Mother Russia (9781590209028) Read online

  “No, no, for small things I don’t like to bother him,” Pravdin insists.

  “Since when is an apartment a small thing?”

  “For the Druse,” Pravdin assures him, “it is.”

  Pravdin, twenty minutes early, is hoping to be the first on line; he is forty-first. He comforts himself by thinking of those ahead as potential clients.

  “How do I know these tickets are genuine?” demands a middle-aged woman wrapped in an enormous brown shawl.

  “How does she know these tickets are genuine?” Pravdin repeats innocently. “Yes or no? Under socialism, forgery is a state crime but hustling is a state necessity?”

  The woman laughs self-consciously. “I’ll take two,” she says and carefully counts out eight rubles from her wallet. Pravdin folds the money away in his change purse.

  Behind Pravdin two young men are playing chess on a pocket board. White advances his queen’s bishop to knight five. “If I say Schonberg,” he complains, “you say Webern; if I say chromatic equality is a built-in tenet of serialism, you opt for diatonic species.”

  “I couldn’t help overhearing,” Pravdin intrudes. “What a coincidence you speak of Schonberg. I happen to have on my very person some Deutsche Grammophon discs that arrived only last night from West Germany.”

  When Pravdin’s turn comes he finds himself face to face with the most expressionless human he has ever set eyes on in his life.

  “Next,” the woman says, glancing up from her incredibly organized desk at a wall electric clock that has no hour hand. Like Pravdin she is extremely thin; unlike Pravdin she is thin without being frail. “Next,” she repeats tonelessly, impatiently, tapping a front tooth with a fingernail.

  Pravdin hands her the form he has filled out, along with his Moscow residence permit (it cost a small fortune), his internal passport, a letter (forged) certifying he is a member in good standing of the Writers’ Union and therefore is entitled to twice the standard nine square meters of living space that is the inalienable right of every Soviet citizen, and a military certificate (the genuine article) indicating he suffers from an old war wound and therefore is entitled to live within a radius of a hundred meters of public transportation. Methodical in her movements the woman piles up the documents, begins with the internal passport, glances at the word Jew penned in alongside entry three (ethnic origin), pockets the two Bolshoi tickets Pravdin has discreetly placed in the military certificate.

  The interview, Pravdin senses, is off to a reasonable start. Touch wood.

  “What is the nature of your war wound?” the thin woman asks in a voice that conveys total lack of interest in the answer.

  “Shrapnel in the neck,” Pravdin explains. “Pinched nerves. I lost the ability to shrug.”

  “That doesn’t sound incapacitating,” comments the thin woman.

  “Incapacitating is what it is,” Pravdin argues passionately. “In a workers’ paradise the inability to shrug is the ultimate wound.” Pravdin leans across the desk. “Lovely lady,” he pleads, “I have friends in high places. I could use influence, but I don’t take advantage of my name, I wait my turn like any ordinary citizen.”

  The thin woman shuffles through some file cards. “I can offer you a flat in Dzerzhinsky—”

  “Sooner Siberia!” blurts Pravdin.

  “Dzerzhinsky is twenty-five minutes by metro from the Kremlin,” the woman continues tonelessly. “The flat is in a building with an elevator, it is eighty-five meters from a metro station, it has fourteen square meters surface, heat, hot water and kitchen privileges—”

  “I’m entitled to eighteen square meters,” Pravdin whines.

  The woman shrugs, writes the address on a card, stamps the card with a seal and signs her name across the seal, hands it to Pravdin, looking up at him for the first time.

  “Could I trouble you,” Pravdin says with mock formality, “for the return of my Bolshoi tickets.”

  “What tickets,” the thin woman asks innocently, “are you talking about?”

  Pravdin paces off the distance from the metro to the front door of the gray building, six stories, one of many in a suburban project set at angles that suggest they are giving each other the cold shoulder. People stare. Pravdin concentrates, loses count, starts again, is annoyed to find the total eighty-three.

  The occupants of the flat, a worn, tired man with thinning hair and his pregnant wife, are wrapping dishes in newspaper and packing them in cartons when Pravdin knocks. (A note indicates the bell is out of order.)

  “You’re the new tenant then,” the man assumes. He manages a smile. “Come on, 111 give you the royal tour.”

