I was going to be fired. Why else would the general manager call me into his office? I sold fewer rooms than the other reservation clerks. I’d once been reprimanded for not pushing the higher-priced rooms. When management wanted to move me to the front desk I’d turned them down. But that wasn’t it.

“I need you to do something for me,” said Mr. Negri, keeping his voice down as he explained that Javad, one of the hotel’s front desk clerks, had just learned of his father’s death in Iran. Sadly, Javad had booked a flight to Tehran for next month in what would have been the first time he’d seen his father in ten years.

“I want you to drive him home,” Mr. Negri said. “He’s upset. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, sir.” Mr. Negri was three years my junior, but referring to him as anything other than “Sir” and “Mister” was unthinkable.

Despite the gravity of the moment, I felt a certain relief at escaping for an hour or so the tedium of answering phones in the windowless, smoke-filled Reservations’ office. The year was 1982, when people still smoked in public places and no one had heard of second hand smoke. It was also near the end of the era of rotary phones and L’Enfant Plaza Hotel may have prided itself on its high-flown Gallic stylings (we answered the phone by saying “Bonjour,” the restaurant had a Cordon Bleu chef), but it had yet to to install an automated reservation system.

Handing me a set of keys, Mr Negri told me where the company car was parked in the garage, then led me to a nearby office where Javad was bent over a desk with his head buried in his arms, muttering to himself, sobbing. His shoulders shook in the beige jacket that was part of the uniform worn by desk clerks. His bald spot was ruthlessly exposed under the fluorescent lighting.

“Kyle’s here, Javad. He’s going to drive you home.”

Javad slowly lifted his head. Any relief I felt vanished at the sight of his tear-streaked face, his red-rimmed eyes, the overall impression he gave of profound suffering. It was shocking, such naked emotion from someone who’d always impressed me with his smooth and dignified manner. Javad pushed his chair back from the desk, one hand clutching a wad of tissues, and rose unsteadily to his feet. Mr. Negri patted Javad on the shoulder and gestured toward the doorway. Passing him off to me, as it were, Mr. Negri gave me a I’m-counting-on-you nod.

Javad was the senior member of the front desk crew, a likable man in early middle-age who was respected both by management and staff for his dependability and competence. Javad and I didn’t interact that much but I often saw him during his break, walking around with a cup of hot tea which he made with two tea bags, extra strong, presumably how they drank it in his native country. Respect from the whole staff increased for Javad after the infamous Chuck Yeager incident. The Iran hostage crisis began in 1979, when students sympathetic to the Iranian revolution stormed the American Embassy in Tehran and captured 52 American diplomats and citizens, and ended 444 days later. When Chuck Yeager came to L’Enfant’s Plaza’s front desk, Javad greeted him as he would any other guest—with a warm smile and a friendly hello, eager to be of service. Yeager, suspicious of this dark-skinned man with the distinctly foreign name on his lapel, asked Javad what country he was from. Upon being told, the great test pilot refused to let Javad check him in or even speak to him. Java responded with forbearance and aplomb, calling over another clerk to tend to Mr. Yeager, then going on as if nothing untoward had occurred. Where was that forbearance now, I wondered, escorting Javad to the elevator, silently urging him to pull himself together, where was that aplomb?

Any hopes I had that once I got Javad in the car he would begin to exercise some self-control were quickly dashed. As soon as he was seated, he became more upset, more vocal, as if he’d been holding back, waiting until he was in a confined space to give full vent to his pain, rocking back and forth, wailing away in what I assumed was Persian. And yet, I noted, he had not neglected to buckle his seat belt. This was somewhat reassuring as I had no idea where Javad lived. Approaching the first intersection after leaving the garage, I waited several seconds before interrupting what sounded like some sort of prayer, the repetition, the chanting, of two or three phrases.

“Javad?” I said. “Left or right here?”

The prayer or chant continued, Javad rocking so far forward the top of his head was in danger of striking the dashboard. I wouldn’t have minded indulging him a bit longer, but a dump truck had appeared in the rearview mirror. “Sorry, Javad. Left or right turn?” I repeated, “Left or right turn,” raising my voice, which, despite the effort, was drowned out by the steady stream of words.

“Javad!”

He shot to attention, gaped wide-eyed in front of him, then slowly, hesitantly, turned to me.

“Sorry, man. I don’t know the way to your house. Left or right.”

“Right,” Javad said, then bowed his head and resumed his keening.

Unfortunately, I had need of his help only minutes later.

“We’ve got another stop sign, Javad.”

He pointed left.

“Thanks.”

By the time I managed to get to the freeway, my distraught passenger had distilled his lamentations into a single phrase, repeated over and over, as if at last he’d found the perfect expression of his lacerating loss. I couldn’t help thinking about my own father’s death, just a year ago last month. I recalled that he died on a weekend because my sister—my only sibling—had reached me at home with the news he’d succumbed to bladder cancer. But that was about all I remembered. I could remember almost nothing of my sister’s phone call: not what words she used to tell me about our father’s death, not what I said in response, not even what extension I was on—the one in my bedroom or the one in the kitchen. I hadn’t cried. I remembered that.

“I’m really sorry about your father,” I said to Javad as I was coming up on the next exit, “but when I get to the Beltway, should I take the north or the south ramp?”

I couldn’t be sure Javad heard me. “North or south ramp?” I repeated, louder this time.

“South,” Javad said and went back to his chanting, his rocking, his crying. I merged with the traffic and headed toward Virginia, suddenly extremely annoyed—at Javad for his total lack of cool, at Mr. Negri for putting me in this ridiculous situation, at myself for being unable to recall even one concrete detail from the day my father died.

Java indicated that I needed to exit the Beltway. By now he’d grasped how much I needed his help and directed me through a residential section, then waved me past a couple of stop signs to a parking area in front of a rundown apartment development: two-story brick buildings with water-damaged roofs, cracked sidewalks, broken toys on the sidewalk. I would have preferred to drop Javad off and be done with it. I never thought I’d be eager to return to the smoke-filled Reservations’ office. But I wasn’t quite as cowardly as that.

Java lurched out of the car and staggered off toward the nearest building. I followed him over the grass and up a flight of stairs. He stopped in front of a door with a crooked “3” on it and fumbled with his keys. Opening the door, he rushed inside, ran across the bare wood floor and into a bedroom. He threw himself onto an unmade bed and buried his face in a pillow, weeping and moaning. I stood just inside the sparsely-furnished rooms, what reminded me of a student’s off-campus apartment.

In the doorway of the room to my left stood two small children, a boy and a girl, both about five or six. The boy wore a Star Wars T-shirt and shorts, the girl a jean dress over a pair of long pants. They were staring at me, more interested, it seemed, in the stranger who’d just entered their home than their wailing father. Appearing behind them was a woman about Javad’s age. I hadn’t known Javad was married, let alone a father. She came over and said something I didn’t catch.

“Pardon?”

“Tea?” she said.

I didn’t want to be there. I was out of my element. I certainly didn’t feel like lingering over tea, but I knew Mr. Negri was depending on me as a representative of the hotel. “Yes, ma’am.” I said.

“Nasreen. My name is Nasreen.”

“Kyle.”

“Sit down, Kyle, please,” Nasreen said, gesturing toward the small round table in the dining area.

The children continued to regard me with curiosity. Or was it reproach? Were they blaming the messenger for their father’s suffering, and their grandfather’s death? It did make me wonder how often someone like me—sandy-haired, blue eyed—had been in those rooms.

There was a loud knock on the door. Nasreen came back and opened it. Two men and three women—two wearing headscarves—burst into the apartment. A commotion ensued, the new arrivals spotting Javad in the bedroom and hurrying to him, covering him with their bodies, hugging him, weeping over him.

Nasreen handed me a see-through glass cup filled with a dark amber liquid. “No sugar,” she said. “That okay?”

“Fine,” I said.

She spoke sharply to the children in Persian and they stepped back inside their room.

“Delicious,” I said. Strong without being acrid, my tea tasted like roses, vanilla, cinnamon, all combined. This wasn’t Lipton’s.

“You work with Javad, yes?” Nasreen said. She spoke nonchalantly, off-handedly, as if all the ruckus twenty feet away could just be ignored.

“I do,” I said. “Well, I work in Reservations—behind the scenes—and he works at the front desk. But yes.”

Nasreen wore loose-fitting jeans, a flowy multicolored blouse, sandals.

I said to her, “My condolences.”

She shrugged. “He was a very old man.”

The mourners were sitting up on the bed now, stroking Javad’s back and shoulders, talking to him in placating tones, but Javad was unconsoled, unconsolable.

“Do you smoke cigarettes?” Nasreen asked me.

“Sometimes.” Actually, I was trying to quit.

“Come,” she said. I followed her to the other side of the apartment. She slid open the door to the balcony and we stepped out. The D.C. skyline was visible on the horizon. A plane was descending into National Airport. The day was overcast, chilly. Nasreen offered me an unfiltered Camel. I placed my teacup on the wicker table next to an ashtray overflowing with butts. We each lit our own cigarette with her bic.

