IV.
“You’re
traveling the night through?” asked the other traveler in the cabin assigned
to Yakov. There were beds folded into the wall, so another could still join
them.
“Yes, to Lvov.”
“You’re reading Sholem Aleichem and
you’re pronouncing his city like Russians do? It’s ‘L’vyiv’, and he’d give it
more a Yiddish accent.”
“Good to know. Yes, then, L’vyiv.”
“Why do you want to go there?”
Yakov turned to look more fully at
the middle-sized, middle-aged man. In his hands was not a book but a bottle of
vodka he was beginning to unscrew. Yakov thought quickly but didn’t speak too
fast. “I’m a student. Of literature, as you can see. I haven’t been to most
places I’ve read about—haven’t been to Leningrad, for instance, where so much
is set…and so I figured I could use a trip to Lvov—L’vyiv—”
“You’re a student of literature and
haven’t been to Leningrad!” He leaned in to whisper, “you can call it
Petersburg for my taste.”
“No, I haven’t been there.”
“You’ve been to Moskva, surely.”
“I have not. I’ve learned what I’ve
learned in Kiev.”
“Mercy! Then this is an adventure
for you.”
“Well, it could be. I’ve been
interested in Alexander Kuprin, so Odessa might be bigger in my future—”
“Kuprin! A dinosaur. You should be
reading Bulgakov. Black Snow. Heart of a Dog.”
“How did you come to literature?”
“I spent time in prison. You can
read there to your heart’s delight. Heart of a dog’s delight.”
“But not such titles, surely?”
“At a certain, lower rank, at the
grubbier of prisons, no one bothered to check titles. I made good with my
guards and didn’t ask for much, so…it was easy to get what I wanted. They wanted this—” he gestured to the
bottle—“and I was far-and-away the best in the ward at making it—provided I had
the right equipment, which they sometimes provided. If you ever get arrested,
young—what’s your name?”
“Ilya.” He figured it wouldn’t
disadvantage his friend to have such tracings to Lvov.
“I’m Oleg. Or Olesh, if you like.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“If prisons are meant to be hell,
Ilya, you might as well embrace it, and that’s the first way toward climbing
your way back to earth. Here, drink up!”
“I don’t really—”
“Da
vai, you don’t really ‘study’ literature. You drink it up.”
The train pulled into Boyarka, the
first stop outside of Kiev, and a beautiful young woman slid open the cabin
door. She asked, shyly it seemed, whether the third space was available, and
Oleg exclaimed “of course!” She said she only needed to go to Berdychiv—a
couple hours away—and that she was very tired and didn’t drink, if it were
agreeable just to sleep that stretch. “But of course,” again came the voice of
the master of the cabin. Yakov was quite appreciative of this chance just to
sleep.
A half-hour out of Boyarka, the
three already bedded down, she slunk out of their cabin and didn’t return
until, as Yakov estimated in his sleeplessness, the two hours it took to get
past the Kozjatyn junction. Then, rather abruptly, she shook the two men of the
cabin awake (Yakov needed no shaking) and asked in a cloying politeness if she
could please change her clothes before she was to meet her mother—“I can’t have
her seeing me so frumpy”—which wasn’t quite the case, but who was to argue?
Yakov left the cabin immediately, while the groggier man nearly tumbled out of
the middle bunk and groped his way out the sliding door, which she closed and
locked.
“You know what she’s doing,” Oleg
mumbled.
“Changing clothes, as she said.”
“She’s going through our luggage.
You got anything valuable?”
“No.”
“Me neither. She’s going to
disembark rather disgusted with us.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’m not. But I have a hunch. I ride
this train an awful lot and anything can happen between the first and
penultimate stops. It’s how I was first arrested: I was drawn into an innocent
game of cards that turned argumentative, and then into a big brawl; since I
held my money—and plenty of it, at the time—I was the one implicated as some
sort of gambling bandit. I could have parted with the money, naturally. But at
a certain point, you lose your bearings and have no idea how to placate this
person or that.” He had fully awakened by now, and rapped on the closed cabin
door: “how’s it going in there, sweetie?” No response, but general rustling. He
returned his quiet commentary to Yakov. “I’m a Jew, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Really? I am, to a certain extent,
also Jewish.”
