The Nesting Dolls Page 23

  Natasha’s and Boris’s parents sat glued to the television, watching the images from Russia, the crowds at the Kremlin, Yeltsin on the tank, Gorbachev resigning. The republics, some of which had been connected for five hundred years, falling away like crumbs.

  “I don’t believe it,” Papa kept mumbling. “I can’t believe it. I know history. I know all empires end. But I never expected to see it. What did we do it for?” Papa’s confusion turned to anger. He pointed to his sightless eye. “What were we fighting for?”

  Natasha understood their bafflement. It had been difficult enough as Gorbachev’s glasnost spewed out revelations about crimes committed by the Soviets. Her parents had known it was bad; there were always stories, always rumors. But they hadn’t known just how bad. The final straw for Papa was confirmation from the Katyn Forest where, in 1940, fifteen thousand Polish nationals had been executed and buried in mass graves by the NKVD. They were supposed to be allies, but Stalin saw them as threats. When the Red Cross investigated, Stalin severed relations, insisting the murders had been committed by Germans, not Soviets. Now Gorbachev was admitting complicity.

  “Not our boys,” Papa moaned. “Not our soldiers. They were good boys. We were defending our Motherland. We were heroes.”

  Natasha sympathized with his heartbreak.

  Because she was in the throes of her own. Along with glasnost and the dawn of a new political age came the release of political prisoners.

  Dima, among them.

  It was in all the local Russian language newspapers. The American ones, too. Everyone was buzzing about these freedom fighters, now being showered with Congressional Medals of Honor, Medals of Freedom, book contracts, and invitations to tell their stories in the United States.

  Dimitri Bruen, Natasha read in Novey Amerikanetz, would be speaking at the YM-YWHA in Bensonhurst about his life as a prisoner of conscience. Accompanying him would be his wife.

  Miriam.

  The ex-Marina had spent the sixteen years since Dima’s capture championing his cause, at home and abroad. She’d been placed under house arrest, she’d been exiled, and, as a reward, she’d been among the first released by Gorbachev under pressure from President Reagan. Miriam moved to Israel, where she and Dima were married by an Orthodox rabbi in absentia. Not the way Natasha had imagined it but close enough for her to feel robbed. Now that Dima was free, he and Miriam went everywhere together. At each venue, Dima swore that half his medals and accolades belonged to her. She’d done the hard work of keeping his memory alive and mobilizing the masses to fight for him. He’d still be in Siberia if it weren’t for his Miriam.

  That could have been Natasha.

  That should have been Natasha.

  Just because she wasn’t the hero of the hour didn’t mean Natasha hadn’t worked just as hard as Miriam. Natasha had taken just as many risks, put her life on the line in the exact same way, even if the media didn’t know about it. Natasha realized, now that she’d had over a decade to think about it, that she hadn’t been a coward. She’d simply been brave in a different way. She’d chosen to obey Dima’s wishes and put the safety of their daughter ahead of personal goals. Miriam hadn’t been compelled to make such a difficult decision. Miriam was free to continue flitting about the globe, untethered and irresponsible. She didn’t understand a mother’s sacrifice.

  Natasha checked the date and time of Dima’s appearance at the Y. It was scheduled for a weekday morning. Boris would be at work. Julia would be at school.

  Natasha told her daughter there’d been a change of plans. They were going to hear a great man speak. It would be much more educational than any classes she’d be missing.

  “No,” Julia wailed. “You don’t understand, Mama. This could lower my grade!”

  “You’re coming,” Natasha informed her daughter, gambling that Julia would be too cowed to push back. And one more thing. “Don’t tell Papa about it. Don’t tell anybody.”

  Natasha stood at the back of the auditorium, Julia by her side, watching the crowd fill in for Dima’s lecture with the elderly and the unemployed. Who else had free time on a Wednesday morning? Julia had her nose buried in a textbook, whimpering about the science class she was missing.

  Natasha asked, “Did you tell Papa we were coming here today?”

  “You told me not to.”

