Natasha and Other Stories (4 page)

As a token of his gratitude, the KGB agent personally escorted us up to Sergei’s room. So long as Sergei appeared at the competition and was on the flight to Moscow with the rest of the team, everything else was of no consequence. We could see him as much as we liked. The KGB agent swore on his children’s eyes that there would be no problems.

At Sergei’s door, the agent knocked sharply.

–Comrade Federenko, you have important visitors!

Dressed in official gray slacks and buttoning his shirt, Sergei opened the door. He hesitated to speak until the KGB agent slapped my father’s back and confessed that he was always deeply moved to witness a reunion of old friends. Then, Dusa’s address in his pocket, he turned and departed down the carpeted hall.

In the hallway, Sergei embraced my father and kissed him in the Soviet style. Next to Sergei, my father—five feet six and 170 pounds—looked big. I hadn’t expected the physical Sergei to be so small—even though I had memorized his records the way American kids memorized box scores and knew that he was in the lowest weight class at 52 kilos.

–That bastard, he scared the hell out of me.

–The KGB, they know how to knock on a door.

–Especially that one. A true Soviet patriot.

Sergei looked down the hall in the direction of the KGB agent’s departure. My father looked. So did I. The man had gone.

Sergei turned back, looked at my father, and grinned.

–I was in the washroom, I almost pissed myself. I thought, if I’m lucky, it’s only another drug test.

–Since when are you afraid of drug tests?

–Since never.

–Do I need to remind you of our regard for drug tests?

In his capacity as Dynamo administrator it had been my father’s responsibility to ensure that all the weightlifters were taking their steroids. At the beginning of each week he handed out the pills along with the special food coupons. Everyone knew the drill: no pills, no food.

–Absolutely not. Keeps the sport clean.

–And, of course, you’re clean.

–I’m clean. The team is clean. Everyone is clean.

–Good to hear nothing has changed.

–Nothing.

Sergei clapped my father on the shoulder.

–What a wonderful surprise.

On our way to the hotel, I had been rabid with excitement to see Sergei, but seeing him in person, I couldn’t speak. I stood behind my father and waited to be acknowledged. It seemed like a very long time before Sergei turned his attention to me. When he finally did, he looked down and appeared not to know me.

–And who is this?

–You don’t recognize him?

–He looks familiar.

–Think.

–It’s hard to say.

–Take a guess.

–Well, if I had to guess, I would say he looks a little like Mark. But he’s too small.

–Too small?

–Mark was much bigger. He could do fifteen, maybe even twenty push-ups. This one looks like he couldn’t even do ten.

–I can do twenty-five! I do them every morning.

–I don’t believe it.

I dropped down onto the red and gold Sutton Place carpet and Sergei counted them from one to twenty-five. Panting, I got back up and waited for Sergei’s reaction. He smiled and spread his arms.

–Come on, boy, jump.

I leapt. Sergei carried me into the hotel room and I hung from his arm as my father called Gregory’s room. Sergei’s competition was two days away and it was decided that he would spend a little time with us the next day and then he and Gregory would come for dinner after his competition.

When my father and I returned from the hotel with the good news, my mother was scrubbing every available surface. Floors, oven, furniture, windows. She presented us with several bags of garbage which we dropped down the smelly chute in the hallway. My father told her that Sergei looked good. As though he hadn’t changed at all in the last five years.

–What did he say about the way you look?

–He said I looked good. Canadian. Younger than the last time he saw me.

–If you look young, then I must be a schoolgirl.

–You are a schoolgirl.

–The ambulance comes once a week. Some schoolgirl.

The next morning my father stopped at the hotel on his way to judge events in the middleweight class. Sergei wasn’t competing that day and I took the subway with my father so that I could guide Sergei back to our apartment, where my mother was waiting to take him shopping. As we crossed the lobby toward the elevator I noticed the KGB agent making his way over to intercept us. I noticed before my father noticed. From a distance I had the vague impression that there was something not quite the same about the agent. As he drew closer I saw that his face was badly swollen. With every step he took the swelling became more prominent. It was as though the swelling preceded his face. From a distance he had been arms, legs, torso, haircut, but up close he was a swollen jaw. My father, distracted by his obligations to the competition and nervous about being late, didn’t appear to recognize the man until he was standing directly in front of him. But then, on seeing the agent’s face, my father stiffened and seized me by the shoulder. My God, he said, and simultaneously drew me back, putting himself between me and the KGB agent.

