The Free World (18 page)

T
he second time Alec went to Ladispoli to meet Masha, he’d encountered his father walking the paved path along the edge of the beach. Alec was with Masha, going in the opposite direction. Before they drew close enough to speak, Alec had recognized his father’s shape, even in the low light of dusk. His father peered directly and stolidly ahead. Alec thought for an instant to duck into a shuttered beachside café, and hide behind the stacked chairs and umbrellas, but he knew this was idiotic. Though when they approached each other, Alec saw in his father’s eyes a grudging, regretful look—as if he was disappointed that Alec hadn’t had the good sense to duck into the shuttered café, behind the umbrellas and chairs, and spare them both the inconvenience of this meeting.

With no recourse, they stopped and acknowledged each other. Alec saw his father give Masha the briefest glance, no more than a shift of the eyes, after which he didn’t look at her again.

—You’re still here? Samuil asked.

—I’m still here, Alec said.

Hours earlier, when he’d arrived in Ladispoli, he had seen his father, mother, and the rest of his family in the rental cottage. For
the duration of Alec’s visit, his father had remained in the living room, poring over a manuscript.

With a stricken expression his mother had said: He writes; he reads; he goes for walks.

Alec had seen the writing and the reading; now he’d seen the whole troika.

—When is the last train to Rome? Samuil asked.

—Ten fifteen, Alec said.

—See you don’t miss it, Samuil said evenly, nodded his head, and resumed his walk.

Alec had deliberately chosen to walk with Masha along a part of the beach that he believed would be the least trafficked by Russians, among whom, first and foremost, he counted his family. They hadn’t seen anyone until they met his father. That he was there, so far from where he should have been, seemed like an act of spite. At the same time, Alec couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, in the austerity of his solitude. He turned and watched his father grow indistinct in the distance and the darkness. His father was becoming a recluse, rejecting everyone and everything, denying himself every pleasure except the pleasure of denial, whereas for Alec, the pleasure of denial—that high, weatherbeaten pleasure—was the one pleasure he didn’t want.

The pleasure he did want was Masha. A pleasure much closer to the ground. In pursuit of this he’d gone to the apartment she shared with her mother and her hoodlum brother. He spent more than an hour eating dinner with them. Masha had told him to be on time, so that they could all eat together before her brother left for work. When Alec arrived, Riva Davidovna acted as if he were a favored and long-standing suitor. Even Dmitri, whose attitude couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than hostility, wasn’t hostile in the same way. Previously, his hostility had seemed a type of suspicion, now it seemed more seasoned—as if he’d known Alec for many years and had long held a negative opinion of him.

A place was set for him next to Masha. Riva Davidovna served, ladling out vegetable soup, inquiring if he wanted one or two spoonfuls
of sour cream. She asked after his parents and after Karl and Rosa. A casual web of acquaintance connected them. Riva had seen Rosa at Club Kadima painting and posting her signs; she’d seen his mother at Piazza Marescotti tending to the boys; and evidently Karl had a stake in the auto body shop where Dmitri had found work. The impression created was of a respectable, industrious family, with Alec as the bachelor son. Facts inconsistent with this impression Riva willfully ignored—for instance, where exactly Alec went when he went home.

After the meal, Riva allowed him to take Masha for the unchaperoned walk. Just walking with her, he felt an almost ungovernable desire. He hadn’t experienced anything like it in years. Not since he’d been a teenager and spent entire evenings with an erection straining against the fly of his pants. That was when he’d gone to dances to seek out girls who would chat breezily or look blankly over his shoulder while they returned his pressure with their hips and thighs. Alec had almost forgotten how exciting that had been, testing the limitations. A few years later, nobody took the limitations seriously anymore and everything changed. He certainly hadn’t missed the limitations. But now that he’d encountered them again, he believed that they added to Masha’s appeal. She was eighteen years old, of less than average height, with dark hair and eyes, and a figure that seemed to strain the laws of physics, like a glass filled past the brim. Had she been a deranged nymphomaniac, Alec imagined he’d be similarly hooked, but he preferred her this way: coy rather than wanton.

When he was alone with her, he felt the need to always be touching her. On their unchaperoned walk, Masha rested her head against his arm and he held her around the waist. Whenever his hand slipped down, she let it linger before she guided it back to its original place. And when he stopped to kiss her, she behaved like the dance partners from his teenage past and let him press his groin against her abdomen. The pleasure of it traveled the length of his body and resolved like a high note in his jaw.

Things didn’t go too much further: she trapped his hand between her thighs; he stroked her breasts; she traced a line with her fingertips.

She was toying with him; her excuse, that she was a virgin and inexperienced.

—I see it’s hard for you to believe, Masha said. Other women you’ve known are different, right? All you have to do is ask.

