse.”

“Tell me that again after four hours on the bus.”

“Call me back when you have the information?”

“No, Mother has it right here in the book.” Father gave him all the information and they said good-bye.

They refused to sell him a ticket at the train station until right before departure—inflation was too high to be able to lock in the price even the day before. Nor could they guarantee him that the bus would even be running. “Capitalism now,” said the ticket agent. “They only run the bus if there are enough passengers to pay for the fuel.”

That night, after half an hour of trying, he got through by telephone to Cousin Marek.

“Little Itzak?” Marek said.

“I use
Ivan
, mostly.” Ivan was a little surprised. Cousin Marek had always called him Vanya. Ivan didn’t remember that Marek had even known his Jewish name. But that was a long time ago, and perhaps the old farmer had been amused at this family of Russian intellectuals who suddenly decided to be Jews and then took up residence on a farm.

“You eating kosher?” asked Marek.

“No, not really,” said Ivan. “I mean, I avoid pork, lard, things like that.”

“No lard!” cried Marek. “What do you put on your bread?”

“Cheese, I hope,” laughed Ivan.

“All right, we’ll go out and pluck a few from the cheese tree.” Marek laughed at his own joke. “Come ahead, we’re glad to have you. I’ll find out when the bus is coming in and I’ll be there to meet you. I’m afraid all the cows you knew are long since knackered.”

“They didn’t like me anyway.”

“You weren’t much of a milker.”

“I’ll be no better now, I’m afraid, but I’ll do whatever you need. I . . . pole vault rather well.” It took him a moment to think of the Ukrainian word. Marek laughed.

That night, when Ivan was through packing, he was still too full of springtime to sleep. He went outside for a walk, but even that wasn’t enough. He began to jog, to run, dodging through the streets as he used to do as a child. When he was a child he had never been allowed outside to run at this time of night, and it surprised him how many people were still out and about. But it might not have been like that, before. Had there been closing laws for drinking establishments? Or a curfew? He wouldn’t have known, not at his age, or if he knew, he forgot.

In school in America he had picked up the American idea of life in the Soviet Union, even though he had lived there and knew it wasn’t all terror and poverty. But his memories of life in Kiev had faded, or retreated out of sight, anyway, to be replaced by the American version. And it was true, partly—the high-rises were all hideously ugly slabs of concrete with only the most slapdash attempts at aesthetics, as if socialism required that beauty be expunged from public life.

But the older parts of the city still had grace to them. He headed for the Staryy Horod, the old part of the city, and stopped only when he reached the Golden Gate, built in 1037. He touched the stone and brick columns, which had once stood in ruins but now were restored to something like their original form. When the Golden Gate was first built, and the little church atop the arch was still sheathed in the gilded copper that gave the gate its name, it was the center of Kiev, and Kiev was the center of the largest, most powerful kingdom in Europe. He imagined what it must have looked like then, with the stink and noise of medieval commerce in these streets. The trumpets blaring, and Prince Vladimir the Baptizer or Yaroslav the Wise riding with their retainers through the cheering throngs.

Ivan had no romantic notions of chivalry, of course—Russian legends, history, and folklore had never had an “Arthurian” period of anachronistic dreaming. The people lived in squalor and filth, by modern standards. The difference between the aristocracy and the lower classes was entirely expressed in the quality of clothing and the quantity of food. By his clothes a man was known; wealth was worn on a man’s body, and on the bodies of his womenfolk. So the cheering throngs would be wearing plainer colors, the traditional weave of these grasslands, while the prince and his people would be wearing silks from the East, looking for all the world like Oriental potentates—even though the princes were Scandinavians from the north, not Oriental at all. The wealth of Rus’—ancient Russia—was in trade, and the trade was in the fabrics and spices of the East.

So of course it would not be just the smell of dung and sweat and rotting fish and vegetables—there would be whiffs of the heady aromas of cinnamon, pepper, cumin, basil, savory, paprika. Ivan breathed deeply and almost believed that he could sense some lingering traces of the ancient days.

And with those breaths he was ready to move on. He ran down the hill into the Podil district, the area where he had grown up. Some old churches and monasteries remained, but most of the buildings dated from the 1800s. Running along these ever-more-familiar streets felt like coming home, and soon enough he found himself in the street where he had lived as a child. What came to him then was not history, but memory, and not memories of oppression or want, but rather of happiness with his parents, with his friends. Here was the postbox, here the spot where old Yuri Denisovich sat to take the sun every bright afternoon, and here was the place where Mother always came to bring treats to Baba Tila, an old Armenian or Georgian woman, somewhere foreign and mountainous and exotic, anyway. Every day or so, a little treat to the old lady. Did she still live here?

Ivan slowed, stopped in front of the building. His first thought was that he had no idea which room belonged to the old lady, since they had never gone inside. Baba Tila was always at the stoop, wasn’t she? No. She sat at the window right beside the stoop, so Mother climbed three steps and then handed the treat to Baba Tila through the window. Treats, Mother called them, but as often as not they were just leaves. For tea, Mother said, so that was a treat. But once it was dirt. Mother only looked at him with disgust when he laughed about it. “Baba Tila grows plants in her window box,” she said.