Natasha and Other Stories Part 2

My father and Gregory ran the cla.s.s for several years without incident. The directors received their cut and kept quiet. As long as the Dynamo teams were placing well, n.o.body was willing to mess with a good thing, and at the time, Riga Dynamo was clicking along: Victor Tikhonov worked magic with the hockey team before being promoted to Moscow and Red Army; Ivanchenko became the first middleweight to lift a combined 500 kilos; and the basketball and volleyball teams were feared across Europe. So n.o.body paid much attention to my father's cla.s.s.

It was only in the mid-1970s that things started to turn. As Jews began to emigrate many of my father's bodybuilders requested visas to Israel. Dynamo represented the KGB and someone at the ministry started making connections. It was pointed out to one of my father's directors that there was a disturbing correlation between my father's bodybuilders and Jews asking for exit visas. My father and Gregory were invited into the director's office and informed of the suspicions. These were the sorts of suspicions that could get them all into trouble. It wouldn't look good at all if the Riga Dynamo gym was sponsoring anti-Soviet activities. The director, an old friend, asked my father whether the bodybuilding cla.s.s was a front for Zionist agitation. It was an unpleasant conversation, but everyone understood that this could only be the beginning of the unpleasantness. The cla.s.s was now being closely monitored. The only way to keep from shutting it down would be to justify its existence in an official capacity. In other words, they had better discover some talent.

After the meeting with the director, my father suggested to Gregory that the smart thing to do would be to end the cla.s.s. They'd made their money, and since my parents had already resolved to leave the Soviet Union, this was exactly the sort of incident that could create serious problems. Gregory, who had no plans to emigrate, but who also had no interest in a trip to Siberia, agreed. They decided not to continue the cla.s.s beyond the end of the month.

The following day my father discovered Sergei Federenko.

On the night my father discovered Sergei Federenko the cla.s.s ended later than usual. Gregory left early and my father remained with five students. It was almost ten when my father opened the back door of the gym and stepped out into the alley where three young soldiers were singing drunken songs. The smallest of the three was p.i.s.sing against the wall. My father turned in the opposite direction, but one of his students decided to flex his new muscles. He accused the little soldier of uncivilized behavior, called him a dog, and said unflattering things about his mother.

The little soldier continued p.i.s.sing as if nothing had happened, but the two bigger soldiers got ready to crack skulls.

-Would you listen to Chaim? A real tough Jew b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

-You apologize, Chaim, before it's too late.

My father envisioned a catastrophe. Even if by some miracle he and his students weren't killed, the police would get involved. The consequences of police involvement would be worse than any beating.

Before his student could respond, my father played the conciliator. He apologized for the student. He explained that he was part of a bodybuilding cla.s.s. His head was still full of adrenaline. He didn't know what he was saying. Doctors had proven that as muscles grow the brain shrinks. He didn't want any trouble. They should accept his apology and forget the whole thing.

As my father spoke the little soldier finished p.i.s.sing on the wall and b.u.t.toned up his trousers. Unlike his two friends, he was completely unperturbed. He reached into his pants pocket and retrieved a small bottle of vodka. One of the other soldiers pointed to a black Moskvich sedan parked in the alley.

-Listen, f.a.ggot, if one of your boys can lift the Moskvich we'll forget the whole thing.

They made a deal. The Moskvich had to be lifted from the back and held at least a meter off the ground. Even though the engine was at the front, the back of the car was sufficiently heavy. Taking into account the frame, wheels, tires, and whatever might be kept in the trunk, the total would be in the hundreds of pounds. Maybe three hundred? Maybe four? It was an impossible bet. None of his students would be able to do it. It would be an exercise in futility. They would certainly be humiliated, but from my father's perspective, humiliation was better than a beating and a police inquiry. So, out of respect for my father, his students shut up and endured the ridicule. One by one they squatted under the car's b.u.mper.

-Careful, Chaim, don't s.h.i.+t your pants.

-Lift it for Mother Russia.

-Lift it for Israel.

As expected, none of them could so much as get it off the ground. When they were done, one of the soldiers turned to the student who had started the trouble.

-Not so tough now, Chaim?

-It's impossible.

-Impossible for Chaim.

-Impossible even for a stupid c.o.c.ksucker like you.

Amazingly, instead of killing the student, the big soldier turned to the little soldier.

-Sergei, show Chaim what's impossible.

The little soldier put his bottle back into his pocket and walked over to the Moskvich.

-Chaim, you watch the stupid c.o.c.ksucker.

Sergei squatted under the b.u.mper, took a deep breath, and lifted the car a meter off the ground.