The KGB agent clapped his hands and broke into what appeared to be a lopsided grin. His distended lips barely parted but parted enough to reveal white cotton gauze clamped between his teeth. When he spoke, it was through this gruesome leer, like a man with his jaw wired shut. My father tightened his grip on the back of my neck.

–Roman Abramovich, looks like you really did me a favor.

–She’s the dentist for my family. I go to her. My wife. My son. I swear she always does good work.

The agent’s jaw muscles twitched as he clamped tighter into his grin.

–Good work. Look at me. I couldn’t ask for better. She put in three crowns and a bridge.

–She’s a very generous woman.

–She knows how to treat a man. Anesthetic and a bottle of vodka. I left at four in the morning. A very generous woman. And beautiful. It was a wonderful night, you understand.

–I’m glad to hear you’re happy.

–Roman Abramovich, remember, you always have a friend in Moscow. Visit anytime.

Laughing at his joke, the agent turned, and we proceeded to the elevator and rode up to Sergei’s floor. In the elevator my father leaned against the wall and finally loosened his grip on my neck.

–Don’t ever forget. This is why we left. So you never have to know people like him.

We knocked on Sergei’s door, and after some shuffling, Sergei answered. He was in the middle of his push-ups when he let us into his room. He was wearing an undershirt and his arms were a bold relief of muscles, tendons, and veins. In Italy, during our six-month purgatory between Russia and Canada, I had seen statues with such arms. I understood that the statues were meant to reflect the real arms of real men, but except for Sergei I had never met anyone with arms like that.

As my father was in a hurry, he left me with Sergei as he rushed back out to the convention center. I waited while Sergei dressed.

–So where are you taking me today?

–Mama says we’ll go to the supermarket. She thinks you’ll like it.

–The supermarket.

–The good supermarket. They have every kind of food.

–And you know how to get there?

–Yes. First we take the subway and then the bus. By the subway and the bus I know how to go almost anywhere.

–How about California?

–The subway doesn’t go to California.

–Then maybe we should take a plane.

The way he said it I didn’t know if he was joking or serious until he laughed. I wanted to laugh too but I hadn’t understood the joke. I sensed that I wasn’t intended to understand it in the first place. I was hurt because I wanted very much to be Sergei’s equal, his friend, and I suspected that Sergei wasn’t laughing at his joke but rather at me.

Seeing that he had upset me, Sergei tried to make up for it by asking about the supermarket.

–We sometimes go to another one that isn’t as good. In the other one they don’t have the things they show on the television. But at the good supermarket you can find everything.

On the bus ride home I pointed out the landmarks that delineated our new life. To compensate for the drabness of the landscape I animated my hands and voice. I felt the tour guide’s responsibility to show Sergei something interesting. At the northern edge of the city, home to Russian immigrants, brown apartment buildings, and aging strip malls, there wasn’t much to show. I stressed our personal connection to each mundane thing, hoping in that way to justify its inclusion. There was the Canadian Tire store where I got my bicycle, the Russian Riviera banquet hall where my father celebrated his birthday, one delicatessen called Volga and another called Odessa, a convenience store where I played video games, my school, my hockey arena, my soccer fields. Sergei looked and nodded. I kept talking and talking even though I could tell that what I was showing and what he was seeing were not the same things.

When the bus pulled up near our apartment building I was relieved to stop talking. Sergei followed me into the lobby. I used my key and let us inside. Upstairs, my mother was waiting. For the first time in months she was wearing makeup and what appeared to be a new dress. In the dining room there was a vase with flowers. There was a bowl on the coffee table with yellow grapes. There was another bowl beside it containing assorted Russian bonbons: Karakum, Brown Squirrel, Clumsy Bear. When my mother saw Sergei, her face lit up with true happiness. Involuntarily, I looked away. After so many miserable months I was surprised by my reaction. I had been praying for her to get better, but there was something about the pitch of her happiness that made me feel strangely indecent. I had felt this way once before when I accidentally glimpsed her undressing through a doctor’s office door. Here as there, instinct proscribed against looking at my mother’s nakedness.

