The train was waiting for him to saunter inside before it closed its doors. Wedged into the corner, feeling mighty, Pasha went to work sifting the free literature amassed at information desks, making two piles, one to discard and one for further study. He next looked up when the conductor shouted, Last stop, last stop, train going to the yard, everybody off! He grabbed a pile, suddenly unsure whether he’d grabbed the one intended for keeping or for tossing, and scrambled out onto the platform. He’d arrived at Woodlawn, in the Bronx.
• • •
IF ESTHER AND ROBERT NASMERTOV were to give an official account of their son’s relationships (which, to be sure, they’d be glad to do), the name Misha Nasmarkin would be assigned, with harmonizing confidence, that parentally beloved distinction of best friend. In accordance with the rule for household-endorsed friendships, it had its origins in tender youth. From first grade all the way through to tenth (the last year of schooling prior to college), with the exception of that one year Pasha stayed home due to let’s not get into it, the two boys had been in the same class. At thirteen they both made the leap to the gifted-and-talented high school (unhindered by the four layers of added hurdles, one for each Jewish grandparent). They’d taken up a common cause — the death of Ms. Pulvitskaya, enemy of literature (a cause of which even the parents approved). And the surnames! It was as if the universe had, in the spirit of economy, created two boys but one desk. Day after day, year after year, it was their four legs, twitching and kicking or lifeless and numb, Misha’s on the left, Pasha’s on the right, but regardless because all four belonged to the desk. Ten-year-old Pasha had already demonstrated a catastrophic intolerance for the idiocy of others, yet he found a soft spot for Misha, not in response to a quality inherent in Misha but to Misha’s struggle with the class, which met his ceaseless attempts at fitting in with merciless contempt that in turn sparked in Misha a still more fervent desire for acceptance. Misha was the pit stuck in the windpipe of a burly beast. Pasha adopted him, allowing him to get away with remarks, tastes, and habits that from anybody else would’ve been grounds for that person’s obliteration from Pasha’s psychic radar. In a room of thirty, Pasha might acknowledge the existence of a handful. Many of the obliterated were teachers, their assignments obliterated along with them. Pasha would’ve been expelled on more than one occasion had his father not been the Dr. Nasmertov. For those deranged teachers with no mortal fears (Ms. Pulvitskaya), Robert would bring smoked pork sausage wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper. The taste bent her soul in such a way that even outside her stomach nothing could remain as stark and unbending.
No longer bound by the 120-by-70-centimeter wooden board full of obscene and graphic carvings, the boys would’ve drifted apart in one of a million ways. Instead Misha’s father was tipped off to a very likely arrest — he was the director of the vodka plant, a position that rarely ended in leisurely retirement — and they scrammed. The friendship was embalmed. That they lived in different countries and continued to correspond was seen as a testament to their bond; in fact, it was the only reason for its survival. Minimal maintenance required. A seasonal phone call, a rare letter of personal updates peppered with unavoidable literary pretensions, a warm sentiment or two about one day living in the same city or at least on the same continent.
Misha had arrived in America at an odd age, too young for the usual immigrant dance step of struggle and settle, sweat blood for two years, then fall into a respectable career with decent pay and a retirement plan, fueled by the hope that your progeny will have a better go of it but too old to attempt camouflage, hoping only that the seams don’t show. His father belonged to the businessman species, one of those hastily assembled men with an electric stride, a plethora of tics, and an inability to sit at dinner tables. They abridged the struggle and settled for nothing short of the full American-dream package, which included a certificate of struggle completion, Park Avenue penthouse, tasteful collection of automobiles, new face for the wife even before the old one went to shit, and a downtown apartment for their artistic son. Artist was preferable to writer — why set limits, and didn’t he also have an interest in film? They provided the best platform for success that money could buy, enrolling him in non-degree programs, financing interactive projects, and passing along relevant phone numbers, which he used unabashedly, because timidity was the quickest route to nowhere. With an accent he thought to be his only hindrance but was actually his edge, Misha asked the local literati out to dinner and to drink the fine champagne (cognac) at his loft. In return he expected to be taught the ropes, the implicit request being that a cushy spot in the front row of the American Parnassus be freed, dusted, and prepared for his soft, pasty, not overly demanding tukhes. Meanwhile he’d be following in the steps of Conrad and Nabokov and transmuting his literary output to the only language now acknowledged.
Nobody protested when Misha offered his loft for Saturday soirees, sampling of his liquor cabinet, laughing at sloppily told tales of backward life in the old country — they distill their own moonshine on the job! drink their mother’s perfume! pay doctors in sour cream whose quality is tested by sticking in a fork! — but upon being handed a manuscript of his novel-in-progress they became unreachable. Though there were those, too, who prioritized a good time and would wiggle endlessly to get it. I haven’t had time yet; first chance I get; my mother’s sick; so much potential. As these wigglers assumed, Misha tired of asking or finally noticed the darting gaze of a friend yet again being inconvenienced to lie.
If Misha couldn’t be great, he’d be contemporary — he returned to composing in Russian, making “shocking” use of its wealth of profanity and thereby alienating the friends of his parents, a not-insignificant demographic when it came to sales. But Russian friendship, unlike American, was burdened by loyalty — a chapbook came out in Moscow and was translated into Turkish. He tried to live as if his life were a success, which inevitably led to discrepancies and incongruities. Reality was a bad choice of enemy — it had no need for disguise, didn’t respect the rules, and hit below the belt. Every new and/or unknown situation (in which reality festered in its most virulent strain) had to be met with all available shields and methods of defense at the ready. A reality-twisting muscle developed, which converted raw contradictory information into what should have been, bridging every inconsistency, manually returning everything to the shelter of sense; with time the muscle’s power grew, and by now it worked almost at the speed of reality. The “almost” was tragic. It revealed the muscle’s existence to those who were either very intimate with Misha or very perceptive. Pasha, who was both, posed a significant threat.
A reunion on his turf made Misha nervous. He’d been using his letters to Pasha as opportunities to flesh out fantasies. So he forgot about Pasha’s visit until one night when he was flossing his teeth after an insipid evening organized by the elusive, mentally disturbed Plinsk and the phone rang. Of all people it was Robert Grigorievich, Pasha’s father, inquiring in a voice throaty and hoarse whether Pasha didn’t happen to be in Misha’s company at the moment.