| |
It felt good to doze off and not be in a constant state of red-alert. In Afghanistan, Mikhail had to be attuned to the slightest variation in sight, sound or smell that might signal death stalked. He was riding the metro with his family from their proletariat neighborhood of concrete boxes to his father’s apartment complex in an upscale section of Moscow.
He opened his eyes when he heard an older woman say to Valeria in Russian-accented English, “Your children are so beautiful.”
A statement of fact that pleased Mikhail.
The woman, in her fifties, was poised and well-dressed in a light blue Western pants suit. Her clothes, though fashionable by Russian standards, were styled for American women of the 1970s. And her coiffed gray hair was a beehive straight out of the 1960s. She sat directly across the aisle from the Khalatsyns.
“I am a professor of English literature at Moscow University,” she added with pride. “You and your husband must be American. What do you think of our beautiful metro?”
Valeria nudged him; her eyes asked: What did she say? Although his wife spoke hardly any English, at least she recognized the language.
Mikhail answered in Russian: “This kind woman said our children are beautiful.”
“Well they certainly are,” a delighted Valeria replied. “She spoke English. Is she American, Mishe?”
He slapped both knees, rocked back and forth in his seat, and laughed. Russians believed that anyone who spoke English was an American, even though the English also spoke English; and infinitely better. The Russian professor laughed too, realizing her mistake.
Happy to answer both women’s questions, in Russian, Mikhail said: “No ma’am, we are proud Russians.” Then to Valeria, “No, Lera, she is as proud to be Russian as we are.”
The Khalatsyns exchanged pleasant conversation with the woman. But darkness lay behind Mikhail’s courteous smile. If this woman was more knowledgeable about the United States she would know that his gorgeous wife would be spat upon for marrying a “Negro.” As for his children, no matter how beautiful and intelligent, they would be called “zebras.”
When they got off the train at his parent’s metro stop, Mikhail was happy to see how a simple ride up an escalator to the street delighted Malli and little Albina. When they arrived at the top, the children immediately begged to ride back down and then up again.
Amused, Valeria said, “They do it every time we visit Grandma and Grandpa. Don’t we, you naughty little hooligans?”
Mikhail smiled. “Then I shall not break a family tradition. Let’s go.”
The Khalatsyns rode down, and then back up again.
On the street, the children were so excited they scampered way ahead of their hand-holding parents. Valeria called for them to slow down, but they didn’t until Mikhail’s voice boomed: “Hooligans, your mother and I are old! Slow down so we can keep up.”
The children stopped and ran back to both parents. Mikhail scooped up his Albina, and Valeria held hands with Malli. Mother and son made a game out of it, swinging their arms back and forth.
It would be so good to see his parents again, especially his father. He needed to lighten a burden he been carrying since Afghanistan. Mikhail had been like a rock to so many others this past year and a half, now it was his turn to lean on someone else.
***
MIKHAIL’S FATHER HAD been born in the small town of Fulton, Mississippi, twenty-five miles due east of Tupelo. His slave name had been Malcolm Robeson; but when he was granted Soviet citizenship in 1933, he immediately changed it to Malkol’m Khalatsyn.
Dr. Malkol’m Khalatsyn kept much of his earlier life hidden from his children. Mikhail knew his father was born on October 28, 1907 and had immigrated to the U.S.S.R. when he was twenty-six-years-old; a young man, but not that young. At his age Mikhail was already a husband and father. Did his father have a wife or ex-wife back in Mississippi? Did Mikhail have American half-siblings? Were his grandparents still alive?
If Mikhail did have half-siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins in America, he preferred not to know; after all, despite sympathy for the hard lives these people must still lead, they were the main enemy. In the event of a nuclear holocaust, he’d rather not think that a part of him would be incinerated back in America. There would be enough overwhelming grief for his relatives and the Soviet people who would meet the same fate here in Russia.
Although Mikhail was never able to pry personal information from his father about the old man’s family in America, the doctor was less reticent when it came to certain memories of black life in the Deep South. Mikhail’s high school class in American History had studied the tragic story of Emmett Till. Till was a fourteen year-old Negro teenager who had been murdered in Money, Mississippi in 1955. He had been accused of disrespecting a white woman. The class had been shown a famous photo of the baby-faced, smiling young Emmett before his brutal murder. Then the class had been horrified when they saw a photo of a disfigured corpse that lay in state in an open coffin.
“How could people do such a cruel thing, Papa? Emmett was only a few years younger than me.”
