Natasha and Other Stories (5 page)

Gregory, who had important matters to attend to, left me with a plastic press pass and instructions not to get into any trouble. I could stick around as long as I liked, or at least until someone told me to leave. I watched him head over to the Soviet delegation, where Sergei was stretching beside a young blond weightlifter. From every corner came the sounds of exertion, of metal striking metal and metal striking wood. Nobody paid me any attention as I wandered around. I finally took up a position near the center of the room and watched men lift heavy things in preparation for lifting very heavy things.

The competition took hours. My father reserved me a seat in the front so that my view wouldn’t be obscured by the heads of adults. Sergei’s weight class was one of the last on the schedule. Until Sergei performed I spent most of my time watching my father. Up onstage with the other judges, he looked very much like his old picture in the IWF passport.

Sergei’s weight class competed in the afternoon. Very quickly it became clear that it was a competition between two men: Sergei and Krutov, the blond weightlifter. Their first lifts exceeded those of the rest of the competitors by several kilos. After that, from attempt to attempt, they performed only against each other. I watched first as Sergei eclipsed his world record in the snatch and then as Krutov matched it. Each one lifting fluidly, in one motion, almost twice his own weight.

When it came time for the clean and jerk Sergei declined the opening weight and watched as Krutov successfully approached and then matched Sergei’s world record. To catch Krutov, Sergei had three attempts. During Sergei’s lifts, Krutov waited silently in the wings. I sat on my hands and watched as Sergei failed on his first attempt, and then, minutes later, on his second. Both times, straining under the bar, he managed to get the weight up to his chest and no farther. Until Sergei’s final lift, it hadn’t occurred to me that he could lose. But as he chalked his hands in preparation for the lift, it not only occurred to me that he might lose, but, all at once, I knew he would. I looked at the people around me and sensed that they also knew it. Sergei seemed to know it too. He paced the stage almost until his time expired. I watched the seconds on the huge clock behind him tick away. Just to stay in the competition, he had to match his own world record. And when he failed to do it, when he was unable to steady the bar above his head, when all three judges’ lights—including my father’s—glowed red, I felt sick. As I watched Sergei embrace Krutov and then Krutov embrace Gregory, I tasted and then swallowed the eggs I had eaten for breakfast.

After the awards ceremony I followed my father over to Sergei. He was standing slightly apart from Gregory, Krutov, and the rest of the Soviet team. When he saw us he forced a smile. My father congratulated him and Sergei held up his silver medal. He took it off his neck and let me hold it. He kept the smile on his face.

–A silver medal. It’s not gold, but I guess you don’t find them lying in the street.

Sergei looked over to where Gregory was standing with his arm around Krutov.

–Don’t forget to congratulate Comrade Ziskin on another great day for Dynamo. Another one-two finish. What difference does it make to him if all of a sudden one is two and two is one?

At home, my mother had prepared a large and elaborate dinner. There were salads, a cold borscht, smoked pike, smoked whitefish, a veal roast, and tea, cake, and ice cream for dessert. She had set the table for five and used crystal glasses and her good china. I wore my clean new Polo shirt. My father told amusing stories about our immigration in Italy. He made an effort to reminisce with Gregory about their old bodybuilding students. The ones who remained in Riga, those who were now in Toronto, others who sometimes wrote letters from New York and Israel. My mother inquired after some of her girlfriends. People in the Jewish community whom Gregory would have known even though he and my mother were almost a generation apart. Even I talked about what my school was like, what sorts of cars my Hebrew school friends had. The only person who didn’t talk was Sergei. He listened to all the conversations and drank. My father had placed a bottle of vodka on the table, and after the requisite toasts, only Sergei continued to address the bottle. With the bottle almost gone, he suddenly turned on Gregory and accused him of plotting against him. He knew that Gregory planned to recommend that he be removed from the team.

–He wants to put me out to pasture. Soviet pasture. The rest of my life grazing in the dust. The only way he’ll get me back there is with a bullet through my head.

Sergei kept drinking, even though it looked like he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open.

–Roman, you did the right thing. You got the hell out of that cemetery. Now you can look forward to a real life. And what do we look forward to? What kind of life, Gregory Davidovich, you KGB cocksucker!

After another drink Sergei’s head began to drift toward his plate and he accepted my father’s help and rose from the table. His arm draped over my father’s shoulder, Sergei stumbled into my bedroom and onto my single bed. My father closed the door and returned to the table. He lowered himself wearily into his chair. Submitting to gravity, he looked again like my old father.

