The Free World (3 page)

As Alec turned back toward his room he heard the familiar piercing voices of his nephews. There was a bounding on the stairwell and two darting beams of light. The boys raced down the steps and then along the hallway, shining their lights into people’s faces. The boys were seven and five; the two-year age difference half that of his and Karl’s. Yury, the elder, and the more reserved of the two, looked like Karl, square and sturdy, and tried to emulate Karl’s laconic manner. Zhenya, on the other hand, though only five, showed the ill effects of
his mother’s and grandmother’s coddling. He was overfed and impudent—qualities that Alec hoped he would outgrow. Emma was fond of pointing out that he himself had been a hundred times worse than Zhenya at that age.

After irritating half of the people in the hallway, Yury pointed his flashlight into Alec’s face.

—Looking for someone? Alec asked.

—The captain, Yury said.

—What captain?

—The
submarine
captain, Zhenya chimed. Can’t you see we’re going down?

—I knew we were in trouble.

—The captain is wounded, Yury said.

Before the boys could run away, Karl descended the steps and called to them. Grudgingly, they scuffed over to him. Karl led them to Emma, who had arranged four bowls on the floor near the entrance to their room.

—Sit, Karl said.

The boys slid their backs along the wall and dropped down.

—Eat, my darlings, Emma said. Grandmother made a tasty soup.

—How are we supposed to eat it? Zhenya demanded. There are no spoons.

—I’m sorry, darling, Emma said. Grandmother couldn’t find the spoons.

—Lift the bowl, drink, and don’t complain, Karl instructed.

Alec stood beside his brother and directed his flashlight at the wall immediately above Karl’s left shoulder. The wall, a grimy off-white, diffused just enough light to illuminate the side of Karl’s face. Karl’s expression suggested that he was not at all seduced by the anarchic, carnival atmosphere in the hotel. His mind operated on another plane. Alec would see a circus and want to join; Karl, meanwhile, would estimate the cost of feeding the elephants and conjecture that the acrobats suffered from venereal disease.

It was going to be like this every night, Karl said. The sooner they could get out of the hotel the better.

—You know that the Joint covers the hotel for eight days, Alec said.

—You want seven more days of this?

—I’m ready to go now.

—The hotel manager has a deal with the Joint. So long as the trains keep coming, his hotel stays full. That’s why he serves us slop. And so long as he serves slop, people plug in their hot plates. There’s a bus driver on our floor from Tula. He’s been here four days. Every fucking night a fuse blows.

—Why is he still here?

—He takes the train to Ladispoli every day. Brokers demand extortionate prices for hovels. Our bad luck. It’s summer. High season. Romans want to get away from the city, lie on the beach, swim in the sea. The bus driver comes home after a day of pleading and weeps in the bathroom so his wife and children won’t know.

—So what does that mean for us?

—The bus driver has a sad and trusting face. One look at his face and you want to plunge a knife in his back.

—And our faces?

—My face is whatever it needs to be. As for yours: there may be a sexually frustrated woman with an apartment available. In any event, I don’t intend to come back here and weep in the bathroom.

T
here was no limit, it seemed, to Polina’s sense of dislocation. The border crossing at Chop had been nightmarish, but at least the nightmare had conformed to some perverted Soviet logic. What was cruel and nonsensical about it was cruel and nonsensical in a typical way. Then on the brief stopover in Bratislava, where they had to change trains for Vienna, she had already begun to feel a heightened sense of foreignness—even though they were still only in Czechoslovakia, where it was not too difficult to find people who spoke Russian. Vienna was overwhelming, every step felt like an embarrassing misstep, but at least Alec had understood the language. And yet, compared to Rome, all that had preceded seemed mild and rational. When, on their first morning in the city, she and Alec stepped onto the sidewalk outside their hotel, Polina had the distinct impression that every car and pedestrian was rushing deliberately at her. She had never before seen quite so much human traffic. Cars, mopeds, and people surged in response to some inscrutable choreography. She watched an old man cross the street and somehow avoid being killed by several cars and one moped carrying two bare-chested teenage boys. On the sidewalk, a mother passed holding the hand of a little girl. The girl was no older than four or five and chattered
away in singsong Italian. This little girl, Polina thought, stands a much better chance of fending for herself in this city than I do. She can put one foot in front of the other. She can cross a street. In Vienna, they had heard rumors about Rome. The city was dirty. Crime was rampant. To walk near Termini, the central train station, was effectively to surrender your valuables. As a city, they were informed, Rome’s claim to being part of Europe was purely geographical. Vienna was Europe; Leningrad was Europe; Riga; Moscow. With its withering summer heat, filth, and disorder, Rome was Africa.

