At the end of 1944, Genrikh returned to Moscow. The war had turned into victory—Stalin’s Ten Blows ushered the Red Army into Europe. Victory was already hanging in the air, but the “killed in battle” notices kept coming.
Of all the boys in their class, only two remained alive after the war: Genrikh himself, and Jack Rubin. Jack came home with no legs. From the class of ’41, there were also only two who survived. One of them was Daniel Mitlyansky, who subsequently became a sculptor. In front of their school, a statue commemorating these boys still stands, a statue made by Daniel at the beginning of the 1970s. But that time was still a long way off.
42 Fifth Try
(2000–2009)
Liza and Yurik saw each other for the first time in the rehabilitation clinic, on the day Yurik was discharged. Liza came to pick up her cousin Marfa, who had finished her rehab treatment on the same day. A group of people who had been waiting for more than an hour for official stamps on their documents, which had been locked in the desk drawer by a secretary who had gone to lunch, consisted of Nora, Tengiz, and Yurik in one cluster, and, in the other, Liza, Marfa, and Liza’s fat aunt Rita, as crushed by the misfortune of it all as a 250-pound hulk, holding a tiny infant encased in a towel—Marfa’s three-month-old son—could possibly be. Marfa, who could hardly be said to exist at all if not for the evidence of her penciled-on eyebrows and large, brown-painted lips outlined in a darker-brown lipstick, had somehow managed to give birth, having barely been aware of her pregnancy or the labor itself. For the whole previous year, Marfa had been in a constant drug-induced stupor, and had only a fragmentary recollection of what had happened. Marfa and Yurik were the only ones in the group who talked to each other. All the other relatives of those who had finished their six-week treatment were cautiously silent. They were used to living with a shameful secret that demanded nondisclosure by all concerned. Yurik and Marfa discussed a fellow who was staying behind in the clinic, and even censured him for his overbearing behavior.
Liza, who had spent a great deal of effort trying to drag her cousin out of her narcotic haze, regarded with sympathy another family who were fighting for the life of their child. Nora and Tengiz left to smoke every ten minutes. The first time they went out, Tengiz motioned to Yurik to come with them to smoke.
“No, no, Tengiz. I don’t smoke … for the time being,” said the curly-haired drug addict, laughing. “Just give me two or three days.”
“Damn, you’re one tough dude, Yurik!” Marfa praised him.
“If you had brought the guitar, I’d sit down to play right now…”
“Your guitar is in the car. I brought it,” his mother said.
“Nora, you’re amazing.”
Maybe they’re not his parents, since he calls them by name, Liza thought to herself. But the fellow called after Nora as she went out, “Mama, the six-string, I hope?”
“Naturally,” she said, nodding.
Nora brought in the guitar. Yurik took it out of the case and stroked the strings with his hand. They responded the way a dog responds to the touch of its master—with eager warmth and devotion. And he played something familiar, tender, and cheerful. His face changed: he pressed his lips together, and his eyes stared in front of him with intense concentration, seeing clearly what was inaccessible to others. His head nodded slightly in time with the music.
How could they have spent an entire month and a half without books, without music, without any interaction with others besides themselves? Liza mused. A strange rehab program. Some American system from Massachusetts, without medication, relying only on soul-saving conversations with psychologists … Well, as long as it helps. Poor Marfa, and this guy Yurik, too; poor things.
She liked him. The expression on his face, the way he played …
He has a happy face. How strange for a drug addict, but he has a happy face. Marfa, on the other hand, has always been inclined to suffering, Liza thought.
Then the secretary came in and took out the stamps, and the two families gravitated apart, in order not to mingle.
Fate attempted to unite Yurik and Liza a second time in the fall of 2006. By this time, he had become steeped in the history of jazz, and in music theory that lay beyond the realm of the purely academic. He had lost interest in performing with bands as a guitarist, and had mastered a profession that seemed to fall into his lap: he had become an interpreter. His English didn’t equip him for the task of literary translation, but it was just what was required for film, especially modern American blockbusters, featuring criminals, policemen, gangs, and prostitutes galore. This was the language of the ghetto, the African American and Latino ghettos in particular, a language in which he was absolutely proficient, and which was not taught in foreign-language institutes or universities. Naturally, he was invited to the “AmFest,” the first Russian-American film festival. He dubbed three films a day. The working schedule was frenzied, but he easily kept up with it.
“The path from my ear to my tongue is short; it bypasses my brain completely,” he said. “My brain gets to take a breather.”
In the break between screenings in the Horizon Theater, where the entire Moscow elite was gathered, especially the more disheveled variety, Yurik went to drink some coffee and ended up at the table where Liza was sitting. He didn’t recognize her. But Liza recognized him, and hesitated—was it worth reminding him that they had met? She asked him whether he remembered when he and Marfa were released from the clinic together. His cup froze in his hand.
“Marfa died four years ago. I was at her funeral,” he said.
“Yes, I arranged the funeral. She was my cousin. It was not the right occasion for getting to know someone, of course. But I don’t remember seeing you there.”
“That year, three of the people who were in treatment with us died. Marfa, Mustafa, and Slava. There were twenty-five people in the group. Two of them, as far as I know, pulled themselves together and stayed clean; about eight people started shooting up again; one person was killed; and I don’t know anything about the rest of them. During the first year, everyone got together regularly in meetings, but, little by little, everyone stopped going. That’s in keeping with the statistics, actually. I’ve got to go now.”
It was their second try, and it failed miserably. This rather plump girl, with long hair and a face that looked a bit feral—like that of a fox or a wolf cub—had reminded him of things he wanted to forget. And he promptly forgot about the encounter.
Liza berated herself—what a little idiot she had been! As if she couldn’t pick a better topic. But she liked Yurik still more than she had at the rehab clinic. There was something indefinable in him that she had never sensed in other people, and the commonalities that other thirty-somethings of her acquaintance shared were completely lacking in him; she couldn’t quite put her finger on what the quality was.
After Marfa’s death, Liza adopted her nephew, Timosha, as her own. He was born with a cleft palate and lip—or “harelip,” in the vernacular. This birth defect did not affect his mental development, but it certainly made his own life, and that of his relatives, miserable. Liza spent a great deal of time with the boy, arranged for consultations with doctors, paid plastic surgeons, and became very emotionally attached to him. Her aunt was only too grateful that she had taken him under her wing. Liza gave up journalism and went to work in a travel agency, as a full partner. Business started booming, in large part thanks to Liza’s talent for talking on the telephone. In addition to the gift of gab, her affable nature, and her sociability, she had a remarkably pleasant voice.