Nasreen was a handsome woman with big dark eyes under unplucked brows, high cheek bones, and a prominent nose. There was a languidness about her, a weariness or sadness, that made her exotic to a middle-class kid from the white-bread suburbs. Even the way she smoked was different, holding her cigarette like a dart, between thumb and index finger, before raising it to her full lips.

“Everyone likes and respects Javad at the hotel,” I told her.

“He’s always talking about it, the hotel.”

I couldn’t tell whether that was a good or bad thing.

“He’s very popular,” I said.

“Popular, yes, but the pay,” she said, shaking her head, “Not so good.”

“No. I have two roommates. Otherwise I couldn’t afford to live in the city.”

“And the hours,” Nasreen said. “Terrible.”

Front desk clerks had rotating hours. They never knew from week to week whether they’d be scheduled to work in the a.m. or the p.m.

“They’re not the best if you’re raising a family,” I conceded.

“But he loves it there,” she said, squinting as she drew on her cigarette. In a sing-song voice, “The beautiful lobby. The fancy rooms. The famous guests.”

“Did he tell you about Chuck Yeager?”

“Who?”

“Chuck…Never mind.”

“I applied for a job at your hotel,” Nasreen said.

“You did? Which one?”

“All of them. Except for housekeeping. I do housekeeping enough already. Lack of formal education, they said. I said, I educate myself. My English is as good as anyone’s. I love English. So many ways to say the same thing. But…” Nasreen shrugged. “Javad would live in the hotel if they let him. He’s found—what is it you Americans say?—his groove. He’s found his groove.”

“And…you haven’t?”

Aside from the irregular hours, there was a reason I’d refused to leave the relative safety of the Reservations’ office for the front desk. The guests at L’Enfant Plaza tended to be very well-off, very entitled. I wanted nothing to do with repeated face-to-face encounters with people every bit as rude and obnoxious as Chuck Yeager. I was an inhibited, socially awkward thirty-one-year-old college grad who lived with two guys he didn’t particularly like and hid away in a nowhere job. So it was unusual for me to ask a personal question of someone I’d just met—of anyone really—but I felt like Nasreen had invited it, that she had pulled me out on the balcony for just that purpose.

“No,” Nasreen said. “Not too much. But it’s a great country. Everybody says so. Land of opportunity, yes?”

I heard a chorus of “Nasreen! Nasreen!” coming from inside the apartment, the mourners calling for her, imploring her to join them.

Nasreen was unmoved.

“Well,” I said, “it can be a difficult adjustment coming to another country.“

“Easier for men. Much easier. Women in my country…” She made a dismissive gesture.

“You’re a stay-at-home mom, then? You don’t work—I mean—outside the home.”

“Is that what’s it’s called? Yes. That’s me. I stay at home.”

The balcony door opened. One of the headscarf-wearing women strode through and up to Nasreen, got right in her face, speaking in rapid Persian. Nasreen, impassive, held her cigarette at eye level as if she might burn her interlocutor’s cheek if she got any closer. She listened a while longer, then spoke two or three fierce sentences. The woman backed away and left the balcony.

The children were watching us through the glass door.

“Nice kids,” I said to say something.

When Nasreen saw them she gestured brusquely, shewing them away.

I asked, “What are their names?”

“Muhammad and Fatima. Their father named them.” She frowned.

“You would have preferred other names?”

“There are so many beautiful names in my country. Why the same old ones?”

“Will you be going back?”

“Going back?”

“To your country. To Iran. For…the funeral.”

She answered without hesitation, “I will never return to my country.”

I didn’t go to my father’s funeral either. There was no funeral to go to. He’d requested that he be cremated without ceremony immediately after his death.

“What you like some more tea?” Nasreen said.

“Sure. Thanks.”

She took my empty cup and returned a minute later with my refill.

“How long have you been married?” I asked Nasreen.

“What?”

“How long have you and Javad been married?”

Nasreen smiled, smoke seeping out of the corners of her mouth. “Javad’s not my husband. Javad’s my brother.”

“Oh. I thought…” Just like that I had to reset the entire scene, the entire day. Nasreen saw my surprise, knew what I was thinking: here she was chatting with a stranger while her brother was doing all the grieving for their recently departed father.

“Me and Javad,” she said, “we had a very different relationship with Baba. I can not take my brother’s tears seriously. I can not respect them. What’s the expression? Different strokes.” Nasreen nodded, pleased to have found precisely the right phrase.

“You and your father weren’t close?”

“No and yes. Baba was very strict with me. He was afraid I’d be corrupted by Western influences. He hated it every time I left the house. I couldn’t date. I couldn’t listen to the music I liked. Javad—he came and went as he pleased.  He had girlfriends. He got his degree at Tehran University. I was not allowed to go to college. I was expected to get married and start a family and there was no use arguing. I argued anyway.”

The balcony door flew open again. All three women huddled around Nasreen, talking at once. Nasreen glared into their fervent faces, saying nothing, letting them make their case before they gave up and went back inside.

“My father and I weren’t that close either,” I said, lighting another cigarette.

The last time I saw him he was lying diagonally across a bed in a white T-shirt and brown and white stripped boxers, his eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling, his chest slowly rising and falling as he took deep, raspy breathes. I had just started to thank him for being my father, a short speech I’d memorized on the three hundred mile drive to Pennsylvania, when my sister stopped me. He hadn’t been conscious since last night, she told me. Hospice said he’d lost almost all brain function. I hadn’t minded not finishing my speech. My sister called me ten days later and we had the conversation I couldn’t recall.

“My father wasn’t much of a talker,” I said.

“Baba talked all the time. Mostly about religion. I couldn’t say anything without him quoting some verse from the Quran to prove my wickedness.”

“Even when you asked my father a direct question,” I said, “he didn’t have a lot to say.”

”Tight-lipped.”

“Yes. He wasn’t comfortable around most people. I’m not sure he was comfortable around his own children. He was shy. Like me.”

“You’re not shy.”

“I am, though. I am, well, normally.”

“Baba was not shy. He was lord and master. How do you say? He ruled the roost.”

“My father didn’t at all. My mother raised us, basically. She did all the disciplining and stuff, which she resented. We weren’t real close-knit, my family.”

“Close-knit?”

“Not much togetherness. Not a lot hugging and kissing. It’s kind of embarrassing, but…” A surge of emotion filled my chest.

“Yes?” Nasreen said.

“I barely remember the day my father died.”

Nasreen gazed at me for a moment, as if searching for the perfect idiomatic expression to cover this sad fact; deciding not to bother, she said simply, “There are worse things,” and stubbed out her cigarette. She was pinching another one out of the pack when the balcony door opened yet again. It was Javad this time. He was a mess, his jacket falling off one shoulder, his eyes swollen from crying, his cheeks wet with tears. “Nasreen,” he said and stretched his arms toward his sister. Nasreen stood firm, chin up, unlit cigarette poised next to her ear. Javad appeared so desperate, so needy, I found myself losing impatience with Nasreen’s intransigence. I had half a mind to run to him myself. The children had drawn close to the door again, peering in at the adults and their inscrutable goings-on. It looked like another stalemate, Javad and Nasreen just staring at each other, when Nasreen said something in Persian that didn’t sound entirely negative. Javad answered with a string of words that included her name. Then they were talking over each other in louder voices, “Baba” every fourth or fifth word. Suddenly, there was silence. It was a second before I realized Nasreen was looking at me. I don’t know what she saw in my face, but whatever it was she said something to Javad that made him drop his hands, race across the balcony, and fall into his sister’s arms.

I slipped away. As I was passing through the living room I could feel the children’s eyes on me. When I got to the door I turned and put up my hand. Muhammad and Fatima’s small bodies stiffened, as if stunned to have been acknowledged by me. Would they remember this moment? Would they remember this day? Was there enough caring to make a memory? Raising their hands, they waved me out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The education of the exceptionally promising begins early and ends almost never, and this Nathan Berditchev understood long before the age of twelve when, one muggy night in the cramped Berditchev living room over glasses of tea and slices of stiff sponge cake, the rabbis of the Yeshiva of Eastern Queens informed his parents that he, Nathan, had certain gifts.

It was not seemly to make too much of it, the rabbis murmured, Nathan listening from the stairs in cowboy pajamas that in the sticky August night clung to his back. A layer of humidity had been hanging in the apartment all day, unable to move; to neither escape out the open windows nor disperse among the four rooms—a two-story, two up, two down, his mother had told her mother, the only time Nathan had heard even a twinge of a boast in his mother’s voice, a sin as severe as eating traife or going to the movies on shabbas, temptations, all, of an unholy world—a stillness so thick that Nathan had felt as though he were swimming through soup as he’d gone from room to room looking for something to do, the worst heat wave in New York City, the headlines said, in fifty years. Humility was a trait to be cultivated by all, one of the rabbis said softly, the nervous tinkling of a spoon against glass, just as they mustn’t allow themselves to be bitten by the serpent of pride; but this was something Mr. and Mrs. Berditchev needed to know about their son, a child gifted even more, God should forgive them, than his brother Carl, himself a brilliant boy, a light to the yeshiva, they should make no mistake, a shining example for Nathan to follow. But a Nathan he was not, and never would be.