HIAS had distributed maps to all of the family heads and expected them to fend for themselves. Polina’s sense of direction was good, but when they set out on the first day Alec and Karl took charge of the maps. They quickly got lost. They boarded the correct streetcar but took it going the wrong way. By the time Karl and Alec realized their mistake, they’d already been riding for ten minutes. They clambered off and reversed their steps in the mid-afternoon heat. Every few blocks they stopped so that Emma could take a drink from a thermos of water. Because they had already spent their money on a streetcar going the wrong way, they didn’t have money for a streetcar going the right way. At one point, Emma saw a park and insisted that Samuil needed a rest, and they all huddled under the shade of a palm tree. Rosa, who had left her boys with the bus driver’s wife, complained about a woman who at breakfast had finagled an extra serving of milk by claiming that her son was only twelve years old.

—Twelve years old. Stalin didn’t have such a mustache.

They recognized their destination, when they reached it, by the large group of émigrés milling about in front. They pressed their way through the crowd and presented themselves to a security guard. The guard, an émigré like themselves, made them recite their names and their city of origin before he let them pass. Though it was unnecessary in such heat, he stressed that the use of the stairs was expressly forbidden. They rode the elevator four floors and followed a
hallway into a large waiting room filled with people. There were not enough chairs for everyone; some people sat on the floor while others leaned against the wall. The stout, matronly Georgian and Azeri women had fallen silent. Some tried to cool themselves with the black silk fans that they’d brought to unload at the markets. Their men gazed into their shoes or at the ceiling. The only exceptions to the general torpor were three old men bent over a small chessboard, and a young, pretty, dark-haired woman who was teaching her son to read using the signs tacked along the walls. The boy formed words by sounding out each letter. In a clear, earnest voice that, unexpectedly, stirred Polina’s heart, the boy enunciated:

AVOID LIVING IN THESE HIGH CRIME AREAS.

ENGLISH CLASSES OFFERED.

ROOM AVAILABLE IN CLEAN APARTMENT. ROME. CALL LUIGI.

DRIVING OR OWNING MOTOR VEHICLES IS FORBIDDEN.

DESTINED FOR CANADA OR AUSTRALIA? GOOD COMMAND OF ENGLISH? JOINT AND HIAS HIRING INTERPRETERS.

—What’s your name, little boy? Polina asked.

—Vadik, the boy answered.

—You read very well.

—He can also recite poetry, said his mother. At two he was already singing “The Regimental Commander.” If he’s in the right mood he can also do Marshak.

—Would you like to recite a poem? Polina asked.

—About Lenin? the boy asked.

—If you like.

The boy snapped to attention, pressed his fingertips to his bare thighs, below the hem of his shorts, and raised his chin for better projection.

—They taught him that stance in kindergarten, his mother said.

With feeling and conviction, the boy chimed:

—When Lenin was little / With a head of boyish curls / He also
gamboled happily / Upon the snowy hills / Stone upon stone / Brick upon brick / Gone is our Lenin, Vladimir Illich / Deep in the Kremlin / A kind heart resides / Sad are the workers / Sad too am I.

By the conclusion of the poem, others had turned to listen and when the boy was finished there was a smattering of applause.

