The Wild Child Part 4

Faith was one of Rouenna's specialties. Her family's tiny duplex on Vyse and 173rd in the Bronx fairly burst with olive-skinned ceramic Madonnas nursing sweet baby Jesuses, just as the fifteen reproductive women of the extended household gave sustenance to their newborn Felicias and Romeros and Clydes, everywhere breast milk and obeisance and quiet American devastation. In the late seventies, when Rouenna was a toddler, their apartment building in Morrisania had been torched for insurance purposes. One afternoon a threatening anonymous note was slipped under their door, and by evening "finishers" came to strip their apartment of its electrical wiring and plumbing fixtures. Rouenna's mom draped her with a blanket to protect her from the winter cold, and by nightfall their building joined the parade of torches lighting up the northern bend of the Harlem River. Fortified by the quiet submission of the poor, they trooped over to a homeless shelter that had been recommended to them by other relatives in similar circ.u.mstances. Eventually some Methodists won their trust by feeding them. They found her mother a job sweeping city streets, and one of the younger, more mobile grandmothers was set up selling sweet ices on a street corner (the men of the household had long since fled). The Methodists helped them fill out applications for the new government housing that was then slowly revitalizing the Bronx. By the nineties, Rouenna's family had climbed into the ranks of the lower middle cla.s.s, their meager but ever-growing worldly goods racing ahead of their obliterated urban psychologies. And then I came along, the "rich Russian uncle sent by G.o.d" who had taken such interest in their daughter's development. Little did they know who was saving whom.

"I know you're all heartbroken over your daddy," Rouenna said as she worked the hump, "but I gotta say, he didn't do right by you."

"He didn't love me enough?" I asked.

"He drags your a.s.s to Russia, then he kills the Oklahoma dude, and now you can't leave. My family may be f.u.c.ked up, but at least we look out for each other. When I told my moms you was Jewish, not Methodist, she was like, 'Long as he treat you good.' "

"It's different in Russia," I said, kissing one of Rouenna's hands, which was cradled beneath my chin. "Here a child is just an extension of his parents. We're not allowed to think or act differently from them. Everything we do is to make them proud and happy."

"Whatever," Rouenna said. "Why don't you just do what makes you you proud and happy and let your dead father rest already?" proud and happy and let your dead father rest already?"

"You know what that would be, sweetie?" I asked.

"You wanna bust a nut in me?"

"I want to do some laundry."

Like all Jewish boys growing up in Russia, I'd had all of my earthly needs (save one) taken care of by my mother, but after Rouenna moved into my gargantuan Financial District loft, she exposed me to a new experience-the Laundromat. At first I insisted that a professional laundress wash our socks and underwear, but Rouenna taught me there was something simple, methodical, and pleasing about doing it yourself. She taught me all about temperatures and detergents and how to treat "delicates." After the drying machine stopped spinning, we would roll up our socks together. She would make perfect little b.a.l.l.s out of the socks, and when we got home, it was such a pleasure to unroll them and put on a warm fresh pair. I'll always a.s.sociate self-laundered socks with democracy and the primacy of the middle cla.s.s.

I took Rouenna down to the cellar. A laundry was already in progress. My manservant, Timofey, was supervising a young new maid as she sorted through my tracksuits and loincloth-style underwear. "Yes, that's how we do it here," Timofey was saying to the maid, nodding sagely. "That's just how the master likes it. What a good girl you are, Lara Ivanovna."

I chased away the servants, threatening to beat them over the head with my shoe (it's a little pantomime I do with the staff; they seem to enjoy it). "Thanks for FedExing me the fabric softener sheets, Rowie," I said. "We don't have the good kind here. I can't get enough of this 'outdoor fresh scent.' "

Rouenna was looking over the control panel of the new washing machine I had airlifted out of Berlin. "How does this work, boy-o?"

"The instructions are in German."

"Duh, I can see they're not in English. Show, don't tell."

"What?"

"Show, don't tell."

"Meaning what?"