A sharp intake of breath—his mother? father?—the spoon silent; an ambulance wailed in the distance. Another casualty of the weather, heat stroke, the phrase his mother had ominously repeated all afternoon, visions percolating in Nathan’s brain of a giant paint brush lapping over innocent victims walking home from the bus. The siren stopped; Nathan hunched over and wrapped his arms around his knees. This was the way of the world, was it not, the other rabbi said, his voice gravelly and absolute, not a question but a pronouncement, moving as though weighted through a lower stratum of air, reaching Nathan at his feet and traveling through him like a current, the sort of voice you never argued with, addressing itself almost sternly in response to what Nathan could only imagine was his mother’s bowed head, hearing her children compared, the terrible truth that one, in some terrible respect, had come up short. It was not her doing, the voice said, more a reprimand than a comfort. Nor was it a reflection on the merits of her sons. This was the will of the Creator, dispensing a little more of this here, a little less of that there, and it was not for them to presume to understand. It was only for them to accept what was, safeguard what had been given, and see to it that it wasn’t squandered.

The slightest movement at Nathan’s back. He quickly turned, looked up the steps. Nothing stirred on the landing above him, not the sheer curtain that hung on the airless window nor the shaft of light from the room he shared with Carl. What if this one time Carl hadn’t been so stubborn? What if this one time he’d given in to Nathan’s pestering to defy their parents’ orders and join him to eavesdrop on the stairs? What then?

A shuffling in the living room, footsteps on the linoleum in the hall. Nathan curled himself into a ball. “Who knows,” the lighter voice said, striving for cheerful. Rabbi Lerner, the new principal for the younger boys, an American, no trace of an accent, who brought in old clippings of Hank Greenberg, three-time American League champion and a practicing Jew. “Maybe one day Nathan will be teaching all of us—Maimonides, the Tosefta, even”—Lerner’s voice dropped to a loud whisper, a dramatic flourish—“The Zohar.” The four of them appeared in Nathan’s vision, his father and mother, small and defeated-looking, even smaller next to the visitors, whose backs were to him—Lerner, young and athletic like the ball players he admired, and the other man, gray-haired under his black yarmulke, powerful shoulders to match the powerful voice. Nathan’s father opened the door, the thick heat standing under the light of the street lamp like a sentry, and the visitors, putting on their hats, stepped out into the night.

Slowly, his parents walked back to the living room; Nathan heard their muffled voices, life never rising up in triumph to give them joy, good news clothed always in an outer layer of bad, their heads bowed as though a great weight had been deposited in the house. When he heard the stacking of plates, the rattling of silverware, he turned and ran soundlessly up the stairs, Carl asleep with his glasses on, a book open beside him on the damp sheets, doomed now in their parents’ eyes though he would never know why, and hurried into his own bed and pulled the blanket up over his face. Why him? Why couldn’t it be Carl? Carl, who would grow up to teach Lerner? Who would pore over volumes of commentary, Tosefta, Maimonides?

And, worst of all, The Zohar. The Book of Splendor. Nathan had been told little of it, revelations of mystics and hermits. But he had heard. Knew that it was supposed to contain the keys to the secrets of heaven, codes to all the mysteries in the universe. It was so dangerous no one was allowed to open its pages until they reached the age of forty. Because if you did, you could go crazy. Cross over to the other side. Even die.

But what if he didn’t want to know? What if he didn’t want to see into the hidden meaning of all things? Why couldn’t it be Carl? Carl, who was always searching, who would spend the rest of his life looking for the answers to every question anyway?

The light in the hall went off; he heard his parents on the stairs. He reached across the night table and removed Carl’s glasses from his face, turned off the lamp and lay on his back. He closed his eyes, the evening sitting on his chest like a safe, and swore to himself he would never repeat a word of what he’d heard, not to anyone, not even to himself, certain that neither the rabbis nor his terrified parents would either. Then he squeezed his eyes tighter and prayed to God that someone had made a mistake.

*

September, the bus to school an hour instead of twenty minutes, the new apartment with the separate dining room and built-in china closet worth the trip. His mother’s tone describing it to her mother had been one of amazement, disbelief that sometimes things improved. His father was no longer a cutter but a supervisor, maybe one day a foreman, his mother had whispered, straining to keep not so much pride out of her voice but all hope and expectation. Too, one had to be scrupulous about the evils that came of too much talk. What’s the most lethal weapon a person can own? she would say. A loose tongue, and point to each of their mouths and then her own to show that she too wasn’t above such weakness. On the bus ride home, Nathan did his homework by the flickering lights of the evening traffic; Carl squinted by the glass and read his poetry. Whitman, Schwartz, Shapiro, Ginsberg, names Carl rattled off from the books he kept hidden under his bed. Poetry was Carl’s religion, Nathan told him. Every few weeks, he would swear Nathan to secrecy and make him go with him on the subway to a hole-in-the-wall bookstore on Fourteenth Street, installing Nathan on the sidewalk to keep watch before ducking into the bookstore as if he were robbing a bank, then coming out forty minutes later with his loot, half to be stuffed into Carl’s book bag and half into Nathan’s so as not to arouse suspicion. The books were dusty and old and had a mildew smell that clung to Nathan’s bag for days.

Now they strained by the dim light while rain sheeted the glass. The first bleak portents of winter. Nathan hated winter, hated waking in the dark, coming home in the dark. They lived like bats, Carl said; the only good thing about winter was his birthday. He would turn eighteen at the end of December. For one night he’d insist on light, he told Nathan. Every lamp in the house on, even the one over the stove. The door of the bus flew open; a gust of wet air funneled in. A lady with two shopping bags of groceries sank into the seat opposite Nathan, knocking his textbook to the floor with the hem of her coat.

“Stupid assignment,” Nathan murmured, bending for it. “Inventions of America. The lousy book is so old it has only forty-eight states.” Everyone knew the secular studies at school were a joke.

“Ah, the folly of dry fact masquerading as language. Unlike real language,” Carl said, patting his own book, the faded green cover like old cloth. It smelled of moth balls, closets that were never opened. “One day, Nathan, you’ll see how the written word can change your life. I don’t mean the Talmud, I mean these words. The real truth is in these.” He lifted his book reverently, like a treasure brought up from the bottom of the ocean, and recited, dramatic. The woman across the aisle turned to look. “‘Of Life immense in passion, pulse and power, cheerful, for freest action formed under the laws divine, the Modern Man I sing.’ Isn’t that spectacular? Man, Nathan. That’s what he’s saying. We are the real story. Because we have free will. We determine our lives. Without a god. Courtesy of Mr. Walt Whitman.” He smiled broadly at the woman, who tsked and turned away. “Such a shame,” whispered Carl, looking at the woman. “A philistine.”

Nathan didn’t know about philistines or free will. He knew only the relentless logic of the Gemara, the endless volleys of the Mishnah. He understood the law. Rules, argument, reason. He didn’t understand Carl. But then again, no one did.

*

Weeks of unending rain. Ponds formed on the walkways to the apartments and never drained away. Carl wanted to go to the bookstore again.

“We just went,” Nathan said. “And how do you even have any more money? You’re supposed to be saving up for college.” Cards for the 1960 Dodgers lineup were laid out before him on the bedspread. Their parents had closed their door hours ago. Their father was out of the house by four-thirty, doing everything he could to impress the owners so he’d have a shot at the foreman’s job. This was his chance, he told Nathan’s mother. If I’m the first one in and the last one out, they’ll pay attention. No sick days. No leaving early on Fridays. Don’t give me that look, Miriam. I can be home before shabbas or we can eat. Which do you want?

Carl straddled the back of the desk chair. His feet were huge in his socks. There had been a call that evening from the yeshiva; Nathan, from the stairs, overheard his mother telling his father. Carl’s marks were slipping, he seemed distracted, preoccupied. Had he taken on something extra-curricular? Was something wrong? He’d never had trouble in the past. “I vant my books!” Carl said and opened his mouth wide and pretended to eat his arm. “More books! More books!”

“You’re crazy, Carl,” Nathan said, returning to the lineup. He needed only two more to complete the team. Lerner had offered him ten bucks for Koufax alone. Lerner was nuts; it was just a piece of cardboard. If he could find the Koufax, he’d gladly take a ten off the principal.

“Crazy? You call me crazy?” Carl was up on the bed, on his knees across from Nathan, messing up the spread and scattering the cards. “I vant, I vant!” Duke Snider was in Carl’s mouth.

“Give it back!” Nathan said, pulling at the card. Carl held on with his teeth, whipping his head around like a fierce dog. He was loving it, Carl the vampire, Carl the wild animal.

“Give it!” Nathan yelled. Carl raised his eyebrows and pointed at the door. They’d wake their father and have to hear a speech by their mother about respect for parents and peace in the house. “Give it back!” Nathan hissed.

“Argh!” Carl growled, jerking his head before taking the whole card into his mouth. He chewed, took it out, dangled it in front of Nathan, then dropped the soggy ball onto the bedspread. In the next instant, he pulled from behind his back a perfect Duke Snider.

