Blind Date

  “Pity you weren’t following me that day. You might have prevented him from —” She stopped.

  Levanter no longer felt intimidated. He moved closer to her. As he spoke, he looked out at the empty yard. “In my thoughts I called you Nameless.”

  “That’s kind of romantic,” she said, “but now you can call me by my real name —”

  “I know your name,” Levanter interrupted her quickly. He did not want to hear her say it. “I inquired about you the first time I saw you at camp. But you’ll always be Nameless to me.” He had straightened up, away from her, and stood staring at his feet.

  “Why didn’t you ever talk to me?” she said softly. “Other boys did.”

  Levanter did not look up. “I know,” he said. “But I was too frightened. I saw you with a tall, good-looking guy, that swimming champ. You laughed at everything he said, and he looked at you as if he owned you. I was jealous. I would have given anything to be as close to you as he was.” When he raised his head, he could just make out that she was smiling.

  “I remember him,” she said. “He was funny. But I only talked to him a few times.”

  “I watched you every time the two camps were together,” Levanter said. “When Oscar talked about raping girls, I would imagine myself doing it to you. I know that’s a terrible thought, but it’s the truth.”

  She listened in silence.

  “You see, Nameless, I was in love with you. Maybe I still am.” He did not move. He felt his pulse beating in his temples.

  She did what he could not bring himself to do. She moved close enough for their faces to touch, but Levanter was reluctant to put his hands on her. They could see each other’s eyes. A cold shiver ran through him. She reached up and folded her hands behind his neck. Tentatively, he ran one hand lightly over her back, sliding it down her silk blouse, feeling the brassiere, then the panties under her tight skirt. The hand lingered there for a moment, then he brought it up to rest gently at the back of her neck.

  With his other hand, he raised her chin until her eyes caught the dim light from outside. He looked at her for a long time, trying to memorize her face as he had memorized the rest of her.

  Slowly, Levanter pulled back.

  “Are you afraid of hurting me?” She hesitated. “Because of what he did to me?”

  “I am afraid of losing you, Nameless. Of losing you again,” said Levanter.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered. “You won’t lose me unless you want to.”

  He saw Nameless every day, right after school. He waited impatiently, afraid that she would not show up, until he saw her jump off the streetcar as it slowed at the corner.

  They went to the public library and sat together at one of the large tables doing their homework. Each evening, as they stood across the street from her home, about to part, Levanter already began to fear, even while he was still with her, that she might not want to see him again. Perhaps during the night, pondering the events of the day, she would come across some hidden truth about him.

  Yet he made no effort to bind her to him. Under various pretexts he avoided introducing her to his parents, and postponed meeting hers. She had told him he was her first boyfriend; he argued that meeting him might make her parents unnecessarily apprehensive about their only child.

  Levanter had not kissed her and avoided every opportunity to make love with her. He remained genuinely shy, fearful that he would do something that would make her leave him.

  Summer came. On the first hot weekend the two of them rode their bicycles out of town. Nameless said she was tired, and they stopped at a lake in a nearby forest and lay down on the still, grassy shore.

  “It’s so peaceful here,” she said once she had caught her breath. “So private, so safe.”

  Levanter looked into her face. He marveled at the perfect symmetry of her features.

  She studied him, her eyes moving from his lips to his eyes, then back to his lips. She reached toward him.

  In an instant of panic, he sat up.

  She rolled over and rested her head on his thigh. He felt reassured and ran his fingers lightly over her back. He looked down and saw the nape of her neck. It was white and frail, barely covered with delicate, thin fuzz. Tenderly, he framed her head between his hands, kissing the spot and licking the little drops of perspiration. Involuntarily, in their own remembrance of the past, his fingers started to stroke her temples.

  Nameless sprang up with such force that he was thrown backward.

  “What happened?” Levanter scrambled to his feet, confused.

  Her face, so wholesome and calm just seconds before, was now disfigured with rage.

  “It was you. Now I know it. It was you!” she screamed, covering her face with her hands.

  Levanter turned away from her. Behind him, he heard her climbing onto her bicycle. When he dared to look around, Nameless was far away, pedaling as fast as she could. He found himself wishing she were a thing; then one day he could own her.

  Levanter never telephoned the Russian actress again. She presented a dilemma that he could not solve. For years, he ceased to be aware that the language buried under his American experience was still strong enough to trigger an unexpected emotion.

  The language itself kept surfacing at the most unlikely moments. One morning, as he was walking to a meeting at a New York hotel, Levanter passed an old woman and overheard her mumbling to herself in Russian as she plodded slowly down the street. He turned to get a better look at her.

  Peering through her old-fashioned bifocals, she noticed his curious stare. “Look at this stupid one!” she said out loud. “Staring, as if he’d never seen an old woman before!”

  Addressing her politely in Russian, Levanter said, “Forgive me, Madame, I did not mean to stare at you. I merely heard you speaking Russian. This is America. People don’t understand you.”

  “How do you know they don’t? You understand me!” she retorted angrily, then tottered away, murmuring to herself, “Another smart one, ready to speak for everybody.”

  Levanter was invited to teach a course in investment and had to rent a place to live in Princeton.