—Not always.

—No?

—Sometimes there’s no need to ask.

To Alec, it didn’t matter what they said to each other or even if they meant it. The thrill was in saying the words and having someone say them back. The conversation was always the same anyway. You repeated at twenty-six what you’d said at sixteen. And, if you were lucky, you got to repeat it again at fifty-six and ninety-six. To see yourself through admiring eyes, to tell a woman what you wanted—what could be better? How could you tire of that? Emigration had already spoiled too many pleasures and hadn’t granted many new ones in return.

This was why he was so happy to have found Masha. With her, he was back on familiar ground. It was like Riga before the whole convoluted saga of the emigration. He’d seen a girl, become smitten, and pursued her. For the first time in a long time, the demands of emigration were peripheral. And as for Polina, he believed that one thing had nothing to do with the other. Masha was a complement, not a competitor, and so he felt altogether good, to the point of satiety, like a man who had everything.

On the ride back to Trastevere, as Alec was rocked into a near dream state by the iron drone of the rails, the dark fields in the window leaping up to become dark towns, an apparition of Masha’s father filtered into his thoughts. He’d never so much as seen a photograph of him, but he’d assigned him a face: and this face was looking at him. A bald head, a strong brow, intense black eyes, lean cheeks, and a growth of stubble. It was the face of a man in late middle age, though Alec knew that Masha’s father hadn’t been forty when he’d
died. Alec examined the face to see if Masha’s father approved or disapproved of him. He wanted him to approve, but the father’s features were grim, foreboding. Alec sensed that he neither approved nor disapproved—he didn’t care. In his eyes, Alec was insignificant, not worth a moment’s consideration. Masha’s father was consumed with weightier matters. He stood accused of a commercial crime, a capital offense. He was an astute man. He knew what awaited. His wife, a widow, would be put out in the street. His children would grow up without a father, stigmatized and humiliated. His boy was three, the little girl, one. They wouldn’t remember him. His son would become a violent criminal.

Alec saw the face of a man condemned to hard labor in a uranium mine. He saw him pry a gold tooth out of his mouth and bribe a guard. He saw him swinging by his belt in his jail cell.

T
he bells at the Vatican were ringing the evening Polina and Alec took the train to Ladispoli to attend the Rosh Hashanah pageant. Pope John Paul had died completely unexpectedly, having served for barely one month; but at Club Kadima the principal topic of conversation was that the Israeli parliament had approved Begin’s peace agreement.

Chairs had been arranged to accommodate the absolute maximum number of spectators. Alec’s parents arrived in advance and occupied seats two rows away from the stage. Emma held three seats, two for them and one for Karl. As Polina and Alec squeezed into their seats a woman raised her voice, challenging Emma’s right to save so many seats. The woman, in her fifties, her face red with heat and indignation, charged Emma with effrontery. The woman’s husband glared in stern, wordless support of his wife. He was scrawny, cerebral, with inordinately bushy eyebrows under a sky blue cap. The woman was also saving a seat. Emma drew her attention to the hypocrisy. They sniped back and forth, taking umbrage, invoking their credentials. The woman was an economist; her husband was a physicist. Emma retaliated with her medical degree, Samuil’s managerial position, his war record. The woman eyed
Polina and Alec as accomplices to the crime. As she became more emphatic, the woman took to leaning over Polina, as if she were of no consequence.

—To save more than two seats is vulgar.

—Where is this written?

—Written? Where is it written not to spit, not to root around inside one’s nose in public? It is common knowledge for any cultivated person.

—My grandchildren are in the pageant. Their mother, my daughter-in-law, is in the choir.

—Mazel tov! So you think this gives you special privileges?

—If I want to save seats for my two sons and my other daughter-in-law—who don’t live around the corner but had to take the train in from Rome—I don’t need your permission.

Mercifully, a woman from Sachnut appeared on the stage and demanded the people’s attention. Slowly, the talking and bickering subsided and the auditorium grew quiet.

The woman began with introductory remarks about the pageant. She explained everything at a rudimentary level, presuming that her audience was unfamiliar with the basic tenets of the religion. Everyone listened obediently. Polina noticed that the woman beside her, livid only moments earlier, had miraculously relaxed. She nodded her head and smiled receptively at the mention of the words “torah,” “Rosh Hashanah,” and “the Jewish people.”

The pageant began with the adult choir performing three songs. They then exited to make way for the children, who marched in, sweetly self-possessed. From the audience came cries of instruction and encouragement. Also commands.
Larachka, be a big girl: don’t cry!
The choirmistress scurried out and helped the little ones into their ranks. The older children tried to shepherd the younger ones. Watching the children stumble into their places, mount the risers, and straighten their costumes, Polina felt the familiar pang. She wondered if, for the rest of her life, she would continue to react this way. It wouldn’t do.