Nathan grabbed it. “Stinker. Now get that spitball off of here.”

“Certainly,” Carl said, pretend British, delicately lifting the wad with two fingers and tossing it into the air, then catching it in his mouth and making an exaggerated swallowing sound.

“Carl, no! You’ll choke!”

Carl stretched his head back, giving Nathan a full view of his Adam’s apple and the stubble on his neck. “Never fear, my dear Watson. It’s perfectly edible.” He held up a finger. “`Smile O voluptuous cool-breath’d earth! Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!’ See? Liquid trees? Completely natural. Per the peerless Mr. Whitman.”

“Eating cardboard is gross.”

“Don’t vory,” Carl said. He went to his own bed. “I’m satiated now. I don’t need any more bessball player blood.” He did the eyebrow raise again. “But I do need more books. And you vill be my accomplice.”

Nathan lifted his covers, eased himself in and slid the cards under his pillow. He lay on his back and closed his eyes, heard Carl taking off his pants, rummaging under the bed for another book. He knew Carl had been skipping school but would never tell. Anyway Carl was always at the bus stop at the yeshiva by the time Nathan got there for the ride home. He had told Nathan he didn’t want to go to CCNY or Queens next year; he didn’t want to go to college at all. He wanted to be free. To ride the rails and criss-cross the country. I hear America singing!

“Nathan, you awake?” Nathan rolled onto his side and looked at Carl, who was on his back, his book held high above him, like the Torah after the reading. What if Carl went away and never came back? “Listen to this! `Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!’ Allen Ginsberg. A Yid!” He grinned at Nathan. “Did you hear? Everyone’s an angel! Everybody’s holy!”

*

Their father didn’t get the foreman’s job. The company brought in an outsider. Rumor was that the factory was being sold, the foreman the new owner’s man; even his supervisor job wasn’t secure. He had maybe a month, then he was out on the street.

If I’d done more, maybe they’d have kept me, he said to their mother behind their half-closed door. Maybe I could have persuaded them.

What—get there at four in the morning instead of six? Work eighteen hours a day instead of twelve? Don’t be crazy, Avrum. They wanted an outsider all along. They were playing with you. Like they always do.

There were more calls from the school. Carl was absent too much, when he was there he didn’t pay attention, his thoughts elsewhere, Mr. and Mrs. Berditchev needed to have a talk with their son.

“Boys his age, their thoughts should be elsewhere,” his father said. “Like on getting a job.” He’d gotten his notice. Walking papers. Nathan saw papers with little legs. They needed to think about moving, his father said; the new apartment was too much. At supper Carl had brought up the birthday lights. What kind of foolishness was that? their father snapped. Now, when he was about to be out of work, they should burn more electricity? Carl might as well have asked to burn dollar bills. “Lots of boys take afterschool jobs, Miriam. If they go to the public school.” The faucet went on, Nathan’s mother rinsing something. Seething. His father’s voice rose. “There’s nothing wrong with a little more responsibility, a little less Gemara.”

The water shut off. His mother was descended from a line of scholars and rabbis that stretched back to Peter the Great. In more than two hundred years, not a single male in her family had attended a secular school. Nathan and Carl had been told this a thousand times; it was their birthright. Unlike what they got from their father’s side, uneducated laborers and tradesmen. It was nonsense to talk of public school, his mother said now. Hadn’t he heard the rabbis? Both boys were exceptional; they needed the proper education. She was disappointed in the yeshiva. They were probably ignoring Carl and he was bored. They weren’t giving Nathan all the attention they promised either.

“Well, you can forget the yeshiva, Miriam. Two weeks I’m out on the street. Did you hear me, two weeks? Even with their scholarships, we won’t be able to cover. Just covering for Nathan will be impossible. That’s right, even for our mister prodigy. Where are we going to get the money? You tell me—where?”

“What are you talking? The boy has a gift, Avrum! You can’t let something like that come to nothing!”

“Oh no? Then you go out and get the job! You find the money!”

His father stormed into the hall. Nathan, on the stairs, huddled into a ball. Too late. His father glared at him, went out the door.

*

November. The sun was a miser. On the days Carl disappeared he no longer met Nathan at the bus for the ride home. Instead he waited for him in front of their apartment building when Nathan walked up in the dark.

Shh, don’t tell. It’s alright. I’m doing something important.

What, you’re looking for a job?

Shh. I can’t say. Don’t tell anyone.

Other days, Carl slept the whole ride to school, up all night with his poetry, not only reading but writing now, pages stashed where he wouldn’t reveal. His books numbered in the hundreds. To keep their mother out of their room Carl made Nathan promise to make his bed; Carl would vacuum and dust. They were helping out, Carl told her. She’d found a job taking care of newborn twins of a rich relative of someone in the building. Each day she rose at five to take two buses to Jamaica Estates where she stayed until the husband got home at night. After a cold supper she went straight to bed. Their father pounded the pavement. Nathan saw his father pounding with a hammer. Or his fist.

One cold wet night two weeks into his mother’s job, Nathan waited for her in the kitchen. He’d been intercepting calls from the school: they’d be cancelling Carl’s scholarship after the first of the year, more deserving boys were waiting. He set out a plate, a fork, a knife, made his mother tea. She sat down and he brought out butter, two slices of rye bread, a hard-boiled egg. He took a chair and watched her take a bite, then told her he didn’t want to go to the yeshiva anymore. That he’d wanted to go to the public school for months but had been afraid to say so.

She put down her knife. “Is this because I’m working? Your father will get a job, this won’t last forever.”

“That’s not it. I’m thinking I might want to be a lawyer. Or learn the stock market. Or go into business. I think I have a head for that.”

She folded her hands. She was trying to control herself. People in her line didn’t go into the stock market, into business. “You’re a very gifted boy, Nathan. You could become a scholar. More than a scholar. An illui. You know what an illui is? A Talmudic genius. My father, of blessed memory, was one. In Europe. Before this country made him grovel, made him give Hebrew lessons to ignorant American children who didn’t deserve a minute of his attention. You take after my family. They were intellectuals. People of quality.” She stopped as if she’d said something she shouldn’t have. “Enough. There’s time to decide all this when you’re older, I don’t want to hear another word.”

He inched up on his chair. “You don’t understand. I don’t care about what they’re teaching me. The Mishnah, Gemara, it’s all riddles. Puzzles. Mental exercises that don’t mean anything. Nobody cares about the Talmud except a bunch of rabbis who don’t know anything else. I don’t believe in any of it. It has nothing to do with real life.”

The sting of her palm on his cheek threw him back into his chair. She stood up and left the kitchen. He heard the door of his parents’ room sharply close.

*

His father found work at a striking coat factory in Brooklyn. A two-hour commute for half the pay. A scab; Nathan saw him as a thick red mark over an old wound. Each day his father wanted to flee in shame as he walked through the picket line. One morning he saw someone he knew from his old factory. The man shouted an insult and Nathan’s father wanted to turned around and go directly home. He told Nathan’s mother some indignities weren’t worth it.

And being some rich girl’s cook and maid isn’t an indignity? Wake up, Avrum. Principles like these we can’t afford. Look at your sons. Do you see how anxious Nathan is? How thin and tired-looking is Carl? We’re wearing them out with our worries.

December moved in. A frozen fist. Christmas carols blanketed the radio stations. Posters in the subway showed red-cheeked Santas and smiling families sitting beside brightly wrapped presents under a tree. That’s how they got people to buy, Carl whispered to Nathan, pointing to the ads in their train car, his blue knit cap pulled down low. By making you believe this was happiness. But it was a trick. Because once they got you to buy things, they could get you to do other things. If Nathan had any doubt, all he had to do was look at the signs right in front of their noses. Act now! Call today! There were forces out there trying to penetrate their minds. You had to build up mental shields to keep them from controlling your thoughts.

Mental shields? Nathan asked.

Defenses, Carl murmured. To keep the forces from getting through. But he and Nathan were lucky. They weren’t susceptible because they were Jews. So the forces couldn’t invade them. For now.

Outside the bookstore, Nathan waited at his usual spot, hands shoved into his pockets, collar up against the cold. He hadn’t wanted to come. But Carl had insisted; he’d gotten hold of a Koufax and weaseled Nathan out of half of Lerner’s ten. Nathan would have given Carl the whole ten if it would’ve made Carl stop acting so strange. Everything was secret now. He wouldn’t read his poetry out loud at night because someone might hear. He vanished for whole days, coming back to the apartment long after their parents went to sleep. He told Nathan he was working on something important but couldn’t tell him what it was.

A tap on the shoulder. A man as old as his father. “Don’t be frightened. I’m from the bookstore. There’s a boy inside.”

Their footsteps on the linoleum were drums. The man described: glasses, blue hat, fingers gripping a five dollar bill like a life preserver.

“Carl?”

He was huddled on the floor at the end of a long row. He looked at Nathan blankly. Was this another joke? Was Carl about to jump up and play vampire? Hah, hah, got you! No. Carl only made jokes at home, never in public. His eyes darted from Nathan to the man to the crowd collecting behind them.