  “We’ve found a marvelous house for you,” the real estate agent announced cheerfully. “Right next to Khrushchev’s daughter!”

  “Khrushchev’s daughter?” Levanter asked. “Who?” He thought for an instant. “You must mean Stalin’s daughter.”

  “Khrushchev’s daughter, Stalin’s daughter, what’s the difference?” The man shrugged.

  Levanter was overwhelmed by the extraordinary quirk of fate. He knew that Svetlana Alliluyeva had come to America and that she lived in Princeton. But he had never imagined how it would feel to be near her. Apprehensive, he agreed to rent the house.

  Weeks later, when some American friends actually invited Levanter to meet Svetlana Alliluyeva, he still found it difficult to accept the knowledge that she was the daughter of Stalin. He studied her surreptitiously, silently repeating to himself that this woman was indeed Stalin’s daughter. The thought of her proximity to Stalin paralyzed him. Even though he knew he was responding irrationally, he could not bring himself to speak Russian.

  From the start, Levanter addressed her in English, apologizing for being out of practice with the language of his parents. In the months that followed, they met several times. Their conversation ranged from events in recent European history and the Soviet Union’s role in shaping the world today to a letter from one of the many readers of her books. But the two of them never exchanged a word in Russian. Her name alone, even over the telephone, was enough to call up visions of his Moscow past, and for him she became a direct link to the awesome power that Joseph Stalin had wielded. Levanter had to remind himself again and again that he was a lecturer in Princeton now, not a student in Moscow, and that he was talking with a woman who was just another neighbor and only happened to be the daughter of Stalin.

  Later, in Paris, Levanter told Romarkin about his acquaintanceship with Svetlana Alliluyeva
, and his friend was overwhelmed.

  “Can you imagine?” he thundered at Levanter. “Can you imagine meeting her in Moscow when her father was still alive? Suppose in the late forties you had come to one of those university social events. You noticed an average-looking woman. And when you asked, ‘Who is that woman?’ you were told, ‘That is Svetlana, the daughter of Joseph Stalin!’ Can you imagine how great your astonishment would have been then?”

  Levanter showed him a few photographs of Svetlana Alliluyeva. Picking up the snapshots reverently, as if he were handling fragile and irreplaceable heirlooms, Romarkin carefully spread them out on the café table and studied each one. “It can’t be,” he whispered. “The daughter of Stalin an American. It can’t be.” He shook his head. “If within a quarter of a century you or I can go through life under Stalin and then go halfway around the world and meet his daughter as an ordinary next-door neighbor, well, I guess that means anything can happen.”

  Levanter could no more part with his language than he could forget about his cultural heritage, as he was often reminded.

  One of his European professors, who had just immigrated and knew very little English, asked him to dinner at his apartment. When Levanter arrived, he found the professor in the kitchen. The air was filled with the pungent scent of spices, herbs, and freshly cooked meat. The professor, impressed with the variety of American foodstuffs, was surrounded by fresh vegetables and an assortment of open jars and bottles. He told Levanter he was preparing a special Ruthenian beef goulash.

  As they chatted in Russian, Levanter noticed several empty cans, each with a picture of a dog’s head on the label. He edged over to the counter and looked more closely. The cans, clearly marked DOG FOOD, seemed to have just been opened.

  “Where is the dog?” Levanter asked.

  “What dog?” The professor was stirring the goulash, inhaling the aroma.

  “Don’t you have a dog here?”

  “Heaven forbid!” exclaimed the professor. “Animals are a nuisance. What gave you that idea?”

  “Americans love dogs. I thought you had gotten yourself one.”

  “I will never be that much an American!”

  Nonchalantly, Levanter looked around the kitchen. “What meat do you use for such a succulent goulash?” he asked guardedly.

  His host beamed. “Beef, my friend, only canned beef,” he said, gesturing with his chin at the cans.

  “Canned beef? Fascinating! But why canned?” asked Levanter.

  “Better quality. Tastier and tenderer.”

  “Why this particular brand?” asked Levanter, pointing to the empty cans.

  “I was in the supermarket, and when I saw the picture of the smiling dog, just like in the old country, I knew it was the choicest American canned beef!” The professor nudged him with his elbow. “Don’t you remember our ‘Smiling Dog’ brand beef? You’ve been away too long.”

  As they sat down to eat, the professor breathed in the scent of the goulash, an expression of bliss on his face. During the meal, he praised the high quality and tenderness of American meat, assuring Levanter that it was superior even to the “Smiling Dog” beef he remembered so fondly. Levanter said he was not hungry that evening and accepted only one small helping.

  Another European immigrant, a respected poet, invited Levanter to a reception at his home following the wedding of his son, a graduate student at Yale. The bride, a Yale coed, was from an old banking family, and the guest list of two hundred was composed predominantly of “natives,” as the poet called them — the New England relatives and friends of the bride’s family.