As my mother served the tea Gregory confessed that Sergei was more right than wrong. But this was something my father knew as well as he did. A weightlifter’s career was five, maybe seven years. After that there was a nice arrangement. A position with Dynamo. A lucrative job with customs. Maybe a coaching placement, or moving papers from one corner of the desk to the other. Sergei would get what everyone else got. He’d keep his three-room apartment, he’d have his garage for his car, he’d never have to worry about a salary. That Russia was becoming a colossal piece of shit was a different story. That my father had proven himself a genius by leaving was undeniable. Dunking biscuits into his tea, Gregory admitted he should have left when he had the chance. Now it was too late.

My father looked at my mother before speaking.

–Don’t be fooled, Grisha. I often think of going back.

–Are you insane? Look at what you have. Take a walk outside. I saw beggars on the street wearing Levi’s jeans and Adidas running shoes.

–Three days out of five I’m afraid I’ll join them.

–Roma, come on, I’ve known you for thirty years. You don’t have to lie on my account.

–I’m not lying. Every day is a struggle.

–Look, I’m not blind. I see your car. I see your apartment. I see how you struggle. Believe me, your worst day is better than my best.

Leaving my parents and Gregory at the table, I went down the hall and into my bedroom. Even though I knew every step blind, I waited for my eyes to become accustomed to the dark. Sergei was stretched out on my single bed, his feet barely hanging over the edge. I went over and stood beside him. I listened to his breathing and considered his body through his suit jacket. Again, I was amazed at how small he was. I bent closer to examine his face. I didn’t mind that he was in my bed, although I wondered where I would sleep if he stayed. When he suddenly opened his eyes, I was startled.

–Well, boy, what do you see?

He raised himself to a sitting position and looked me over. He put his hands on my shoulders and my arms and gripped for a proper appraisal.

–How many push-ups can you do?

–Twenty-five.

–Only twenty-five?

–I think so.

–For a boy like you, anything less than fifty is a disgrace. He climbed off the bed and kneeled on the floor. He patted a spot beside him.

–Come on, come on.

When I hesitated his hand shot up and seized me by my new Polo shirt. I felt the fabric tear and heard two buttons strike the floor.

–Let’s go. You and me. Fifty push-ups.

At first I managed to keep up with him, but after a while he began to race ahead. I strained not to fall behind, afraid of what he might do to me. But he continued to do the exercise, counting to himself, not minding me at all. When he finished I finished as well.

–See, it feels good.

I nodded my head in agreement.

Sergei looked over at my alarm clock. It read past ten.

–Look at how late it is. Shouldn’t you be asleep?

–It’s okay. Sometimes I stay up until eleven.

–When you were in Riga it was nine o’clock sharp. You remember how you liked it when I used to put you to sleep?

–I remember.

–It wasn’t so long ago.

–No.

–Come on, into bed.

–It’s okay. I don’t really have to.

–Into bed. Into bed.

His tone left no room for negotiation. I kicked off my shoes and lifted the covers.

–Good.

Sergei knelt down beside my bed and gripped the wooden frame.

–Comfortable?

–Yes.

His face straining, he used his legs and rose from the floor; my bed resisting, scratching the wall, but leaving the ground. At first the bed tottered and I gripped the sides, but then he steadied it. Smiling triumphantly, he looked at me. I heard the door opening behind him. I recognized my father’s footsteps. Then other footsteps. My mother’s. Gregory’s.

–Nu, boy, tell me. Who is the world’s strongest man?

Looking past Sergei at my father, I waited to see if he was going to do something. My mother started to take a step forward but my father restrained her.

–Nu, boy? Who is the world’s strongest man?

–Seryozha. Seryozha Federenko.

–Wrong, boy. That was yesterday’s answer.

He laughed and turned to face Gregory.

–Isn’t that right Gregory Davidovich?

–Put him down, you idiot.

Seryozha emitted something that was a cross between a cough and a laugh. He carefully eased my bed to the ground and proceeded to slump down on the floor. Gregory and my father both moved to help him up, but as Gregory reached for his arm Sergei violently slapped it aside.

–You bastard, don’t you dare put a hand on me.

Gregory stepped back. My father carefully took hold of Sergei’s armpits and helped him up. Without protesting, Sergei put his arms across my father’s shoulders.

–Roman, you were the only one who gave a shit about me, and we will never see each other again.

With faltering steps, my father supported Sergei into the hall. I got out of my bed and stood in my doorway. Gregory followed my father and Sergei into the hall and toward the front door. My mother came over and stood with me.