The man herded the strangers away—Someone’s just a little ill, let’s give the boy some room. Nathan inched up to his brother. Carl’s lips trembled. The wrinkled bill stuck out of a balled fist. “Come take my hand, Carl. Let’s go home.” He grasped Carl’s clenched fist and Carl rose, teetering like a golem. “He’s not feeling well, that’s all,” Nathan said to the man, his arm around Carl’s waist. “I think he’s coming down with something.”

“Sure, sure,” the man said, leading them through the store. Nathan ignored the stares. At the door the man said, “You going to be alright? You want to call your folks?”

There was something in the man’s face. Had he seen Carl before? Had Carl been coming to the bookstore alone? Had he acted strange before?

“We’re okay, thanks,” Nathan said, and he shuffled Carl out the door and to the subway. Within seconds of the train pulling out, Carl was asleep, the five sticking out of his fist. Nathan pried it loose, stuffed it into his pocket.

Two stops from their own Carl woke up. He pressed his face against the glass. “Where are we? What are we doing on the subway?”

“You don’t know?”

Carl turned to him.

“We’re going home, Carl. From the bookstore. We left early.” He showed Carl the book bag on his lap. “See? It’s empty. Remember?”

Carl looked at the bag, then at Nathan. He looked outside the window again, then at his hands. He lifted them and sniffed. Then he looked at Nathan again. A wave of something Nathan had never seen before crossed his face. Fear. “What are you talking about?”

“You wanted to spend your five from Lerner.” Nathan dug in his pocket for the bill and made to give it to Carl but Carl recoiled as if it were a poisonous bug. “I went to the sidewalk like always. You went into the store. You were there a long time. A man came out and found me.” He searched Carl’s face. Nothing. Why didn’t Carl remember? “He brought me to you. You were sitting on the floor.”

“Had I fallen?”

“No.”

Carl stared at Nathan, then out the window again. He turned back to Nathan. “Not a word to anyone, okay?”

Nathan nodded. His eyes were welling up. “Are you sick, Carl?” he whispered, leaning into his brother’s coat, mildew and must clinging to the wool.

In the dark space between them, Carl squeezed Nathan’s hand. “I don’t know.”

*

The yeshiva cancelled classes on Christmas for the first time in its history. Rabbi Lerner had persuaded the headmaster, the man with the gravelly voice, that it was time to acknowledge that they were in America and that it wasn’t right to require the secular studies teachers and janitorial crew, none of whom were Jewish, to come to work.

“All of a sudden we’re like the goyim,” Nathan’s mother said, filling a cake pan with batter. “Soon he’ll tell us to go sing carols and buy ourselves a tree. It’s a disgrace.”

Nathan watched her from the table where he sat with his father, eating a roll. A blizzard had dumped six inches on the city. Nathan had slept late, and when he woke up, Carl wasn’t in his bed. His parents thought Carl was still upstairs.

“Why are you complaining?” his father said. “Better I should have to go to Brooklyn today in this weather? Better you should be at the prima donna’s house, killing yourself on the ice walking from the bus? You said she was paying you for today.”

“A Jewish girl giving a Christmas bonus. I don’t want to take it.”

“Take it, Miriam.”

“Don’t push me, Avrum.”

His father sipped his coffee and gazed at the newspaper. White Christmas Blankets New York. But it was no blanket, Nathan thought. His mother slid the pan into the oven, dusted her hands on her apron. “What’s with Carl? It’s ten o’clock.”

“So? You’re going somewhere? He’s exhausted, Miriam. Let him sleep.”

She poured herself coffee, pulled out a chair. “I don’t like how he looks. Not that I ever see him.” She turned to Nathan. “Not that I ever see either of you.” She pulled a tissue from the apron and wiped her eyes.

“It’s alright, Ma.” Nathan reached across the formica and patted her hand. “We’re doing fine.”

“You’re not doing fine. Coming home from school every day to an empty house, a cold supper. Shabbas”—she looked at his father, who kept his eyes on the paper—“hardly shabbas. We’re living like animals. Existing just to eat and sleep.” She sipped her coffee. Nathan finished his roll. After a few minutes he went to the living room and lay on the couch, watched the falling snow.

The doorbell woke him. Two policemen and, between them, a silent shivering Carl. They’d found him wandering in Forest Park, no coat, his clothes and sneakers soaked. He didn’t know where he lived; they got the address from the phone book.

“Downstairs,” his mother commanded after they’d walked Carl up to his and Nathan’s room and gotten him out of his frigid clothes and layered on extra blankets, gave him tea, waited until he fell asleep. “Did you know he wasn’t here?” she said when they were in the living room.

Nathan nodded.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Nathan watched the falling snow. “He goes on a lot of walks, I don’t know where.” He looked back at his parents. “I just figured he’d gone for another one.”

“Is he worried from something?” his father asked. “Money? College? He hears our arguing?”

“The yeshiva’s been calling,” Nathan said. “They’re taking away his scholarship.”

“I told you, Miriam! I told you we should’ve let him go to the public high school when he asked!”

Carl had asked to go to public school? “Carl wanted to go to the high school?” Nathan asked.

“That’s not your business,” his mother said.

“Don’t listen to her! Yes, he was sick of the yeshiva! We should have listened! You were so stubborn, Miriam!”

“Enough, Avrum! When did you hear about this, Nathan? Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Why didn’t he tell us?” his father erupted. “Because look what happens when he does! Do we listen to our sons? Do we pay attention? No! Because of you! You’re blind to your own children!”

“I’m blind? What about you? Working on shabbas, what kind of example is that! And not enough money to keep the same roof over our heads, we have to move again! Whose blindness is that!”

His father stomped out. Nathan watched the snow. He and his mother sat in silence. After a few minutes his mother went upstairs to check on Carl.

*

All night Nathan heard his parents fighting. By the next morning they had a plan. They told Nathan that when the yeshiva resumed the following day, his mother would go with him and Carl and demand to speak with Rabbi Lerner and find out what was going on. Then, when the public school reopened, she would go there. Tell them Carl was a smart boy, no more scholarship money, when can he enroll. Things were going to change in the family. Peace in the house. Financial worries were for parents, not for children. They were going to take better care of things from now on.

“What do you think Carl will say?” his mother asked, teary. Carl was still asleep. His father had gone out to buy the newspaper. “Do you think he’ll be happier now?”

Nathan looked at her. How could he save her? How could he save any of them?

“It’s his birthday tomorrow,” he said. “Let’s turn on all the lights.”

*

The next morning Carl whispered to Nathan at the kitchen table not to worry, that he’d had a breakthrough with his secret work, but that he would go to school because it was his birthday and his absence would be noticed. Nathan listened, feverish, didn’t touch his breakfast. Fifteen minutes later, the thermometer plucked from his mouth, his mother sent him back to bed. She would stay home with him and go to the yeshiva the next day. Meantime they would have a birthday cake for Carl when he and his father returned home that evening. They would turn on all the lights.

At three o’clock Nathan woke to the sound of the front door. The snow was still falling. He went downstairs. His father stood in the living room in his coat and hat, his face ashen. His mother sobbed on the couch.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Nathan said. “Why are you home? Did you get fired? Did they shut the place down?”

His father turned to the window. The sky was slate.

“Is it Carl? Did something happen to Carl? It’s Carl, isn’t it. Tell me!”

“Sit down, Nathan.” His father’s voice was shaking. “Your brother, he was on the roof. The roof of the school. Naked, no shoes, nothing, standing in the snow, the ice, yelling.” His voice broke. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, held it against his eyes. “Yelling about angels, they were telling him the secrets of heaven, coming back for him, he was waiting, ready. Crazy nonsense, out of his mind. Four teachers had to hold him down. He was going to jump. They had to tie him up to carry him downstairs.” He began to cry and Nathan felt himself splitting in two, floating onto the ceiling and watching the living room as though it were a play being performed by people he didn’t know. A woman weeping on the couch. A bent man, shoulders shaking, in a wet hat and coat. A boy staring out at a gunmetal sky.

*

The school sent Carl to Bellevue in an ambulance; Nathan’s parents went by taxi. Nathan wasn’t allowed to go despite his pleas. Mrs. Gottlieb from next door came to stay with him until his parents returned. Nathan wasn’t to breathe a word.

He lay on his bed and watched the ceiling. The bell at the back door rang, a single ding. Mr. Gottlieb with Mrs. Gottlieb’s dinner—a piece of chicken, still warm—Mr. Gottlieb standing on the mat, wiping his shoes of the dirty slush from the alley where the Dumpsters were. Nathan looked over at Carl’s bed. The bedspread ached for Carl, the night table whispered for Carl, the curtains fluttered for Carl. Everything longed for Carl.

He looked down. But not the books.

He scrambled to the floor and lifted Carl’s dust ruffle. Hundreds of them, like vermin. He reached in and pulled them out, stood up and threw back Carl’s bedspread, found them under the blankets, the pillows. Then the dresser, behind the radiator, hidden in newspapers on Carl’s chair. He threw them onto the floor, pulled the linens off his own bed, pushed up the mattress. Hundreds of pages scattered on the box spring. Numbers and shapes like impenetrable formulas, sentences scribbled along the tops and sides, words curled inside circles, snaked inside hexagons. The comet’s tail saves the sufferer. Bring me to the palace of radiance. A perfect world, full of splendor.