The children sang five or six Hebrew songs to the accompaniment
of violin and piano. Samuil’s friend, the one-legged Josef Roidman, was the violinist. He smiled ebulliently now at the children, now at the spectators. The pianist was a boy in his teens—gangling and serious—the very opposite of Roidman.
A prodigy,
Emma whispered deferentially.
Sixteen years old. A big career ahead of him. His teacher was Horowitz’s student. Practices here three hours every day. One time they didn’t let him; he wept. A great talent. Hands of gold.

The ebullient Josef Roidman, the solemn piano prodigy, the sweet disharmony of the children’s choir: Polina felt an upswell of emotion, a tenderness that moved her nearly to tears.

Near the conclusion of the program, as the children’s choir was complemented by the adult, Karl arrived and claimed the place Emma had so valiantly guarded for him. The choir had launched into the first verse of the Israeli national anthem, and the choirmistress had bid the audience to rise. Groans and the scraping of chairs greeted Karl as he edged into the row. As he brushed past the woman and her husband they both looked at him briefly, contumeliously, before they dared not look at him any more. Polina saw them turn toward the stage, pretending at patriotism. Polina, who hadn’t seen Karl for a month, perceived the change in him. He’d always had a formidable character, but now he seemed somehow more intimidating, like a man grown contemptuous of talk, who could afford to say less and less to more and more people.

At the conclusion of the concert the woman from Sachnut held the stage for her closing remarks.

5738 promised to be a remarkable year. It would be a historical year for the state of Israel. After many wars and many sacrifices, 5738 would bring peace to the land. Those people who feared Israel because of war no longer had anything to fear. There is no longer any reason for a Jew to say “Next year in Jerusalem”—”This year in Jerusalem!”

With this exhortation, the woman from Sachnut signaled to Josef Roidman and to the pianist, who then led the choir in a final spirited Hebrew song—the youngest children joining together to dance in a circle around the woman from Sachnut, who clapped her hands, waved her fist, and encouraged the audience to lend their voices. The
song was familiar to Polina from the drunken celebration that Alec had taken her to, now nearly two years ago, at the Riga synagogue.

That day at the synagogue she gave herself over, if not precisely to Alec, then to the affair, which she felt existed somehow independent of the two of them. She recalled even the moment of letting go, when Alec had pulled her into the frenzied circle inside the synagogue courtyard. In public, in view of coworkers, in the center of the city, under the watchful eyes of the police, she’d allowed herself to be claimed by a man who was not her husband. Even a child who had glimpsed them that afternoon would not have been deceived.

It was a wonder to her that word didn’t reach Maxim that same day. A wonder that he gave no sign of suspicion, and that months later, when she’d made her decision to leave him, that he met her announcement with a blank and uncomprehending look. She might even have thought it a wonder that, after she’d submitted to the second abortion, he hadn’t noticed anything awry about her emotionally or physically even though she bled and suffered from cramps for days afterward. Maxim never posed any questions, as if, being a man, he was unwilling to delve too deeply into that obscure gynecological precinct. And he’d also not protested or even remarked that Polina was physically remote in the weeks that led up to the abortion and also in the weeks that followed. All told, they hadn’t had sex for months. But Maxim behaved as if he was unaffected by this. As if it didn’t bear mentioning. What in courtship would have been grounds for separation, in marriage was accepted as a matter of course.

After the abortion, she’d felt as if there was nobody to whom she could turn for comfort. Naturally, she’d kept it from her parents. She’d also kept it from Nadja—whom she didn’t want to saddle with the shambles of her personal life. She felt completely adrift. Her marriage was finished. It was only a matter of time before she informed Maxim and made it official. She no longer knew why she’d agreed to the abortion. Alec’s proposal seemed absurd in the wake of what she’d done. How could she marry Alec or emigrate with him when she didn’t even want to see him? She didn’t want to see anybody.
She felt as if she never again wanted to be spoken to, looked at, or known.

When, in the days immediately after the abortion, Alec had come to see her, she’d released him from all promises and responsibilities. He didn’t owe her anything and should consider himself free to go when and where he pleased. She imagined that this would come as a relief to him, but even if it did not, and even if he was sincere in wanting to honor his promise, she was no longer willing to go along. When Alec returned a second time—to persuade her, or confirm that she was serious, or assuage his conscience—she’d told him the same thing again. He didn’t need to feel bad or guilty or upset. She had no ill feelings toward him. She asked of him only that he let her alone.

Then, one afternoon, at the conclusion of the workday, she was visited by an older woman whom she’d never met before. The woman approached Polina at her desk. Polina had noted her when she entered the office, as had the others. Her entrance had been so tentative that she’d succeeded in arousing everyone’s attention. As she crossed the room, seemingly in Polina’s direction, Marina Kirilovna had leaned over to Polina and said archly,
Well, here comes Mamasha.