  “First the lowdown on the building,” Pravdin demands. His eyes, darting nervously, take in the room: boxes tied and ready to go, matching overstuffed easy chairs, a grand-father clock with a sweep second hand that jerks when it passes the five, a huge television set, trunks, suitcases.

  The pregnant woman straightens, her palms on the small of her back. “I have to admit it, the building has a certain charm,” she observes dryly. “Today for instance there was no cold water in the taps. You wouldn’t be interested in a kitchen table, would you? The top is genuine formica.”

  Pravdin, dispirited, shakes his head, shuffles around the room, peeks into the kitchen, the toilet (both shared with another family), sniffs, screws up his face in disgust, tries to flush the toilet, has to climb on the handle to depress it. Using the tip of his sneaker he pushes up the yellowing plastic toilet seat; it is angled badly and bangs down again.

  “How do you pee?” Pravdin asks absently.

  “Quickly,” the man replies.

  “Funny is what you’re not,” snaps Pravdin. He turns on the tap marked “cold”; rusty hot water gushes out. He looks up at the shower nozzle, which is caked with a whitish residue, and then down at the hole in the cement floor that serves as a drain.

  “I suppose the facilities are like this in our space rockets,” the pregnant woman clucks her tongue sympathetically. Her husband shoots her a look and she goes back to her packing.

  “The same is what it is,” Pravdin agrees, “with the possible exception that the drain holes are stainless steel.”

  “Listen, it’s not all that bad,” the tired man urges. “The couple you share the kitchen with, the woman works at the hard currency store for tourists and gets the inside track on certain shipments before they’re put on sale.”

  “She’s good on fur hats, leather gloves, waterproof boots,” the wife calls out.

  But Pravdin is already removing his sinking heart from the flat.

  There are no signs forbidding people to walk on the grass; none are needed. But Pravdin, hunched forward, absorbed in his thoughts as he cuts diagonally across Sokolniki Park, is in no mood to obey signs that aren’t there. Pigeons scatter. Emaciated squirrels claw their way up trees. An old man in civilian clothes with a chest full of medals angrily shakes his cane but Pravdin, out of earshot, hurtles on. At Khokhlovka, a district of factories and warehouses, he reaches for his chalk, scrawls in English across a billboard trumpeting how many schools have been built in the last five years:

  Nothing worth knowing can be teached

  (Anon: Pravdin studied English in the camps but his teacher disappeared in midcourse); Glancing fearfully at dark clouds conspiring over the rooftops, he hurries on to the warehouse that serves the Druse as a base of operations.

  The small door at the rear opens before he has a chance to ring. Pravdin, shivering from a rain that has yet to fall, ducks to enter, is greeted by Zosima, a Berber with a small blue flower tattooed on her left cheek. Long plaits of silky black hair fall across her shoulders to her waist, indicating that she is not married. Her lids are painted blue; her gaze is direct, unblinking. Pravdin has seen her before; she is one of the Druse’s “nieces” and chauffeurs him around in a curtained Packard that is said to have belonged to the Cuban ambassador. (“I never drive myself,” the Druse once confided to Pravdin, “my hands are too small.”)


  “Chuvash expects you,” murmurs Zosima.

  “How expects me?” Pravdin is edgy. “I never called I was coming.”

  Zosima only steps back, bolts the door behind him, leads the way through labyrinthian warehouse aisles stacked with busts and statues of men whose biographies have been conveniently lost: Bukharin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev. (“I am the day watchman at a pantheon of nonpersons,” the Druse told Pravdin the first time he visited the warehouse.)

  The Druse, whose full name is Chuvash Al-hakim bi’amrillahi, greets Pravdin at the door of the room that serves the warehouse guardian as an office. Dressed in a black European suit, an embroidered skullcap set squarely on his shiny bald scalp, deeply tanned, he places his right hand on his heart, inclines his head to Pravdin. “Salaam aleikum, brother,” he says quietly.