  Natasha recognized the conflict trembling through her daughter’s body as she struggled to decide which was worse, disobeying an order from her mother, or keeping a secret from her father. Which was the right thing to do and which was the wrong thing?

  Natasha considered telling Julia that was why she’d majored in math. In math, there was always a correct answer you could prove. Well, unless you’d been assigned a Jewish problem. Which, of course, made Natasha think of Dima.

  Not that she’d managed to think about much else since news broke of his release. Natasha scoured each television interview and newspaper article, looking for a message meant for her, a private signal that Dima’s priority upon being set free was to track down his child—and her mother.

  Miriam must have told him about Natasha’s immigration to America. Surely, that had been among Dima’s first questions. Miriam would have tried to twist Natasha’s motives, make her look bad, suggest she had fled in fright, first from the hijacking attempt and then from the scrutiny that followed. Miriam would make it sound like Natasha broke from the KGB questioning and from being tailed night and day. But Dima would know better. He wouldn’t say anything to Miriam. She wouldn’t understand. She wasn’t a parent like they were.

  The auditorium grew hotter, a mass of bodies that, despite living in America, hadn’t caught on to the deodorant trend in tipping-point numbers. The women sat fanning their dripping necks and cleavage with folded programs. The men rolled up their shirtsleeves and loosened their top buttons, revealing tumbleweeds of graying hair at odds with their bald heads. It smelled like everyone had brought a snack. Natasha could make out cans of sardines, a jar of herring, sliced sausage on rye bread, pickled tomatoes, an uncut hunk of Swiss cheese, and a small orchard of seasonal fruit.

  A cohort sitting in front of them noticed the hardworking Julia leafing through her book and wiping at the sweat beneath her nose with an index finger. The woman thrust a handful of green grapes at her, urging, “Eat, eat, little one. They’ll cool you off.” When Julia hesitated, looking to Natasha for permission, the woman pressed on, “You’re too skinny. You need to eat.”

  Natasha shrugged, indifferent, and Julia accepted the grapes, thanking her in Russian. The woman beamed. “Such a well-brought-up girl.” Then, as an aside to Natasha, she harkened, “In USSR, fruits so shriveled, so ugly. In America, it is like all food wears makeup, no?”

  Natasha smiled wanly, hoping that would terminate the conversation. She wished to avoid drawing undue attention to Julia, fearful that everyone would spot her resemblance to Dima the moment he ascended the stage. This was a private matter. Natasha refused to be the subject of gossip.

  A smattering of applause starting at the front and spreading outward like a nuclear blast cued Natasha to Dima’s arrival. He sauntered onstage behind the center’s director, Miriam a step behind. She looked no different than Natasha remembered. But that could have been because all Natasha remembered were Miriam’s shapeless, long-sleeved dresses that fell below the knee, and a scarf tied beneath her left ear.

  Dima, on the other hand, now lived trapped underneath the casing of an older, pudgier man. She’d expected him to be thinner. More than a decade in Siberia suggested drastic weight loss would be on the menu. Instead, he had rounded out, the vast shoulders hunched over a paunch, his forearms and palms downright beefy, his thighs brushing against each other. Natasha guessed that, since his release, Dima had been overindulging in the delicacies of the West.

  His hair was speckled with gray, though the original silk-stalk color made it difficult to tell. Natasha sneaked a peek at Julia, wondering if her daughter would also be able to hide her aging in s
uch a manner. While Natasha was looking at Julia, she searched the teen’s face, wondering if Julia sensed something, anything? The girl was focusing on Dima, having dutifully put her textbook away.

  “What do you think?” Natasha couldn’t stop herself from asking.

  “He’s a brave man,” Julia responded, like the gold-medal student that she was.

  Natasha sighed.