Polina didn’t know what Marina Kirilovna meant, but watched the woman come near, her face nervous, sympathetic, and polite.

The woman introduced herself by saying,
Forgive me, but if I am not mistaken, you know my younger son, Alec,
and she asked Polina if she wouldn’t mind joining her for a short stroll.

For half an hour they walked the streets around the factory in the pale late-afternoon light. It was nearly April and spring was making its first cracks in winter’s shell, but here and there, on the pavement, there remained patches of ice. Emma asked if she might hold on to Polina’s arm for balance.

Emma began by saying that she had come to Polina of her own accord. Alec hadn’t asked her and he didn’t know that she was doing it. Though, in another sense, she believed that he had asked her and that he wanted her to help him—he had just not said it in so many words.

—Not long ago, Emma said, Alec told me and my husband that he was going to marry and apply for emigration. It was the first we’d heard about either of these things—neither of them being something a parent would take lightly. We were both quite shocked, though, I daresay, not for the same reasons. Now Alec changes his plans: he still intends to emigrate, but no longer to marry. When I ask about his bride, who she is, what happened, he doesn’t say. But I’m his mother. Men believe they have secrets only because women pretend that they don’t know.

Emma delivered this last line with a wry resignation, and Polina felt yet more warmly disposed toward her.

And then, without any further preamble, Emma related a story from her past.

Emma tried to conjure for Polina the image of herself as she was at the age of twenty-one, a young bride, innocent in a way twenty-one-year-old girls no longer were, wedded to a handsome man she barely knew, a man twelve years her senior, a Red Army officer and a veteran of the front, experienced in life in ways she couldn’t imagine and didn’t dare ask about. They were living in Baltinava, the small town where Emma had been born, and from which she and her parents had fled when the Nazis invaded in 1941. In the woods surrounding the town were bandits of various stripes. Most days, there was shooting. It was dangerous to go into the streets at night, and even more dangerous to be on the roads outside of town. Her father and her husband were both military men. Time and again, they led raids into the woods.

This was in January, the winter of 1946. She was six months pregnant. For most of the Soviet Union the war was over, but for her it persisted.

—I was frightened every minute of every day, Emma said. I feared for the lives of my father and my husband, out in the woods, and I feared for the life of my unborn child.

There were townspeople who sympathized with the bandits. When her father and husband were away, only she, her mother, and her invalid grandfather remained in the house. Her father and husband
left them a submachine gun, but the weapon terrified her and her mother both. If, God forbid, the need arose, neither of them trusted herself to use it.

The strain on her nerves led to complications with her pregnancy. From the very beginning, she had been unwell. What she desperately wanted was to quit the terrifying town and wait out the duration of her term in Riga, or at the very least with relatives in Karsava. But her father and her husband dismissed the idea. Her husband said that the conditions in town were nowhere near as dangerous as she made them out to be.

But she couldn’t cast the worries from her mind, and she couldn’t simply ignore the shooting that came from the woods. Finally, late one evening, under the weight of her nervous strain, something in her snapped. There were terrible pains and a great deal of blood. She was put into bed, and the white sheets were quickly drenched. Outside, a thick coat of snow lay on the streets.

—The town had no proper doctor, Emma said, only a medic in the Red Army garrison and two midwives. I had already started my medical training and I knew that there was nobody in town equipped to handle what was happening to me. I thought that my baby was going to die inside me, and that I would die too.

Through this anguish, she saw her husband standing at her bedside. She thought he was angry with her, but then, with great force, he said:
You will not die.

He went out into the night and returned with his hat and the shoulders of his greatcoat covered in snow. With the help of her parents she was lifted from the bed, wrapped in wool blankets, and taken outside on a feather duvet. Her mother had used a rag to stanch the bleeding, but it didn’t help. In front of the house was a horse-drawn sledge that her husband had hired from a neighbor. There were no trucks or automobiles to be had. Even the garrison had none—but even if it had, a truck or an automobile would have been crippled in such snow.

She was put on the sledge, and her husband took the reins.

From where she lay, she saw the back of his greatcoat. He had a
submachine gun across his shoulder and a whip in one hand. He snapped the whip and they lurched off into the dark, frozen night.

They were headed for Karsava, fifteen kilometers away. At night, in such weather, the trip would take hours and hours.

—I lay in the sledge and felt the life draining out of me. Not just my own life, but also the life of the child. In my delirium, I felt the child’s spirit float out of me and waft into the sky. I felt beyond all consolation. Only a woman who has experienced such a tragedy can comprehend it. I no longer cared about my own life. I was ready to let my spirit drift off after my child’s.