My father offered to drive or call them a cab.

Gregory shook his head and smiled the familiar Soviet smile.

–What for? Have you forgotten? There is always a car waiting downstairs.

Still holding on to my father, Sergei permitted himself to be led down the hall and into the elevator. Gregory said goodbye to my mother as she closed the door behind him. I went to my bedroom window and waited. Below, in the parking lot, I saw a man smoking beside a dark sedan. In slightly more than the amount of time it took for the elevator to descend to the lobby, my father appeared in the parking lot with Sergei clinging to his shoulders. Gregory followed. The man opened the rear door and my father eased Sergei into the car. I watched as my father shook hands with Gregory and with the man. As my father turned back in the direction of our building the man opened the driver’s-side door. For an instant, the light from the car’s interior was sufficient to illuminate his swollen face.

O
N THE RAILWAY PLATFORM in Vienna, my mother and aunt forbade my cousin and me from saying goodbye to our grandparents. Through the window of the compartment we watched as they disembarked from the train and followed an Israeli agent onto a waiting bus. The bus was bound for the airport, where an El Al plane was waiting. We were bound for somewhere else. Where exactly we didn’t know—Australia, America, Canada—but someplace that was not Israel. As my mother, aunt, cousin, and I wept, my father and uncle kept an eye out for Israeli agents. These agents were known to inspect compartments. Any indication that we had close relatives on the buses would bring questions: Why were we separating the family? Why were we rejecting our Israeli visas? Why were we so ungrateful to the State of Israel, which had, after all, provided us with the means to escape the Soviet Union?

The answer to these questions, for my father and uncle, was 150 million angry Arabs.

For my grandfather, a lifelong Zionist, this was no answer. Back in Riga, packing our bags, he had decided that he would not go chasing us around the globe. At least in Israel he knew there would be a roof over his head. And at least in Israel, surrounded by 150 million angry Arabs, he would have no trouble identifying the enemy.

In the days leading up to our departure, a common argument went:

Grandfather: There, I’ll never have to hear dirty Jew.

Father/Uncle: So instead you’ll hear dirty Russian.

Grandfather: Maybe. But where you’re going you’ll hear one and the other.

Though I never heard dirty Jew, dirty Russian tended to come up. Particularly at Hebrew school. Not very often, but often enough that I felt justified in using it as an excuse when I tried to convince my parents to let me transfer to a normal public school.

This was a campaign I started in earnest in the seventh grade. The year before, we had finally moved out of the apartment building and into a semidetached house. Geographically, the move was negligible—looking out my bedroom window, I could still see our old building—but we now had a backyard, a driveway, a garage for my bicycle, and a carpeted basement. We also now had a neighborhood. Across the street, my aunt and uncle bought a similar house. In other houses lived other Russians who had succeeded in accumulating down payments. Their children became my friends: Eugene, Boris, Alex, Big Vadim, Little Vadim. In the evenings and on the weekends, we roved the streets, played wall ball, road hockey, shoplifted from the Korean’s convenience store, and abused Fat Larissa, the neighborhood slut.

My new friends were all Jewish, but after my mother framed my bar mitzvah portrait—in which I wore a white tuxedo—they took me outside, held me down, and pummeled my shoulders until my arms went numb.

My mother was categorically against me leaving Hebrew school. This was partly out of deference to my grandfather, but also because of a deep personal conviction. There were reasons why we had left the Soviet Union. She believed that in Canada I should get what I could never have gotten in Latvia. As far as she was concerned, I wasn’t leaving Hebrew school until I learned what it was to be a Jew.

My father, I knew, was more sympathetic. For years, because of special considerations made for the poor Russian Jews, the Hebrew school had subsidized my tuition, but after we bought the house, the subsidy was revoked. And even though my mother had secured a better job and my father’s business had improved, I saw the irritation on his face every time I started complaining about the school.

–He knows the language. He can read all the prayers. If he wants to leave maybe we should let him leave already?

–Take the money from my salary.

–I didn’t say it was the money.

–Take the money from my salary.

–You want to redo the kitchen. That’s also from your salary.

–If that’s my choice, I can live without the kitchen.

My mother was resolute. Nothing I said helped my case. So that April, just after Passover, I put Jerry Ackerman in the hospital.

Most days, on his way to the office, my father would drop me off at school in his red 1970 Volvo. On a Friday, after gym, Jerry Ackerman said something about Solly Birnbaum’s small hairless penis and Solly started to cry. Solly was fat, had webbed toes, and was reduced to tears at the end of every gym class. I had never defended him before but I seized my chance.