"It's something Professor Shteynfarb always says in my fiction cla.s.s. Like instead of expositing about something, you just gotta come out and say it."

"You're taking a writing cla.s.s with Jerry Shteynfarb Jerry Shteynfarb?"

"You know him, spuds? He's awesome. He says I have a really authoritarian voice. And you got to have an authoritarian voice to write phat fiction."

"He said what what?" I dropped a tub of detergent on my sweaty left foot. The toxic hump shot a jolt of despair across my body, filling my mouth with what tasted like bad medicine. I immediately saw Rouenna and Shteynfarb together in bed.

Let me give you an idea of this Jerry Shteynfarb. He had been a schoolmate of mine at Accidental College, a perfectly Americanized Russian emigre (he came to the States as a seven-year-old) who managed to use his dubious Russian credentials to rise through the ranks of the Accidental creative writing department and to sleep with half the campus in the process. After graduation, he made good on his threat to write a novel, a sad little dirge about his immigrant life, which seems to me the luckiest kind of life imaginable. I think it was called The Russian Arriviste's Hand Job The Russian Arriviste's Hand Job or something of the sort. The Americans, naturally, lapped it up. or something of the sort. The Americans, naturally, lapped it up.

"You got beefs with Professor Shteynfarb?" Rouenna asked.

"I'm just saying be careful. He's got a reputation in certain New York circles for being very promiscuous. He'll sleep with anybody."

"And I'm 'anybody'?" Rouenna banged shut the washing machine lid.

"You're somebody," I whispered.

"Well, Professor says I got a real story to tell, not like the usual c.r.a.p about rich whiteys getting divorced in Westchester. I'm writing a story about how they burned down our building in Morrisania."

"I thought you were studying to become a secretary," I said. "A powerful executive secretary."

"I'm broadening my mind, just how you axed axed me to," Rouenna said. "I don't want to just be educated, I want to be smart." me to," Rouenna said. "I don't want to just be educated, I want to be smart."

"But Ro-"

"No 'buts,' Snack. I'm sick of you acting like you know what's best for me. You don't know s.h.i.t." To make her point, she jammed her fist in my mouth. "Now, what the f.u.c.k this German thing say?"

I removed her fist and gently cleaned off my saliva with a pa.s.sing sheet of fabric softener. I wanted to show, show, not not tell, tell, her how much I loved her, but I found myself impotent and weak, full of words and little else. " her how much I loved her, but I found myself impotent and weak, full of words and little else. "Kalt means cold, and means cold, and hei hei means hot," I explained. means hot," I explained.

She clicked the dial, and the laundry machine started to rattle in contention. She looked into my blue eyes. "Of course I love you, idiot," she said. And with the effortless bounce of a still-young person, she lifted herself up on her stubby toes, took me by the ears, and slowly showed me how.

8.

Only Therapy Can Save Vainberg Now.

For two weeks following Rouenna's departure, I lay on my Mies van der Rohe daybed, doing nothing but waiting for Dr. Levine to return from his conference in Rio de Janeiro. One afternoon, as if planning my revenge for Rouenna's possible amour fou amour fou with the evil Jerry Shteynfarb, I baited a pair of Asiatic university students conducting a census into riding on top of me for about five minutes each. They were from some G.o.dforsaken Eskimo province, but they smelled, in a perfectly Russian manner, of dill and sweat. Some multiculturalism! Even our Asians are Russian. The census form was more shocking still. Apparently we now live in a country called "The Russian Federation." with the evil Jerry Shteynfarb, I baited a pair of Asiatic university students conducting a census into riding on top of me for about five minutes each. They were from some G.o.dforsaken Eskimo province, but they smelled, in a perfectly Russian manner, of dill and sweat. Some multiculturalism! Even our Asians are Russian. The census form was more shocking still. Apparently we now live in a country called "The Russian Federation."

July came around, and I realized that I was looking at the two-year anniversary of my internment in Russia. Two years? How had it come to pa.s.s? I had arrived in July 1999, ostensibly to visit my father for the summer, completely unaware that he was about to murder an Oklahoma businessman over a 10 percent stake in a nutria farm. But that's not entirely true. From the moment I bought my ticket, I had a premonition I wasn't returning to New York anytime soon.

