“It’s beautiful,” he whispered. “More beautiful than they ever told us it would be.”
By the time the first travelers had descended from the train, men and women from the fields and from inside the houses had begun hurrying to the station. A young blond man on a cart, waving a slice of birch—Iosif Reznick, Israel knew him well!—urged his white horse into the deepening pool of arriving settlers. From one of the longer buildings emerged a half dozen uniformed, red-scarfed children. They carried banners. Cries and shouts faintly penetrated the train car’s windows.
The adults carried banners as welclass="underline" “Welcome, Jewish Workers!” “Tsu a Yiddish Land!” and others that Larissa didn’t have time to read in the rush to disembark. The passengers lined up to pass the bags from the car and onto the ground next to the tracks. After a month’s companionship, Larissa subdued the urge to say farewell to her fellow travelers. She’d be spending the rest of her life with them. Descending onto the earth, her feet tingled, surprised at its solidity.
It was as if the new arrivals had never breathed air before. They stood alongside the train gluttonously filling and emptying their lungs. The tenous, midday sky was enormous and a purplish blue the dark of twilight. Despite the near-freezing temperature, the travelers weren’t cold: this electric sensation on their arms and chest and inside their lungs was something better and more lifegiving than cold. As the train, with a (congratulatory? derisive?) burst of steam, abandoned them, Larissa sensed that she had been hurtled into deep space.
A dark-haired, grinning-almost-to-tears schoolgirl handed her a bouquet of wild flowers, purple, blue, and orange. The flowers’ perfume was of some sweet alien spice. Larissa tried to clear her throat, to offer thanks, but already the girl was presenting a bouquet to another arrival. Around Larissa, freely crying men and women fiercely grappled with each other, tattooing their faces with wet kisses. Something she couldn’t see bit her.
Israel had already accepted his bouquet and placed it alongside his bags and was now ignoring the old friends calling his name and streaming past him. He was very still, taking everything in, the entire natural landscape, in the event, it seemed, that he would be forced to leave immediately and would need to recall it the rest of his life. The mountains, the fields, the sky. Did colors like this exist in Europe? Were there any colors in the graveyards and cobbled streets of his ancestors?
Among the last to emerge from the shacks was Leo Feirman, ambling among the settlers and new arrivals, an unlit cigar in his hand. Like many of the men, he wore a blue workshirt and an oilskin jacket. His face was tanned and he had lost some weight. He nodded hello to a few people and then gazed down at their luggage. He made his way to Israel indirectly, surveying the new settlers. His approach was casual, as if he had seen Israel just the other day.
“Is this everything?” he asked.
“Hello, Leo. Yes, it is. You look terrific.”
The cigar twitched like something alive, but Leo smiled and gave one of Israel’s bags a little nudge with his foot.
“All personal belongings. Am I right?”
“Mostly books, I suppose. What’s the matter?”
Leo smiled in surprise at the question. “Nothing at all. No, it’s all right. Have a nice trip?”
“To tell you the truth, Leo, I’ve already forgotten the trip. Listen, I have some letters from your sister and nephews.”
“The only thing is, Israel,” Leo drawled, his glance again caressing the travelers’ luggage. “The only thing, Israel, is that I have a cable from the Commissariat for Land Issues. It was sent a month ago. According to the cable, you were bringing supplies. More equipment. Plow blades, shovels, seeders, wire. Hammers. Sickles. We need everything. We’ve already got enough nails for every man, woman, and child, but nothing to drive them in with, and nothing to drive them into. How do you like that? We’ve been getting cables all summer. The commissariat says there was a 600,000-ruble disbursement made on behalf of Komzet in July. Do you know anything about it?”
Israel shook his head absently, looking now at the structures in the foreground. “These houses. They’re old.”
“We’re renting from the Cossacks. Cash money.”
Israel studied the landscape. He counted the buildings and looked toward the horizon for other signs of human settlement. The grounds were littered by a dozen or so gray canvas tents, latrines, and cooking equipment. Finally, he said, “There’s no new construction.”
“You stupid prick,” Leo said gently, almost affectionately. “How can you build a house if you don’t have a hammer? Do you know how cold it’s going to get in a month?”
A young woman Larissa’s age approached her, smiling broadly. She was round and fair-haired and her face was roiled by insect bites.
“You made it!”
Larissa studied the tracing of welts, as if it were a map waiting to reveal important secrets.
“Is everything all right? Larissa, the journey…”
“No, I’m fine. It’s just a shock.” She exhaled a frail chuckle, shaking her head. “You know, I’m sorry, I had forgotten you would be here. As if I were going someplace entirely different, or someplace that was nowhere at all.”
“Gitten yur! Happy New Year!” When Larissa looked at her blankly, Rachel added, “What luck that you made it in time!”
Rachel handed her something. It was heavier than it looked and unpleasantly wet. Larissa hadn’t celebrated the Jewish New Year since she was a small girl.
“It’s soaked in honey,” Rachel explained. “Cake. For a sweet year. That’s the custom.” She beamed in apology. “It’s the best we can do. We’re short on eggs.”
The settlers had begun loading the luggage onto Iosif’s cart, joking about the bags’ weight. One of the suitcases burst open, revealing bourgeois dresses and lingerie and occasioning much laughter that lingered in the open spaces. The settlers straggled across the way. Larissa watched them but stayed where she was, tenaciously, as if she were afraid that the ground would slip away from her. Israel had bent and wrapped his hands around the grips of his suitcases, but now he let go and straightened his back. He smiled. Rachel waited. Larissa was keenly conscious of their presence, and also of love washing over her like a warm bath. She could close her eyes and immerse her face in it. She knew also that the moment she moved, perhaps thirty seconds from now, history would begin moving again too. Her gaze led her beyond Israel, past the settlement, a small pond, a stand of bare trees, a sliver of river, sere meadows, and then all the way to the shadowy borderlands rimmed by mountains.
Orbit
ОрбИта
To the daring intellect of Soviet man
That first penetrated space.
First, they sat for a minute. That was one of our customs of departure. They each took a seat: Yuri, Ivanovsky, Karpov, Kamanin, and the Chief Designer. There wasn’t a seat for Titov, who hunkered alongside Kamanin and stared into the floorboards. Not a word was spoken. Outside the cottage a bus raced its engine. His helmet on his lap, Yuri grinned at the Chief Designer.
The Chief Designer strained to return the smile. He dropped his gaze to the clipboard and studied his checklist and the timeline, trying to recall if there was anything they had forgotten. It was bad to return for something after you had left; if you did return, you’d have to look in a mirror and stick out your tongue. Yuri’s ventilator hummed.