“Mazel tov to the both of us, then.
She may also be a Jew, but my bet would be no.”
“What does your being a Jew have to
do with your story?”
“Arrests happen for a lot of
reasons, and sometimes just the reason of being who you are. I was a ‘political
consultant’, shall we say, of Shostokovich’s Thirteenth Symphony, the one
called ‘Babi Yar’. Have you heard of it?”
“I’ve heard of Yevtuschenko’s poem—”
“Yes, then, that’s it. I was a
commissioned reader of his poetry, especially as Dmitri was putting the
finishing touches on that opus.”
“You’re a musician?”
“I’m a dabbler, but that’s neither
here nor there. I worked to ensure the success of the premier in Moskva and
tried like hell to get it performed in Kiev—at the massacre site, no less. I
had plenty of sponsors but not on the governmental level, so I had to keep that
side of things rather veiled. Getting musicians to practice the piece, doubling
and tripling their standard fare for the risk they thought they were
incurring—albeit, most were aware it was a hands-down success in Moskva… Well,
we made some in-roads, but couldn’t pull off the ultimate event. I had money
enough but I guess not the charisma, the ‘street smarts’, as they say in
America…. It’s a skill we don’t teach our pioneer boys and girls. Except this
girl, maybe—” he put his ear to the cabin door and spoke evenly, “I think our
‘train smarts’ compatriot is finished, yes?”
She opened the door and indeed
looked very elegant. She thanked them for their gallant patience and moved down
the narrow corridor to wait for the train to enter the Berdychiv station. There
wasn’t any disgust in her expression as she bid them good-bye. And neither of
them checked their belongings before they climbed back into their bunks and
slept their way to L’vyiv.
They woke to the conductor’s knock
and a bright dawn. Oleg stepped out to use the loo, then returned and Yakov did
the same. The train pulled into the ornate station and the passengers stepped
out. Yakov had nothing more to do than look up at the huge trusses and sunray
atmosphere through the sky windows. Oleg stood by him and, after a moment,
inquired whether he had a place to go.
“No, not specifically. I took the
night train to give myself the fullness of a new day.”
“That’s how you travel?”
“Well, not that I’m so
experienced—not having been to Leningrad, as you know—”
“St
Petersburg, remember? We’re in context. It’s odd: I’m a Jew—you say you’re
somewhat that, too—and I’d far prefer we call a thing for what it is, even if
in this case it’s a Christian pretext for a czar’s apotheosis. Which, lo and
behold, passes on to Lenin for the same dubious reasons. Anyway, do you have
even a direction to go, now that you’re here?”
“I’m quite natural in city parks and
markets, so that’s where I’ll head.”
“Hmm. Well, I live in the Klepirov
village on the nearest trolley line from this station. You’re welcome to stay a
night to figure out your plan—I can show you where Sholem Aleichem lived, just
blocks away from my house, or what you might expect out of our modest open
markets.”
“Why would you make such an offer?”
“No reason other than I empathize
with your process. No one nowadays reads Aleichem and explores such origins.
Just as no one sticks their necks out over Babi Yar.”
So they walked to the trolleybus and
commenced a small tour of L’vyiv, down Prospect Gorodska. “Here’s the only
synagogue that survived Nazi annihilation,” Oleg pointed out, at the Brothers
Mikhnovs’ki street. “And on the other side is where Olesh Babiy lived—I’ll tell
you about him later.” Yakov took mental note, but wondered about Oleg’s zeal
and patronage, not to mention the presumption of ‘later’. The mental departure
didn’t last long, though, as the familiar and grand prototype of a circus
building loomed on the left side of the boulevard.
“I didn’t tell you that I worked as
a clown in one of Kiev’s circuses.”
“Oh, is that so? Well, we have
exactly what you see—no competitors and arguably little interest, though they
purportedly pack in an audience, not that I’ve ever been witness to it…. So,
here: we’ll get off at the next stop, Leontovich—sometimes referred to
nostalgically as the Bryhidky Prison, not that I’m so intimate with the place!”
