Yakov quit the circus a few weeks
later. Nothing had changed there—only once did Nadia glance his way when she
was certain Sergey was nowhere to take notice. Even then, any semblance of
warmth was hard to figure. He had kept to his routine at the university park,
right up to an hour before the show. Though he always prepared on time (the
advantage of easy facepaint), the manager was getting edgy.
“With respect, sir,” Yakov told him, “I’ve enjoyed my job
here but need to move on.”
“Move on?”
“Yes—I mean, not out of the city necessarily, but to do
something besides clowning. I know some can do it into their old age, and maybe
I’d return—maybe I’ll have to—but I must try other things.”
“You’ll regret this, and when homesickness kicks in I
won’t have to take you back, you know.”
“With respect, sir, I came to tell you, which isn’t
always the case in this trade.”
“What do you want then?”
“Just two shows more and nothing said to anyone.”
“I’ll need two weeks to fill the position.”
“I’ll stay one week max.”
“You’ll stay long enough to train someone in.”
“If he can be found this week.”
And that’s how it went. Yakov managed to find his
replacement himself, having seen a number of charlatan routines in the city’s
thoroughfares and back alleys. The other clowns were nervous at the sight of a
newcomer (the manager kept his word and did not reveal Yakov’s resignation),
but since the intern interacted with them well, Yakov knew all the more he
wouldn’t be missed.
And he wouldn’t miss them. He had met a distributor of
old books named Ilya, an unassuming man who took a liking to Yakov and trusted in
his learning curve. Even though the retailers at the Besarabska bazaar didn’t
want extra competition, Yakov appealed to them to let him have a little space
during the morning rush in exchange for the word-of-mouth he’d give their ware
as he peddled a suitcase full of books throughout the city. It was illegal to
free-lance in metro stations, but people did, and Yakov thought he’d have an
advantage if he used his suitcase as a chess table—easy enough to paint
thirty-two alternating squares on the leather side—and prop it up with a
compact army stool. He packed another two stools to lure passers-by into a
quick game or a browse of the on-display books that he propped where and how he
could—on a wall ledge or at his feet. He’d tell folks, as promised, that they
could find a wider array of titles at Besarabska, and to be sure to say that
Yakov had sent them. He earned less than his wage at the circus, but read more
and more, and felt more fully human even when policemen remonstrated and made
him pack up and go.
He’d head to Taras square by mid-afternoon, there to fill
out the day with just chess or personal reading—nothing more to display. He
hoped and did not doubt that Nadia would see him, and most of these spring days
were well worth the wait. He had landed upon an epistolary novel by Viktor
Shkolvsky—ZOO, or Letters Not about Love—that
had been smuggled in from Berlin, where the emigrant writer had lived in the
early 1920s; he read it twice to decide that he’d give it to Nadia, even if by
instinct he was loathe to script out anything.
And instinct, he was aware, is as mindless as heartbeats.
In a fleeting moment with Ilya, who was sitting with Yakov one late afternoon, he
gave up the rare copy. “I love this passage,” he flipped to Letter Four, “but I’m pretty vague on
the context.”
“I haven’t read this at all, so I’m all ears.”
“You don’t read what you sell?”
“And, to make that notion worse, I sell what I don’t
read! But da vai—what struck you?”
“This—it starts:
I’m not going to write about love. I’m
going to write only about the weather.
The weather in Berlin is nice today.
The sky is blue, the sun higher than the
houses. The sun looks right into
Pension Marzahn, into Aikhenvald’s room
—well, I should get to the
relevant point—”
“No,” Ilya assured, “I’m setting the scene in my mind,
and, moreover, I’ve nowhere to run off to.”
“Really? So I’ll just skip a couple lines to where it
gets interesting:
Today is February 5 . . . I’m still not
writing about love—that’s the title, see, but that’s not where I wanted to…
ah, here:
I don’t like the weather to be freezing or
even cold”
“Which will set up the challenge to the dislike, yes?”
“I guess so—this is where it departs and, well…”
“Read on, I’ll shut up!”