You know, this happens a lot to Russians. The Soviet Union is gone, and the borders are as free and pa.s.sable as they've ever been. And yet, when a Russian moves between the two universes, this feeling of finality persists, the logical impossibility of a place like Russia existing alongside the civilized world, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, sharing the same atmosphere with, say, Vladivostok. It was like those mathematical concepts I could never understand in high school: if, then. If if, then. If Russia exists, Russia exists, then then the West is a mirage; conversely, the West is a mirage; conversely, if if Russia does not exist, Russia does not exist, then then and only and only then then is the West real and tangible. No wonder young people talk about "going beyond the cordon" when they talk of emigrating, as if Russia were ringed by a vast cordon sanitaire. Either you stay in the leper colony or you get out into the wider world and maybe try to spread your disease to others. is the West real and tangible. No wonder young people talk about "going beyond the cordon" when they talk of emigrating, as if Russia were ringed by a vast cordon sanitaire. Either you stay in the leper colony or you get out into the wider world and maybe try to spread your disease to others.

I remember coming back. A rainy summer day. The Austrian Airlines plane dipped its left wing, and through the porthole I caught first sight of my homeland after close to ten years of living in the States.

Let us be certain: the Cold War was won by one side and lost by another. And the losing side, like any other in history, had its countryside scorched, its gold plundered, its men forced to dig ditches in faraway capital cities, its women conscripted to service the victorious army. From my plane window, I saw defeat on the ground. Wind-strewn, deserted suburban fields. The gray sh.e.l.l of a factory sliced in two by some unnameable force, its chimney leaning precariously. A circle of seventies apartment houses, each sinking toward the circular courtyard that separated them, like old men huddled together in conversation.

There was defeat on the faces of the Kalashnikov-toting boys who guarded the dilapidated international terminal, ostensibly from the rich pa.s.sengers of our Austrian Airlines flight. Defeat at Pa.s.sport Control. Defeat at Customs. At the curbside line of sad men with battered Ladas begging to ferry us into town for hard currency, defeat. Yet on Beloved Papa's face, prune-dry, oddly sober, infused with a misbegotten familial glow, there was something like inc.u.mbent victory. He tickled my stomach and made a manly poke at my khui. khui. He pointed proudly at the armada of Mercedeses ready to ferry us to his four-story He pointed proudly at the armada of Mercedeses ready to ferry us to his four-story kottedzh kottedzh on the Gulf of Finland. "Not bad, these new times," he said to me. "Like an Isaac Babel story, but not so funny." on the Gulf of Finland. "Not bad, these new times," he said to me. "Like an Isaac Babel story, but not so funny."

For his dissident Zionist activities in the mid-eighties (particularly for kidnapping and then peeing on our neighbor's anti-Semitic pooch in front of the Leningrad headquarters of the KGB), my father had received a two-year sentence. It was the best gift the authorities could have given him. The months he spent in prison were the most important of Papa's life. Like all Soviet Jews, Papa had been trained as a mechanical engineer in one of the city's second-tier universities, and yet he was a scheming working-cla.s.s boy at heart, not terribly different from his new criminal cellmates with the greasy necks and unshaven noses. Placed in this element, Papa fronted the gangster talk. He devised all kinds of cigarette-related prison capers. He turned bread crumbs into shoe polish and shoe polish into wine. He smuggled in copies of Penthouse, Penthouse, pasted the centerfolds on the back of a willing inmate with girlish hips and rented him out by the hour. By the time Beloved Papa got out, two things had happened: Gorbachev had graciously called off most of that annoying, unprofitable communism with the long lines and detonating television sets, and Beloved Papa had met everyone he would need to know in his reincarnation as a Russian oligarch. All those Georgians and Tatars and Ukrainians with the sweaty-brow entrepreneurial spirit so beloved by the American consulate. All the Ingush and Ossetians and Chechens with the casual att.i.tude toward public violence that would create the fine explosive Russia we know today. These men could throw a punch, strangle a hooker, fake a customs form, hijack a truck, blow up a restaurant, start a sh.e.l.l company, buy a television network, run for parliament. Oh, they were pasted the centerfolds on the back of a willing inmate with girlish hips and rented him out by the hour. By the time Beloved Papa got out, two things had happened: Gorbachev had graciously called off most of that annoying, unprofitable communism with the long lines and detonating television sets, and Beloved Papa had met everyone he would need to know in his reincarnation as a Russian oligarch. All those Georgians and Tatars and Ukrainians with the sweaty-brow entrepreneurial spirit so beloved by the American consulate. All the Ingush and Ossetians and Chechens with the casual att.i.tude toward public violence that would create the fine explosive Russia we know today. These men could throw a punch, strangle a hooker, fake a customs form, hijack a truck, blow up a restaurant, start a sh.e.l.l company, buy a television network, run for parliament. Oh, they were kapitalists, kapitalists, all right. As for Papa, he had things to offer as well. He had a good Jewish head on him and the social skills of an alcoholic. all right. As for Papa, he had things to offer as well. He had a good Jewish head on him and the social skills of an alcoholic.

