In deference to the newcomer, the musicians at first reverted to the traditional arrangement, but the bass clarinetist forced the music across the measure and brought the others with him. Larissa didn’t need to struggle to keep up: jazz seemed to be the way she had sung it her entire life.
No applause or comment followed their performance. The musicians put away their instruments almost furtively, as if caught in a shameful act—and in fact, they had been. The girl’s husband was destined because the marriage was contracted by a broker, a disgusting practice outlawed by the Soviets. Such nostalgia would never have been approved for the evening’s official program. The bass clarinetist gave Larissa a long, appraising look before dismantling his instrument, and then a nearly imperceptible, conspiratorial smile.
Larissa had never sung for Rachel, nor for anyone else in Moscow. Despite their years of friendship, Rachel hadn’t known Larissa even liked music. This surprise did not amuse her; very quickly, like the last frames of a torn cinema film, the confidences she had offered Larissa flickered by in recollection. This time her smile obscured a wince.
Grinning, Israel said to Larissa, “I thought you didn’t know Yiddish.”
“I do. A little.”
Larissa reddened. Her parents and grandparents had spoken Yiddish at home only when they didn’t want her to understand, but there had been so much they didn’t want her to understand that she had become fluent.
At the same time, she had developed another facility. Her father and grandfather played violins and her mother the clarinet, and in the small, overfurnished drawing room cluttered with photographs of forgotten and neverknown ancestors and relatives, plus her own cot, she sang to their instruments. She carried the memory of this intermittent family harmony like armor.
“Comrades, I thank you,” Israel said, placing his emptied glass next to his chair. “Take a look on page three tomorrow. You’ll like what you’ll see.”
“You work for Komzet on the side, don’t you? That’s what they said. Am I right?”
These words were spoken by the vocalist, who had reapproached Israel with tentative steps.
A wide, welcoming smile stretched across Israel’s face.
“Damn right.”
“Well, Comrade Shtern. Sign me up. I’ll go.”
“Of course you will. You’re a Jew.”
“And the Russians won’t let me forget it.”
“In Birobidzhan, you won’t want to forget it. And you won’t have to perform in some kockenshteindit basement underneath a bakery either. We’re going to build you a theater with five hundred seats, cloakrooms, dressing rooms, recital rooms, lobbies walled by mirrors and lit by chandeliers, everything. It will be entirely for the preservation—and celebration—of Jewish culture. There’ll be Yiddish music, drama, cinema, and wireless broadcasts. Our cultural works will be all around us, as plentiful and natural as the air we breathe. And why shouldn’t they be? I want all you boys to come. Will you make me that promise?”
The drummer chuckled and turned his head away, avoiding the question. The other musicians didn’t reply.
Israel went on: “It’s remarkable how many times in the course of a day I’m approached by young, brave, healthy, hard-working Jews who ask me about colonization. It’s taken hold of our national imagination. There’s no denying it: we are about to write a new chapter in the history of the Jewish people. My friend, leave me your name and address. We’ll be in touch.”
In the past hour the evening had turned clement. Israel and the two women stepped out onto sidewalks wet but free of ice and largely empty of pedestrians. Through some aural illusion, the sound of the bass clarinet continued to snake through the moist night air, moaning pastiches of other familiar compositions, Larissa’s own voice in accompaniment, richer and lustier than she had ever known it. She wished to preserve this illusion, and to that end she closed her senses to the Arbat’s rough cobblestones pressing through her thin-soled boots, the twinkling streetlamps and the presence of her friends. She imagined that in the basement theater she had somehow exposed herself, yet she felt no remorse for it.
And then she thought to ask: “Birobidzhan?”
“The Jewish national homeland.”
“Is it in Palestine?”
Israel laughed derisively. “Palestine is a lost cause. A strip of desert enshrined in myth. The Arabs will never let it exist and neither will the British. Any so-called Jewish national state in Palestine will always be an instrument of British imperialism.”
“So what is it then?”
He stopped and reached inside his coat pocket. From it he withdrew a small square of folded paper. He maneuvered Larissa and Rachel within a street lamp’s spotlight and executed another feat of prestidigitation. The square began to unfurl, apparently without end, its folds inexhaustible. Passersby turned their heads, first in wonder and then in fear, before scurrying away: was this a political demonstration? As solicitous as any stage performer, Israel asked the two women to open the last fold. Larissa took one end, Rachel the other.
“Voila!” Israel cried. “The Jewish national homeland. Created by Jewish workers and peasants, supported and protected by Soviet power, respected by the international proletariat. It’s near Khabarovsk. On the Chinese border.”
They had opened a standard wall map. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics sprawled dizzyingly across the sheet. Its southern rim ran jagged against ancient empires. Its north petered out among uninhabited islands, archipelagoes, and deserts of ice. Three time zones east of Vladivostok, the country stretched nearly off the upper right-hand corner, trying to escape its own borders. Larissa held the familiar section of the map, the upper left corner, which tucked central Europe, Moscow, and Berlin in the same creased square. “Look here,” Israel said—and she couldn’t: he was pointing to a Russian dip into China several feet away. Leaning awkwardly, but still trying to keep the map open, Larissa teetered above the peach-colored steppes. Israel touched her arm, to steady her. His touch was warm, high up her arm. Then he let go and pointed to the place again. The light was too dim for the small print to be intelligible. A breeze stirred the map, tugging it between her fingers like a fish on a line.
“Forty thousand square kilometers,” he said. “Virgin land rich in mineral deposits, lumber, and fertile soil. Bigger than Belgium, bigger than the British Mandate area of Palestine—and no Arabs. Just a few indigenous people and Russian and Cossack settlers, all enthusiastic about Jewish colonization. And it has just been given the full support of the Central Committee.”
Rachel squinted into the map, and then at Israel. “You’re building a theater there?”
“In time. And also Jewish schools, a Jewish cultural center, a Jewish publishing house, a Jewish newspaper, a Jewish party secretariat—”
Larissa abruptly asked, “How about Jewish places of worship?”
Israel shrugged with studied disregard. “Freedom of religious belief is guaranteed by Article 65 of the Soviet Constitution.”
Three
Another woman may reflect on the story of her life and marvel at the chance encounters, odd remarks, freak accidents, slight misunderstandings, and trivial decisions—if only I hadn’t gone back for my hat!—that have located her in this place at this time in this life. Perhaps respect for the personally serendipitous is a “Western” concept, a tenet of the cult of the individual. I myself live east of Istanbul, Delhi, and Beijing, where we prefer to give credit to fate or, in latter times, to history. My mother, Larissa, had gone to the Komzet party on a whim, which she regretted as soon as she arrived, but in the end she considered her life the product of unflagging historical determination.