A Replacement Life (16 page)

“Why don’t
you
write it,” Slava said. “I’ll translate. That’s the solution.”

“No, no,” Israel said, waving him away. “Don’t get puffy. Listen, you can’t teach an old Jew how to make money. I’ll tell you a joke, and then you can go to your Manhattan. Two guys are panhandling on a street in Moscow. One has a sign that says: ‘I’m Ivanov,’ in other words a Slav. ‘Please help a poor beggar.’ The other’s sign says, ‘I’m Abramov,’ in other words a Jew. ‘Please help a poor beggar.’ And whoever walks by, they give money only to Ivanov, more and more. It’s like they’re giving money to Ivanov just to stick it to Abramov. Finally, a Jewish guy comes up to Abramov and says, ‘Abramov, what’s wrong with you? Change your sign to a Slav name!’ At which point Abramov turns to Ivanov and says, ‘Look, Moshe, this schmuck is teaching me how to make money.’” Israel quaked with laughter. “What those
shvartzes
pull in the subway? ‘I lost my job and I’m trying to get back on my feet’? Pathetic! An old Russian man could run ten circles around them.”

“I think you underestimate your black-market skills,” Slava said.

“Even a legless man knows how to run when he needs to,” Israel said, shrugging. “We’re all graduates of that particular academy. But it’s too late for some of us. I’m interested in what happens to you, however.”

“I am going to be arrested for forging restitution claims for my grandfathers,” Slava said.

“No need to say it so loudly like that,” Israel said, glancing at the window.

“I’ll be going,” Slava said.

“For your information,” Israel said, peering at him—he was shorter than Slava, but his gaze was strong—“I have no illusions why he mentioned the letter to me. He gives not to give but to show you he gives. Look, it’s a kind of compliment to owe something to Yevgeny Gelman, for a man like that to think you can give him something of use—I can barely take three breaths without coughing. But Slava, don’t pretend
you are doing this to be a good grandson.”

“Don’t pretend you’re a writer,” Slava said.

“Opa!” Israel said. “You may be your grandfather’s grandson, but you are also your grandmother’s grandson. She was the fierce one. That’s the nice thing about having children. They take the best of you both. Two for the price of one.”

“You get your letter, and I get to be with my grandmother for a thousand words,” Slava said.

“Oh,” he said. “I see. That’s nice.”

“Don’t worry, it’ll be under your name.”

“I’m not worried.”

“You should be,” Slava said. “We’re committing fraud. International fraud, apparently. I know that means nothing to any of you.”

“We are always behind you, Gogol,” Israel said. He clapped Slava’s arm. “Have a safe trip.”

As Slava walked out, he wondered how Israel had meant it. Behind Slava in defense or behind Slava, hiding.

On his way to the subway, Slava found himself looking around casually—was anyone interested in his progress? The day’s last light was leaking away, so it was hard to tell. The street crawled with the usual suspects, grandmothers with mesh bags, a bowlegged Mexican, a cop chewing gum, everyone moving, no one stopping because he stopped. Slava felt resentful relief.

On the train home, Slava went over the details of their conversation—visions
of swinging pricks, quadriplegics, Kharkov, and shrapnel sieved through his mind, refusing to snag on some brain branch and bloom—but all of it was either irrelevant or too broad for a claim letter. What had happened to Grandmother after the close call with the Germans? More forest wandering? No, that wasn’t the right direction. Overly similar narratives—Slava was sure that was a red flag.

It had been bothering him since that first night. He hadn’t gotten Grandmother right in Grandfather’s story. Israel was right that improvements could be made, but he was wrong about which. In Grandfather’s letter, Slava had described Grandmother’s actions, but he hadn’t described
her
. What was she like? He couldn’t find out through a scene before or after the war, because that wouldn’t qualify. And it was hard enough to conjure her as a fifteen-year-old waif without having to disguise her as a boy.

He had three stations before he would go underground. He sighed and dialed Grandfather.

“Hi,” Slava said cautiously.

“Hi yourself,” Grandfather said.

“News?” Slava said.

“The new bed’s here,” he said. “It’s nice. Smaller but nice. Japanese wood. First they brought a twin, but that’s the width of a hospital bed. I’m not sleeping in a hospital bed. Oh, it doesn’t matter. I can’t live here anymore. How can I live here if I lived here with your grandmother?”