“Because
of the cold, the Apostle Peter denied Christ.”
Yakov looked up and expected
meet Ilya’s eyes, which were closed in a smile.
“The
night was cool and he walked up to the fire, but at the
fire
sat public
opinion: the servants kept questioning Peter about Christ and Peter
kept denying Him.
Here he capitalizes ‘Him’—” Ilya
didn’t respond or open his eyes.
“A cock was crowing.
The cold spells in Palestine are not
severe. There it is certainly
warmer
than in Berlin.
If the weather that night had been warm,
Peter would have
remained
in the darkness and the cock would have crowed for
nothing,
like all cocks, and in the gospel there would be no irony.
Yakov paused at that. He was
conscious that the present spring air was as pleasant here as anywhere on the
planet. And that in general, irony wasn’t something he’d given much thought to.
Lots was done for nothing, let alone cocks’ crowing. But the gospel harping (or
hinging?) on such details? What did he know of the gospel, anyway? Still, he
read
“It’s just as well that Christ wasn’t
crucified in Russia. Our climate is
continental—severe cold and blizzards; the disciples of Christ would have
flocked to the fires at the intersections and would have stood in
line to deny Him.
Capital ‘H’ again—“
“You tell a good story, Yakov, but a shitty exegesis!”
“What? What’s that?”
Ilya smiled bigger in his opened eyes. “May I borrow that
book?”
“May you borrow! It’s technically yours, or at least I’m
indebted to your provision. You’re the reason I was able to read it in the
first place.” And though Yakov imagined Nadia receiving it more deeply, even with
half the spirit, he handed it over.
As if Ilya knew what traipsed through his young friend’s
mind, he pulled out of his haversack a volume of Tsvetayeva’s poems and said,
“Don’t sell this one—I don’t know if we’ll procure another. And she’s too good
to give up.”
Nadia did show up a couple days later, and Yakov did hand
over Ilya’s treasured book. He tried for a moment to bridle his enthusiasm,
asking about the circus and his replacement. “Normal. He’s no great
shakes—doesn’t have your timing or range. But I don’t really pay much
attention.”
“Have the horses been good?”
“You surely mean Sergey.”
“Okay. Has he been good?”
“He’s my husband. What do you want me to say?”
“That he’s been good.”
Nadia hadn’t even sat down yet—Yakov had risen when she
approached—and she shifted her body as if she now needed to go. She again had a
bag of groceries that Yakov cavalierly took from her hand and placed on the end
of the bench. “What, are you hungry?” she asked without mirth.
“Not really.” He sat down and jerked his head slightly to
the remaining space on the bench. “Care for a game?”
Finally she smiled, and sat. “Of checkers? Or maybe
charades…” Yakov swept the pieces from the suitcase top into his lap and lifted
the lid to pull out the book of poems. He set it on the top of the lowered lid
and began assembling the pieces in their starting positions. Nadia breathed
through her nose and looked at him. “I only have a couple minutes.”
Yakov continued to place the pieces one at a time. “I’ve
played maybe thirty times today. My tag-phrase, which I thought I’d get tired
of myself when I first starting using it, is ‘every game is different.’ And it’s true, even for the shoe-in
wins. So much true that I never think of funneling things to a formula, though
that’s tempting in this business.”
“Mine, too…. Did you know I started out on the trapeze?”
“No, you never told me that.”
“Actually, Sergey, too. He had a bad fall, catching just
the edge of the net and breaking his collarbone.”
“Did you fall?”
“Of course, but not that badly. You know you’re going to
slip once in a while and you just let yourself drop—no problem. But bad falls
happen for two reasons: stretching a trick beyond what’s wise, or getting bored
with a routine that you could practically do in your sleep.”
“Which was the case for Sergey’s fall?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t watching, and he didn’t want to
talk about it.”
“Whenever you fell, which was the more likely case?”
“I suppose boredom. I
can concentrate well on a challenge, and I still I like the flips and flying. What
I didn’t like then was the pendulum rhythm of it all, the counting out. Or the formula, as you put it.”
