Golinkin - A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir

Copyright 2014 by Lev Golinkin

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.

www.doubleday.com

DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Alfred Music for permission to reprint an excerpt from Wont Get Fooled Again, words and music by Pete Townshend, copyright 1971, copyright renewed by Fabulous Music Ltd. Administered in the United States and Canada by Spirit One Music (BMI) o/b/o Spirit Services Holdings, S.a.r.l., Suolubaf Music and ABKCO Music, Inc., 85 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Music.

Jacket design and illustrations by Michael J. Windsor

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Golinkin, Lev, author.
A backpack, a bear, and eight crates of vodka : a memoir / Lev Golinkin.
pages; cm
ISBN 978-0-385-53777-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-385-53778-0 (eBook) 1. Golinkin, Lev.
2. Jews, RussianUkraineKharkovBiography.
3. Jewish refugeesUnited StatesBiography. 4. Jews, RussianUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.
E184.37.G655A3 2014
947.004924092dc23
[B]
2014005408

v3.1_r1

To Jeff, Bettie, Amanda, and Dr. V

This book was born from a need to understand my past, and as such, everything recounted here is as accurate as memory, research, and reflection can allow. But this is not only my story: the narrative takes place in the context of a massive refugee movement and includes accounts of numerous individuals, some of whom werent eager to publicly embrace a turbulent past. In light of this, and in the spirit of not being a jackass, I have changed the names of those who asked to remain anonymous or werent available to provide consent.

It was a hot day and the metal bleachers of Alumni Stadium channeled the sunshine directly into the center, where the graduates and I melted in our black gowns. The commencement speaker, a blind man who had climbed Mt. Everest, spoke about the journey of life, and ways to overcome obstacles, and the many lessons of college. He said other stuff, too, but I dont remember what it was. I couldnt listen. I needed to move. I needed a cigarette. I needed a pack of cigarettes, I needed coffee, extra-large coffee with cream and no sugar, and most of all, I needed to walk.

People and places I hadnt thought about for yearsthat Id refused to think aboutflashed through my head, drowning out the mountain climber. I had to find Linda, and Peter, and Eva, and the bald hotel owner, and the Bosnians. I had to find the pudgy man who pulled us off the Vienna train station and the blond girl from the house with the red door who gave me a jacket on a cold February evening when the wind howled down the Danube. There were others I had to find. Unfortunately, I didnt know their names, or where they were, or what they looked like, which was going to make looking for them a bit problematic.

The speech ended, everyone clapped, and we broke up by schools and shuffled off to various parts of the campus for the second half of commencement. On the way, friends swapped congratulations and contact info, and I made a mental note to clear my phone book and disable my e-mail account. Boston College was kind enough to let me participate in the graduation ceremony, so I crossed the stage and was handed a giant envelope with a little printout explaining why there was no diploma inside and I would therefore not be going to med school. I smiled and shook the deans hand, Dad took a picture, and I scampered back to my seat without further thought on the matter. The only thing preventing me from graduating was a one-credit physics lab. I could earn my diploma in a month, and then apply to med school or not apply to med school. At this point it wasnt important.

Commencement ended and the countdown began: we had to empty our dorms by 5:00 p.m. I hadnt packed and by the time Dad and two family friends scraped me out of my room and into a van, we were right at the deadline. Dad, a meticulous packer, was rechecking straps and calculating optimal suitcase alignment when I excused myself, ran back to the dorm, shut the bathroom door, and turned on the faucet. The water helped, for some odd reason. Even though there was no one else in the dorm, the rushing sound made me feel more alone. Ive always needed that moment before the plunge, to stand and gather, and Ive always preferred being alone by myself to being alone in a crowd.

The Soviet Union was waiting. The largest country in the world, a country the size of North America. The land that worshipped the embalmed body of a bald monster, the land that banned God, the land of black cars, illegal radios, crooked mirrors, and underground bakeries, where missiles and tanks rolled under the red flag. The guards were waiting, and the gas masks and the refugee camps. From the moment I stepped on American soil I had dedicated myself to forgetting, ignoring, and burying them, and still they waited. I felt my hands clenching the porcelain sides of the sink, felt the familiar panic radiate from my chest, crawl up my neck, choking me, urging me to run, get a new address, new goals, new friends, move, disappear, be somewhere else, but for the first time in my life, being terrified didnt matter. I had to go back, to Indiana, to the refugee camps in Austria, to talk to people, walk around, and reconstruct something resembling a past. College has many lessons; I stood with the blind man on that one. Some Id forget, some Id already forgotten, but the one thing that finally sank into my head is that you cant have a future if you dont have a past.

A thin film of vapor coated the mirror by the time I turned off the water and walked back to the van, where Dad was pacing. It was past 5:00 and the campus was nearly abandoned. The faculty had driven off to embrace the summer, and the grounds crew was stacking chairs and folding pavilions in a rush to move on. Maroon pennants with the BC logo flapped from lampposts making me think of other red banners flapping in other winds, in a country that no longer existed. Lanky shadows of campus towers chased the van down Commonwealth Avenue, like giant Gothic windshield wipers clearing away the school year, and then I passed out, and when I woke up we were getting gas at a rest stop in Jersey.

I spent the next two years walking.

Parades were the gold standard of the Soviet Union. Workers parades, womens parades, Revolution parades, the Great Patriotic War parades, we had them all. We had perfected parades; we had the best parades in the whole damn world. St. Patricks Day? Thanksgiving?