Grandfather had forgotten their argument long ago. He didn’t hold grudges. They were impractical.

“How do you feel,” Slava said, stalling.

“Like a racehorse. You?”

“Spoken to Mom?”

“More often than you,” Grandfather said. “She’s been here every night.”

“Do you need anything?”

“I need it to be 1975,” he said. “Your grandmother and me on the beach in Yevpatoriya. Do you know how difficult it was to get a vacation voucher for husband and wife at the same time? Most people had to take vacations one by one. And the authorities were always wondering why the country had such a problem with adultery. Degenerates. Do you remember when we took you there, you thought it was water in the cup but it was vodka, and you fell asleep under the table on the beach?”

“Can you tell me something else about Grandmother?” Slava said. “Something about the ghetto?”

“I told you everything I know.”

“Try to remember something else. I need it.”

“What for?”

“I just need it.”

Grandfather took a moment to ponder this. “She didn’t like to talk about it,” he said at last.

“I know, you said that. But surely she said something else. How can you live with someone for fifty years and not know!”

“So now you will educate me on how to live with a woman. Why don’t you wipe the snot from your nose first.”

“I’m about to go into the tunnel.”

“Good for you.”

“The phone doesn’t work in the tunnel.”

“There were pogroms,” Grandfather said. “In the ghetto. Thinning the herd, they called it.”

“And?”

“That’s all there is!”

“All right,” Slava said.

“Call more often,” he said. “Remember your grandfather.”

S
he slept without any clothes. In the morning, Slava liked to finger the grooves left in her face by the pillow. She twitched so he would leave her alone. He waited and then started again. The cat collaborated by climbing on her head. Its name was Tux, but Arianna always called it the Beast. It didn’t look very beastly, just black and white spots that shifted together with its bulk when it moved. Occasionally, Slava and the cat would stare off across Arianna’s sleeping body, taking the other’s measure.

Finally, she opened her eyes. “You know, if you stopped, he’d stop,” she said.

“We can’t stop,” Slava said. “We’re animals about you.”

She laughed. “If you’re so fond of me, let me sleep.”

“You’re hot as a furnace inside that blanket. You could power a factory.”

“So that’s why you sleep so far away,” she said. She threw off the blanket and jumped on top of Slava. The cat resentfully gave up its position. The weight of Arianna felt solid and reassuring.

“It’s Saturday?” he said.

“I hope you’re right, or I’m late for work,” she said.

“So you don’t—Shabbat?”

“To synagogue? Not every Saturday, no. Some Saturdays. My mother’s problem. I pick and choose.”

“Why aren’t you going today?” he said.

“Because I’m happy right here.”

Slava looked up at the ceiling. “Who are you?” he said.

“I know,” she laughed.

“Where did you come from?” he said.

“Los Angeles,” she said. “City out west.”

“What did you think when you got off the plane that first time?”

“Well, I’d been here before.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I thought: Here is a place where everything will be different tomorrow.”

“I think that’s why I dislike it,” Slava said.

“You don’t know anything except your neighborhood,” she said.

“That’s why I don’t,” he said.

“Something tells me that’s not why.”

“Let’s talk about you,” he said.

“It was lonely,” she said. “For some reason, I couldn’t talk to anyone in school. Sometimes you feel things very strongly and you need to follow it even if you don’t know why you feel that way. And I didn’t want to talk to anyone. It’s like all this was my secret and I didn’t want to share it with anyone.”

“You sat on the windowsill and smoked cigarettes.”

“Yeah. But then it stopped one day. I got tired of cigarettes. I really wanted to be healthy. The day I had that thought for the first time, I went to a yoga class. When I was finished, I went to another one. And when that one ended—”

“You did a third.”

“I went to half of a third. In the middle, I was done. I got up and walked out.”

“You’re enlightened.”

“Hardly. I just stopped wanting to dig around.” Her dead fingertip indicated the spot between her eyebrows. “I’ll come back to it. There are things I don’t have, and that’s all right. There are things I want that my mother also wants for me, and that’s all right, too. Do you know what I want?”

“Tell me.”