Mikhail would cry for many days thereafter. The initial sorrow soon morphed into an intense hatred for all Americans: southerners who had perpetrated such a horror and northerners who did nothing to stop it. None of the murderers of Emmett Till ever went to prison.
“They’re animals! I would gladly tear them apart with my bare hands,” he raged to his father in English. The tragic story of Emmett Till was one of the reasons young Mikhail decided to join the army. He would dedicate his life to defeating the Great Satan.
“All men are created equal — ha! How do you say it in English, Papa?”
In English, “It’s called bullshit, son.” Then back to Russian: “It’s our duty as Soviet citizens to fight injustice and change the world. Let that be your article of faith, Mishe.”
Everyone in Mikhail’s class knew that Dr. Khalatsyn had been born in Mississippi not far from where Emmett had been murdered. Mikhail’s teacher personally invited the doctor to come and speak before her class. There he shared a personal story.
“When I was ten-years-old,” the doctor began, “I remember riding in my father’s horse drawn wagon. Three black men, friends of my father, stopped us on the road. They asked my dad if he would go with them to, ‘Cut ‘er down.’ ”
Back in those days, young Malcolm Robeson had no idea what the men were talking about. A so much wiser now Dr. Malkol’m Khalatsyn remembered clearly what one of the men had said: “You should leave the boy home, Mike.”
Grim-faced: “No. Boy’s gotta see this.”
“He be too young!” exclaimed another.
“Every Negro boy living in Mississippi need’ta see it!” Mikhail’s grandfather raged to his friends. Then he whipped the reigns.
Dr. Khalatsyn wept openly as he told the class about what he saw on that cool Delta day in December: a pretty, young black woman in her twenties hanging from a tree. Her eyes had forever been set in terror with her mouth wide open after her tongue had choked out her last agony.
“All the black folk in town knew she had killed a white man who tried to rape her,” said the doctor. “The white man’s family claimed she robbed him.”
“They hung a Negro woman without a trial!” The outraged teacher had interrupted, asking and then answering her own question.
“It wasn’t cold that day,” the doctor said, remembering, “but I couldn’t stop shivering.”
“Did you have any white friends, Dr. Khalatsyn?” asked Mikhail’s teacher.
“Not after that day, ma’am,” the doctor replied. “There was too much hate in my heart back then. Not until I came to the Soviet Union did I begin to heal.”
Mikhail suddenly felt like he was collapsing in on himself. He had never heard this story before. He and his classmates shared his father’s great pain. Some openly sobbed.
“Do you know what my papa said to me when I asked how people could do such a thing?” his father told the class. “He said, ‘Not all white folks is evil, Malcolm, but them that ain’t don’t do nothing about them that is.’ ”
Mikhail always knew his father was proud of being a Soviet citizen with a new Russian name, but he wondered why the old man clung to vestiges of his American name: Khalatsyn meant Robeson in Russian while Malkol’m meant Malcolm. (khalat meant “robe” and syn meant “son.”) For Mikhail’s sister, Dzhoan, there was no such ambiguity. She knew she was 100% Russian and America was the main enemy.
***
MIKHAIL HAD BEEN INSPIRED by his father’s rise from immigrant to respected surgeon. The elder Khalatsyn was a Party member in good standing and in the top one percent of Soviet society. After intensive study of Russian language and Cyrillic, Malkol’m entered medical school. After graduation, Dr. Khalatsyn had married a Russian girl and was now firmly implanted in the Nomenclatura.
Mikhail did not hold that against him. He knew his father was unlike the others.
Mikhail, Lera and the children entered his parents’ huge apartment, luxurious by any nation’s standards. There were cheers and a sign hung on the wall that read in Cyrillic: “Welcome Home Mishe!” Mikhail was immediately smothered with kisses and greeted with happy tears from the two other beloved women in his life: his mother, Albina, and his sister, Dhzoan. He was so glad to see his sister again that he had to tease her about her change in appearance.
“I see you’ve finally done something nice with your hair, Dzhoan. You no longer look like an Afro-American radical from the 1970s.”
Dzhoan had lighter skin and her facial features leaned Slavic. In college she had studied the Black Power movement in America. She had dyed her light brown hair black and gave it an Afro perm. Since the siblings spoke excellent English and enjoyed American movies, Mikhail used to call his sister, “Super-Fly-Girl.”
