Elkie always came to tea with something unexpected. When they were in Komsomol, it was pins and medals for activities Yitta hadn’t even known Elkie was involved in, or boys who got dropped before the drinks cooled, or flowers “just to brighten up your apartment.” After that, it had been a strange moment of hesitation before the request to be a witness for her wedding, and then fresh-baked pies, outrageous ideas for kids’ names, a little locket with pictures of them both when they had been kids, and a phone call from her husband after she didn’t turn up one day in August 1968, explaining that she’d been arrested. After that, she had brought a succession of musical instruments, an enthusiasm for headscarves that may or may not have hid a scar, and handmade papercut cards for almost satirically mundane events (“Congratulations on your oil change!”).
After more than thirty years of gifts, it surprises no one when a ray of sun, deflected off the lipstick-kissed edge of a glass at a nearby table, strikes a hastily-wrapped parcel under Elkie’s arm as she sits, flags a server, and orders coffee. “This is for you,” she says.
Yitta takes it with one hand, holds it with two. “Should I open it here?”
“Probably not.” Elkie shakes her head. “It’s my favourite album, but it’s magnitizdat. I’m going to buy a real copy when I get where I’m going.” She grins, and Yitta’s face tilts with suspicion. Elkie shrugs. “Besides, you’re the only person I know who understands English.”
Yitta lowers her glass like it might shatter. “What do you mean, ‘where I’m going’?”
Elkie grins wider, and the lines at the corners of her eyes cast in every direction as she checks to make sure the server isn’t coming. “Israel,” she whispers.
“Oh my God!” Yitta’s eyes fly open so wide that the whites of them might serve for the clouds the sky is missing. “Kuzmir got the exit visas! Congratulations!”
“Don’t congratulate us yet,” Elkie cautions. “We haven’t been approved.”
“Then how…” Yitta’s question trails off as the server arrives with coffee, leaving a silence filled only by the clinking of dishware at surrounding tables. Whatever words she’s looking for, she realizes, must be coming off the top of her head like steam from the cup.
Elkie’s grin, which could not get any wider, instead grows more wicked. She waits until the server is six paces away before announcing in a hush, “I’m going to drive!”
A perfect spring hangs over the patio while Yitta chokes on a sip of tea, and she wishes she could laugh because she knows this is exactly what Elkie hoped for—this sputtering, muted moment for the wind to swish strangers’ conversations with the chatter of the Bira and a shot of applause from newly sprouted leaves in the birches along the sidewalk; a moment for the drama of her declaration to float like a soap bubble they never caught as kids—one that, for just a moment more, Yitta won’t be able to burst with any of her grown-up worries. And then the tea is down, and the moment’s over.
“You’re going to drive…. to Israel. What is that, ten thousand kilometres? Not that it matters; you’ll be stopped at the border in a hundred.”
“They can only stop you at the border,” Elkie explains, “if you cross at the crossings.” Something in her voice recalls that Saturday when the kids were young and they took them downtown, and Alyosha licked the horse in the Monument to the First Settlers on a dare, and Yitta had to pour warm water over his tongue while Elkie explained cause and effect.
Yitta takes another sip of tea, feels its warmth on her tongue. Her words unfurl with pedantic slowness. “I.e., everywhere you can cross.”
“Not everywhere you can,” Elkie contradicts. “Everywhere you’re supposed to. Do you remember our trip to Baikal?”
Yitta’s face changes. “How could I forget? Kuzmir and Eizik rented that boat… and you accidentally kicked the line off as you climbed in… we were so busy talking, we didn’t even realize we’d drifted off without them until they paddled that canoe out after us!” She laughs, and Elkie’s eyes lead her laugh the same way her fingers lead Larry Carlton’s guitar when the tape turns, taking pleasure as much in the fulfillment of expectation as in the novelty of the sound.
“Well,” Elkie continues, “it’s not even that far to the Mongolian border—thirty-five hundred kilometres of steppe and scrub and desert without a soul standing on it. Cross away from the highway—say, somewhere just south of Nizhnii Tsasuchei—” she tosses the name on the table as though everyone has heard of it, “and no one’ll even notice.”
Yitta takes a bemused sip. “Then what?”
“Rinse and repeat,” Elkie shrugs. “The border between Mongolia and East Turkestan is pretty much the same. Stick to rural highways in-country, leave them and cross open desert at the border. Change some rubles if I can, or just trade for gas and food. Eventually, I hit the Wakhan Corridor. The Afghan border is notoriously porous on both sides; I get into Iran for a song. I haven’t decided which combination of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, or Jordan is best afterward, but at that point, I’m already almost ninety-two percent there!”
“Why not just drive through Georgia?” asks Yitta, with the air of the physics professor at their old polytechnic, humouring some undergraduate’s delusional thought experiment.
Elkie ticks two reasons off on her fingers. “A) There are fewer natural crossing points by car in the Caucuses and more of them are controlled, and B) it would keep me in Union territory past the point where I’ll be reported missing.”
