Stalina Read Free Page B

path was made clear, or simply pulled up from below with a snap of my rubber-gloved hand.
    *  *  *
     
    Seeing a glimpse of the ocean’s waves through the clouds made me think of how I used to swim in the Gulf of Finland with my mother just a few years before I left Russia. The doctors said it was the best therapy for her dementia.
    “The cold water will awaken the senses and stimulate the organs. Her blood will flow more readily. It’s all about blood flow,” they would say.
    My mother had been a member of a water ballet collective in her youth and consequently swam beautifully. I loved to watch her swim and tried to imitate her curved arms and the precise entry of her fingertips into the water. On one of our regular Sunday swims, a family secret was revealed.
    That day Mother came up for air after a long time underwater and announced, “Swimming makes me think of Maxim.”
    Maxim was my uncle.
    She continued, “Maxim kissed me underwater.”
    I thought she was confused. “Don’t you mean Father kissed you?”
    “No! Kisses were from Maxim. We kissed so long we had no air; he emptied the last drop of air into my lungs.”
    “You almost drowned?”
    “We bobbed to the surface, and I breathed the air back into his lungs.”
    “What about Father?”
    My mother replied, “Your father let me have the pleasure I did not have with him.”
    “With his brother?”
    “He’s not your uncle.” She was annoyed as if I should have known.
    As we both treaded water, a seagull landed near us. The bird screeched at a piece of sodden bread floating by and grabbed it in his beak. Another bird swooped down and stole it out of his mouth. The first gull did not pursue his foe. Instead, he floated past us and let out a feeble screech to no one in particular.
    “How spineless,” I thought. That gull reminded me of my father, who would stay home writing and drinking when my mother and Maxim would go out together. After a couple of years, he was only drinking and never wrote anything new. He would obsessively read and reread his published poems and essays, pacing up and down our room holding the book or journal in front of him and taking a pen from behind his ear to make the changes. He wrote about vodka as a metaphor for oppressive government. Many of his poems were in English. His supporters would learn them and deliver his words through the underground to publishers outside Russia. I memorized all his poems. This was a typical practice to save the writings of our country’s poets. On paper their work could easily be lost, destroyed, or sent to the authorities. Like this one:
    Stalin demands we drink his vodka.
    Why should he be everyone’s doctor?
    Perish the thought if you drank sangria,
    Cover your ears to block his logorrhea.
    Our future will rise like a glass filled with
    Schnapps, port, or rye.
    Your choice, your high,
    While the others fall blind, no future, no time.
    He inspired other writers to write what was on their minds, while he became more and more crippled by the loss of freedom for words and humor. It was to him the height of cruelty. At the end of the night, the liquor would be gone and the pages were unintelligible.
    *  *  *
     
    After going through some unexpected turbulence, the plane landed safely in New York City on September 30, 1991. That was when my strange new life began.



Chapter Four: Port Authori-TAY
     
    Kennedy Airport is all about moving things. Airplanes, luggage, people, money, coffee, donuts. Bleary-eyed and swollen from the trip, I welcomed the moving sidewalk and slowly drifted forward. The people who walked along the outside concrete sidewalk were faster than the motorized one. With some relief to my swollen ankles, I moved closer to the real America. People stood along the corridors waiting and straining to see all the arriving passengers. A man clutched a photograph in one hand and a straw hat in the other. A family of six, everyone exactly the same height and not very tall,