—Now do one about Brezhnev, a man called.

—Don’t be coarse, a woman responded.

—Pay him no mind, a third added.

—Very nice, Polina said to the boy as he relaxed his pose.

—If you can believe it, he knows more of them than I do, the boy’s mother said.

—You must be very proud.

—Thank you. I wish I could take the credit. But it was the kindergarten. Where are you from?

—Riga.

—Do you know Leningrad?

—Hardly at all.

—Do you have children?

—No, Polina said.

—Well, there is a wonderful kindergarten. The best in the city. My husband pulled every string, called in every favor. We had money saved for a car, but once we learned there was a chance, we parted with nearly all of it. It’s probably the same in Riga.

—Probably.

—It was a wonderful kindergarten. Excellent teachers. Progressive pedagogical methods.

—All right, she understands, the husband interrupted, the kindergarten was good.

—At recess the children played in an apple orchard, the wife continued.

—This is her big regret, the husband said. The kindergarten.

—He says that now, but you should have seen him when we picked up Vadik from the kindergarten for the last time.

—Well, the fact of the matter is, I’ve heard mixed things about the educational standards in America, the husband said. Students in
the fourth grade who don’t know the capital of France, can’t do simple arithmetic or sign their names.

Inside the classroom, Polina eased into one of the little school desks. Alec appeared and slid into the place directly behind her, even though there was an empty desk beside her.

—I like this better, Alec said. It’s like a fantasy.

—Which fantasy is this?

—The two of us in school together. Young love.

—This is a new one?

—Hard to keep track.

—So how does it go? You pull my braids, dip them in the inkpot?

—I sit all day and admire you. Stare at the back of your neck. Dream about you. Get yelled at by the teacher.

During the orientation, as the woman from the Joint was speaking, Polina twice had to reach back and slap at Alec’s hand when he tugged her hair.

—Are you even listening to what she’s saying? Polina whispered.

—After class, meet me in the hall. I’m having difficulties with algebra, Alec said.

When the orientation was over, Alec leaned forward and said he thought they should rent an apartment in Rome.

—So you were paying attention for that, Polina said.

As part of her talk, which escalated sometimes into a harangue, the woman from the Joint had dissuaded people from trying to rent apartments in Rome. The best and most expedient housing solution for everyone was to be found in Ostia and Ladispoli, where the Joint and HIAS had established satellite offices. Ladispoli and Ostia also now boasted Jewish community centers, created for the émigrés, where there were regular lectures, cultural events, and even programs for children. That past March, in Ladispoli, a professional director, formerly of the Moscow Theater, had helped stage a spectacular Purim pageant. And in April, in Ladispoli as well as Ostia, with the help of the Italian Jewish community, they had managed to organize Passover seders for more than one thousand people. Needless to say, these were very moving celebrations.

—If the Romans are heading to the shore to escape the heat, it might be easier to find a place in the city, Alec said. —I don’t think it’s a good idea, Polina said. —You’re not serious.

—Your family will be in Ladispoli and we’ll be in Rome?

—That’s part of the appeal.

—They’ll say it was my idea, Polina said.

—No they won’t.

—They’ll think it.

—I’ll make it clear, Alec said.

—I’d be happier if you left things alone, Polina said. —Happier sharing an apartment in the suburbs with Rosa? You’d be miserable.

—A happier miserable, Polina said.

I
n Ladispoli, the hub of Russian activity was Piazza Marescotti, a short distance from the beach. It served as bazaar, employment agency, and social club. When they arrived, Alec saw an old man holding a sign that advertised tutoring in math and physics. Another man offered English lessons. There were women offering to mind children. A few people, men and women both, had also spread blankets on the ground and laid out a selection of small items. Many others were there just to trade gossip and kill time.

Karl was the first to spot a familiar face. It belonged to Boris Tsiferblatt, known at the Riga Dynamo gym as Boris the Bodybuilder. He was at the piazza advertising his services as a mover.

