“Come on!”
“The bourgeois look to the past and the proletariat looks to the future,” Slava said, thinking a Soviet slogan might divert them, but he bungled part of it.
“I remember,” Vera said in Russian, looking at Slava, “Slava’s family had finally been called to the consul. For the interview if you were going to be let into America. And nobody speaks one drop of English. But you can’t have a seven-year-old boy answering. So they all stumble how they can, and then the consul asks, ‘Why do you want to go to America?’” She said this last part in English. “And nobody understands him. Moments like this — I mean, you know — enough to kill the application. Because they are rejecting people already by this time. Go to Israel, they say.
“And Slava understands, but how can he answer? So he says, ‘I want to meet my aunt Frida.’ And the consul laughs. And everyone laughs. And meanwhile, his mother or father — who was it, Slava? — understands. Because they practiced this answer, you know. ‘Why do you want to emigrate to America?’ Svoboda. And how do you say svoboda?”
“Freedom!” the table shouted.
“How do you remember the word?”
“Aunt Frida!” the table shouted as one.
“And so after Slava said ‘Aunt Frida,’ one of them remembered and said, ‘Freedom.’ And they passed. You can say that without him, his family wouldn’t be here.” She beamed proudly.
The table whooped and rocked with applause. “To Slava!” Oslik whooped. “To Slava!” everyone shouted. Slava gave in and smiled sheepishly. Thimbles knocked his, splashing cognac onto his wrist, palms kneaded his shoulders, and Leonard launched into the “Marseillaise.” Next to him, Vera shone with a thousand lights.
Three hours later, a final piece of herring gleaming undesirably in a small lake of oil and a pack’s worth of cigarettes crushed into a porcelain ashtray, the group had switched positions. The boys were at the table, finishing the cognac, and the girls were smoking on the couch. Leonard’s blazer clung limply to the back of his chair. He had unbuttoned the upper two buttons of his shirt and hung his arm across Slava’s shoulder, as if the two of them had served under Kharkov together. Now and then Slava heard his name in the circle of girls and peered over Leonard’s Pushkinian curls to make out what was being said. It was difficult because Leonard was breathing heavily into his temple. Slava looked at Vera, who looked at him, as if she came equipped with a device that alerted her every time he wanted her attention. She nodded and smiled.
Leonard’s girlfriend, Galochka, wandered over to Leonard and Slava. “Popochka,” she said to Leonard. Little butt. “You’re done eating?” She wedged herself into his lap, eliciting a grunt. “I’m going to feed you until your belly is so big no other woman will want you. And then you’ll be all mine.”
Leonard turned to Slava. “Who said women don’t speak directly?” He turned to Galochka: “Dove, please, we’re speaking.” Galochka pecked Leonard’s forehead and removed herself to the couch.
“How long have you been together?” Slava asked, to ask something.
“I don’t know,” Leonard said, squinting with overfed eyes at the clock. “Our parents have medical offices next to each other.”
“I see,” Slava said. Leonard downed two fingers of cognac and gazed contemplatively at the wall. “What specialty?” Slava said dutifully.
“Gastro?” Leonard said absentmindedly. “Mine are gastro, hers are feet. You and Vera?”
“We just met again,” Slava said.
“She’s special,” Leonard said.
“That’s what everyone says,” Slava said. “We haven’t really spoken. She clears my plate and runs off.”
Leonard tried to focus on Slava through the drink in his eyes. “She doesn’t want to interrupt.”
“What, this?” Slava said.
“You know what?” Leonard said. “You’re okay, Slava. You know why?” He stuck out his fingers — Slava was startled by the gold band on his left hand; he and Galina couldn’t be over twenty-five, but they were married — and counted. “One, you don’t run your mouth. You observe. It’s a gift. People talk too much. They like to hear themselves talk. And two, when Vera said famous Slava was coming, I’ll be honest — I’m drunk, so I’m honest — I thought, This guy is going to be a fucking prick. And you are a prick, a little bit. You think you are better than us. But you’re all right. I like you.”
Despite himself, Slava smiled. Leonard — sloping belly, puffy fingers, the face starting to line — was already a little version of the man he would be in thirty years, to him an achievement. Some questions — America, but a distinctly Russian America; Galina; the medical office he would inherit from his parents — he had answered and would never have to be asked again.
“You’re a charming prick, too,” Slava said.
“Good.” Leonard’s face broadened in pleasure. “Let’s drink to our women.” He reached for the bottle again.
“Galina is driving?” Slava said.
Leonard brought a finger to his lips and winked. Then his teeth closed around the bottle stopper. He extracted it with his mouth and spat it across the table.
“You savage!” Galina shouted from across the room. “I’m not taking you to the dentist when you ruin your teeth.”
“Get up, get up,” Leonard counseled Slava, a bottle in one hand and a Slava in the other. Everyone looked up from their positions. Leonard made eyes at Oslik, who immediately sprang from his seat and dashed for the stereo. A Russian pop song emerged from the speakers. “Opa!” Leonard shouted, swigged from the bottle, and gave it to Slava, who held it at his side. “Drink, drink,” Leonard insisted quietly, pulling Slava, whose right arm now rested around Leonard’s haunch, to an unoccupied part of the living room.
“The lilac fog,” the crooner sang, “sails above our heads.” Slava watched one of Leonard’s trousered, loafered feet kick the air, the keys in his pocket producing a businesslike jingle and his center of gravity immigrating position until Slava was nearly embracing him from behind. “I love this song!” Oslik’s bulb-girlfriend shrieked. Leonard’s leg returned to the floor and he turned to look at Slava: “Nu?” Obediently, Slava kicked up his left leg. “Attaboy!” Leonard roared, rubbing Slava’s head to indicate admiration for his balance despite his having consumed nearly as much cognac as Leonard.
By now the chorus was up—“Conductor, please don’t rush / Can’t you understand / I’m saying goodbye / To her forever”—the entire room shouting in unison and swaying in place. Leonard’s turn: He kicked up his right leg. Slava kicked up his right leg. Leonard swigged, Slava swigged. They went around the living room, the others singing and yelling. Slava must have revealed an unforeseen aptitude for the primary maneuver, because soon he was alone in the middle of the living room, Leonard seeking respite in Galina’s arms and pushing Vera out onto the dance floor. “Ve-ra! Ve-ra!” the crowd chanted, dividing her name into the syllables that Slava had mouthed so many times as a boy. The room swimming, he summoned her with an open hand. Rolling her eyes, she rose to join him, swirling and twirling, demurely coquettish, as he kicked and sprang. They hadn’t planned, but somehow they fit together. Grandfather’s tutelage, so useless at Bar Kabul, directed his arms and legs, and she — she danced on heels as if on bare feet, though after a while she kicked them off to applause. Finally, the song ended and they collapsed on the carpet. The room thundered, feet stamping the floor.
After they were done, everyone wanted to try it, the dining table pulled back and the carpet rolled up until the living room resembled a dance floor. “Tomorrow the people downstairs are going to have my head.” Lara shook her head. “Take this down, apologize, and everything will be okay,” Vera said, holding up an unopened bottle of cognac. “See what we started?” Leonard slurred to Slava even though he was buried in Galina’s considerable bosom. Slava walked up to Leonard’s slumped form and laid a wet kiss on his cheek. “Oh, Galinochka, you frisky, frisky…” Leonard mumbled, and everyone burst out laughing. They danced until the clock showed midnight.