The Nesting Dolls Read online

  Today, however, Natasha’s revolutionary agenda consisted of ducking out early from work. The students weren’t heartbroken to see her go. Natasha consoled herself imagining how shocked they’d be once they learned about the secret life their boring spinster teacher had been living right under their noses. And here the brats thought they were so smart!

  Natasha reported to OVIR as directed, stepping in line behind a motley cohort of academics seeking permission to attend overseas conferences, laborers hoping to vacation somewhere exotic like Bulgaria, and other aspiring emigrants. You couldn’t tell who was who merely by looking. The uncertainty helped Natasha feel less anxious. With Dima by her side, she could execrate the entire corrupt system, storming barricades and all. Sans him, she preferred to get through the application process without drawing attention to herself.

  In line before Natasha was a young woman around the same age, her straight, ebony hair and bedroom eyes suggesting Eastern ancestry. The third time she looked at her watch, then peered around to check how many aspirants were still ahead of them, she told Natasha, “I was here yesterday. They shut the window right in my face. I hope I can get the application today.”

  “Are you going for school?” Natasha asked out of politeness and boredom.

  “My honeymoon.” The girl giggled, flashing an as-yet-untarnished wedding ring.

  “Congratulations,” Natasha said.

  “How about you? Where are you trying to go?”

  Spurred by the woman’s oblivious happiness, Natasha felt compelled to top it. “I’m going to emigrate. My boyfriend and I are. Together.” Much more romantic than some ordinary honeymoon.

  “Oh!” Her line companion looked impressed. “Are you Jewish?”

  Natasha nodded.

  “I heard you people were being allowed to leave.” The girl sighed, envious. “Like always, my papa says, Jews get the best luck . . .”

  “Natalia Nikolayevna.” The OVIR official looked over Natasha’s documents. He tapped her forged invitation with his pen and observed, “That doesn’t sound Jewish.”

  “It’s Nahumovna,” she defended. “The principal at my school, he changed it because—”

  “You’re going to need to prove that. Also”—he handed Natasha her application—“bring your passport, birth certificate, work authorization—you married?”

  “No.” She blushed, as any single girl her age was required to do.

  “Children?”

  “No.”

  “If you’re leaving kids behind, support has to be paid up in advance till they’re eighteen.”

  “I’m not married, and I don’t have any children.”

  “Parents? Going to need their permission. Also grandparents.”

  “Three of them are dead and one lives in Siberia.”

  “Death certificates, then. We can’t have you leaving any dependents behind.”

  “My parents aren’t dependents. They’re working adults.”

  “Still your responsibility. Need their signed affidavits that you’re not abandoning them.”

  Natasha felt an urge to clarify if that wasn’t the point of a socialist state to take care of those who needed it whether or not they also had relatives to do the job?

  “Oh, and one final thing—higher education? University?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’ll need to reimburse us the cost of that. Diploma Tax. Twelve thousand two hundred rubles.” What an oddly specific amount. “Payable upfront.”

  The next morning, Natasha was headed for her classroom when she was waylaid by the principal, who insisted on seeing her in his office.

  “Is this about yesterday?” Natasha asked as she followed his scurrying figure down the hallway. “I felt ill; I got another teacher to cover for me.”

  He shuttled Natasha into his office and yanked the door shut, whipping around to face her, seething, “You could have quit!”

  “It was one afternoon.”

  “The others of you people—they were considerate enough to quit before they filed! Do you know how badly it reflects on me that someone in my employ is betraying the Motherland? They’re going to wonder what I did to encourage you. What if others decide to follow your example? What if they think there’s subversive activity going on right under my roof?”

  “I requested an application. I haven’t even—”

  “Get out. I don’t need trouble. As of this morning—no, as of yesterday—you don’t work here.”

  “What have you done?” Mama demanded the moment Natasha stepped through the door that evening. Despite being newly unemployed, she’d put off telling her parents, wandering around the park for most of the day. Natasha didn’t come home for supper, either, choosing to slink in when Mama would be getting ready for bed and Papa would already be happily inebriated. But as it turned out, they were sitting in the kitchen, waiting for her, the Rozengurts out of sight. Mama still had her work clothes on. Papa was acting sober.

  Mama raged, “You couldn’t have given us a warning? A chance to prepare ourselves?”

  “What happened?” Natasha looked from one to the other.

  “Nothing important,” her father dismissed with a wave of the hand that had been resting against his cheek, not even bothering to make a joke. Which is when Natasha knew it had to be heinous.

  “They called him in,” Mama contradicted. “Party meeting at the factory. Important officials, his supervisors, his coworkers. They put him in front of the room and they let him have it.”

  “Wasn’t so bad.” Papa acted more interested in calming Mama than in rehashing his shame. “Not the other fellows’ fault. They were ordered to be there, told what to say. I’ve done it myself against others. No choice.”

  “The names they called him! A traitor! A turncoat! Because of you!”