  Chapter 33

  The brave man commenced speaking about his bravery. And Natasha wondered if she’d misunderstood. Dima claimed he was talking about his years of activism in Odessa. But the existence he was describing, of loneliness, of isolation, of never knowing whom he could trust and not being able to expose his real self with anyone, that had to be about his time in the Gulag. He talked about the boredom and drudgery of day-to-day resistance, how much of it was futile. What good, Dima asked, did the longhand copying of forbidden books do anyone in the end? Or furtive meetings where wannabes talked much and did little? No—Dima raised his voice in rehearsed passion—action was the only thing that mattered. Bold action, drastic action, committed action. It’s not enough, he exhorted the crowd, to cluck in sympathy and shake your head about how awful things are. Change can come only through action. And the only action that brings about change is the kind that brings with it great personal risk—and great group reward.

  The audience erupted into applause. Julia had to elbow Natasha to prompt her into raising her palms and bringing them together, out of sync with the rest.

  Dima went on talking. He talked about the horrors of prison, interrogations that went on for weeks, questioners changing in shifts, while Dima passed out from lack of sleep and was revived with hoses spraying ice water. He talked about his hunger strikes and his forced feedings, tubes jammed down his throat while he lay strapped onto a metal table. He talked of sharing cells with rats and body lice, of the untreated infections that erupted over his body. And he talked about the woman who’d allowed him to survive it all.

  Natasha’s heart plummeted into her stomach. Surely, now . . .

  But no, of course, it was Miriam. Miriam who stood by him; Miriam who never gave up on him; Miriam who, Dima was thrilled to announce, was pregnant with Dima’s first child.

  They were both excited. They had waited so long to become parents.

  The crowd applauded again. Some shouted, “Mazel tov.”

  Natasha clutched Julia’s wrist, uncertain whether it was to stop her from clapping or to reassure herself that the girl was real.

  “Anyone can have a baby,” Natasha told Julia, in response to her questioning look. “It’s not an achievement worth applauding.”

  There was a meet-and-greet after the formal talk. Fans queued up to shake Dima’s hand, ask him questions, slap him heartily on the shoulder. Natasha lined up, waiting her turn.

  “Hello, Dima,” she would say.

  “Natashenka!” he would gasp.

  “I live in America now,” she would say.

  “I didn’t know,” he would say.

  Natasha would smile forgivingly at Miriam. She would keep her secret and not tell Dima that his wife knew. Natasha understood Miriam’s desperation to hold on to him, to let Dima think she would be giving him his first child.

  “This is my daughter, Julia,” she would say, nudging the girl forward. “She’s fifteen years old.”

  They would need to go somewhere private to talk after that.

  The line stretched on. You’d think they were selling opening-day movie tickets—the only thing, Natasha and her family had been shocked to realize, for which Americans were prepared to stand in line. That’s what Natasha got for hiding in the back. She should have grabbed a seat, front and center. Everything would have gone differently if Dima had spotted her right away.

  And then he did. Like the song promised, Dima looked across a crowded room, and he saw her. But did he fly to her side? Did her make her his own?

  No.

  Because that happened only in Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals.

  Though, to be fair, like the tune promised, Dima did gaze across a crowded room. And what he saw there was . . . a stranger.

  There was no recognition. No recognition of Natasha, no recognition of Julia. How could he not recognize Julia? She was the spitting image of him! How could Dima not recognize his own child? More important, how could he not recognize the physical manifestation of everything he and Natasha had shared? It was that last part that shattered her the most. There they were, Dima and Natasha, alive in one body. And it meant absolutely nothing to Dima.

  Had Natasha truly aged so much? Or had she ultimately meant so little to him? They’d spent nearly every day together for months. Natasha still recalled the faces of colleagues she’d worked with then, even of some of her students. They would run into each other on the Brighton boardwalk, and there was always a flash of recognition, no matter how much time had passed.

  Yet Dima had overlooked Natasha without a blink.

  “Am I looking old?” Natasha demanded of a startled Boris the moment he walked in the door after work. She’d passed the afternoon studying herself in the mirror, pulling on her skin to see if that made the wrinkles smooth, plucking gray hairs, and smacking the bottom of her chin with the back of her palm, commanding the wattle to stay in place. Yet, no matter from which angle Natasha scrutinized herself, she still recognized the brave young woman who’d made the resistance possible. They wouldn’t have been able to do it without her. Dima had said so himself, hadn’t he? The day she procured their tickets. He’d said it in front of everyone.

