A Replacement Life by Boris Fishman Read Free Book Online Page A

camps.’”
    “What are you, Lenin’s grandson?” Grandfather said. “Maybe I didn’t suffer in the exact way I need to have suffered”—he flicked a finger at the envelope—“but they made sure to kill all the people who did. We had our whole world taken out from under us. No more dances, no holidays, no meals with your mother at the stove. A meal like this?” He pointed at the living room. “Do you know what it means to have a meal like this? Do you know what we came back to after the war? Tomatoes the size of your head. They’d fertilized them with human ash. You follow?”
    “So now you want your revenge,” Slava said. “Heist the German government.”
    “The German government?” he said. “The German government should be grateful to get off this easy.”
    “This German government didn’t kill anyone.”
    “So, everyone, we should say thank you?” Grandfather slapped his hands, the pop rising to the ceiling.
    “What is it?” Slava said. “Do you need more money?” He pointed around them: the bureau, the bed, the tricked-out torchieres keeping sentry in the corners.
    “Money?” Grandfather said, drawing back. “Money makes the world go round. Money’s not the only reason, but I don’t know anyone who’s been hurt by money.”
    “Why did you never tell me any of that before? About evacuation?”
    “We didn’t want those ugly things in your head. We wanted you above us. Enough hands had to go in the dirt so yours wouldn’t have to.”
    “So this is a rose you’re asking me to smell?”
    “It’s family, Slavik.”
    “Let’s skip the big words, if you don’t mind. I’m not Kozlovich. It’s crime. That’s our family? Do you know what the punishment is if we’re caught?”
    “I would give my right arm for you if that’s what it took. That’s family.”
    “If that’s what what took?”
    “You—safe. You—happy.” Grandfather slapped the nightstand between them. “This conversation is over. I don’t need your services.”
    “I don’t need your right arm!”
    They sat in bitter silence, listening to the muted chatter carrying from the living room. Slava savored his power over Grandfather, like an olive you keep sucking to get every thread of the meat.
    Now he was a writer. Who was responsible for this deviancy in the first place? In America, unlike back home, the mail came down like a blizzard. The adults hauled it upstairs with dark faces. Was this a letter from James Baker III alerting the Gelmans that a tragic mistake had been made and the family would have to return to the Soviet Union? They couldn’t read it.
    The letter was given to Slava. His fingers were small enough for the Bible font and onionskin pages of the brick dictionary they had procured from a curbside, somebody who had learned English already. As the adults shifted their feet, leaning against doorjambs and working their lips with their teeth, he carefully sliced open the envelope and unfolded the letter inside, his heart beating madly. He was all that stood between his family and expulsion by James Baker III. America was a country where you could have Roman numerals after your name, like a Caesar.
    As the adults watched, Slava checked the unfamiliar words in the bricktionary. “Annual percentage rate.” “Layaway.” “Installment plan.” “One time only.” “For special customers like you.” The senior Gelmans waiting, Slava was embarrassed to discover himself mindlessly glued to certain words in the dictionary that had nothing to do with the task at hand. On the way to “credit card,” he had snagged on “cathedral,” its spires—t, h, d, l—like the ones the Gelmans had seen in Vienna. “Rebate” took him to “roly-poly,” which rolled around his mouth like a fat marble. “Venture rewards” led him to “zaftig,” a Russian baba ’s breasts covering his eyes as she placed in front of him a bowl of morning farina. Eventually, he managed to verify enough to reassure the adults