From our apartment my mother drove our green Pontiac to the good supermarket and then the mall where Sergei bought blue jeans for himself and for the woman he was dating. Also, on my recommendation, he bought some shirts with the Polo logo on them which were very popular at the time. Against my mother’s protestations he also insisted on buying a shirt for me and one for my father.

–Bellachka, don’t forget, you wake up in the morning, you get into your car, you go to a store, you can buy anything you want. In Riga people now line up just for permission to line up.

I was grateful when my mother didn’t say anything to contradict him, since both she and I knew that the only way we could afford fifty-dollar shirts was if Sergei paid for them.

When my father returned from the convention center that night he was exhilarated. He had witnessed two world records. One by a Soviet lifter he had known. He was energized by the proximity to his former life. He had seen old friends. People recognized him. He had also spent a few hours with Gregory Ziskin and they had been able to have a drink in Gregory’s hotel room. Gregory had filled him in on the Dynamo gossip. Colleagues who had received promotions, others who had retired. The politics with directors. New athletes on the rise. Gregory was proud that, including Sergei, the national team had three weightlifters from Riga Dynamo. There was a new young lifter named Krutov in Sergei’s weight class who showed considerable promise. He had been taking silver behind Sergei for the past year. Having the gold and silver medalists was doing wonders for Gregory’s profile with the ministry. He’d heard rumors of a transfer to Moscow and a permanent position with Red Army.

As a souvenir, my father surprised me with a poster signed by the Soviet national team. We, in turn, surprised him with his Polo shirt. In the living room, my father and I tried on our new shirts. My father said he couldn’t think of when he would wear it. He had plenty of shirts. I had plenty of shirts too, but I felt as though I had only one.

Along with the poster my father also secured tickets for me and my mother for the next day’s competition. My mother, anxious about preparing dinner, felt she couldn’t go. Even though she wanted very much to see Sergei compete. I had no obligations. The competition was on a Saturday. I had no school, no homework. Nothing that could keep me from watching Sergei perform.

At the convention center dozens of wooden risers had been joined together to create a stage. At one edge of the stage was a long table for the officials. My father had his place there along with the two other judges. A small black electrical box sat squarely in front of each judge. The box was connected by wires to a display board. On the box were two buttons, one button for a good lift, the second button for failure. Before the competition started my father allowed me to sit in his seat and press the buttons. As I sat there Gregory Ziskin approached. I had only faint memories of Gregory, who, unlike Sergei, hadn’t often come to the apartment. He was my father’s friend and business partner, but there was a quality to his demeanor that stressed the professional over the personal. He looked perpetually impatient.

At my father’s suggestion Gregory agreed to take me behind the stage so I could watch the lifters warming up. In Riga it was something my father had enjoyed doing. He always liked the energy of the warm-up room. But now, as a judge, it was unacceptable for him to give even the impression of bias or impropriety. Leaving my father to review papers, I followed Gregory through a heavy curtain toward the sounds of grunting and clanging iron.

Standing in the wings, I watched a scene I recognized as familiar only once I saw it. The warm-up room was very big, the size of a high school gymnasium. There was activity everywhere. In small groups, coaches and trainers attended to their athletes. Teams could be distinguished from one another by the colors of their Adidas training suits. Some of the lifters wore the suits, others had stripped down to their tights. In one corner I watched as trainers wrapped and taped knees, in another corner other trainers had set up massage tables. In the center of the room a large section of the floor had been covered with plywood. Several bars had been set up for the lifters. There were also chalk caddies. I looked on with fascination as the men went through their rituals of applying the chalk to their hands, arms, and shoulders. To handle the perfect white cakes of chalk seemed reason enough to become a weightlifter.