He flung the papers onto the floor with the books, emptied shoeboxes, shook out sweaters, dug in pockets and hats. Then he went into the hall. The Gottliebs were talking in low tones in the kitchen. From the linen closet he pulled down the old white sheets they took to the bungalow colony in summer—they would not go again—and piled in the papers, the books. When he got to the green one, Carl’s favorite, he flipped it open.

You road I enter upon, you are not all that is here. I believe that much unseen is also here.

Carl had thought it was only words. They both had. But they’d been tricked. Words could betray you. They promised you truth and they told you things you should never know and then they took your life.

Because everyone knew there were things no one should ever know.

He filled the sheets, tied them tight, put on his sneakers. He waited at the top of the stairs. Mr. Gottlieb went out the back door. Mrs. Gottlieb rinsed her dish. He saw the kitchen light go out, heard her pad into the living room, click on the TV.

He hurried down the steps, a sheet over his shoulder, its contents digging into his back. When the noise from the television billowed up with laughter, he unlatched the kitchen door, ran out into the icy black night through the alley to the open Dumpster and hurled his terrible burden into the stinking bin. Then the next one and the one after that, two, three, four trips, heaving his burden into the trash again and again until it was all gone and he raised his trembling face to the moonless sky and cursed the God who answers his prayers.

I was thrilled when the Ivanovs moved in next door. That house had been empty for a long time.  Too long.  I felt that they had arrived not a moment too soon, before the roof fell in and the foundation buckled.

Actually, I would have been pleased had anyone moved in, but the Ivanovs, being recent Russian immigrants, lent the event an exotic gloss. Vova, the patriarch, was the stereotypical Russian bear. He was immense, but, except for his paunch, most of his bulk was raw muscle. He had high cheek bones, a split nose, the punchy aspect of a heavy drinker, and a Clint Eastwood squint. His hands, overworked for years in a Russian coal mine, were like square, dark vices. He was balding, but the hair at the sides of his head was full. His wife, Luba, was an interesting opposite. Petite and soft-spoken, she was a plain woman. She wore no makeup and tied her salt-and-pepper hair back in a simple knot. Whenever I acknowledged her she blushed.

They had two children — Nina, age fifteen, and Igor, fourteen. Actually, Igor is no longer Igor. On his first day in an American high school, his peers, hearing his name, were merciless. And so he came home and announced, “Call me Gary.” Vova never accepted this.

I was immediately drawn into the family’s orbit. On their first day in their new home, Vova came over and asked, in halting English, if I had an ax he could borrow.  I watched as he took the tool, marched into his backyard, and demolished the half-collapsed garage to its underpinnings in the space of three hours. I remarked to Luba that two men couldn’t have done that job in a day. “Vova never gives up,” she said. “He always finishes what he starts.”

She was right. By the end of the week there was a new garage sitting on the concrete slab, the whole of it built with wood Vova had scavenged from the town dump.

The family went at the house and its land with the same élan. Day after day I watched as broken panes were replaced, sagging gutters removed, clapboards scraped and painted. Luba worked tirelessly in the garden, with Nina joining her after school. They removed the dense jungle of Japanese knotweed with pickax and shovel, turned the newly revealed soil, and within weeks had created a small garden of Eden, brimming with tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and beans. In a gesture of good will, Vova planted, of all things, a kiwi vine along the chain link fence that separated our properties. “Take all the fruit you want,” he said, his arms spread wide.

I was an idle observer of all this industry, though not by design. I offered to help wherever and whenever I could. Vova wouldn’t hear of it. He was not only a master at demolition and construction, but knew a great deal about electricity and plumbing, and was eager to put this skills on solo display. He rewired the house and installed a second bathroom. Every morning, before he went to work at one of Maine’s last paper mills, Vova headed out in the family’s old Volvo and returned a short while later with materials from the dump — wire, junction boxes, copper and pvc pipe.  You name it.  He even found a perfectly serviceable commode there. “Vova never stops,” said his adoring wife. “He does it all for us. He is so loyal.”

We lived side-by-side along the Penobscot River. This body formed our common artery.  We each had a modest dock and often chatted across the water while sitting in our lounge chairs, enjoying the summer breeze and listening to birdsong. The Ivanovs had a dog, a Great Pyrenee, that was snow white and for this reason was named “Sneg.” Vova was utterly in love with this large animal that sat on its haunches by his side at every opportunity. One evening, while we were on our docks, Vova was stroking Sneg’s head and humming. “Look at him,” he beamed, his voice tender. “This is smartest dog. Brain very big. Bigger than some peoples.” And then he got down on all fours and began to commune with the canine, arfing and rubbing noses. Luba waved her hand in silly embarrassment. “Oh, Vova,” she said, as if she were talking to a child. Vova looked up at her and yipped.

Sneg cast adoring eyes at Vova. But his love for his master was exceeded only by his loathing of me. I discovered this the hard way one evening when I went over to the Ivanovs’ dock to show Vova one of my fishing lures. As soon as I set foot on it Sneg began to growl. He bared his teeth and his eyes flashed. I backed away.

“Ooh,” cooed Vova in a mock cautionary tone, as if he did not want to be too harsh on the animal. “This is friend, Sneg. Be nice.” I was hoping that he might give the animal a clip on the snout. Instead, he only stroked his back and continued to speak sweet words.

I learned to work around Sneg, as our relationship seemed to have little chance of improving. Things were easier, of course, when the Ivanovs were visiting at my house; but even then, Sneg howled in great ululations of longing for Vova. “See how he cries for papa,” said Vova, looking up, his eyes like stars as he sat at my table with his family, his voice full of emotion.

Those visits were always congenial, if animated. Vova could never resist speechifying about Russia, about the obstacles he had overcome: his life in the coal mine, the rampant theft, the need to lock everything, unaccountable authorities, arcane laws. His complaints, I sensed, were a means of showing how much he could take. Nina and Ig…, er, Gary, said little. Now and then Nina would sigh. I couldn’t tell if it was a sigh reflecting some sense of loss, or whether she was just becoming an American teenager, convinced that her parents were refugees from some primitive, less sophisticated culture. Gary was more engaged, his intelligent eyes following every face, every word of the conversation. “I miss real Russian food,” he said at one point.

His father immediately reacted.  “No!” he bellowed. “Your mama make it just like Russia.”

“It’s not the same here,” countered the son. “Maybe the ingredients are different.”

Vova slammed the table, his large hand coming down like the piston of some great engine. “You don’t know what you talk about,” he said with finality. Through it all Luba smiled lovingly at all the members of her family, like a benevolent sun casting its warmth upon its planets.

As the weeks, months, and then that first year peeled away, each of the Ivanovs bore down with intensity on their particular projects. Vova continued to be a locomotive of hard work. Tireless and imaginative, he rose at four to get in a few hours of nail pounding and scavenging before setting off for the mill. When he returned home he resumed where he had left off, his energy undiminished. Luba stayed home and avoided me when Vova was not there. She worked inside or in the garden, but my greeting elicited only those demure blushes. Nina, as per my inkling, quickly became a petulant, self-centered, American teen. She began to talk back to her parents; I could hear the screeching at night. “You peasants!” she screamed at them. “What do you know? Tell me what an iPod is. You can’t even turn on a computer. Get an education!”

Luba’s only response to this was to quietly sob and turn to Vova who, for his part, seemed amused. The two of them came over one evening, at Luba’s behest, to get my opinion. I had never heard Luba speak so much. “She’s becoming another person,” she sniffled into her Kleenex. “She’s impossible to live with. But I couldn’t live without her.”

“She’s just learning from her new friends,” I offered. “Trying to be like them to fit in.”

Vova snorted, as if in derision of my opinion. “She beautiful girl,” he said. “Good parents. She will find love and  man and in the end everything is happy.”

I could hear Sneg howling dolefully across the way. Vova’s ears perked up. “You see?” he said, his expression becoming dreamy. “Sneg love papa because papa love Sneg. Everything will work out.”

“Vova!” sobbed Luba. “Nina is not a dog!”

In at attempt to turn the subject to something that did seem to be working out for them, I asked about Gary, but my voicing of his alias struck a nerve. Vova firmed his lips and sat up. He pounded the table with his fist. “Igor!”

I conceded the boy’s given name.

“He lazy,” said Vova, which surprised me. “Luba  disrespectful, but believe it, she work. In garden. And  babysit for people. She work. But Igor! He read, he write, he look out  window. Sometime I think he sleep with eye open. When I talk to him he smile and say, ‘Yes, papa,’ but hear nothing. And then,” he continued, lowering his voice and leaning toward me, “I hear something in bathroom, something unnormal, and I go in and…”

“Vova!” shrieked Luba.

“He look at me like nothing wrong, just holding himself in hand.”

Both parents fell silent. “It’s normal,” I said.

“But to continue when found!” said Vova, his eyes wide.