—I see you’re putting your training to good use, Karl said after an enthusiastic greeting.

—I’ve got my hand in a few things, Boris said. But people come and go every day. It’s a good way to make a little extra money.

They had left Rosa behind with the children, and traveled together to look for a place to live and also to make a phone call to Emma’s cousin in Chicago. It was a Tuesday, one of two days when Emma’s cousin had written that she could be found at home. On
other days she had her job at the bakery, her driving lessons, her English classes.

On account of his sideline, Boris said that he sometimes got leads on apartments. The day before, he’d seen a family off to Philadelphia. They’d had a good three-room apartment. In the coming days, he knew of other people going to Baltimore and San Francisco. San Francisco: in the Soviet Union the name had possessed magic. California. America. Australia. Canada. Now when people spoke of these places, they spoke mainly about the relative strengths of their economies or the nature of their industries. Boston was in decline. Hadn’t New York City filed for bankruptcy? Calgary, mind you, was booming. They compared climates. San Francisco was wonderful if you didn’t mind rain every day. Atlanta was forty degrees in the shade and you were lucky to find a white cop. San Francisco had the ocean and a famous bridge; New York City had culture and phenomenal buildings. To live in these places you could marvel at them every day, but who did? In the same way you took a beautiful girl and made her into a wife. The wife remained enchanting, full of mystery, to everyone else. Strange men saw her on the trolleybus, concocted brute or intricate fantasies of seduction, while you waited for her to come home with the groceries and wash your socks.

—We are six adults and two children, Emma said.

—It’s not impossible, Boris replied. Maybe not an apartment, but a small cottage. There are cottages.

From Piazza Marescotti they went south along Via Ancona to the post office, which housed the international call center. It had a small seating area where people waited for their calls to be connected. One operator accepted the phone orders from behind a long wooden counter. Beyond the seating area, three numbered phone booths were visible. From one of them, Alec heard a man’s hoarse voice shouting in Russian.
I can’t hear you well. Can you hear me? The furs? The furs? Hello? Mentka, you hear me? Yosik wrote you what? Your furs? He was with us at the border. He’s a liar. He saw with his own eyes that the furs were confiscated.

Holding a piece of paper with her cousin’s name, address, and
phone number, Emma approached one of the operators at the counter. Karl, Alec, and Samuil drew up to the counter with her while Polina found a chair beside the window. The operator was a woman in her middle thirties, plump though not unattractive, with a hairstyle too fashionable for her job and her face. Because of her hairstyle, Alec expected her to be curt or impatient, but she listened attentively as Emma repeated the words “Chicago, Illinois, America” and her cousin’s name, and pointed to the digits of the phone number as they were written on the slip of Soviet graph paper. Emma looked meaningfully at the operator, as if, in the absence of a shared language, concentration and desire could effect understanding. The operator peered back at Emma. Then she pointed to Emma and spoke one word. When Emma didn’t respond, she continued to point and said several more words, hoping, perhaps, that given a broader choice of words, Emma might encounter one she recognized.

—What did she say? Emma asked Alec.

—I don’t know.

The operator pointed to herself and drawled: “Gisa.”

—What does she want? Emma directed her question nonspecifically at Alec, Karl, and Samuil.

—Your name, Samuil grumbled. Tell her your name.

They had spent immoderately on the train to Ladispoli. But Samuil hadn’t wanted decisions made about an apartment without him; Alec had insisted that Polina come and see the place for herself. To compensate for the expense, Emma had planned ahead and instructed everyone to conserve their dinner rolls from the previous evening. Rosa had sent them off with lingonberry jam from her private stash, and so, as they waited for their call to be connected, Emma unpacked the bread and jam and prepared their lunch. Sharing the waiting area with them were an elderly Italian, an Arab laborer in stained jeans and work boots, and the wife of the Russian man who denied stealing his friend’s furs.