  “Shalom Aleichem back to you.” Pravdin bows awkwardly, precedes the Druse into his office which is covered, floors and walls, in oriental carpets, giving to the room the thick muffled atmosphere of an Uzbek yourta. Chuvash and Pravdin sit cross-legged on either side of a low iron table. An old beetlelike woman, her face masked by a heavy black horsehair veil, hovers. Chuvash mutters something to her in Kirghiz (one of the six Turkic dialects he speaks fluently). She moves away, neither man speaks, she returns with shallow bowls of green tea brewed in a charcoal-heated samovar and served with a delicate herb called hell. The aroma clears Pravdin’s nasal passages. The Druse offers Pravdin a plate of biscuits. He takes one, bites into it, cups his other hand underneath to catch the crumbs.

  The Druse sips his tea while it is still scalding hot. Pravdin leaves his bowl on the table and blows on it until he can bear to lift it. When the bowls are empty the old woman is summoned to take them away.

  “So.” Pravdin dries his lips on the sleeve of his Eisenhower jacket, clears his throat.

  “Brother, it has come to me again,” Chuvash says.

  Pravdin, concealing his skepticism behind a crooked smile, leans forward.

  Chuvash places both hands on the iron table, palms down, speaks with his eyes closed, his back straight. “It is the reign of the last Emir of Bukhara, Said Mirmuhammed Alimkhan,” he recounts intently. “He lives in the Ark twenty meters above the level of the city. This Friday, as every Friday, carpets are laid between the Ark and the mosque. The people prostrate themselves, see only the Emir’s finely worked golden slippers as he makes his way to the mosque. Later he returns to the Ark through the twin towers, mounts the tunnel between the prison cells, pauses to say something to a dignitary just before my door. I see him through a crack in the wood. He is a slight man, absolutely beardless. When he speaks to the dignitary I become aware that he has a stutter. ‘That the executions b-b-b-b-begin/ he commands. The dignitary falls to his knees to kiss the hem of his robe. The Emir continues on to the balcony to watch the executions. This Friday there are five. They are performed with a knife. I am to be the fourth.”

  “How can you be sure it’s you?” Pravdin, agitated, demands.

  “In the vision I am brought to the courtyard below the balcony. They are dragging away the corpse of the man before me; he had been convicted of incest. I fall on my knees and lift my palms to the Emir for mercy. And I see on my palm the triangle of lines indicating I am a seer.” Chuvash turns up his right palm and traces the triangle with his finger. “You see, it is always the same.”

  “What about the mercy?” Pravdin wants to know.

  “The Emir smiles down at me and nods in a kindly, almost fatherly, way just as the executioner’s knife slices through my jugular.”

  “Aiiiiiiii,” Pravdin grimaces, clutching his own throat; he has a vivid imagination and a low threshold of pain.

  Chuvash smiles. “It is fascinating, is it not? If there were only a way to study this phenomenon scientifically, to confirm it—”

  “How many of these incarnations have you had?” asks Pravdin.

  “It is difficult for me to say. Often different visions seem to relate to the same incarnation. I count at least six, but I’m not certain. And you?” Chuvash gestures with his pinky nail, which he has allowed to grow extremely long. “I understand you don’t consider them evidence of previous incarnations as I do, but have you had any more of your dreams?”

  Pravdin flashes his crooked smile. “I dreamed about a monastery cell, whitewashed. The bunk bed has no pillow, the crucifix above it has been pried off but it has left its imprint from having been there for centuries. A bearded Jew of indeterminate age leans against the imprint of the crucifix.”

  “Ah,” sighs Chuvash, impressed.

  “It is only a dream,” cautions Pravdin.

  “Of course,” Chuvash nods. “Continue.”

  “Shots ring out, a ragged volley first, then a single shot from a smooth-bored naval pistol. The Jew starts, opens his eyes, sees for the first time the imprint of the crucifix. His bloodless lips move, words form but no sound emerges; he is speechless with humiliation. A horrified expression crawls across his face like a crab. At that instant a key turns in the lock, the door swings open with a squeal.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Who it is I will never know,” Pravdin confesses. “Someone flushed the communal toilet, the pipes banged and I woke up.”

  Zosima slips into the room, whispers to the Druse. He produces a huge gold pocket watch, sees it has stopped, taps it with his pinky nail to make it start, says a few words in Uighur. Zosima backs out of the room.

  The Druse appears pressed for time. “What brings you to me, brother?” he asks politely.