This detail was a red herring. What really seemed to hurt Vova was his son’s perceived shiftlessness. But who wouldn’t look like a laggard compared to Vova? And so I offered, “Maybe he’d like to do a little work for me. Mow the lawn, do some painting.”

“Yes, yes,” said Vova immediately, his expression begging. “Anything to get him out of house and doing something with hand” — he caught himself — “Something else with hand.” As he said this he threw out his own hands, clasping and unclasping them repeatedly, like restless claws.

Gary came by the next day. Such a pleasant kid. He greeted me cheerfully. A little on the stocky side, he was by no means heavy, just well packed. His straight, dark hair was neatly cut, accenting a high forehead and immense brown eyes. I watched as he mowed the lawn, then took it upon himself to rake up the cuttings, which I had told him was unnecessary. The day was searingly hot, the sun brutal, but he moved apace, back and forth, without rest, clearly his father’s son. In a nod to the heat, he finally took off his shirt and cast it over a tree branch. His chest glistened with sweat. He turned and I caught my breath. There, across his back, was a long, crimson welt, extending almost from shoulder to hip. At first I thought it might be a surgical scar, but what procedure would warrant such  a long diagonal incision?

When Gary appeared at my door he had his shirt on again. I invited him in for iced tea. He sat quietly at the kitchen table and drank two tall glasses before drinking the third at a more moderate pace, chuggling the ice between sips. I took the opportunity to ask him how everything was going.

“School is not very challenging,” he said. “I learn more from reading books at home.”

“Do you play any sports?”

“No. Nothing. In Russia I played soccer.”

“I bet you were good.”

He perked up, smiling broadly. “I was a midfielder,” he said. “I could go anywhere on the field.” As he said this he traced a line through the air with a finger.

“Why don’t you play here?”

Gary shrugged. “I’m not interested.”

“Do you have any friends?”

“At school. A couple.”

“You live in a beautiful place, right on the river. I’m sure they’d like to come over some time.”

Gary shook his head. “No. That wouldn’t be good. Sneg.”

“I think I’m the only one Sneg has a problem with. He seems gentle with everybody else.”

“Sneg is gentle,” confirmed Gary. “Dad treats him better than anybody else in the house, except for mom. Last night we had lamb chops, but he saved the tenderloin for himself and Sneg.”

I was struck by the quality of the boy’s English. How many American kids his age would know what tenderloin was?  But the bit about not being able to bring friends home because of Sneg struck me as inauthentic.

The conversation ended there. Gary got up and I pushed a few bills toward him.  He demurred, but I gestured with the money.  He finally took it and shook my hand. “Any time you need help,” he said, “just ask. And you don’t have to pay me.”

As I watched him cross over to his yard it occurred to me that this kid was no slouch.

The summer progressed in a lovely fashion — long, hot days punctuated by rain at night, just as paradise would have it. The river slowed until it was a still lake, glinting in the sunlight. When it looked inviting like this, I felt a tinge of regret, and embarrassment, that I had never learned to swim. I watched as kingfishers darted and rattled low over the surface of the water and mallards conducted their broods among the reeds. The Ivanovs continued to labor and prosper, although Nina became more intractable. She wore capris whose tightness gave her a stiltlike gait, took on a gothic look with black lipstick, and had her navel pierced. She dyed her hair purple with flame orange highlights. All of this sent Luba into a slough of despondency. At night her wailing elicited howls from Sneg in a piercing counterpoint.

Gary continued to work for me — painting and weeding and mowing. In the tug of war over remuneration, I managed to prevail, telling him that all work was good and worthy of compensation. Our post-chore conversations, though, barely broke the surface before he got up to return home. On blistering days, when he thought I was occupied elsewhere, he took off his shirt and I saw fresh evidence of abuse. A bruised shoulder and another welt, crossing the first one, creating a broad crimson “X” on his back. I was finally compelled to speak. When I did, Gary froze before me, his hand clutching his glass of iced tea. His expression was serene, but in his eyes I could see the wheels turning, as if he were searching for the correct thing to say, or deciding whether he should speak at all. Finally, after releasing his breath, he said, quietly and clearly, “I’ll take care of it.”

“I’m willing to talk to your father.”

Gary’s gaze unlocked and he threw me a questioning look. “Who said anything about my father? Please don’t think you know what’s going on. And please don’t interfere.”

He left. And he left me wondering. If not Vova, then could it be Luba? If so, why? It seemed impossible, but then again, in the newspaper that very morning I had read about a woman, a physician, no less, who had kept her six-year-old son in a wooden box in the basement because he had tried to set her on fire. Anything was possible, nothing was beyond belief anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if Vova told me he was the heir to the Romanov throne.

Not long thereafter, things changed. A period of calm set in at the Ivanovs. Vova was more light-hearted, Luba less emotional. Perhaps it was because Nina seemed more normal. She had returned to her natural hair color, dispensed with the body glitter and black lipstick, and unshackled herself from the capris. Only Gary seemed to be moving off in a different direction. He had become morose. Since our last conversation he had made excuses every time I offered him work. Late at night a dim light burned in the bathroom next to his room, and then, before the light went out, a gasping moan.

Then, one day, Vova showed up on my doorstep. “We are going on American vacation,” he announced, grandly. “First time. Florida!” As he said this he clapped his chest with his hands. Then he said something which left me speechless. “Please,” he begged, “take care of Sneg.”

“The dog?”

“Yes, yes,” said Vova. “Everything okay. He stay in doghouse with chain. Just give water, food, speak lovely words to him, like son.”

“But the dog hates me.”

Vova waved me off. “No, no,” he said. “Sneg love papa. When papa not here, Sneg love you.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Please,” he begged. “We leave tomorrow.”

“Why don’t you board him?”

Vova looked confused. “What is board?”

“A place where they keep dogs while you’re away.”

“Cost money?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Ush!”

They left the next morning, the diesel of the Volvo clattering and puffing black smoke as the boatlike vehicle moved off down the street. I looked over the fence and saw Sneg, reclining on his front paws in the entrance to his doghouse. When he saw me he raised his head and growled. He had enough water and food for the day, so I decided to worry about him the next morning.

The ensuing week was a disaster. Sneg’s chain was twenty feet long, so I couldn’t get near enough to service his food and water bowls. On my first attempt, he allowed me to come close, watching placidly as I spoke lovely words to him. “What a good dog. A father’s angel.” And then he lunged. I flew out of range, his jaws snapping at my heels. The end of the chain yanked him back with such sudden force that he jerked the entire doghouse forward as he let out a wrenching yelp.

My only recourse was to toss dog biscuits and sodden clumps of meaty food from a safe distance. Water was a messier affair. I squirted it over the fence with the garden hose. It filled Sneg’s bowl but also created a mud pit in front of the dog house. At night Sneg howled so forlornly and so incessantly — for Vova, I presumed — that the neighbors called the police. Although I pleaded helplessness, as the animal’s caretaker I was fined for disturbing the peace. Otherwise, during the day I worked in the backyard, throwing worried glances over at Sneg, imagining he had the brute strength to break his chain in his determination to attack me. Instead, he rested on his forelegs, taking his repose, staring blankly at the green world around him.

Then, one day, his landscape offered a diversion.  Mrs. Osnoe’s cat, an orange tabby, wandered into the yard from across the street.  Sneg took notice and followed her with his black marble eyes, his great head rotating like the turret of a gun. The cat paid him no mind as it ambled past the doghouse. In a flash Sneg sprang to life, seized the tabby in his great jaws and broke its neck. Then he resumed his repose, the lifeless feline lying at his feet, one small forepaw twitching.

I gasped. What could I do? I tried to retrieve the body by making a lasso from clothesline, but Sneg seized it and engaged in a tug of war with me. I couldn’t tell Mrs. Osnoe. Not yet, anyway, because she would have called the police and I feared they might shoot the dog. At the very least, I would be fined again. The tabby had been a porch cat that came and went as it pleased, so Mrs. Osnoe never fretted when it disappeared for a couple of days. And its lying in state in front of Sneg’s doghouse seemed to have a pacifying effect. He ceased howling at night. I decided to drop the whole affair in the Ivanovs’ lap when they returned.

Two days later they were home. I heard the harsh clatter of the Volvo’s engine from inside my house. I thought to go out to greet them, but then decided to let events take their course. I didn’t have to wait long. Within five minutes Vova was at my back door. “Who is cat?” he asked.

“Sneg killed her.”

“Poor cat.”

“Yes. She belonged to Mrs. Osnoe. I tried to take the body away but Sneg wouldn’t let me.”

“Sneg dirty.”

“I had to squirt water into his bowl with the garden hose. He wouldn’t let me come near.”

“Ooh,” sighed Vova with sweet emotion. “He miss papa so much. He cry?”

“Every night. Until he killed the cat.”

“Don’t worry. I take care of everything.” Then he began to tell me about his vacation. He glowed and raised his eyes heavenward. “Florida!” he proclaimed, as if he had discovered the promised land. “Beautiful, beautiful. But hot!”