–Ackerman, if I had your tweezer-dick I wouldn’t talk.

–Why are you looking at my dick, faggot?

–Ackerman thought he had a pubic hair until he pissed out of it.

–Fuck you, Berman, and that red shitbox your father drives.

In Rabbi Gurvich’s office, Dr. Ackerman said that I had banged Jerry’s head so hard against the wall that I had given him a concussion. Dr. Ackerman said that Jerry had vomited three times that night and that they’d had to drive him to the hospital at two in the morning. Dr. Ackerman asked, What kind of sick person, what kind of animal would do this? When I refused to answer, my mother apologized to Dr. and Mrs. Ackerman and also to Jerry.

This wasn’t the first time my mother and I had been called into Gurvich’s office. After our move into the new neighborhood I had begun to affect a hoodlum persona. At school, I kept to myself, glowered in the hallways, and, with the right kind of provocation, punched people in the face. Less than a month before I gave Jerry Ackerman his concussion, I’d gotten into a fight with two eighth graders. Because of dietary laws, the school prohibited bringing meat for lunch. Other students brought peanut butter or tuna fish, but I—and most of the other Russians—would invariably arrive at school with smoked Hungarian salami, Polish bologna, roast turkey. Our mothers couldn’t comprehend why anyone would choose to eat peanuts in a country that didn’t know what it meant to have a shortage of smoked meat. And so, I was already sensitive about my lunch when the two eighth graders stopped by my table and asked me how I liked my pork sandwich.

For my fight with Jerry Ackerman, I received a two-day suspension. Sparing words, Gurvich made it clear that this was never to happen again. The next time he saw me in his office would be the last. To hit someone’s head against a wall—did I ever think what that could do? If I got so much as within ten feet of Ackerman he didn’t want to say what would happen. He asked me if I understood. My mother said I understood. He asked me if I had anything to say. I knew that what I had to say was not what he wanted to hear.

On the drive home my mother asked me what I was trying to do, and when my father got home he came as close as he ever had to hitting me.

–Don’t think you’re so smart. What do you think happens if you get expelled? You want to repeat the grade? We already paid for the entire year.

On the street, I told Boris, Alex, and Eugene, but they weren’t impressed.

–Congratulations, you’re the toughest kid in Hebrew school.

I returned to school the week of Holocaust Remembrance Day—which we called Holocaust Day for short. It was one of a series of occasions that punctuated the school year beginning with Rosh Hashanah in September and ending with Israeli Independence Day in May. For Chanukah, the school provided jelly donuts and art class was spent making swords and shields out of papier-mâché; for Purim, everyone dressed up in costume and a pageant was organized during which we all cheered the hanging of evil Hamman and his ten evil sons; for Passover, every class held a preparatory seder and took a field trip to the matzoh bakery; for Israeli Independence Day, we dressed in blue and white and marched around the school yard waving flags and singing the
Hatikvah,
our national anthem.

Holocaust Day was different. Preparations were made days in advance. The long basement hallway, from the gymnasium to the pool, was converted into a Holocaust museum. Out of storage came the pictures pasted on bristol board. There were photocopies of Jewish passports, there were archival photos of Jews in cattle cars, starving Jews in ghettos, naked Ukrainian Jews waiting at the edge of an open trench, Jews with their hands on barbed wire waiting to be liberated, ovens, schematic drawings of the gas chambers, pictures of empty cans of Zyklon B. Other bristol boards had Yiddish songs written in the ghettos, in the camps. We had crayon drawings done by children in Theresienstadt. We had a big map of Europe with multicolored pins and accurate statistics. Someone’s grandfather donated his striped Auschwitz pajamas, someone else’s grandmother contributed a jacket with a yellow star on it. There were also sculptures. A woman kneeling with a baby in her arms in bronze. A tin reproduction of the gates of Birkenau with the words
Arbeit Macht Frei.
Sculptures of flaming Stars of David, sculptures of piles of shoes, sculptures of sad bearded Polish rabbis. In the center of the hallway was a large menorah, and all along the walls were smaller memorial candles—one candle for each European country. On Holocaust Day, the fluorescents were extinguished and we moved through the basement by dim candlelight.