“Don’t the horses make the same effect?”
“They’re thinking creatures and they move, more or less,
with me, more like a dance. The trapeze bar could care less.”
Yakov was about to ask even if Sergey was on the other end to catch you? but thought
better. “So the horses have treated you well…”
Nadia sighed and picked up the book. “What this?”
“It’s for you. I meant to give you another one that
features St Peter...”
“Huh?”
“This one is great—” he beckoned the book to his hands
and turned to a creased page. “It’s entitled ‘Much Like Me’ but I’d call it
‘Passer-by’. It’s sadly her tombstone poem so maybe not the place to start…”
and gave it back to her, and she silently read. Yakov picked up one of the
black knights that he knew was getting loose at its base and tried to tighten
its little screw. When Nadia had finished reading, he asked, “does any line
stand out?”
“You mean lines,
don’t you?”
“Sure. It’s that good, isn’t it!”
“It’s that good, but you also know what I mean—”
“Well, I…”
“The single line, or phrase rather, that I like is just ‘cemetery strawberries’—I don’t need the
follow-on that they’re ‘sweeter and fuller than any other.’”
“True. The image is enough.”
“But you like
the lines…”
“I like all the lines.”
“You want me to say
Think
of me simply and
Simply of me forget”
“Not if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to.” Nadia turned to her bag of groceries
and stood up to go. “I don’t have
anything to give you in return—I honestly passed this way on a whim.”
“See, exactly like Marina’s poem: ‘Passer-by, stand still!’”
Nadia paged through the little volume and, after a little
deliberation, showed Yakov a certain title. “You’ve read these all? Even this
one—‘I’m glad your sickness is not caused
by me’?”
“Of course,” Yakov grinned, “it’s my trade after all.”
Truth told (and not yet to
him), Yakov wasn’t in an official trade because Ilya had never registered him
as a bookseller. Besarabska was mostly a food market, but plenty of ware, from
parakeets to perfumes to car parts wound around the sides and enclaves, from
the huge art deco hall to the train station. It was a destination point for all
kinds of shoppers, if just as itinerant in feel as the metro thoroughfares.
Policemen walked around as much to scan what they would later buy as to ask for
papers, and wait for bribes. Yakov hated this environment for its mundane
bustle and lack of imagination. Unlike the parks, where he could engage in a
game or sit back and read without interruption, here he had to flit his eyes to
ensure a browser wasn’t going to walk away without paying, or else stare
vacantly at the thousands and thousands of passers-by. Good riddance, he thought. I’m
here merely to justify the rest of my day.
He was jolted, then, one mid-summer evening when a knock
on his door compelled him to justify his lack of employment. “I work for Ilya
Radomovich, at Besarabska.”
“No.” The bespectacled man spoke without emotion and
referred to a document on his clipboard. “You used to work at the Kobzov
circus, which reserved you this flat, and now you don’t. So you’ll have to
register somewhere else and, in all likelihood, prepare to move out.”
“I am registered, I’m sure—”
“Are you? Were you ever registered for military service?”
“What’s that have to do—”
“Were you?”
“No.”
“Right. No. You skirted that requirement and now you are
falling into such habits.”
“I was never summoned—”
“Nor did you take any initiative to serve the union.
Citizens like you, Jergen, buckle the system a bit. But just a bit: your type
of petty sabotage only comes back to make you miserable.”
“I’ve never tried to sabotage anything.”
“You’ve never rigged anything?”
“I haven’t broken the law.”
“And you know
the law?”
Yakov did not, really, know where to go from this
statement. He had been reading, by coincidence, the parlance of Porfiry
Petrovich with Raskolnikov, and then, more abstrusely, the mental meanderings
of Svidridgailov. Knowledge of the law, civil or natural, had almost nothing to
do with justice, and an administration of orders (as this bespectacled man was
ostensibly doing) had even less to do with either. Yakov could have replied, ‘I
do not know the law’ and also ‘just as you.’ He did not. Instead he asked, “how
much time may I have here?”
