She was still living a frugal life on Cooperative Street in a room with a bed, a table and chair, a small wardrobe, and a sideboard piled high with books.
When she closed the door, she walked slowly over to the phonograph that Jack had wanted her to keep. She was glad that Valeri Pushkin had given it to her before leaving for Leningrad with Ivan Zarko and his family. She stroked the mahogany box that protected it and carefully removed it. As if carrying out a ritual, she took the lid off the metal can and removed the wax cylinder. She positioned it over the phonograph’s axis and cleaned the surface with a silk handkerchief. When the cylinder began to turn, Jack Beilis’s warm voice floated through the room again. Natasha closed her eyes so that she could see him and listen to the sound of his sweet words.
Dear Natasha: I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but whatever happens, don’t waste your tears on me. On the contrary: smile. Until today I have drifted through life, trying to run away from poverty as if it were the greatest sorrow, without realizing that the misery traveled with me, in my soul.
Some might be saddened by my fate, but I feel lucky. Few men are able to say that, even if their life turned out to be short, it was really worth living. I have been lucky. Lucky to find you. Lucky to learn that, even if fate leads us into the abyss, there is always hope.
Today, for the first time in my life, I can be the master of my own destiny. And that’s why I choose you.
Promise me that you’ll never change. That way I’ll know that, when you can no longer hear my voice, you will still listen to me in your heart.
When the phonograph let out its final sound, Natasha smiled. Though he was gone, she carried his love with her, so deep inside that nobody would ever be able to take it away.
EPILOGUE
Leonid Varzin set aside the plans for the heat engine and puffed on his papirosa as if there were no pleasure more intense. Smoking was one of the two privileges that differentiated him from the other inmates of the Kharkov Prison Camp. The other consisted of staying alive, which was feasible for as long as he and his cellmates successfully developed the prototypes they were working on. While he savored the smoke, Leonid observed the willowy prisoner hammering the fixtures of a frame in the workshop. One after the other, the blows were angry, relentless, each stroke seemingly aimed at the chains of his captivity.
“You should save your strength. At that pace you won’t last another six months, and I asked them to keep you alive because we need your skills,” he called out.
The prisoner didn’t answer. He kept his eyes on the fixture and continued hammering. Leonid and his pals might find respite from the monotony of imprisonment in developing their projects, but for the man with the hammer, helping them was only a means to survive another day, as he had been doing for two years.
When he finished with the rivet, he stood and fixed his blue eyes on the bars over the windows. Outside, it was snowing hard, and the cold numbed his chest in the place where a dagger had once been lodged. He rubbed the scar, and without intending to, brushed his hand against the medallion that still hung from his neck. When he gripped it, the bars slowly vanished.
He kept hammering, with the same determination as on the first day he arrived. For him it was just another day. But when the sun went down, it would be one fewer day until he was reunited with Natasha. One fewer day until, finally, he could enjoy the last paradise.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In the summer of 2011, I began to draft the first pages of this novel. At the time, I was in New York, where I’d traveled in search of rest and inspiration. Each morning, before sitting in front of my laptop, I’d go for a walk in Columbus Park, two blocks from the apartment where I was staying. During one of those walks, I stopped at a colorful market where books were sold by the pound at a price so ridiculous it was as if they were giving them away. I had been browsing for a while when an old essay entitled “Working for the Soviets” caught my attention; it was about the large numbers of Americans who had immigrated to Russia during the Great Depression. I bought it without hesitation. That night, for the first time in many years, I thought of my grandma Bienvenida.
My siblings and I enjoyed a fortunate childhood. Perhaps we didn’t have the best toys or go on vacation every summer, but we always had two adorable old ladies by our side, with their curled white hair and their felt slippers, with which they’d briefly threaten us when they grew sick of our mischief. There were two of them, Bienvenida and Sara, and they were twins—twin sisters and twin grandmas.
Bienvenida never married. When Sara was widowed, Bienvenida went to live with her to help her with her small children. Many years later, when we were born, Sara and Bienvenida cared for us with that love and tenderness that only grandparents know how to give. Bienvenida was actually my great-aunt, but in my heart, she was my grandmother, and I only ever thought of her as Grandma Bienvenida.
Sara had her favorite grandchildren, and Bienvenida had hers. I was Bienvenida’s.
As I grew up, I became ever more intrigued as to why Grandma Bienvenida never married. She was a sweet and caring woman, with a pleasant face and an enormous heart, and at ten years old, I couldn’t understand why she’d remained alone. One winter’s night while she rubbed my joints with alcohol to bring down my fever, I dared to ask her. She replied that she’d never found the right man. However, there was a sadness in her face that I’d never seen before, and without knowing why, I knew she was lying to me.
I wasn’t wrong. Years later, I caught her crying while she read an old letter. When I approached to console her, she pressed the letter against her heart, and holding back tears, she told me that if I ever fell in love, and however difficult the circumstances, I must fight for that love as if my life depended on it.
We never spoke about it again. Bienvenida died at age ninety-three, when I was seventeen, and it was one of the saddest days of my life.
Years later, my father told me about the fleeting relationship that had marked Grandma Bienvenida. He revealed to me that she once met a young man with whom she fell hopelessly in love. He was a livestock trader and had just returned from the Soviet Union. During the months they spent together, the young man captivated her with his amazing tales of the nation of the Bolsheviks. He described the places where he worked, the immigrants from other countries he met, the wonders he discovered, and the horrors that forced him to flee Russia.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out, he enlisted with the Republicans, and their paths separated. The last Bienvenida heard of him was a letter from the Ebro front, in which her sweetheart repeated that he loved her more than ever, and bemoaned the absurdity of war.