  Natasha winced as she pictured all the men and women from Papa’s factory, the ones who’d treated her like an honored guest when she’d visited as a little girl, letting her pretend to turn the big mechanical cranks and try on the heavy aprons, the ones who’d taken sandwiches out of their lunch pails, broken off pieces, and offered them to her, telling Natasha she was too skinny, the ones who’d slipped her sucking candies because she’d been so good and well behaved. And now these people were hurling invectives at Papa. Just like he’d done at them on different occasions. The image brought tears to Natasha’s eyes.

  “Mama, I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

  “About us, no, you most certainly did not think.”

  “That the word would get out so quickly. I was fired today. Papa, did you—”

  “Not yet,” Mama steamed. “But tell her what they did do. Tell her!”

  “A symbolic gesture, that’s all.”

  “They stripped him of his medals. Every last one of them. They said a man who raised a child capable of such high treason doesn’t deserve to be called a Hero of the Soviet Union.”

  “Oh, Papa, no . . .”

  “Medals? Feh. What use are medals? You can’t eat medals.”

  “And that’s another thing. How do you plan for us to get by without your salary and, God forbid, if Papa and I are removed from our jobs?”

  This, Natasha suspected, was another inopportune time to make a crack about the socialist state taking care of its citizens regardless of circumstances.

  “I’m sorry it’s come to this. But once I’m in the West, I could send—”

  “You’re not going anywhere.” Mama crossed her arms in a defense even their Hero of the Soviet Union couldn’t breach. “Because Papa and I will not sign papers granting you permission.”

  In her infamous history of the Communist Party class, Natasha learned that socialism led not only to sexual emancipation and greater freedom for women (which was why the USSR had no need for a women’s liberation movement, unlike the United States) but higher sexual satisfaction as well. In 1952, at a conference in Czechoslovakia, it was unanimously resolved that, due to the equality between women and men in the E
astern Bloc, socialists enjoyed more fulfilling sex lives than capitalists. Natasha wondered where this alleged satisfying and fulfilling sex was taking place. Everyone she knew shared either an apartment or, like her, a room with their parents or, worse, their in-laws. Trying to squeeze in stolen-moment sex while your family was out or pretending to be asleep a few inches away, behind a flimsy curtain, was, she inferred, less than satisfying. And those were her state-sanctioned married friends. If you were single, borrowing a room was about the best you could hope for.

  Which was why, the first time Natasha and Dima got to be truly alone together, it was in the dorm room of Dima’s acquaintance at Odessa University. Floor matrons were known to look away from girls being sneaked in—for the right price. Nonetheless, Natasha and Dima entered separately, playing it safe.

  There was nothing romantic about the room, or its cot, writing desk, chair, and coatrack, from which hung the official resident’s spare set of pants and shirt.

  Natasha gushed, “It’s beautiful!”

  Dima turned quizzically in place, wondering if he’d missed something.

  “I’ve never done anything like this before,” Natasha confessed. “I knew other people did, but not girls like me.” She fumbled finding the words to explain how giddily releasing it felt to, for the first time, not be surrounded by a throng of censorious passersby or by intimates who’d known everything about her since the cradle. To be alone, to be anonymous, to be . . . free.

  “This is our way out,” Dima had told her in Moldavanka. He’d meant from the oppression of the USSR. Natasha thrilled at his words. When Dima spoke of his cause, Natasha saw the poetry mathematics used to hold for her, the promise of a brilliant life glittering tantalizingly in the distance. A chance for her to stand out, to be special, to be somebody. She imagined them hand in hand, fighting for his noble cause, no longer at the mercy of people telling her what she could or could not do. Natasha embraced her vision and flung herself into the arms of the man she’d been unable to stop thinking about for nearly half a decade, kissing him as if she didn’t need anyone’s permission. Not even his.

  An only slightly startled Dima returned Natasha’s kiss, then moved to unbutton her blouse. Her hands reached for his shirt. It would be effortless to keep going, to forget what she’d come to tell him. But it would be dishonorable, and Dima deserved the very best of her.

  Reluctantly, Natasha withdrew, leaving him to stare at her, puzzled and breathing heavily.

  She told him, “My parents said they wouldn’t give me permission to emigrate.”

  He looked relieved the problem wasn’t something he’d done. “They will.”

  Dima wrapped his arms around Natasha’s waist, his face buried in her neck, his lips tracing a trail from her shoulder to her chin.

  Natasha moaned. And then she said, “There’s another problem. The Diploma Tax. I could never raise twelve thousand rubles.”

  “You won’t have to,” he murmured. “It hasn’t been enforced since 1973, though the OVIR drudges are still instructed to act as if it is. Americans have this amendment”—he was kissing her cheek—“Jackson-Vanik. It ties trade to human rights.” Her brow. “The U.S. objected to the Diploma Tax. A group of their Nobel laureates protested against it. So while it remains on the books, the Politburo decided not to enforce it, to keep the Americans trading with them.” The last thing Dima said before catching her upper lip with his teeth was, “You’re in the clear.”

  “Oh.” Natasha wasn’t as thrilled as she knew she was expected to be. She’d been hoping to use it as an excuse not to have to go against her parents, and to remain with Dima—through no fault of her own.