“Your problem isn’t here, Jergen; your problem is
registering as you need to. The state is not intent on kicking you out,
firstly, or having you play hide-and-seek. But to remind you of the terminus
technicus ‘sabotage’, you risk not an eviction but a reassignment to Siberia.”
“What?”
“Yes, we know”—and the ‘we’ included a heavyset man who
impatiently barged his way past his bespectacled partner, to size up Yakov’s
sparse furnishings—he picked up the splayed copy of Crime and Punishment and flipped it to his boss, who tucked it into
his case. “We know that you didn’t weather well the Kyzyl Kum; rest assured there’s
not such a desert in Siberia. Listen! I’m here to tell you to register—fast—and
not with Ilya Radomovich!”
“What’s wrong with Ilya? He’s above board—”
“He’s not your concern, especially if he hasn’t
registered you.”
“Is he in trouble?”
“Good night, Jergen. You have four days to settle your
situation.”
Ilya was not at Besarabska the next morning, or the next.
The other booksellers had no information and were rather guarded about Yakov’s
queries about ‘registration’. Not that he came off as a mole—Yakov thought
about that in reverse, that one of them might have signaled him to the
authorities, to push him out of their space. He thought he had been on friendly
enough terms, but then again, they likely disparaged the way he scooted off at
the noon whistle, so to speak, with a suitcase full of books that otherwise
would have remained at the market. Yakov never went out drinking with them; he
didn’t smoke or tell jokes. Sure, he covered tables for anyone who needed to go
urinate, and he was generally considerate about buying a couple extra samsa to
offer as a mid-morning snack. He tended to a teapot over a little electric
heating coil—forbidden in this section of the market, for fear of fires—and
taught the basics of the shell game when there weren’t any browsers at the
tables. No, Yakov was no mole, as unknown as he was. But anyone could be a
mole, especially if one wanted to stay rather unknown, free to burrow away and
surface only as needs would have it.
There was one person he felt was rather trustworthy, for
the sometimes extensive interactions he had with her at Taras square. Her name
was Irina, a widow who lived with a ‘rascal’ of a son: “fifty years old and
loafing around the flat until wherever he goes and whatever he does half-way
through the nights—he never tells me.”
“And your best guess?” Yakov fiddled with the chess
pieces she was not here to play. He knew she’d detract from potential
customers, but then again, she came to the park like clockwork
with
her Pomeranian, park herself on a nearby bench, stroll several times up and
down the promenade, feign
interest in the books she’d
never buy and, when invited to, sit and chat.
“My best guess is that he’s ashamed to say, even to
himself. Prodigal son, he is. But he’s all I have, along with this little furball.”
They’d talk about the dog, the day, the details of
‘loafing around the flat’, the small talk that spilled out of Besarabska or the
television set. Then she’d always say the same farewell: “Yakov, be happy,
until next time.”
“Actually, Irina,” Yakov said on this day, “next time may
be long in coming. I need to move on, and I’ll ask you this favor: you remember
Ilya, the tallish guy that sat with me a couple weeks ago?”
“I’ve seen so many sit with you, playing chess—”
“Well he was just talking books,… anyway, he’s slightly
balding and tall, usually wears a brown jacket,…named Ilya…my supplier of
books. I’d like him to know that I’ve gone to Lvov and will probably find a
similar situation there if he wants to know.”
“Lvov? Why do you
need to go there?”
“Because, as it turns out, Kiev has only been a stop on
my way west. Longer than usual, admittedly, and it tempted a definition of
home. But…”
“I understand. And am sad. When will you go?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’ll look out for this Ilya for you.”
“And one more, perhaps? You’ve probably never seen her,
but, well, her name is Nadia; works at the Kobzov circus…; has a jealous
husband, not that I’ve—”
“Be at peace, Yakov. You’re not my prodigal son. I’ll
keep an eye on your bench as long as I can get these old legs to work.”
“You’ll tell no one else?”
“It’s between you, me and the dog.”