“How long is the drive? Kuzmir could just take the time off work and call it vacation. That’s assuming, of course, that he wants to leave the country more than he wants to keep the paint job intact on that Zhiguli. You know you’re turning around the first time it chips in the Gobi, right?” Yitta laughs, obviously expecting it to catch—Elkie has never passed up a laugh at Kuzmir’s fastidious husbandry—but when the little shamash of Yitta’s chuckle sputters and goes out, the menorah is still dark.
“I’m not bringing him,” says Elkie. “He’s the one who will report me missing.”
“Damn it, Elkie!” exclaims Yitta, and all her wry teasing is gone in a flash of exasperation. “Why do you hate that man so much? I get that he’s not the most exciting, but he’s a good husband. Eizik and I wouldn’t have set you up with him if we didn’t know he would be. He’s given you two lovely children and a good home and presents on time for your birthday and your anniversary every year – that’s more than I can say for Eizik! You wouldn’t just… leave him?”
Elkie’s eyes hang low and level over the edge of her cup, like sister suns going down on the river. Her sip is long and slow, and when the tide of the coffee goes out, it leaves her mouth—for a moment—as the opening of some Aegean cave where sirens might shelter. And then she says, “You have an application in for an exit visa, too.”
“Of course.”
“Why do you hate this city so much, Yitta?” There is no hint of sugar in Elkie’s sarcasm. “Birobidzhan isn’t the most exciting, but it’s a good city. Your parents wouldn’t have moved here if they didn’t know it would be. It’s where you’ve brought up three beautiful kids and marked so many special moments. You wouldn’t just … leave it?”
Yitta sighs. “That’s not the same and you know it. This city is a joke—street signs filled with Yiddish and we’re counting people’s cats to make a minyan. Nobody sees us. Nobody cares. In Israel, they want us.”
“Why do you think I’m going?”
“Of course you’re going!” For a second time, Yitta feels the words escaping her like steam. “But there’s a process, Elkie. You think you can do anything! I’ve always admired that about you. But you can’t off-road a VAZ across all of Asia. Not even you. You just have to be patient.”
“Why?” Elkie falls back into her chair. “Did Moses just wait for Pharaoh to say it was okay to leave Egypt?”
“YES! He did, actually!”
“But he didn’t take his wife.”
“Only because she wasn’t in Egypt! They reunited at Sinai.”
“And if Kuzmir ever gets his visa, maybe I’ll see him in Beer Sheva.” Elkie’s next sip of coffee is dramatically composed.
Yitta slumps. It would be Beer Sheva. The Negev. That’s exactly where Elkie would go, stubborn and defiant as she is now, holding the coffee on her tongue and letting that perfect spring moment sink in as winter flees the Amur, rays of sun clattering on the sidewalks and rooftops like the arrows of an army giving chase. It all seems so long ago—the German advance, the evacuations, but somehow, when Elkie’s lips press red against the cup’s edge, Yitta can still see her friend’s beaming face, unlined and unpainted, above the kerchief of a Young Pioneer completely in her element at the end of the earth. That was why they’d become friends, wasn’t it? Their fathers working in the same factory was the occasion, but the reason was that they were both scared little girls. But being scared made Elkie go and do, and Yitta—who had followed her onto the platform to get a red kerchief herself—would have followed her anywhere.
“You can’t,” says Yitta, and the words plunk down like sugar cubes.
“Watch me,” says Elkie.
Watch me. They’re twelve years old. Elkie’s gotten a bike for Noviy God and changed the front tire for an old ski she’s sawed in half so she won’t have to wait for spring. She’s dragged it up onto the snowbank, with Yitta trailing her the whole way telling her it won’t work. She mounts the bicycle, cranks the pedals—all at once the crust under the tire gives way, the rear of the bike plunges into the drift, and Elkie’s body falls backward into Yitta’s outstretched arms. Then they are face-to-face under sky billowed like a grey blanket, red-cheeked and panting, upside down to one another, and Elkie smiles. I meant to do that.
Watch me. They’re twenty years old. Elkie’s gotten herself onto the blasting crew working the Angara’s left bank and has pulled Yitta behind the barricade to witness her first detonation in the rockface. Her eyes are wild and her hard hat wobbling as she switches rapidly between giving confirmations to her crew and telling Yitta how glad she is that she finally signed up for shock construction with her, how the Fifty Years of Great October Dam will be the largest single power producer in the world, how they will be able to tell people what they did—really did, with their hands—to build socialism. Then, with a final fuse check, eager glint becomes wicked grin, and Yitta knows it’s time, yet somehow it still takes her by surprise—the leap of the trees like wild dancers, the spray of the rock like hailstones, the sudden trebling of the river’s roar—and she throws herself into Elkie’s side. Elkie says nothing—just holds her and beams.
The patio sun strafes Yitta’s face like debris. She feels the lines deepen. “It’s only a season, Elkie. You have to be patient.”