The Russian completed his telephone call and left with his wife. (“So?” his wife asked as they walked out the door. “You’d think I hadn’t done enough for him,” the man spat.) The operator connected
the Italian, and Alec watched as he limped to his designated booth. Every few minutes Emma checked her watch.

—What do we do? Emma asked.

—We’ve already waited an hour. You want to cancel the call? Samuil asked.

—Rosa is waiting with the children. What will she think?

—She’ll think. She’ll think we’ve been delayed, Karl said.

—If we knew how to call the hotel, Emma said, they could inform Rosa and maybe put our food aside.

—Do we know how to call the hotel? Samuil asked.

—No, Emma said.

—So why blabber about it?

—I only thought, Emma said dejectedly.

Just then, the operator’s phone rang.

—Emma.
Numero due,
the operator said, and motioned to the appropriate booth.

Emma sprang up and rushed to the booth, beckoning for the others to follow.

—Hurry, so everyone can have a chance to speak, she said.

Everyone rose, except for Polina, who shook her head and said, The woman doesn’t know me. Go on. You talk.

The woman didn’t know Alec all that well either. He had seen her perhaps three times in his life. She was his mother’s first cousin. As children they had been close. They had, in fact, shared the family house. During the war, they had evacuated together and spent the war years in the Kara-Kalpak region of Uzbekistan. Shura, the cousin, had met her husband there and, after the war, settled in Vilnius, his town. Emma had meanwhile returned to their house in Latvia, and soon was married to Samuil. Over the intervening years they had corresponded. On occasion, Emma visited Vilnius. More frequently, her cousin came to Riga.

When Alec reached the booth, Emma already had the receiver to her ear and was raising her voice.

—Shura, she repeated, is that you? It’s very difficult to hear. Hello?

Emma looked imploringly at Samuil and Alec.

—You can’t hear her? Alec asked.

—Shurachka, can you hear me? Emma asked again. She paused and pressed the receiver tighter to her ear. There. Now I hear you. Yes, I hear you, she said.

In a letter they’d received in Vienna, Shura had written about the secondhand car her husband had purchased. It was two-tone, green and gold, and larger than a Volga. Her husband had a job half an hour’s drive from their apartment. He was fifty-six years old and, in his entire life, had never operated a car. But he had passed for his license on the first attempt and was now driving on an eight-lane American highway. Shura was also learning to drive the car. Because of the car’s size, her husband had fashioned blocks for the pedals and she sat on a feather pillow, which she stored in the trunk along with the spare tire.

She’s been in America only four months but look at what she’s done, Emma had said after reading the letter. It’s hard to believe that she’s the same person.

Alec tried to imagine his mother in similar circumstances. In Riga, his father had owned a car, a Zhiguli, which he drove poorly and infrequently. Arturs took him to work and, when the need arose, Samuil expected either Karl or Alec to drive him where he wanted to go. Otherwise, the car sat in the garage, halfway across town. Samuil recorded the mileage on a pad to ensure that neither Karl nor Alec took the car out for their pleasure. It never occurred to anyone that his mother might also want to drive it.

Some of the photos that Shura sent depicted her and her husband in the parking lot outside their apartment building, smiling in front of their car. Other photos showed them in downtown Chicago, set against a formidable panorama of receding buildings. There were also photos that they’d taken inside their apartment. One was of Lyona, Shura’s husband, with a bottle of beer at the kitchen table; another was of Shura, her hand resting on a velour sofa, flanked by a floor lamp taller than she.

—For God’s sake, don’t bother with trivialities, Samuil hissed when Emma asked Shura about the weather.

—Other than Rosa and the children, we are all here. In a moment I’ll let everyone say hello, Emma said.

The conversation proceeded for a minute or two along typical lines until Emma came to the point and asked her cousin about sponsorship.

—What happens, Emma asked, do you send your form to HIAS, or do they send something to you?