“Thank you, Irina.” And he left the beloved bench without
looking back.
His plan this evening was to sneak into the circus—not
literally, but inconspicuously, for dread of being recognized by the staff. He
hadn’t shaved for several days, so that would be a slight cover. He still had
in his wardrobe a square Tajik cap and light robe that he had never worn here,
and with a rub of soot especially around his eyes and in his stubble, he could
pass as a random visitor. He mumbled a Tajik phrase when he took his ticket and
settled into a corner on the top row. The acts unfolded predictably and Yakov’s
replacement, as Nadia had attested, was a very ordinary clown, playing less to
the details of the given act and more to the darkness of the crowd. Intermission
was tense: Yakov could neither move nor sit still. He strategized what he’d say
if, enshallah, Nadia would recognize
him and Sergey not. Or, God forbid, vice versa. He had a believable alibi ready that he
needed to come back to work and would convince the manager that a Tajik
caricature would broaden the clown corps. But by the end of the performance
none of those thoughts mattered. There were no horses tonight, “the whole
week,” explained an usher who didn’t recognize Yakov when he questioned their
absence. “That act is on loan, joining their Akhal-Teke cousins.”
‘Fitting,’ thought
Yakov, ‘that Nadia has gone east. Maybe
she took Ilya along, and may they happily realize what I couldn’t find there, or here
for that matter.’
As Yakov trudged back home, he was met at the landing by
the bespectacled man. “You're making progress, I assume?”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve just returned from Kobzov.”
“They took you back?”
“I’m making my bid. What do you think?” Yakov spread his
arms out to show the fullness of the Tajik robe.
“I think you miss your old home.”
“No. I really don’t. But I can bring that ambience here,
for everyone’s entertainment.”
“Perhaps you can. I’ll attend your performance tomorrow
to see what I think.”
“Please do. And much thanks to your spur to get me
registered.”
“You’re not being ironic, I hope.”
“I hardly know what that means.”
The next morning Yakov walked to Besarabska, to ascertain
once again that Ilya hadn’t made an appearance. The other booksellers were
visibly nervous, as their stock was dwindling. “I’m on it,” Yakov proclaimed,
and slinked off to be anything but ‘on it’. Instead, he left to visit Trukhaniv
island for old time’s sake, and walked the long way down the bluff, lugging his
familiar suitcase, packed with his better clothes and the few books he had
left. On the island he played a couple honest games, winning and losing without
bets.
Feeling quite liberated, he walked across the bridge and
south to Pechersk, a monastery he had always wanted to visit but never felt fit
to enter. It was not a place easily open to passers-by: the reconstruction of
several chrams was slowly proceeding
on the auspices of the preservation of national treasures, and public traffic
was largely discouraged. Still, Yakov slipped in and absorbed the timeless
spirituality of the place. Centuries of interred mystics and exponential
prayers provided ample boost to existential doubts. In Yakov’s now-worn
suitcase was an unread volume by Sholem Aleichem, the impetus to an idea he
wanted to enact in Lvov (at the risk of calling it a plan). From what he knew,
Tevye the milkman had the ironic misfortune—a rather vague notion—of being
father to only well-meaning, faithfully Jewish daughters. Well-meaning and faithful should never plague anything, least of all
themselves. Of the hundred-or-so monks wandering about Pechersk (largely
unseen, for myriad meanings), these daughters—and their father, and probably
their mother, to be sure—probably spoke in a more resonant voice than anyone
realized. Yakov could read Aleichem’s account in a matter of hours, but he did
not want to do so just yet.
Time on the train tonight would provide such an
opportunity, and, beyond that, he’d need more meanderings in places like this.
Pechersk was necessarily peaceful. Its effect sheltered Yakov the rest of the
day, and he walked rather assuredly to the voksal, staking his bet that the
night train would have a sleeper cabin available to him. And, stars aligned, it
did. Little did he know, as he waited a placid hour on the station platform,
the bespectacled man and his thug at this very moment were ransacking his flat.
[more installments to follow]
