Glen Hirshberg - Freedom is Space for the Spirit

Vasilys message arrived by telegram, and Thomas couldnt bring himself to open it right away. His assumption was that another of the old gang had died. He settled on the red leather couch by the fire in his Charlottenburg apartment and held the envelope, wet from the snow outside, in his hands. Eventually, Jutta stuck her head out of her sculpture studio. She wiped the back of her palm across her dusty, still-sharp cheekbones.

Good God, Jutta said, is that really a telegram?

From Vasily.

Obviously. He lost his cell phone somewhere?

Last I heardand it was a long time agohe still uses burners. He doesnt trust cell phones.

Internet cafs all closed?

I dont even think he has e-mail. He doesnt trust that, either.

But he trusts his local telegraph operator? Assuming there are such people still in St. Petersburg? Or here? Or anywhere?

Grinning, she moved toward the couch, and Thomas had to fight back a momentary and selfish flicker of annoyance. Whatever was in the telegram, he didnt want to share it, at least not right away. Feeling childish, he watched Jutta lumber closer, her hand on her swelling belly. She smiled at him, and the orange from the fire in the grate caught in her eyes.

What does it say?

In the old days, at the end of Soviet times or during the wild Yeltsin yearsback when theyd really been doing something, when the art had been the moment itself and not the preserving or capturing or remembering of itThomas would have torn open the envelope, tossed it aside. But for this onethe first in yearshe fished out his pocketknife, slit the fold, withdrew the folded yellow paper, and laid the envelope carefully atop the Gerhard Richter Baader-Meinhof monograph on the end-table. Then he opened Vasilys message, and though Jutta could see the wordsEnglish wordsas well as he could, he read them aloud:

Happening now. STOP. Invitation letter at Consulate. STOP. Hurry. STOP. FISTS.

You know, said Jutta, Im pretty sure they dont need to say STOP anymore.

Thomas nodded. Vasily probably just liked using STOP.

And telegrams.

Everything about this. To his astonishment, Thomas felt tears in his eyes.

Jutta was standing right next to him, now, staring down at the note. They still make us get invitation letters?

Its still Russia, Thomas murmured.

I guess, said Jutta, and for a single moment, in her voice, he heard a hint, a suggestion of exactly the feelings he was having. And of course, that was only fair. She had been there, too. Eventually. He looked away, but Juttas dusty, strong-fingered hand slid over his. Thomas, she said. Go.

I cant. The baby.

Is due in three months.

Term. Classes

Start in two weeks.

This is Vasily. Whatever hes up to could last longer than that.

Get a cold. Get pneumonia. Your students will live.

Im not he said. Then, I dont

Call the consulate, said Jutta. Get Vasilys invitation letter and your visa. Go. Turning away, she threw a tiny sliver of soapstone into the fire; She has missed all this, too, he realized. If not for the baby theyd both assumed they were too old to expect, shed have dropped everything and gone with him.

In truth, for that matter, shed have gone without him.

On impulse, and to save money, he took the train. And because hed somehow transformed, right as he entered his forties, into a tenure-tracked Juniorprofessor der situationistichen Kunst who could almost afford it, he took the fast train. He even treated himself to the last second-class bunk in the last available cabin; he was very nearly a father, after all, and long out of practice. He would be of more use to Vasily rested.

The first hours passed in a blissful, bleary-eyed blur. In the observation car, he shared zkusky and vodka with a wealthy American couple, both in their sixties, headed to Poland for some sort of pensioners opera-singer training camp. Thomass spoken English was rusty and his alcohol tolerance significantly diminished, so he wasnt entirely sure hed understood his companions correctly. But they laughed easily and offered him saltine crackers from their travel bags once theyd polished off the zkusky. Better still, they went silent when the train, slowed by snow, crept into the Lower Oder Valley, and the full moon shot up over the marshlands like a comet streaking over the earth, shedding snow flurries that glittered in the air and on the trees, and silvered the surface of the river.

Later, retreating to his bunk, he met his cabinmates, a blond father and his two white-blond, teenaged sons, all smoking and arguing loudly in Finnish. But they quieted without his asking. The whole time Thomas sorted through his hastily packed duffel bag, scrubbed his face with a wet wipe, changed his shirt, and tried to settle on top of the blankets, the Finns stayed silent. When he laid back, one of the sons wordlessly flicked off the light. And so, for a few minutes, wedged into a rut in the hard mattress as if anchored to a cliff face, Thomas imagined he might sleep. Then the party broke out in the corridor.

Poles, mostly, he thought, listening to their laughter streaming under the bottom of the cabin door along with their cigarette smoke. Some Czechs or Slovaks, too. Kids, mostly. When Thomas sat up, he was surprised to see his cabinmates in their bunks, all of them sleeping or at least motionless.

How can they sleep? he wondered. And then, How can they want to?

Suddenly, he was out of his berth and back in his sneakers. As quietly as he couldsilly, really, given the racket from outsidehe edged open the door and stepped into the hall.

Almost immediately, the gaggle of students edged away down the corridor, taking up spots at the next windows down, throwing those open to the cold, the whipping wind. They laughed as clouds of snow whirled into the train, exploding against the walls like birds smacking into glass. Smoking and shouting and drinking and laughing, the students ignored Thomas completely.

It was absurd, of course, to expect any different, except that Thomas did. After all, hed seen so much that they hadnt, done so much that they hadnt: won a yearlong study fellowship to St. Petersburg State, then, with Vasilys help, almost immediately slipped his minders (mostly, admittedly, because why would they have bothered minding him much?) and joined Vasilys crew of expats and expelled students and poseurs and rabble. For nearly a year, theyd wallpapered windowless squatters digs with daisies in abandoned St. Petersburg buildings and left them for no one to find; put on silent concerts, lip-synching and gyrating, in the middle of parks in the middle of the night; rowed a convoy of johnboats festooned with homemade Big Mac wrappers down the Volkhov, under the pedestrian bridge into the thousand-year-old heart of the Novgorod Kremlin, and then set the boats on fire as the waiting militsiya closed around and finally arrested them; back home in Germany, he had ripped whole concrete chunks out of the Wall with his bare, bleeding hands and danced to Afterlife atop it on the very night it fell, then fled police and soldiers from both Germanys into the alleys of the West, which had seemed, to his terrified surprise, so much darker and more frightening than those in the Berlin hed grown up knowing.

Somehow, because he really had done those things (though in another life), hed expected these kids on this train to welcome him into their conversation, and never mind his not-so-cheap sneakers, his dry-cleaned slacks, and neat, salt-and-pepper professors beard.