Seeing a glimpse of the ocean’s waves through the clouds made me think of how I used to swim in the Gulf of Finland with my mother just a few years before I left Russia. The doctors said it was the best therapy for her dementia.
“The cold water will awaken the senses and stimulate the organs. Her blood will flow more readily. It’s all about blood flow,” they would say.
My mother had been a member of a water ballet collective in her youth and consequently swam beautifully. I loved to watch her swim and tried to imitate her curved arms and the precise entry of her fingertips into the water. On one of our regular Sunday swims, a family secret was revealed.
That day Mother came up for air after a long time underwater and announced, “Swimming makes me think of Maxim.”
Maxim was my uncle.
She continued, “Maxim kissed me underwater.”
I thought she was confused. “Don’t you mean Father kissed you?”
“No! Kisses were from Maxim. We kissed so long we had no air; he emptied the last drop of air into my lungs.”
“You almost drowned?”
“We bobbed to the surface, and I breathed the air back into his lungs.”
“What about Father?”
My mother replied, “Your father let me have the pleasure I did not have with him.”
“With his brother?”
“He’s not your uncle.” She was annoyed as if I should have known.
As we both treaded water, a seagull landed near us. The bird screeched at a piece of sodden bread floating by and grabbed it in his beak. Another bird swooped down and stole it out of his mouth. The first gull did not pursue his foe. Instead, he floated past us and let out a feeble screech to no one in particular.
“How spineless,” I thought. That gull reminded me of my father, who would stay home writing and drinking when my mother and Maxim would go out together. After a couple of years, he was only drinking and never wrote anything new. He would obsessively read and reread his published poems and essays, pacing up and down our room holding the book or journal in front of him and taking a pen from behind his ear to make the changes. He wrote about vodka as a metaphor for oppressive government. Many of his poems were in English. His supporters would learn them and deliver his words through the underground to publishers outside Russia. I memorized all his poems. This was a typical practice to save the writings of our country’s poets. On paper their work could easily be lost, destroyed, or sent to the authorities. Like this one:
He inspired other writers to write what was on their minds, while he became more and more crippled by the loss of freedom for words and humor. It was to him the height of cruelty. At the end of the night, the liquor would be gone and the pages were unintelligible.
After going through some unexpected turbulence, the plane landed safely in New York City on September 30, 1991. That was when my strange new life began.
Chapter Four: Port Authori-TAY
Kennedy Airport is all about moving things. Airplanes, luggage, people, money, coffee, donuts. Bleary-eyed and swollen from the trip, I welcomed the moving sidewalk and slowly drifted forward. The people who walked along the outside concrete sidewalk were faster than the motorized one. With some relief to my swollen ankles, I moved closer to the real America. People stood along the corridors waiting and straining to see all the arriving passengers. A man clutched a photograph in one hand and a straw hat in the other. A family of six, everyone exactly the same height and not very tall, bobbed up and down in a huddle like a pack of prairie dogs. At the luggage transport, I spotted the double straps of my satchel rounding the curve and pushed through the crowd to grab the worn leather handles. A line formed for customs. Soon it was my turn. The officer did not flirt with me this time, but he did look me straight in the eye.
“Are you here on business or pleasure?” he asked.
“I’m here for good.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“To stay.”
“Good for you, business or pleasure?” He was all business and a bit annoyed.
“I hope pleasure.”
“OK, pleasure it will be. Step back, please.”
As he opened my bag, I could smell the thick, damp air from the plaster walls of my Petersburg apartment in the liberated molecules. The customs officer did not appear to notice. The name on the tag on his pocket read Sgt. Green. In Russian green is zilliony. His name at home would be Sergeant Zilliony. I liked that better than Green. The first sign of spring at winter’s end when the flowers force themselves through the softening earth—zilliony. In America the color green is about money, greed, and envy.
He opened my photo album and turned it over. A dried bouquet fell out from between the pages. Oh, Trofim. He had given me the flowers with the lab coat at my graduation in Vilnius. He was my professor of physics and chemistry. He was brilliant in both, ran the Young Scientists Club, and was asked to make a speech at the graduation ceremony. Everyone envied my position as his assistant. We spent a lot of time side by side over experiments, but never touched. When his job ended in Vilnius, he was sent to the State University of Leningrad. I was returning home after my studies and was thrilled he would be there. When his family did not follow him to Leningrad for several months, we could not help ourselves.
The officer held up the flattened bouquet and asked, “You have pansies in Russia?”
“Yes, we grow many flowers, but those are not pansies. I believe they are violets.”
“Oh, a horticulturist, well isn’t that nice.”
“A chemist, actually. I just like flowers.”
Sergeant Zilliony prodded at the brassieres, upsetting many more of the precious particles from home. All the remnants of my Russia were being sucked through a black hole in this foreign atmosphere.
“Welcome to America. Good luck,” the customs officer said as he closed my bag.
“Do svidaniya,” I replied, but Sergeant Green had already moved on to the next foreigners and did not acknowledge my good-bye.
Next in line were a group of Italians with many suitcases and cardboard boxes. The officer watched as they lifted everything onto his examination table. Another uniformed person pointed me in the direction of yet another uniform. There my passport was scrutinized by a woman behind a high counter. I had to stand on the tips of my toes to see her. It felt good to stretch my ankles. She looked at me sideways.