  “You’re looking beautiful,” Boris answered, not even waiting to remove his shoes before rushing to appease her. The most shocking part was that he appeared to mean it. Boris honestly didn’t see the wrinkles, the gray hair, the teetering chin.

  Natasha said, “You knew I’d been in your room because you could smell me. You knew I was pregnant just by looking at me.”

  He cocked his head, wondering why the dive into ancient history. They hadn’t discussed or even alluded to these incidents since they happened.

  “You’d know me anywhere,” Natasha said.

  “Where are you, my light, Natasha?” Still standing in their apartment entryway—among the shoes on their shelf, the umbrellas in their stand, and the jackets hanging on their hooks—Boris launched into Pushkin’s poem. “No one’s seen you—I lament.” He went through the whole thing, line by line, ending with, “And at home, depressed and dazed / I’ll recall Natasha’s grace.”

  “Papa!” Julia came bursting through the door to her bedroom, and, for a moment, Natasha feared she’d be unmasked.

  But their daughter wanted only to report some triumph from math class, a complicated problem she’d been the sole student to untangle.

  “Sha!” Natasha raised her hand, holding the child at bay. “Let Papa catch his breath. He works so hard for us, he doesn’t need to be jumped on the moment he walks through the door!”

  Julia ground to a halt. Not due to being reprimanded—she was used to Natasha reprimanding her—but over the reprimand’s context and content. Boris froze in his tracks, as well. Both peered at Natasha in confusion.

  “Sit down,” Natasha ordered Boris. “It’s sweltering. You must be dying from waiting on the subway platform. I will get you some ice cream.” Before he could remind her, she added, “Warmed up a little in the microwave, so it doesn’t hurt your teeth. Julia, run and get the fan from our bedroom; set it up so Papa can have some air.”

  As the girl scurried off, and Boris moved hesitantly toward his La-Z-Boy, peering curiously at Natasha over his shoulder, she went on, addressing their daughter, “Do you ever think about the sacrifices Papa made for us? He had a good job in the USSR. He was an important man. He gave it up to come to a place where he didn’t speak the language, where he didn’t know if he’d be able to find such important work again, where he might have been forced to sweep the streets, like some dvornik. He did it for us, so we could have a better life.�
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  “I know that, Mama.” If Julia had been a different child, the words might have come out defiantly. But Julia was merely meekly agreeable.

  “Your mama made sacrifices, too.” Boris sat down, startled when Natasha reached over to yank the handle that would put his legs up. “She is a marvelous mathematician, much stronger than me. She could have had a successful career in America, but she chose to dedicate her time to you, instead of to the money she could have made.”

  “We did not need the money,” Natasha said. “Papa took care of us. He promised he would, and he did. I never had to worry, not like some others. I knew Papa would keep his promises. He wouldn’t forget.” Natasha stroked the top of Boris’s head, smoothing down the strands of damp hair that grew thinner every year. “Thank you, my Boris.”

  He tentatively raised his arm, squeezed her wrist between his thumb and forefinger, brought it nervously to his mouth and pecked the back of Natasha’s hand, then quickly released it, reluctant to press his luck.

  Natasha bent over and, much to the shock of all three of them, kissed her husband fully and deeply on the lips. Then she went to pop his ice cream into the microwave.

  Boris sat glued to his chair, stunned. Julia first turned away, embarrassed, then turned back to check if the unprecedented public display of affection was over. She waited to see if any more odd things would happen. When they didn’t, when Natasha handed Boris his tepid ice cream, smoothed down his hair yet again, and bustled off, Julia figured it would be okay to start telling Papa about the math problem. It would help both pretend everything was normal.

  Natasha watched them from the side. How could two people who looked so little alike . . . also look so much alike? It wasn’t their physical characteristics. It was their gestures. The way they cocked their heads in consternation, the way they furrowed their brows in disapproval. What did Americans call it? Two peas in a pod? That’s what Boris and Julia were.