“Something sinister in the joke
caused Yakov to think twice about his company. He had never attached himself to
those who knew the ‘insides and out’ of things—not with Ilya, not with anyone
at the Kobzov circus, and certainly not with anyone in Samarkand. Oleg was kind
to offer him the lay of the land, but Yakov hadn’t asked for such guidance and
this fact weighed heavily on him as he trudged reluctantly up Leontovich
street. Still, he went into Oleg’s little flat and accepted the scrambled egg
breakfast he cooked up for him.
“The rest of my day is to look over
some manuscripts and musical scores, and of course to rest up—I didn’t say, I
suppose, but I’ve been rather back and forth between here and Kiev.”
“I’ll not be in your way,” promised
Yakov. “I’m sure I’ll find a place to stay tomorrow night and beyond—”
“Worry yourself not, young Ilya.
Consider the couch yours and let the days unfold as they will.”
The very first unfolding set in
motion the tenor of the day. Under the fresh shirt Yakov had packed in his
checkered suitcase he found a roughly scribbled note that, on the face of it,
he had trouble deciphering:
Don’t trust this guy—
I’ve seen him on this
train before
And while I’m no ace
at this stuff
I’d say he’s a snitch.
So, that said—all
well!
(nothing’s taken)
He crumpled
it into his pocket and put on that fresh shirt and went out. Oleg, unknowing,
bid him also an ‘all well’, and advised him to reconnoiter the Klepiriv market
and Rappaport street, toward St Theodore Square, as he pointed out on a
tattered map, and the inevitable meanderings folks took toward Rynok Square, at
the city’s center. Yakov thanked Oleg as he left, taking only his still unread Tevye, the Milkman, on the tacit
prospect that he wouldn’t return.
And if he wouldn’t return, he knew
he’d miss that faithful checkered suitcase, as much a crutch as anything. It
was fine and good to see another diverse market, with the mash of humanity and
commodities; it was peaceful to walk past the perfunctory, closed synagogue
near St Theodore Square and into the vast grounds of the High Castle, decorated
overtly with statues of upright lions and Soviet remembrances. Yakov had
trouble conceiving a similar role for himself here as he mindlessly assumed in
the Volga region, or cities younger in his life, and further east. L’vyiv
appeared rather insusceptible to rackets and raconteurs. And in such a mindset,
he opened Aleichem’s novel and began to read.
The history of Yakov would not be
worth a fur hat (as Tevye would say) made out of a pig’s tail if there weren’t
(as Tevye would know) a consciousness of the narrative relay. “He addresses his
author like a compatriot,” Yakov reported to Oleg that evening, “like he
himself is the whisper in the writing. Wouldn’t any of us like to be in such
strange control of the story that happens to us, and because of us, and, and,
in spite of us—”
“Yes. It’s the tour de force of Shakespeare when he makes Macbeth say that life is
a tale told by an idiot—in this case, Pan Sholem Aleikem is Tevye’s idiot!”
“But it’s all reverse-like: Tevye’s
the fool—the idiot, if you like—and there is no way he can be other than what
his author makes him.”
“Tell me more of your day, young
Ilya,” Oleg requested, topping off both glasses of wine.
Yakov thought, feigning the
enjoyment of the alcohol; he could begin by addressing the note balled up in
his pocket; he could proclaim his rightful name, or rather milk the pseudonym
for as long as he wanted to be invisible. “I don’t have much to say,” he
shrugged, “that doesn’t stray from Aleichem’s text. I imagined Tevye at every
step—when I was at the bazaar and asked around about jobs, for instance, I
gravitated to the kafir and cheese tables first!”
“Any luck?”
“Only an old butcher gave me an
offer. His son is off in the arctic fleet, his own hands are like the cold hams
he chops; the flies, he says, are his only company…”
“An optimist! So you’ll help him
out?”
“I told him that I’ll buy mutton
only from him when I find my fortune.”
“Fortune!”
“Again, it’s Tevye on my mind. The
poor and the rich have one thing in common: a preoccupation with fortune. Of
course it’s all relative, wealth and luck and fate and circumstance. His
daughters are his treasure and his debt, like he inherited them from some
mischievous genie. I was enjoying his dilemmas—so was he, heart of hearts, with
the likes of strong-headed Hodl and wayward Chava—until it came to Shprintze—”
“—this is the daughter who drowns
herself?”