After this, there was a lengthy pause, during which Emma nodded her head and said nothing. Then she said, Yes, I’m still here. I hear you. I hear you. I understand. No need to apologize, I understand. Yes, of course, I understand. Naturally. All right. Would you still like to say hello to everyone?

—What is she saying? Samuil asked.

—Spin the globe, Karl said.

—Another time then, Emma spoke into the phone. Of course. Of course, I will write you. Yes. Certainly. Send my best to everyone.

Emma replaced the phone and tried to put on a brave face. The way she looked, Alec feared she would crumble if Samuil started to berate her.

—Well, Samuil said.

—Let her at least step out of the booth, Alec said.

—They got a letter saying that Lyona’s brother’s visa was approved, Emma said. They’d been under refusal for two years. What could she do?

—What could she do? She could keep her promise, Samuil said.

—It’s Lyona’s brother and his family. He’s a brother. How could they deny them?

—I didn’t know you had your heart set on Chicago, Alec said.

—What do I care about Chicago? Samuil said. Where I want to go, the door is closed. This is about principle.

—She feels horrible, Emma said.

—Not so horrible that she wouldn’t betray you.

—We already shipped the furniture, Karl said, shaking his head. She doesn’t have anyone else in Chicago who could sponsor us?

—I don’t know, Emma said. She didn’t say. I didn’t think to ask.

Emma was still halfway inside the booth when she said this, and as Samuil, Karl, and Alec started to walk back to the counter, she remained rooted in place.

—What are you waiting for? Samuil asked, either not noticing or ignoring that she had started to cry.

For all his mother’s agonizing and worrying, and for the harsh treatment she often received from Samuil, Alec rarely saw her cry. As a boy, after an argument with Samuil, he would often hear the unmistakable sounds of her crying behind his parents’ bedroom door. Later, by the time Alec was old enough to understand the reasons for those arguments, they had subsided. New arguments replaced them, the subject typically concerning his and Karl’s questionable behavior and misdirection. These arguments were conducted in the open, and didn’t merit tears. They participated in them as a family and, in time, the arguments standardized into the routine that represented life at home. It wasn’t until the talk of emigration that his mother found reason to cry again. If one of these arguments escalated beyond a certain point, she would leave the room. Karl and Samuil and Alec would then fall silent, temporarily chastened by her muffled sobs.

Now, in the telephone booth, with no place to hide, Emma cried openly. At first, she allowed only a few quiet tears, but after Samuil barked at her, she dropped her shoulders and covered her face with her hands.

A long interval followed during which nobody moved. They remained in this awkward standoff until Polina rose, walked over to Emma, and gently placed a hand on her elbow.

She leaned close to Emma and Alec heard her whisper, Emma Borisovna, come and let’s sit for a minute.

Emma kept her hands over her face but allowed Polina to lead her to the seating area. Polina sat down and eased Emma into the chair beside her.

—It’s nothing terrible, Polina said as she stroked Emma’s shoulder.

The dramatics had attracted the attention of the phone operator
and the Arab laborer, both of whom turned their heads to observe her—the phone operator with evident concern. Karl and Samuil, meanwhile, stood several paces away, in the neutral space between the seating area and the operator’s counter.

—What are you crying for? Samuil demanded.

—It hurts, so I cry, Emma said, lifting her eyes above her hands.

—Cry, then. For all the good it will do.

—It’s like a bad dream, Emma despaired. I can’t believe it has happened.

—What’s not to believe? Samuil countered. It’s your own dream. You wanted it. You got it. So don’t complain.

—Now we have nowhere to go, Emma said, wiping her cheeks with the base of her hand.

—Why? On the contrary, now we can go anywhere, Alec said.

—It’s possible, Karl said, that we could still get into Chicago. Anyone can apply. We could explain our situation to HIAS.

—I will not live in the same city as those people, Samuil decreed.

—Chicago is a big place, Karl said.

—They have spat in our faces. I will not associate with them.

—Oh, for fuck’s sake, Karl fumed.