  “Once you receive permission”—Dima began unbuttoning his shirt—“we’ll hand you a list of others looking to emigrate, so you can arrange visovy for them, like we did for you.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?” Natasha followed suit, undressing, while her mind skittered in multiple directions. “Can’t you be arrested for that?”

  “You won’t be carrying the information openly.” Off came Dima’s pants. “You can try to memorize it—that’s the best way.” He sat on the bed and beckoned Natasha to join him. “Or we could hide it on you.” Natasha’s clothes were now off, as Dima embarked on a thorough investigation of potential hiding places. “The courier for the list with your name on it, he took out the elastic of his underwear, wrote the pertinent details on it, then slipped it back in. They stripped him at the border, even stuck a speculum up his ass, but they never found our index.”

  It wasn’t the most romantic sentence Dima could have uttered at the moment, Natasha noted. But it was also, for the first time since they’d met, the first moment when Dima’s attention, his passion, his concern was focused exclusively on her, and nothing else.

  It would have to do for now.

  Chapter 26

  Natasha didn’t expect everything to change immediately, but she did expect something to change eventually. The first time their group assembled after Natasha and Dima spent the afternoon together, Dima sat at the head of the table, as always. Natasha hadn’t expected him to save her a seat next to him—this wasn’t grade school. But it did feel odd that Ludmilla still occupied that right-hand place of honor. Natasha ended up in her usual spot, three spaces down, one ahead of the cuticle-chewing Marina who, a few months earlier, had decided to turn religious, change her name to Miriam, and start covering her hair with a scarf. She hardly ever said anything, so it was easy to forget she was there. A fate Natasha was determined not to share.

  She was heartened when the first item on Dima’s agenda was the announcement that Natasha had begun her emigration process. He beamed at her, and she basked in the glow.

  Sadly, the remainder of the meeting consisted of items that didn’t require beaming. Dima updated them on the efforts of counterparts overseas, the peaceful rallies staged in the United States by the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, and the more militant sit-ins of the Jewish Defense League, as well as the underground efforts of Israel’s Nativ, who suspected they were being spied on by the KGB, making smuggling out information about refuseniks even more difficult. When Dima brought up that last point, Natasha attempted to catch his eye, so they could share a furtive smile about the last time they’d discussed the matter. He shook his head and looked away.

  And so it went, Dima covering their ongoing samizdat distribution of not only handwritten copies of Archipelago but also a Russian translation of Leon Uris’s Exodus, as well as the poems of Joseph Brodsky. The latter weren’t political, but since they’d been judged anti-Soviet and their author locked up in a mental institution as a parasite who failed to contribute to the good of the Motherland, Dima felt they owed the brave rebel their support.

  At the end of the meeting, however, outside of everyone’s hearing, Dima sidled by Natasha and casually let her know that his acquaintance at Odessa University would be taking a long exam tomorrow afternoon. Natasha smiled.

  She was the favorite now.

  There was a different floor matron patrolling the hall, a crone who barely reached Natasha’s shoulder yet sat so regally, she managed to look down her nose while looking up from beneath an ill-fitting wig the color of rancid beets. Natasha presumed she and Dima would enter separately. But at the sight of this Oracle of Delphi, Dima assured, “It’s all right,” and grasped Natasha’s hand to lead her inside.

  “Youdifa Solomonovna,” Dima greeted her. “You’re looking wonderful!”

  “That’s because I live a wonderful life,” she repeated by rote, and discreetly tucked the rubles Dima slipped her into a pocket already bulging with similar bills.

  “Aren’t you afraid she’ll report us?” Natasha asked as soon as the door closed behind them and Dima set immediately to removing his clothes. What had his admonitions about their never being seen together been for all these months, if he felt free to disregard the precaution on a whim?

  “Youdifa Solomonovna is one of us. She teaches Hebrew to our g
roup of refuseniks every Tuesday and Thursday night.”

  A group Natasha wasn’t invited to, allegedly for the same reason she and Dima couldn’t be seen together in public. She told herself it was further proof of just how valuable she was to the group—and to Dima. She told herself she wasn’t jealous of the extra time women like Ludmilla and Miriam got to spend with Dima. She told herself those women had to share that time with assorted others and spend it reading children’s books written in a sequence of squibbles. She told herself the time she and Dima spent together was their own. And a lot more fun.

  “She was in Leningrad during the siege. That’s how she lost her hair, typhus. When there was no food or drinking water to be had, she was one of the women you hear about, still scrubbing revolutionary monuments for the glory of Stalin. She survived all nine hundred days. Decorated a Hero of the Soviet Union! Then, last year, she applied to emigrate to Israel. She was fired from her job as university librarian and sent here, instead. But she’s a tough one. She’ll outlast us all.”

  An inspirational and courageous story, yes, the sort of story that, one day, Natasha expected wide-eyed acolytes to be telling about her. But that was in the future. At the moment, all Natasha could focus on, even as her skirt slipped to the floor and she unbuttoned her blouse, was, “I feel like there’s so much I’m missing. So much more help I could be to you, if you’d just let me participate. Like Ludmilla and Miriam.”