The Ivanovs settled back in with a vengeance. Vova began to build a sort of seawall by the dock, Luba weeded the neglected garden as if she were mounting a counterattack, and Nina, the prodigal daughter, arranged flower boxes under the front windows while her iPod pumped tunes into her head. Gary was conspicuously absent. I finally called out to Vova, who was shirtless and roasting in the sun, his gut flowing over his belt like batter, as he heaved cinder blocks and mixed mortar. “Igor sick,” he said. “Very stay at home.”

“Is it serious?” I asked. “I want him to do some work for me.”

“You tell me,” said Vova. “I work for you.”

“No. You have your hands full. I’ll wait until he gets better.”

Vova gave me a thumbs up and returned to his wall.

I grew increasingly concerned about Gary over the course of the week. The family carried on as if he didn’t exist. He finally emerged one day to tend to Sneg. I called to him from the fence. “Please come over.”

Gary appeared in my kitchen and I handed him a glass of iced tea. I noted a slight discoloration just to the side of his left eye. “Are you okay?” I asked him.

“Please don’t…”

“Listen,” I said. “Your father is beating you. I saw the marks on your back. And now your face. I want to talk to him.”

“Don’t…”

“I’m going to talk to him. And then, if he does it again, you must tell me. You have no choice.”

Gary looked shocked. Not because I was probing, but because I had denied him a say in the matter. Then his features softened. “It’s not so bad,” he said. “The only thing I don’t like are the marks. If there weren’t any marks, I could take it. But I’m always bringing notes to school so I can get out of gym.” Then he looked at me, his eyes pleading. “The thing is, dad never gives up. When he starts to beat me, he has to finish. He never gives up.”

“Why does he beat you?”

Gary shrugged. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “I don’t think my father ever really liked me. Is such a thing possible? Or maybe it’s because life has been hard for him. There are money problems. Our relatives in Russia say they are coming to live with us. Dad can’t afford it, but he can’t say no. It’s like he has to take it out on somebody. He won’t touch mom or Nina. He’s so loyal to mom. And he’d never hit Sneg. So I guess he has to hit me.”

“Nice analysis, but no, he doesn’t have to hit anybody. Nobody deserves pain.”

Gary quietly nodded. Then he swallowed and his face grew tense. “What if it makes things worse?”

“I don’t think it will. When a batterer knows somebody is watching, things can change.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“Then I will call the police.”

Gary had no response to this. He quietly left the house. That evening Vova came over to invite me to supper. I made him a cup of tea and decided to confront him. “Vova,” I said. “I need you to listen to me for the next sixty seconds without saying a word.”

Vova laughed as if preparing to hear a joke.  I watched as dumped a tablespoon of sugar into the tea and stirred it with a bare finger. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Go ahead. Talk.”

I laid it out like machine gun fire. “I know about the beatings. In America it is against the law. If you do it again I will call the police. If you do it again and I don’t call the police, they will arrest me.”

I had awakened the Russian bear. Vova erupted from the table, spilling his tea. “You tell me!” he said. “My son. You tell me! I love my son.” Then he gave me the finger and stormed out.

A pall of silence descended. Vova broke off all contact. When I passed him on the street he stared straight ahead or took pains to avert his eyes. Luba followed her husband’s lead. I saw her alone in the pharmacy one day and greeted her warmly. She pretended I wasn’t there. Nina, too, despite her independent streak, snubbed me. But Gary stayed in touch, however furtively. He sent me an occasional email and shared a few words when he saw me. “But I can’t work for you again,” he said. As I arrived home one day I noticed the kiwi vine that Vova had planted on the fence between our properties. It had borne one solitary fruit, and it was hanging on my side.

The tension was uncomfortable, but what could I do? If I had saved Gary from further abuse, then it was fair at the price. One night he snuck into my house to talk.  He told me the beatings had indeed stopped. “He still yells at me for being lazy, for not making a contribution. I know these aren’t the real reasons, but at least he doesn’t whip me with that cord anymore.”

I told Gary that I believed him, but what was that Russian proverb that Ronald Reagan once quoted? Trust but verify? I told him to take off his shirt. He complied.  The scars on his back were fading, and there were no new marks.

One quiet evening in late August, as I was sitting on my front steps, the Ivanovs piled into the Volvo and went somewhere. I waved as they passed, but they stared straight ahead. Gary, in the back seat with his sister, threw me a quick, apologetic look. It was a warm evening with a clear sky. I walked into my backyard to look at the river, which had begun to move again from recent rains. Sneg was reclining in front of his doghouse. I suddenly noticed that he wasn’t chained. But the backyard was now completely enclosed by a new section of fence Vova had erected as an act of indignation. I was sure he couldn’t leap over the barrier. When he saw me he yawned and licked his chops, as if to say, “I’m free and could get you if I wanted to. This knowledge is enough for now.”

I sat on the back porch and continued to look out at the scene. A last flight of birds before dark, a refreshing breeze from the west, and the first star winking through. A full moon was on the rise. And then I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. Sneg was up and ambling across the yard. I watched as he trotted to the Ivanovs’ dock, paused, and pricked up his ears. There. And another. Fish were breaking the water, feeding on whatever insects were alighting on the surface.

Sneg grew excited. He barked, jogged in place, and then ran to the end of the dock. He hung his head over the side and barked every time a fish broke the surface. With every event he grew bolder, snapping and running from one side of the dock to the other. As he ran to and fro with increasing agitation, the momentum of that huge, overstimulated body finally carried him over the side with a howl of horror.

I froze, wondering if my eyes had deceived me. I had never seen a dog lose its balance. And then, recovering, I sprang to my feet. I clambered over the fence and considered, for a moment, that perhaps this was Sneg’s scheme to get me onto his turf for the final, definitive attack. But his howls echoed from the river as I ran to the dock.

I looked down and saw the dog, madly pawing the water, seeking return to firm ground. I watched, helpless, as Sneg’s claws scratched at the cinderblocks of Vova’s wall.  But it was insurmountable. I dropped onto my belly and reached over the side of the dock but Sneg was out of reach. I jumped to my feet and looked about for a stick, a rope, anything. Sneg continued to howl. For animals with such fixed expressions, I suddenly understood what dog lovers had always professed: that these animals were capable of profound changes of mien. What I now saw in Sneg was a look of terror.

I didn’t have my cell phone, so I couldn’t call 911. Yet I felt that running back into the house would waste precious moments. In the dark water below, Sneg was now paddling in circles, looking forlornly for an escape route. Much of his exertion was against the current itself, which was not as powerful as it was persistent — an unremitting force which quietly tugged, as if knowing that, compared to that of the life it enshrouded, its energy was inexhaustible.

Sneg had ceased to howl and yelp, dedicating his remaining strength to keeping his head above water. In a fit of inspiration, I pulled off my shirt, fell onto my belly again, and threw it out to him. The dog snapped at it but missed. I retrieved the shirt, quickly wound it into a sodden rat’s tail, and whipped it back out. Sneg snapped and missed again. On the third attempt he caught it. But then he stopped paddling and yielded entirely to the lifeline, exhausted.

Now I felt the full weight of that heavy body as I tried to drag it against the inexorable pull of the river. The fabric itself held fast, but I could feel it slipping from my grip. I stared down the length of the twisted shirt, at the end of which Sneg was tethered like a streamer, the dead weight of his white body undulating gracefully in the current. Beyond him the sky was growing dark, already studded with the brightest stars. The moon was well up in the sky. I felt the cool of the evening on my bare back. The neighborhood was silent. The shirt left my hand and I watched Sneg’s two dark, unbelieving eyes fly away from me and disappear under the water.

My God.

I pushed myself up off my stomach and sat there, breathing hard for both me and the life that had been taken by the river. I continued to sit and think, until night had fallen and a scrim of moonlight played upon the water. Two headlights flashed across the backyard. I got up and saw the Volvo pulling in. Then, a few moments later, I heard Vova’s voice. “Sneg! Papa home! Sneg?” Then something indecipherable in Russian, followed by, “SNEG!”

The flashlight fell across my face as I stood there. Vova looked at me, first with surprise and then disgust. “Where Sneg?” he asked. His family was standing behind him, their faces expectant.

“He fell off the dock,” I said, taking pains to speak quietly and clearly. “He fell. I tried to help. And he drowned.”

I had presumed that Vova would neither understand nor believe me. And so, preemptively, I tensed my muscles and struck a defiant pose. “I did my best to save him. Please step aside.”

I could sense Vova’s gathering rage. But what could he do? I had grown so hard that even he could see that I would not be pressed. “I’m sorry,” was the last thing I said as I moved past the family and headed back to the house. But before I went many steps I heard Vova imploring the river spirit the way an unbelieving child might nudge a dead parent. “Sneg? Sneg?”

I heard the great splash. Vova was in the water, swimming downriver, his exertions abetted by the current. “Sneg!” he screamed with every breath.

“Help him!” I cried, turning to the family. “He’ll drown. The current…”

But they were all standing quietly by, as if privy to a shared truth, one they had learned from long experience. Luba was a wall of stoicism as she gazed after her husband, diminished now, cutting a small silver ribbon in the moonlight.  “No,” she said, her children gathered to herself. “Vova will not drown. He can swim a long, long time. He never gives up.”