And Mommy was dead. There was no one to knock him over the head with the frying pan. No Mommy, no Soviet power, nothing to fight for-he could do as he pleased. Waiting for him outside the prison gates, he found a chauffeured Volga sedan, the kind that used to ferry around Soviet apparatchiks. And standing in the shadow of the Volga, with his hands in the pockets of his dungarees and fat loving tears in his eyes, was his giant uncirc.u.mcised son.

The two-year anniversary of my own Russian imprisonment pa.s.sed without ceremony. July gained in days; the White Nights were no longer so white, the blanched evening sky gave way to a palette of genuine blue, the seasonal madness of my servants-their l.u.s.ty cries and frequent couplings-abated. And still I would not leave my bed. I was waiting for my a.n.a.lyst.

On the day Dr. Levine finally returned from Rio, the widowed Mrs. Vainberg called me, begging for an audience, her voice an accordion of unhappiness and dread. "What do I do, Misha?" Lyuba cried. "Teach me how to sit shiva shiva for the dead. What are the Jewish customs?" for the dead. What are the Jewish customs?"

"Are you sitting down on a cardboard box?" I asked her.

"I'm sitting on a broken toaster."

"Good enough. Now cover up all the mirrors. And maybe don't eat pork salami for a couple of days."

"I'm all alone," she said in a thin, automatic voice. "Your father's gone. I need a man's hand to guide me."

This kind of antediluvian talk made me anxious. A man's hand? Jesus Christ. But then I remembered Lyuba standing up for my Beloved Papa at the funeral, trying to launch herself at Oleg the Moose. I felt sad for her. "Where are you, Lyuba?"

"At the kottedzh. kottedzh. The d.a.m.n mosquitoes are killing me. Ai, Misha, everything reminds me of your father. Like this seven-p.r.o.nged Jewish candelabra and the little black boxes he used to wrap around his arm. Judaity is so complicated." The d.a.m.n mosquitoes are killing me. Ai, Misha, everything reminds me of your father. Like this seven-p.r.o.nged Jewish candelabra and the little black boxes he used to wrap around his arm. Judaity is so complicated."

"Complicated, yes. I lost half my khui khui over it." over it."

"Would you like to come over?" she asked. "I bought some orange towels."

"I need some rest, sladkaya, sladkaya," I said. "Maybe in a week or two." Oh, Lyuba. What would become of her? She was twenty-one. The peak of her beauty had pa.s.sed. And what did I just call her? Sladkaya Sladkaya? My sweet one?

Timofey trudged in, a weak, servile smile hoisted onto his grim physiognomy. "I brought you a fresh bottle of Ativan from the American Clinic, batyushka, batyushka," he said, brandishing a large sack of medications. "You know, Priborkhin's master was also in bed with depression, but then he took a little Zoloftushka Zoloftushka and some and some Prozakchik, Prozakchik, and off he went to run with the bulls in Spain!" and off he went to run with the bulls in Spain!"