Dzhoan had her own nickname for him, taken from another one of their favorite movies. She playfully swatted at him. “Whatever you say, Darth Vader,” she said deepening her voice and making sucking, breathing noises.
Their father laughed. “Will you two ever grow up?” he said in Russian.
The siblings answered in unison: “No.”
When Mikhail finally extricated himself from the women, he gave his father a bear hug and kissed him on both cheeks. Then he looked down at his son.
“See, Malli, Russian men do kiss.”
“I’m so proud of you, Mishe,” Dr. Khalatsyn said, his voice cracked with relief as well as joy. “You’ve returned to us safe and sound.”
In addition to his parents, his sister, her husband and their three young sons, were older couples, friends of his parents. None of the kids he grew up with or people he knew in his teenage years was worth knowing anymore. Mikhail was especially happy to see a particular couple in their fifties. They were from Cuba and good friends of his father. He had always looked upon them as an aunt and uncle by choice if not by blood.
While the party-goers partied pretty hard for folks in their fifties and sixties, Mikhail followed his father into the old doctor’s study for some quality alone-time. After ten minutes, his mother opened the door and let a lot of happy noise from outside, inside. She complained why were they hiding while there was a party, Mikhail’s party, going on?
Annoyed, “I haven’t seen my son in over a year, Albina!” said his father. “We’ll be in shortly.”
After she closed the door, “I see something is upsetting you, Mishe. Please tell me everything,” his father said in accented English straight out of the Old South.
Dr. Khalatsyn always did have a good read on his son. But Mikhail was not ready to let his grief over the pregnant Afghan woman into the open yet.
His father pulled out a swivel chair from behind a huge, decadently Western desk. He set it side-by-side next to where Mikhail sat, holding an empty glass. A full bottle of Stolichnaya vodka lay on the floor between father and son. Both men were careful not to drop vodka onto the rug.
“This is my office, my refuge, and I pay the rent,” his father said, “but everything in this apartment belongs to your mother. If we stain her rug, I’ll never hear the end of it.” Then he chuckled. “Whoever said a man’s home is his castle must have been a bachelor.”
Mikhail filled their glasses, both raised a toast, and chugged. Still not talking, when they finished the first bottle, he got up and retrieved another from the liquor cabinet.
“Pravda tells the people how our brave young men are helping to build a revolution and how much the Afghan people love us,” said his father.
“Go khors,” mumbled Mikhail.
The doctor shot him a puzzled look.
The Black Russian’s English was also tinged with a hint of Dixie; they always spoke English when alone together. “Shit-eaters, Papa. That’s what Afghans call us and the Afghans who supposedly love us. We need more vodka.” He poured them another round. Father and son chugged.
Mikhail said: “Do our people really believe Pravda’s lies?”
“I don’t,” replied his father. “I volunteer at a military hospital.” The old man’s eyes reddened with tears when he choked out the words: “I see you in every young face. You are all my sons.”
Such an emotional reaction by his father meant that Mikhail better not mention the pregnant woman. He would not lay his pain on the old man’s alter. Instead, an angry: “Pravda — truth! The Party lies to the Russian people, Papa!”
“All governments lie, Mishe. America lied to its people about Vietnam.”
“We’re not the Americans! We’re supposed to be better!”
His father held up and empty glass. “Pour us another round, son.”
Mikhail poured, and then raised another toast: “To the glorious Party, the lying bastards. And to the destruction of the main enemy, also lying bastards.”
After finishing a second bottle, they started on number three.
“Is there any good news to share, Mishe?”
Mikhail smiled. “I’ve been selected by military intelligence for their special school: the Military-Diplomatic Academy.”
“Mishe! That’s wonderful! That puts you on par with the KGB.”
“We’re better than those Moscow Boys. Even KGB fears GRU. They call us those crazy paratroopers.”
Proudly, “My son the diplomat!” the doctor said, about to drift off into his own reality.
“Not exactly a diplomat, Papa,” Mikhail mumbled.
His father heard only what he wanted to hear. “You will serve our beloved nation through diplomacy and peace. I’m so happy for you, Mishe.”
In Russian Mikhail said, “Think we’re drunk enough, Papa, to rejoin the rest of our inebriated guests?”
In English: “Sure enough.”
Mikhail helped his elderly father off the chair. They staggered back to the party, laughing.
Mikhail had been ready to unburden himself of his crushing guilt, but his father was so happy, he decided not to kill the old man’s mood. He’d already done enough killing back in Afghanistan.