“the very one. Jilted, I guess, but I’m
not sure by whom. Ahronchik meets her at Tevye’s Shavous, an ill-conceived
invitation if there ever was one. Of course he falls in love with Shprintze,
and of course Tevye protests, then relents, then negotiates, then… what does he
say, let me find the page… ‘If we had any brains to speak of, we’d realize that
things are the way they were meant to be, because if they were different, they
wouldn’t be the way they are…. Doesn’t it say, in the book of Psalms, to trust
no one but God? Just leave it to Him: He’ll see to it that the worms are eating
you like fresh bagels, and you’ll thank Him for it too.’”
“Hmm. Vintage stuff. The lovers run
off?”
“That
he’d be able to handle—it had its precedent with Chava and Fyedka. No, the
boy’s uncle intervenes and insists that no cheesemonger’s daughter is going to
solicit his family affluence. And humiliated Tevye doesn’t stand up for
Shprintze, neither does Ahronchik or anyone else, and all the considerations of
love and luck and values and compromise crash out this time. It’s here that
Tevye remembers his audience—Pan Sholem Aleichem, whom he hasn’t seen for a
year and to whom he’s been telling this whole sad tale. ‘What was it I wanted
to ask you? Oh, yes: have you ever seen a drowned man?’”
“Doesn’t he mean ‘woman’”?
“He specifies ‘man’. And implies
himself, though the next line generalizes and probes further: ‘mostly one dies
with one’s eyes shut, but a drowned man’s eyes are always open. I just thought
you might know why that was…’”
“And that’s it?”
“Tevye apologizes ‘for taking so
much of your time’ and begs you—his
own author? his reader?—not to think of him too badly.”
“And do you?”
Yakov took up the last gulp of his
wine. “Not more than for myself,” he eventually said, placing the glass
rim-down on the table, “and by that I don’t really know what I mean.”
Days followed like this: Oleg would
cook a big breakfast, supply Yakov a book—poems by Bialik, for instance—suggest
an area of the city to get to know, turn to his messy desk and wait for the
evening to drink and debrief. There was nothing in his demeanor that suggested
the woman on the train was right, but Yakov couldn’t dismiss her from his
thoughts and thus talked about Tevye, Bialik, Yevtushenko, Bulgakov—anyone but
Ilya, the one he’d left and the one he claimed to be. He was ready for the
inevitable query: ‘what is your long-term plan?’ Literature studies would
reasonably resume in Kiev in a few weeks, and reasonably he was getting
everything and more out of this study abroad. Why talk about himself, he would
argue. I’m here to talk about writers and
their texts, and Providence has arranged for Oleg’s tutorage. But Oleg
never asked the inevitable and waved away his guest’s promise to find a way to
pay for things—“I never intended to freeload.”
“We all do that, young Ilya. And in
a sense, I’m leeching off of you. I hadn’t thought much about the Brothers
Mikhnovs’ki synagogue until you broached it yesterday. Let’s try, you and me,
to see who runs the place, whatever that entails.”
Plenty, it turned out, minus dozens
of shrugs and some suspicious looks, a few professors at the university and
some of their apprentices. A man named Harel was someone who could let them in,
by appointment only. It would be a dour tour of unkempt premises, they were
warned, and indeed the following day it was. Harel stuck to history and gave no
hint that Sabbath prayers were uttered here, or anywhere. Nor did his visitors
ask, but they were reminded that tours were by appointment—Oleg reached into to
his pocket to draw out some coins, which Harel mechanically took—“you have my
contact if you desire a return.”
But such a return was discouraged
when, that evening, an assistant dean knocked on Oleg’s door. Oleg greeted him
with false warmth, “How good to see you again, Viktor Ivanovich, I had meant to
knock on your own office door earlier today—”
“Yes, well, the pleasure shall have
its chance after all. You will let me in for a drink, I trust.”
“Why not?” Oleg said, and backed in
as a lobster.
Yakov rose and uttered a
‘stvrastvuete’ to the academic, who eyed him with interest.