"I don't know about selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors," I said. "I think I should stick just to anti-anxiety meds for now."

"I want only to see batyushka batyushka smiling and throwing his shoe at me with vigor," Timofey said, bowing as far as his cracked spine allowed. smiling and throwing his shoe at me with vigor," Timofey said, bowing as far as his cracked spine allowed.

I dialed Dr. Levine on my mobilnik. mobilnik. Our sessions began at five Our sessions began at five P P.M. St. Leninsburg time, which meant morning on Park Avenue, the hearty American gra.s.ses swaying over the landscaped median, a procession of dark blue Town Cars ferrying moneymakers downtown, everybody tastefully dressed and with no blood on their hands. Or not too much blood, anyway.

I imagined Dr. Levine-his Semitic face freshly tanned from the beaches of Ipanema, his belly perfectly rounded from a judicious intake of churrasco churrasco and black beans-looking over the empty leather couch before him, the speakerphone turned on, the room ablaze with photographs of colorful Sioux tepees, perhaps suggesting the pathway to a better self, that tight little wigwam inside my heart. and black beans-looking over the empty leather couch before him, the speakerphone turned on, the room ablaze with photographs of colorful Sioux tepees, perhaps suggesting the pathway to a better self, that tight little wigwam inside my heart.

"I'm mi-se-ra-ble, Doctor," I howled into my mobilnik. mobilnik. "Lots of dreams about my papa and me paddling a boat down the Mississippi, which becomes the Volga and then some kind of African river. Or sometimes I'm eating a pierogi and my dead papa's inside. Like I'm a cannibal." "Lots of dreams about my papa and me paddling a boat down the Mississippi, which becomes the Volga and then some kind of African river. Or sometimes I'm eating a pierogi and my dead papa's inside. Like I'm a cannibal."

"What else comes to mind about that?" Dr. Levine said.

"I dunno. My manservant says I should start taking reuptake inhibitors."

"Let's wait another week or so before we reconsider your regimen." I listened as Dr. Levine's humane voice crackled across the incomprehensible distance between here and there. I wanted to reach out and hug him across the ether, but that's just the transference talking. In fact, we used to have a strict No Hugs Rule when I saw him in person. "How are the panic attacks?" he asked. "Are you taking Ativan?"

"Yeah, but I've been bad, Doctor! I've been mixing it up with alcohol, which I shouldn't do, right?"

"You shouldn't mix Ativan with alcohol. That's right."

"So I've been bad!"

Silence. I could almost hear him wiping his tender, doughy nose. He gets allergies in the summer, poor guy-his only weakness. Dr. Levine is in his fifties, but, like many Americans of his social cla.s.s, he has the boxy chest of an athletic twenty-five-year-old and a tight, if slightly feminine, behind. I am not a h.o.m.os.e.xual by any stretch, and yet I have dreamed many times of making pa.s.sionate love to his a.s.s, my big body draped over his smaller one, my hands rubbing his sweet gray-bearded muzzle. "Do you want me to say that you're bad?" Dr. Levine said evenly into his speakerphone. "Do you want me to hold you responsible for your father's death?"

"Oh, G.o.d, no," I said. "I mean, in some way I've always hoped that he would die...Oh, I see what you're saying. Oh, s.h.i.t, right...I'm a bad, bad son."

"You're not a bad son," Dr. Levine said. "I think part of the problem for the past two years is that you don't really do anything with your time. You don't spend it profitably, the way you did in New York. And your father's death obviously doesn't help things."

"Right," I said. "I'm like that Oblomov character who never gets out of bed. How sad for me."

"I know you don't want to be in Russia," Dr. Levine said, "but until you can figure a way out, you have to learn to deal with your situation."

"Uh-huh," I said, fiddling with a fresh Ativan bottle.

"Now, remember when you were in New York, you kept telling me how beautiful Moscow is..."