“For you to make breakfast.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“
Pourquoi
?” she said, drawing back. “I thought we’d have the day.”

“We’ve had the week? I have an errand.”

“What do you have to do at ten
A.M.
on a Saturday morning?”

“Just something,” he said, looking away. “Some of us work on the weekend.”

“Don’t, Slava,” she said, and rolled off. They lay without speaking as she checked her phone. The crown molding near the ceiling was beginning to peel in one corner.

“How did you start fact-checking?” he said cautiously.

She looked over at him. “
Why
is this so important to you?” she said.

“Oh, I just hear you every day,” he said. “‘Mr. Maloney, is your bar made of pine or aspen? Can you call the manufacturer?’”

“Yeah, I guess it sounds strange from the side.”

“Mr. Maloney’s gone his whole life without knowing is it pine or aspen. When has anyone asked him what that bar’s made of?”

“What’s your point?”

“Does it really matter?” he said.

“I guess,” she said, putting down her phone. “But think about it. Maloney’s is in New Jersey. Let’s say they don’t have aspens in New Jersey. I mean, they do—I checked. But let’s say. Somebody happens to know that, they see that wrong, they say, What else is wrong? They lose trust. You can’t give a reader a reason to lose trust.”

“Okay,” he said. “But it’s not always an either/or situation.”

“Meaning?” Her eyebrows gathered.

“Let’s say
Century
didn’t hire women. You’d raise hell.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Now, take—I don’t know—an Arab woman. An Arab woman might say, ‘God willing, they will hire women at some point.’ Which strikes you as—”

“Fear-based naïveté.”

“Right. She’s . . . unenlightened. But she might not see it that way. She may be happier than you.”

“Because she doesn’t know better.”

“But to her it’s a fact all the same.”

“So you report that American women and Arab women see it differently.”

“Would you be a stay-at-home mother?”

“No.”

“But you aren’t having your direction chosen for you like the Arab woman? If you have a story that says, ‘Arab women are unfree,’ that may be factually true from an American standpoint. But it’s not true from a Moroccan standpoint. Or at least not a yes/no proposition.”

“She may be happier than me, but she’s still not free, however you look at it. I don’t want to be a stay-at-home mom, and let’s say it’s a mechanical response to how it was with my mother, but I’m free to choose. I won’t be harassed for it.”

“Not physically,” Slava said.

She rolled onto her back. “Slava!”

“During the war,” Slava said, “my grandfather ran away. World War II. When he turned conscription age, he had his identity card revised down by a year. Then he got on a train and ran off again, even farther east. If he hadn’t, he would probably be dead. And I wouldn’t be here. Which would make you less happy.” He peered over at her, but his attempt at levity failed. “Is he a hero or a coward? Which is it?”

“I don’t know. A bit of both, I guess. A hero to you, a coward to somebody else. A hero to me.”

“Pick and choose,” Slava said.

“Why not.”

“When does ‘pick and choose’ become ‘ignore inconvenient facts’?”

“When you’re trying to get at me.”

He waved her away. After a moment, he said, “I don’t get it. The witness in the box has put his hand on the Bible, so everything that comes out of his mouth is treated as fact unless there’s proof that he lied? Talk about naïveté! Because he’s put his hand on the Bible? Now lightning has struck and all of a sudden he’s unable to lie?”

“You can still check that a woman has two children, not three,” she said. “This village was founded in 1673 but that one in 1725. Chickens lay eggs. We landed on the moon. There’s video!” She stared at him. “You have to see the limit of your point.”

He shrugged and watched the fan spin above them. Arianna did not have air-conditioning. Outside, the sun dimmed under passing clouds.

“Maybe it’ll be cooler today,” he said.

“You’re actually going to talk about the weather.”

“It’s the stuff of poetry,” he said bitterly. The cat cocked its head, sensing an opening.

“This is nice,” she said. “It isn’t for real until you’re fighting. Why is it you can’t make me breakfast?”

“I have to run an errand,” he said flatly. Then he added: “For my grandmother.”

“Oh,” she said. “Sure. I’m sorry. You’ll come back here after?”

“No, I need to go home.”

“Okay, I can come there later.”

“Arianna.”

“Day apart,” she said. “Got it.”