“Health also to you,” Viktor
Ivanovich returned. “I hope not to steal time from your visit, comrade—”
“Ilya,” Oleg voiced as an
introduction.
“and patronymic, as I prefer
addressing in full?”
Oleg didn’t have that to provide,
and a full six seconds ticked off the clock before Yakov blurted “Rabinovich”,
which a self-conscious chuckle, gesturing that he was deferring to Oleg.
“Ilya Rabinovich,” put together the
assistant dean, “a pleasure.”
“From Kiev,” Oleg supplied, “on
holiday.”
“I see, I see. A student, I
presume?”
“Yes, of literature.”
“So you must greet Professor
Gorsikov from me, as he and I go way back.”
Yakov nodded and sat down. The next
minutes would be rough, he imagined, and he’d have to resort to a gentler kind
of shell game, to initiate points of palaver or else stay ahead of Viktor’s
routine. He could answer to his interests in literature easily enough, as well
as the general flow of student life at Taras Shevschenko; when specific names
came up, Yakov smiled and answered that he was only in his first year, still
struggling to keep up with all the details, and that his mind often drifted
back to Samarkand, where he was more accustomed to professors named Djora
Djokayevich and Atamurat Ismanov and Hukberdy Gurdov—perhaps he had heard of
these esteemed colleagues? To Yakov’s satisfaction, they were real people who
indeed taught him at junior level how to read and solve riddles, and he enjoyed
thinking of them now.
Oleg brought in a new bottle of
vodka and a plate with three glasses, plus sliced pickles for ‘bitters’ to
follow. “Viktor Ivanovich comes at a good time—I hope, at least, all is well
with you.”
“To health, comrades,” he answered
and threw back his hundred grams. The other men did likewise. “All is well with
me, thank you, and—” pouring himself another— “will be so. I’m in line for
promotion this term.”
“Congratulations!”
“Thank you, and I know you will
understand what I’ve come here to say.” He filled the other two glasses and
waited for Oleg and Yakov to raise them. “Very well. I’m being promoted because
I run a sound ship. No leaks, nothing to patch. A scoured clean deck that keeps
the vermin out. Now I know you are not that—don’t hear me the wrong way—but the
nature of students, wouldn’t you agree, is sometimes to seek knowledge in the
wrong places. Today was suspicious, comrades, and not on the up-and-up. Promise
to stay clear of my premises, especially if you nose around for
counter-revolutionary relics.” He drank this time without losing eye contact,
and glared the others to drink to this promise.
“But Viktor Iv—”
“I’m less interested in your
response, Pan musikant, as you readily know, than that of Ilya…forgive my
memory… Radomovich?”
Yakov gulped and took a pickle,
pacing himself deliberately. “I hope you aren’t offended. There is less
tradition in my side of the union for this kind of thing”—he held up the pickle
and chomped it and gave eyes to both men to follow suit. Oleg jerked and looked
at the assistant dean, who was smiling like a crocodile. “My response is not to
correct you, for one thing: you have authority that is worth of your
protection. The relic you refer to reminds me of the victory over the fascists,
which surely inspires a generation like mine, who barely know what your
generation sacrificed in such a fight.”
“Is that what you want me to
believe?” Viktor swung his head to Oleg, who tensed up his shoulders and raised
his eyebrows. “Ivan Radomovich?”
“His name is—”
“Wait,” Yakov said, “I think this
needs to come back to good terms. I’ve given my response, which you asked to
hear first; Olesh, can you corroborate? What was your interest in what we saw
today?”
Oleg looked at him with annoyance,
but took the question with equanimity. “As Viktor Ivanovich knows me well
enough, I have served the union loyally in the work of commemorative music and
the struggle of the oppressed. Young Ilya here,”
“Rabinovich,” Yakov mumbled.
“Ilya Rabinovich came to Lvov
reading Sholem Aleichem—that’s not against the law nor against the harmony of
our soviet peoples. Have you, Viktor Ivanovich, read anything from our native
author?”
“I have not, and am not so certain
he would pass muster at the faculty in Kiev. Worth inquiring about. Regardless,
I have made my point clear, yes?”
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