Coming by a bottle of hooch had never been a problem for most Clevelanders. From the first days of Prohibition, cases of quality liquor had been floated down Lake Erie from Canada in cabin cruisers and delivered to drop-off points all along the Huron River. From there they were trucked to basement bars and clandestine saloons all over the city. It was in one of these dusky establishments that Fyodor, having just been told to move his elbows off the bar by a prodigious Clevelander of Polish extraction, turned to Sergey and spoke audibly in his native tongue, “Fat Polish hairbag smells like a sewer pipe.” At which point the fat hairbag landed a rabbit punch on Fyodor’s neck to exact retribution for every repression suffered by Poles under Russian rule since the failed November Uprising of 1831. Staggering forward, Fyodor managed to dodge another punch and throw one himself—his first and last before the Pole landed an uppercut to his jaw, this time in memory of the failed January Uprising of 1864. The final punishment (in payback for the disastrous Polish-Soviet War of 1919) was a cut so low it slammed into Fyodor’s groin and lifted him clear off the floor. A moment later relief arrived in the form of a bouncer—an ape in a suit who pinned Fyodor’s elbows to his sides and dumped him in the street with a warning that the next time his Red ass would be hanging from a meat hook.
It was past midnight when Florence discovered the two men at her back door, scratching at the screen. Turning on the porch light, she found a bloodied Fyodor draped around an unhappy Sergey. Florence touched her face, tight with egg whites she’d rubbed in for the night. She pulled her housecoat tighter. “My God—what happened?”
“Let us in.” Fyodor’s heavy shoes scuffed the threshold as Sergey dragged him inside. Blood had dried under Fyodor’s nose. His eye was swollen and turning a livery purple.
“You can’t stay here,” she said. “My landlords will be up….”
“It is another two kilometers to our house. I cannot carry him myself.”
Left and right, the three of them veered down a lampless street. The moon, moving through clouds, reflected off the faces of public buildings. From the alleys came smells of things fecal. “The cavalry’s arrived!” shouted Fyodor, his arms draped around their shoulders. “So you’ve brought your Levantine beauty to show her what drunks and scoundrels we are?”
“You’re showing her well enough without my help. Grab his arm,” Sergey instructed.
“You’ve got this pony eating out of your hand.”
“She understands what you’re saying, you fool.”
A freight yard appeared in the shadow of a sinister-looking warehouse.
“All the better.” Fyodor turned his head to Florence and gave her a drunken grin. “All you intelligentsia girls, vowing you’ll only love a real proletarian, a real worker—and then you go off and start making eyes at fakes like him. This careerist.” She could feel the sharpness of Fyodor’s nails digging into her shoulder as they dragged him. “See for yourself, little girl,” he slurred, his breath like kerosene. “We Russians get drunk, sing songs, cry like children. While you Jews keep yourself busy scheming how to make a ruble.”
“There’s plenty of poor Jews,” Florence muttered.
“But they’re always trying to get rich. Or powerful—look at Litvinov, Kamenev, Zinoviev, all the big wheels.”
“You already have one black eye tonight, Fyodor,” Sergey warned. “Would you like another?”
“What am I—insulting her honor? Who said I didn’t like Jews? I knew a Jewish girl in Leningrad, before the Revolution. She wasn’t allowed to live in the city, because of the quotas. So she got herself a yellow pass”—he turned to Florence—“that’s what the prostitutes used, to get across the bridge and do their business. Imagine! Pretending to be a prostitute, so she could be a student at the university! You Jews—if there’s a way, you’ll find it. So why don’t you ask her to help us out, Seryozha?”
“You want to ask, you ask.”
“Why should I? It’s not me she’s got eyes for. We go home with lint in our pockets and the whole plan is thrown. Whose heads are on the chopping block then?”
“That isn’t her problem.”
“What’s the harm in asking—she’ll find a way.”
—
AFTER SERGEY HAD STRIPPED off Fyodor’s big shoes, peeled his pants, and dumped him on the sagging mattress in the bedroom, he returned to the main room, where Florence sat waiting at the table with her palms between her knees.
“Is he all right?”
“He won’t remember it tomorrow.”
She edged her palms on the table and raised herself abruptly.
“I will walk you home,” Sergey offered.
“I’ll be fine.”
“You cannot walk alone.”
“How could you take him to a place like that?”
Sergey looked back without speaking.
“You’re lucky he’s not at the bottom of the river. You’re lucky he wasn’t picked up by the police! Did you think what a nightmare that would be—for me, if not for you?” And because he gave no sign of speaking, she lit in more. “You’re not in your country—do you understand? There are some sacrifices you have to make.”
“Okay, I will go buy sheep and slaughter it tomorrow.”
“What?”
“You said: sacrifices.”
“Is this all a joke to you?”
He slammed his fists on the table. “What do you want me to tell you?” He got up and made his way to the kitchen cabinets, where he searched through some drawers until he found what he was looking for: the folded yellow pages of a letter. He slapped it on the table as he sank back onto his chair.
“Fyodor’s wife—she has left him. He received this letter today: She writes she does not want anymore to live in Magnitogorsk. Uncivilized. Dirty. No culture. She has gone back to Leningrad, to live with his friend.”
Florence lifted the pages and tried to make out the tiny, delicate hand. She glanced at Sergey. “Are you afraid of getting a letter like that?”
He was sitting in his motorcycle-saddle way again, his knees apart. “I am not married. You know that.”
“I don’t know much about you.”
“I was married. Now I am not. It was only one year. We tried. We ended it.” This explanation seemed barely to interest him.
“Just like that.”
“Divorce, marriage—these are simple things where I am from.”
She held the letter in her hand. “Many things seem more simple there.”
“No,” he said in a bored voice. “Only that.”