  Pravdin laughs nervously. “What brings me to you is a favor.”

  “Only ask it,” Chuvash instructs him.

  Pravdin hesitates long enough to suggest he doesn’t relish asking favors, then tells him about the tearing down of the next to last wooden house in central Moscow.

  Chuvash pulls a scrap of paper from a pocket, uncaps a pen, jots a name and phone number on the paper, offers it to Pravdin. “If they are forcing you out of the next to last wooden house in central Moscow, there is only one place for you: the last wooden house in central Moscow. Call this number, ask for a man by this name, speak to no one else, say only that you are a friend of Chuvash Al-hakim bi’amrillahi.”

  Stunned at the ease of it all Pravdin accepts the paper, folds it away between the bills in his change purse. “When I can do “something for you only ask,” he promises the Druse.

  “When you can do something for me,” Chuvash replies evenly, “you will know it without my asking.”

  CHAPTER 2

  The last wooden house

  in central Moscow …

  The last wooden house in central Moscow, two floors of frayed eaves and awnings, looms at the dead end of an L-shaped alley off Trubnaya Square. Pravdin, nostalgic for the ordered sweetness of shtetl life he has never experienced, blinks back a rush of emotion as he sets down his rope-bound cardboard suitcases. Dear God in heaven, a building with soft edges and no right angles! Surrounded by a fence! White birch trees! Shrubbery! A garden! Weeds even! Next door, the faded paint peeling from its onion-shaped domes: a sixteenth-century Orthodox church that has been converted into a wine shop. Across the alley, towering over both the church and the wooden house: a line of prewar apartment houses, their backs to the alley, their windows silvery with reflected sunlight. Pravdin, fighting faintness, rests a hand on a birch to steady himself. Birds chirp. The sound of Mozart hangs in the air like moisture. The alley seems to swallow Pravdin as he approaches the house, swings back the wooden gate. Hinges squeal. Count your blessings, Pravdin almost weeps. You’re reasonably healthy, relatively wealthy and you’re moving into the last wooden house in central Moscow. Touch wood. (His knuckles rap against the wooden fence.)

  “Hello to anyone?” Pravdin hollers into the house, holding open the front door. “Someone home?”

  “Hello yourself,” a female voice calls from one of the ground-floor rooms. A moment later a young girl pads into the hall on bare fee
t. She has long matted blonde hair that falls to her waist, wears an American sweat shirt with “Make Amends” embroidered across the breast and jeans that flare at the ankle. She appears to be about fifteen. “I’m Ophelia Long Legs,” she supplies, cocking her head, studying Pravdin with childlike curiosity. “You must be the new attic. Wow! What a fantastic jacket. Where’d you ever find it?”

  “It’s an old Eisenhower jacket,” Pravdin starts to explain.

  “What’s Eisenhower? Say, do you eat meat?”

  “What kind of a question is that, ‘Do you eat meat?’ “

  “I don’t mean to be nosey.” Ophelia Long Legs glances up the stairs, lowers her voice. “The reason why I ask is because the ladies you share the kitchen with are vegetarians and they can’t support the smell of meat.” Ophelia giggles. “We don’t eat meat either but that’s because we can’t afford it.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” Pravdin, always on the alert for new clients, wants to know.

  “ We’ is whoever happens to be in the room. We’re volosatiye—hairy ones—you see. Friends come, friends go. Some stay a day, some stay a month.”

  “What about residence permits? What about the police?”

  “Oh, the militia gives us a wide berth,” Ophelia boasts. She whispers again. “Some of us have fathers who are vlasti—you know, bosses. What’s your name anyhow?”

  “Pravdin, Robespierre Isayevich,” Pravdin draws himself up, soundlessly clicking the heels of his sneakers together, “at your beck and call.”

  “Hey, that’s cute,” Ophelia giggles, looking at the sneakers. “What kind of a nutty name is Robespierre? It doesn’t sound Russian.”

  “It’s French. A famous French revolutionary is whom I was named after,” Pravdin explains.

  “I thought France was capitalist,” the girl says innocently. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to have any French rock records, would you?”

  “I know where I can put my hands on some,” Pravdin ventures cautiously, “but they’re for sale, not for lend.”