When she was finished, she looked at me and said: “We have to get out. It doesn’t matter if we die doing it.” The Germans were spreading stories that the Jews escaping from the ghetto were Nazi plants, infected with VD, so the partisans, who didn’t exactly need help disliking Jews, were sometimes executing escaped ghetto inmates on sight. But if we were going to die, she said, we were going to die by a Russian hand, not a German. She would persuade Mother and Father as well.
I wanted to disagree, but listening to her also made me want to be more of a man. I had closed my eyes when Shulamit placed the pillow over her child, but I wouldn’t close my eyes now. Whatever it took, we would escape.
9
MONDAY, JULY 31, 2006
Slava was at the office early on Monday, his only companion Mr. Grayson dipping his bow tie into a buttered bagel. He waved cheerfully at Slava.
When he heard Arianna arrive, he crawled above the divider. She looked up and smiled.
“We didn’t talk yesterday,” he said.
“I wasn’t really around for yesterday,” she said. “I went at it too hard on Saturday night. I got home at four? I slept till noon.”
“Oh,” he said. In his mind, Arianna had waited at home for him to be ready to see her again. He disparaged his callowness.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
“Nothing, nothing,” he rushed to say. They shared an awkward silence.
A cough sounded beside them. Avi Liss was standing by Slava’s desk clutching a pile of printouts. “I’m sorry, lovebirds,” he said. “May I speak? Layout wants to know if Sheila’s going to let you cut the Vatican section. Then baseball can run long.”
“Sheila’s in the desert doing a detox,” Arianna said matter-of-factly. “There’s an infinity pool.”
“I’m sure you know all about it,” Avi said.
“They have this massage?” Arianna went on. “Six people work on you at the same time. Twelve hands.”
“When you figure it out, just let them know directly?” Avi said.
“And Louboutin is opening a boutique there next fall,” Arianna said. “Do you know, with the red sole?” She disappeared from view and lifted one of her heels above the divider, the sole demonically red. That was all you could see: the heel with its vanishing tip, the pale knob of the ankle, and the web of the toes pinched by the toe box. She was wearing a dress — anyone passing by Arianna’s cubicle could get an eyeful.
Avi and Slava remained rooted in place, bovine. The heel disappeared and Arianna vaulted back into view.
“I have to go,” Avi said hoarsely and stalked off.
Slava tried to tamp down the system-wide expansion in his groin. “What was that about?” he said, a little hoarse himself.
“Avi the Jew thinks I’m a JAP. I don’t want to disabuse him.” Her eyes flashed insolently. He was learning the meaning of her expressions. This one meant: I don’t care, but I do. He felt a tweak of satisfaction at this penetration of her invincibility, then instantly felt guilty for it.
“Thanks for defending me,” she winked.
Slava stared, dumbfounded. It hadn’t occurred to him that she could require defending. She held her expression a moment, then laughed. She was joking.
Slava had spent Sunday translating his letter for Israel into Russian, so Israel could hear what Slava had written. “Well, you certainly don’t know how to speak Russian,” Israel said, “but it sounds like you might know what you’re doing with English. It’s beautiful. Who’s the girl?”
“Your sister,” Slava said. “So to speak.”
“I’m saying who is the real-life model.”
“No one,” Slava said. “My imagination.”
“She sounds fierce. Must be one of ours.”
“She’s not one of ours,” Slava said.
“So it is someone!” Israel laughed. “Got you. Oh, you snot-nose. I can barely walk the block, but I can still run circles around you.”
“There’s an American expression, Israeclass="underline" ‘You get more by honey than vinegar.’ Try it sometime.”
“My God, you’re a stiff berry. I hope you find an American girl, Slava. It’s easier for you than it is for us, but it’s hopeless for you all the same. But less so for your children, especially if you go with an American girl. And then your grandchildren won’t even know where Minsk is, good riddance.”
Slava acknowledged the lecture.
“So, did you talk to your grandmother?” Israel said. “It was her: staring at Shulamit, gulping the milk.”
“In a way,” Slava said.
“Next time you see her, say hello from me. You tell her that before that hooligan Yevgeny Gelman got his claws into her, she had another admirer on Karastoyanova. I wish you to find a woman like her, Slava.”
“And what is that like?” Slava said.
“She wasn’t an easy person. She held grudges for decades. People she didn’t like? She minced no words. And she never did anything she didn’t want to. But her heart was big. I’ve never met a woman who loved that way, and I include in that assessment my dear departed Raisa. There wasn’t a false bone in your grandmother’s body. For better and worse.”
“That is the opposite of my grandfather,” Slava said. “What did they see in each other?”
“Marriage is a mystery,” Israel said. “In the end, logical explanation is impossible. Tolstoy was wrong: It’s the happy families that are happy in all different ways, and the unhappy families that are unhappy in the same depressing, predictable fashion. It’s a small miracle, every time, when two people can make one life.”
“So it’s out of your hands,” Slava said.
“No, no,” Israel said. “Quite the opposite. You have to work at it.”
“Then I don’t understand,” Slava said.
“I am almost dead,” Israel said, “and I still don’t understand.”
Throughout the day, Arianna a suddenly awkward presence on the other side of the divider, Slava glanced at the telephone, willing it to ring with Grandfather’s number. By now he would know that Slava had written a letter for Israel. So, call. When you didn’t want to hear from him, he found you, and when you did, he was mum.
Slava lifted the receiver, listened to the dial tone, returned it to the cradle. The phone looked like something Grandfather would appreciate: a spaceship console dressed up as a regular old touch-dial. Slava didn’t know what function most of its buttons performed. Conference, transfer, something called ABS. Was that the button for phone records? His limited purview at the magazine was sufficiently served by one through nine. He snapped the phone out of its nest and bashed the buttons.
“How is he?” Slava asked Berta when she picked up.
“He talks at night,” she said impassively.
“Saying what?”
“Negotiating, counting. I don’t know. It’s impolite to listen.”
“I’m sorry it keeps you up,” he said.
“It’s my job,” she said. “We honor our old people.”
They stalled in an uncomfortable silence. After an eternity, Grandfather picked up the bedroom phone. “So?” he said. “Hello.”
“Nothing. How are you?”
“The doctor says it’s normal.”
“What’s normal?”
“Talking to God in your dreams after… you know. A passing. I wake up, I don’t know what planet I’m on. It’s like I have two bodies. Everything falls from my hands. Easy for him to say normal, he’s not the one feeling it.”
“I’m sure it’s temporary,” Slava said.
“That’s what he said, ‘temporary,’” Grandfather said. “As temporary as life or what? Tfoo, may these doctors get covered up to their heads. I heard you wrote something for Israel.”