  During the reception many of the guests admired an antique, cast-iron, muzzle-loading mortar cannon, about the size of an office desk, mounted on a platform in the center of the living room. At one point, the poet urged the guests to gather more closely around the cannon and, in a voice heavy with emotion that exaggerated his accent, explained that the cannon had been built for his ancestors in the second half of the seventeenth century, for only one purpose: to be fired in celebration of every wedding in the family. The last time it had been used was when the poet himself was married, just before the start of World War II, and the cannon was the sole family heirloom that had been salvaged after the war. He and his wife had recently arranged to have it shipped to them from Europe. And now, he said, to celebrate the marriage of his son the old cannon was to be fired again, for the first time on American soil. As the curious guests formed a circle around the cannon, the poet assured them that he had loaded it with a blank charge. He then grouped his wife, the bride and groom, and the bride’s parents behind the cannon. The wedding photographer readied his camera.

  A single spotlight shone on the cannon’s shiny muzzle, angled upward, over the guests’ heads! The band played the national anthem, then the anthem of the poet’s homeland. The poet and his wife embraced, weeping. Many of the guests were moved by the pomp and the outburst of feelings, but most fidgeted, waiting for the finale, eager to get back to partying. The band stopped. With a shaking hand, the poet lit the long wooden match. He stretched his other arm around the newlyweds. Everyone was silent as the flame touched the fuse.

  There was a sudden flash. A powerful blast shook the room, the cannon jumped, and dense smoke billowed from its barrel.

  From the other side of the room, a woman shrieked, “My God, I’m hit!” Everyone turned calmly in the direction of the voice, apparently assuming that it was all part of the Slavic ritual. Near the wall, a white-haired matron stumbled, then fell to the floor. She was covered with blood and her gown was ripped open, revealing strips of skin hanging from her thighs. The guests, now in an uproar, gathered around her. She fainted.

  Leaning over the victim, Levanter realized that her wounds must be superficial, as they were caused only by the wads of cotton and shredded denim that the poet had used as a blank charge.

  But the poet panicked at the sight of the blood. He rushed to the phone to call for an ambulance. Levanter followed, explaining to him that, as a firearm was involved, he had to call the police. His fingers trembling, the poet dialed the police emergency number.

  The police operator answered quickly and asked for his name and address.

  So nervous that he mispronounced the words, the poet finally managed to spell it all out in a quavering voice. Then the operator asked him what had happened.

  He stammered. “A woman shot.”

  Levanter heard the operator ask, “Shot by whom?”

  “By a cannon,” said the poet, barely audible.

  “By what?” the operator asked.

  “A cannon,” repeated the poet.

  “Please spell that,” said the operator, evidently uncertain that he had understood.

  “C-a-n-n-o-n.”

  “Cannon?” the operator repeated.

  “A cannon,” said the poet.

  “How many others injured or killed?” asked the operator matter-of-factly.

  “One woman wounded.” The poet moaned.

  “Property damage?”

  “None.” He sighed.

  “What kind of cannon?”

  “One of a kind. An antique.”

  “Is this a museum?” asked the police operator.

  “A private home.”

  “A cannon in a private home?”

  “Yes. A family cannon,” the poet whimpered.

  “Who fired the cannon?” asked the operator.

  “I fired it,” said the poet, lowering his voice.

  “Your profession?”

  “Poet.”

  “Poet? But what do you really do?”

  “I write poetry.”

  “Ambulance is on the way,” announced the operator.

  Only when he was with Romarkin did Levanter feel that the language and heritage of his past were not out of place in his new life. Their reminiscences seemed to justify the break both of them had had to make with the very past that held them together.

  Whenever Levanter was in Paris, the two
old friends spent countless hours talking. One evening when the café they were in was about to close, Levanter and Romarkin went next door to a small nightclub, where business was just beginning. Only a few tables were occupied, and a handful of solitary drinkers lounged at the bar. The waiters hurried around officiously, checking and adjusting the cloths and settings. A couple of prostitutes strolled back and forth between the cloakroom and the tiny lobby, keeping an eye on the entrance. Four musicians, presumably unwilling to start playing for so few customers, clustered around the piano, listlessly tuning their instruments, while the maître d’ fiddled with the spotlights.

  Levanter asked for a quiet table, and he and Romarkin were led to the remotest corner of the room, diagonally across from the bar.

  As soon as the waiter brought the champagne that was the price of admission, Levanter and Romarkin settled back comfortably.

  “Tell me, Lev,” said Romarkin, “have you found that people are good in the West? Are they better than where you and I came from?”

  The club was beginning to fill up; a boisterous party took the five front tables. The band started to play, and two couples got up to dance.

  “I have found people to be good everywhere,” Levanter answered. “They turn bad only when they fall for little bits of power tossed to them by the state or by a political party, by a union or a company, or a wealthy mate. They forget that their power is nothing more than a temporary camouflage of mortality.”

  One of the prostitutes, who had been eyeing Levanter and Romarkin from the moment they arrived, came over to their table. She sat down, tucking in her blouse to accentuate her breasts, and smiled at Romarkin.

  He smiled back, and the waiter immediately brought her a glass and filled it with their champagne. The woman raised her glass to both men and quickly drained it.

  Levanter ignored her and leaned toward Romarkin to continue their conversation in Russian. The woman listened for a few minutes, then interrupted them.

  “You speak a beautiful language. What is it?” she asked in French.