"St. Petersburg, actually."

"Sure," Dr. Levine allowed. "St. Petersburg. Well, why don't you start by going for a walk. Look at some of that beauty you love. Take some time to relax and feel yourself distracted by something other than your problems."

I thought of spending a day at the pleasant Summer Gardens, eating a stick of ice cream beneath a belligerent-looking statue of Minerva. I should have bought many more ice creams when Rouenna was around, although we did enjoy at least five a day. If only I had treated her better, maybe she wouldn't sleep with that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Jerry Shteynfarb, maybe she would have stayed with me in Russia. "Yes," I said. "That's what I must do...Precisely. I'll put on my walking shorts right away." Then, before I could stop the transference, I blurted out, "I really love you, Doctor..."

And then I started to cry.

9.

One Day in the Life of Misha Borisovich.

I didn't last long in the Summer Gardens. All the shady benches were taken; the heat was abusive; pious grandmothers pa.s.sing by with their young charges would use me to ill.u.s.trate four of the seven deadly sins. And my Rouenna, with her zippy bravado and distaste for all things cla.s.sical ("Some of these statues ain't got no a.s.s, Misha"), was nowhere to be found.

"To the khui khui with this," I said to my Chechen driver, Mamudov, who was keeping me company on a nearby bench. "Let's see if Alyosha is at the Mountain Eagle." with this," I said to my Chechen driver, Mamudov, who was keeping me company on a nearby bench. "Let's see if Alyosha is at the Mountain Eagle."

"He can't spend a day without his little mutton kebab," Mamudov opined sourly of my American friend.

We drove over the Troitsky Bridge, the Neva River eager and playful on a summer day, a panorama of gray swells and treacherous seagulls. Alyosha-Bob was indeed parked behind a rickety wooden table at the Mountain Eagle, chasing a vodka bottle with a plate of pickled peppers, cabbage, and garlic. We embraced and kissed three times in the Russian manner. I was introduced to his companions, both employees of ExcessHollywood, his DVD import-export business: Ruslan the Enforcer, a man with a shaved head and a fatalistic expression who handled security for the company, and the young art director and Web designer, Valentin, a recent graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts.

"We're drinking to women," Ruslan said. "Alyosha complains that his Sveta makes fun of his prowess in bed and threatens to leave him if he doesn't move to Boston and give her a comfortable life in the fashionable Back Bay neighborhood."

"Sad but true," Alyosha-Bob said. "Meanwhile, Ruslan tells me that his wife cheats on him with a sergeant in the militia and that he has found stains on her hose and panties."

"Also, when they k-k-k-k-kiss," Valentin stammered shyly, "a suspicious manly scent comes from her mouth."

"And as for our friend Valentin," Ruslan the Enforcer said, gesturing to the artist, "he is not too young to know of heartache, either. He is in love with two prost.i.tutes who work at the Alabama Father strip club on Vasilevsky Island."

"Well, to women, then!" we said, clinking our gla.s.ses.

As if drawn by our toast, a pretty Georgian girl with furry arms dropped a fresh bottle of vodka in front of me and threw some charred mutton kebabs on our plates. We chewed on the gristle thoughtfully, slivers of onion crackling between our teeth. The sun sailed westward over the ca.n.a.l running past the ramshackle restaurant, past the disturbing city zoo where the once-proud lions of the Serengeti now live no better than our pensioners, and toward the greener pastures of the European Union.

A typical male Russian sadness descended upon us. "Speaking on the subject of women," I said, "I fear my Bronx girl, Rouenna, may be the quarry of the emigre writer Jerry Shteynfarb."

"I remember that weasel," Alyosha-Bob said. "I saw him in New York once after he wrote that Russian Arriviste's Hand Job. Russian Arriviste's Hand Job. He thinks he's the Jewish Nabokov." He thinks he's the Jewish Nabokov."

Ruslan and Valentin snorted at the idea that such a person could exist. "I don't think they should expose young people to Shteynfarb," I said. "Especially at a school like Hunter College, where the students are poor and impressionable."