You have to be patient. They’re twenty-eight years old. Elkie has braced her hands on Yitta’s shoulders, and Yitta is trying to set her feet more firmly. Elkie’s voice has always leveled the horizon, and now, when it cracks, the world hurtles around Yitta like some off-centre gyroscope. Elkie is still muttering something about not being able to do this when Yitta’s hands clap to her friend’s cheeks. She’s trying to make it all stop spinning, trying to remind Elkie that she’s aged out of Komsomol and that congress meetings can’t replace family reunions anymore—trying to tell her that married life will take getting used to, but that she needs to think of her future—but Elkie’s head is shaking and pressing against her grip. For a moment, Yitta thinks she might lose her—thinks Elkie might slip from her fingers and disappear down Birskii Street—and then, all at once, like the breaking of a crust of snow, Yitta knows what she has to say to make the shaking stop. I’m right here. I won’t leave your side.
You have to be patient. They’re thirty-six years old. Elkie is shivering, her legs splattered in the slush of the street corner, her eyes locked to the yellow police cruiser that’s just passed them. She’s been out of jail for six months, and they only kept her for a couple of days, but she still gets like this every time she sees the cars, or the blue of an officer’s coat. Yitta guides her to a bench, lowers her onto it. When she moves to brush some ice from the hem of Elkie’s jacket, Elkie just shakes her head, eyes still down the street, and pats the spot beside her. Yitta sits, and Elkie tips gently into her side, spills her head onto her shoulder. A miserable winter hangs over the bench while Yitta’s mouth goes dry, and even the steam of her breath disappears from around her formovka. She says nothing—just holds Elkie, and doesn’t know what to say.
“You haven’t told me not to go,” Elkie observes.
“Do I have to?!” Customers at nearby tables turn to look, and Yitta settles sheepishly back into her chair, recovers her whisper. “You can’t possibly be serious. If you’re not shot at the border, you’ll bust an axle in the Tarim Basin and starve.”
“I’ll still be out of this sham city.”
“You’ll be dead. And not just you.”
Elkie’s fingers are on the table edge, but they wait.
“You may not think much of Kuzmir, but he loves you,” Yitta says. “This will kill him.”
“Just him?
“No, you too! We’ve already established that.”
“Well, as long as you’ll live, then.”
Yitta’s pupils widen like they’re trying to mirror the cups. “What do you want me to say? What the devil do you think I could possibly do without you? After thirty-five years? I love you, Elkie—” for a perfect spring moment, Yitta can see in Elkie’s face the expression she must have worn herself when the dynamite went off, but her lips are already in motion, and it all comes down: the flyrock, the cash hitting the floor of the reception hall, the fists of the cops. “I’m your friend. But think of your family.
And just like that, everything is covered in soap film and rainbows.
The clouds in Elkie’s eyes are dark. Her chair scoots back. “I can’t wait anymore.” She tosses some coins on the table as she stands.
Yitta rises after her and the words fly. “I’ll hold onto the record for you, just… take some time. Figure out those last few countries. And then we’ll talk again, yeah?” Yitta’s fingers meet Elkie’s wrist just in time to feel it slip up and out of her grasp, and then her cheeks are in Elkie’s hands, and her lips are under Elkie’s lips, and the clouds are back in her eyes—desperately, hopelessly white—while the whole patio of gawking diners freezes around them, as though spring could run in reverse and thirty-five years vanish as quickly as Elkie, who is already gone. When Yitta gets home, she sets the reels of the tape and starts it playing. The beat is low and strange, the voice high and distant, the words difficult to catch.
While the music played, you worked by candlelight, / those San Francisco nights, / you were the best in town . . .
Yitta is trying to recall the English she took at the polytechnic. The dorm was a fraction the size of this cramped living room. Elkie is there. She’s twenty. She’s gotten her hands on an on-bones bootleg of some American jazz band, God-knows-how.
. . . You must have had it all. / You’d go to LA on a dare and you’d go it alone . . .
Eizik is yelling from the kitchen, telling her to turn this racket down while he’s on the phone.
. . . Could you see the day? / Could you feel your whole world fall apart and fade away? . . .
Eizik is standing in the doorway, glaring until Yitta turns the knob. “It’s Kuzmir,” he says. “He woke up this morning and the car was gone, and he can’t find Elkie anywhere. Did she say anything to you?”
. . . All those Day-Glo freaks who used to paint the face, / they’ve joined the human race. / Some things will never change . . .
Yitta shifts closer to an empty spot on the divan, shakes her head, doesn’t know what to say. Donald Fagen’s voice has left her to sit alone with Eizik and with Larry Carlton’s guitar. Eizik huffs and returns to the kitchen. Yitta turns the music back up.
. . . Is there gas in the car? / Yes, there’s gas in the car. / I think the people down the hall know who you are . . .
The guitar hits the outro. The floorboards warp. The walls melt. The horizon crinkles like a car hood in a bad collision or a map at the end of a good trip. The outro fades and, through the doorway, Yitta hears the receiver fall into its cradle.
“Eizik?” she calls.
His voice rings back from the kitchen. “Yes?”
“We’re still on the list for exit visas, right?”
“Yes, dear,” he sighs. “Yes, we’re still on the list.”
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