Holocaust Day was also the one day that Rabbi Gurvich supervised personally. Gurvich’s father was a Holocaust survivor and had, that year, published his memoirs. We were all encouraged to buy the book. When the copies arrived, Gurvich led his father from class to class so that the old man could sign them. Whereas Gurvich was imposing—dark, unsmiling, possessing a gruff seismic voice—his father was frail and mild. In our class, the old man perched himself behind the teacher’s desk and smiled benignly as he inked each copy with the double imperative:
Yizkor; al tishkach!
Remember; don’t forget!

Even though I had spent the two days of my suspension fantasizing about killing Gurvich and Ackerman, I returned to school and avoided them both. Gurvich was easy to avoid. With the exception of Holocaust Day, his primary role was that of disciplinarian and—unless you were called into his office—he was rarely seen. Ackerman was different. The only class we shared was gym, but in the mornings I saw him grinning as I got my books from my locker; at lunch I sat across the cafeteria as he conspired against me; and at recess, if he was playing, then I abstained from tennis-ball soccer.

For Holocaust Day we were called down into the basement by grades. The hallway was long and, arranged in orderly columns, an entire grade could fit into the basement at one time. After Gurvich made the announcement over the intercom, we followed our teachers down. We were quiet on the way and silent once we got there. Some people started crying before we entered the basement; others started to cry when we reached the dimness and saw the photos on the walls. As we filed in, Gurvich stood waiting for us beside the menorah. When everyone was in the basement, the double doors were closed behind us and we waited for Gurvich to begin. Because the hallway was extremely reverberant, Gurvich’s deliberate pause was filled with the echo of stifled sobs, and because there were no windows and the pool was so close, the basement was stuffy and reeked of chlorine.

Gurvich began the service by telling us about the six million, about the vicious Nazis, about our history of oppression. His heavy voice occupied the entire space, and when he intoned the
El Maleh Rachamim,
I felt his voice reach into me, down into that place where my mother said I was supposed to have the thing called my “Jewish soul.” Gurvich sang: O God, full of compassion, who dwells on high, grant true rest upon the wings of the Divine Presence. And when he sang this, his harsh baritone filled with grief so that his voice seemed no longer his own; his voice belonged to the six million. Every syllable that came out of his mouth was important. The sounds he made were dictated by centuries of ancestral mourning. I couldn’t understand how it was possible for Gurvich not to cry when his voice sounded the way it did.

After Gurvich finished the prayer, we slowly made our way through the memorial. I stopped by photos of the Warsaw ghetto during the uprising and then beside a portrait of Mordecai Anilewicz, the leader of the ghetto resistance. I noticed Ackerman behind me. He was with two friends and I turned my head to look.

–What are you looking at, assface?

I turned away. I concentrated on moving down the hallway but felt a shove from behind and lost my balance. I managed to catch myself along the wall. My hand landed safely on top of a child’s crayon drawing, but my foot accidentally knocked over the Czech memorial candle. Everybody in the hallway froze at the sound of the breaking glass. I turned around and saw Ackerman snickering. Matthew Wise, Ackerman’s friend, stood between me and Ackerman. Wise was bigger than Ackerman, and I was sure he was the one who had pushed me. Instinctively, I lunged at Wise and tackled him to the ground. I was on top and choking him when Gurvich grabbed the back of my shirt and tried to pull me off. Even as Gurvich pulled me away I held on to Wise’s throat. And when Gurvich finally yanked me clear, I saw that Wise was still on the floor, trembling.

While the rest of my class finished going through the memorial, I waited upstairs in Gurvich’s office. I waited, also, until the sixth grade went down to the memorial, before Gurvich returned.

I sat for half an hour, maybe longer. I imagined the horrible consequences. I foresaw my mother’s reaction and, even worse, my father’s reaction. I didn’t regret what I had done, but the fear of squandering so much of my parents’ money made me physically sick.

When Gurvich finally walked into his office, he didn’t sit down. Without looking at me, he told me to get up out of my goddamn chair and go back downstairs. I was not to touch anything, I was not to move, I was to stay there until he came.

Back in the basement I waited for Gurvich by the menorah. I didn’t know where else to stand. I didn’t know where in the memorial my presence would be the least offensive to Gurvich. I stood in one place beside a picture of Jews looking out of their bunks, and somehow I felt that my standing there would anger Gurvich. I moved over to the sculptures and felt the same way. I wanted to strike some sort of anodyne pose, to make myself look like someone who didn’t deserve to be expelled.

I was tracing the ironwork on the menorah when Gurvich pushed the double doors open and entered. Very deliberately, as if he didn’t know what to say first, Gurvich walked over to where I stood. I took my hands off the menorah.