From the time I was four until we left Riga two years later, Sergei was a regular visitor to our apartment on Kasmonaftikas. As a rule, he would come and see us whenever he returned from an international compet.i.tion. Two years after my father discovered him, Sergei was a member of the national team, had attained the prestigious t.i.tle of "International Master of Sport," and possessed all three world records in his weight cla.s.s. My father called him the greatest natural lifter he had ever seen. He was blessed with an economy of movement and an intuition for the mechanics of lifting. He loved to lift the way other people love drugs or chocolate. Growing up on a kolkhoz, he had been doing a man's work since the age of twelve. Life had consisted of hauling manure, bailing hay, harvesting turnips, and lugging bulky farm equipment. When the army took him at eighteen he had never been more than thirty kilometers from the kolkhoz. Once he left he never intended to return. His father was an alcoholic and his mother had died in an accident when he was three. His grat.i.tude to my father for rescuing him from the army and the kolkhoz was absolute. As he rose through the ranks, his loyalty remained filial and undiminished. And in 1979, when we left Riga, Sergei was as devoted to my father as ever. By then he could no longer walk down the street without being approached by strangers. In Latvia, he was as recognizable as any movie star. Newspapers in many countries called him, pound for pound, the strongest man in the world.

Sergei left a deep impression on my four-, five-, and six-year-old mind. There wasn't much I remembered from Riga-isolated episodes, little more than vignettes, mental artifacts-but many of these recollections involved Sergei. My memories, largely indistinct from my parents' stories, const.i.tuted my idea of Sergei. A spectrum inverted through a prism, stories and memories refracted to create the whole: Sergei as he appeared when he visited our apartment on Kasmonaftikas. Dressed in the newest imported fas.h.i.+ons, he brought exotic gifts: pineapples, French perfume, Swiss chocolate, Italian sungla.s.ses. He told us about strange lands where everything was different-different trains, different houses, different toilets, different cars. Sometimes he arrived alone, other times he was accompanied by one of the many pretty girls he was dating. When Sergei visited I was spastic with a compulsion to please him. I shadowed him around the apartment, I swung from his biceps like a monkey, I did somersaults on the carpet. The only way I could be convinced to go to sleep was if Sergei followed my mother into my bedroom. We developed a routine. Once I was under the covers Sergei said good night by lifting me and my little bed off the floor. He lifted the bed as though it weighed no more than a newspaper or a sandwich. He raised me to his chest and wouldn't put me back down until I named the world's strongest man.

-Seryozha, Seryozha Federenko!

My father took me with him to the Sutton Place Hotel where the Soviet delegation had their rooms. A KGB agent always traveled with the team, but it turned out that my father knew him. My father had met him on the two or three occasions when he had toured with Dynamo through Eastern Europe. The agent was surprised to see my father.

-Roman Abramovich, you're here? I didn't see you on the plane.

My father explained that he hadn't taken the plane. He lived here now. A sweep of my father's arm defined "here" broadly. The sweep included me. My jacket, sneakers, and Levi's were evidence. Roman Abramovich and his kid lived here. The KGB agent took an appreciative glance at me. He nodded his head.

-You're living well?

-I can't complain.

-It's a beautiful country. Clean cities. Big forests. Nice cars. I also hear you have good dentists.

In the hotel lobby, the KGB agent opened his mouth and showed my father the horrific swelling around a molar. He had been in agony for weeks. In Moscow, a dentist had extracted a neighboring tooth and the wound had become infected. On the plane, with the cabin pressure, he had thought he would go insane. Eating was out of the question and sleep was impossible without 1,000 grams of vodka, minimum. But he couldn't very well do his job if he was drunk all the time. Also, he'd been told that vodka was very expensive here. What he needed was a dentist. If my father could arrange for a Toronto dentist to help him he would owe him his life. The pain was already making him think dark thoughts. In his room on the twenty-eighth floor he had stood at the window and considered jumping.

Using the hotel phone, my father called Dusa, our dentist. A top professional in Moscow, she had not yet pa.s.sed her Canadian exams. In the interim, she worked nights as a maid for a Canadian dentist with whom she had an informal arrangement which allowed her to use his office to see her own patients, for cash, under the table. The Canadian dentist got fifty percent with the understanding that in the event of trouble, he would deny everything and it would be Dusa's a.s.s on the line. Fortunately, after months and months of work, there had been no trouble. And several times a week, after she finished cleaning the office, Dusa saw her motley a.s.sortment of patients. All of them Russian immigrants without dental insurance. My father explained this to the KGB officer and told him that if he wasn't averse to seeing a dentist at one in the morning, he had himself an appointment.

As a token of his grat.i.tude, the KGB agent personally escorted us up to Sergei's room. So long as Sergei appeared at the compet.i.tion and was on the flight to Moscow with the rest of the team, everything else was of no consequence. We could see him as much as we liked. The KGB agent swore on his children's eyes that there would be no problems.

At Sergei's door, the agent knocked sharply.

-Comrade Federenko, you have important visitors!

Dressed in official gray slacks and b.u.t.toning his s.h.i.+rt, Sergei opened the door. He hesitated to speak until the KGB agent slapped my father's back and confessed that he was always deeply moved to witness a reunion of old friends. Then, Dusa's address in his pocket, he turned and departed down the carpeted hall.

In the hallway, Sergei embraced my father and kissed him in the Soviet style. Next to Sergei, my father-five feet six and 170 pounds-looked big. I hadn't expected the physical Sergei to be so small-even though I had memorized his records the way American kids memorized box scores and knew that he was in the lowest weight cla.s.s at 52 kilos.

-That b.a.s.t.a.r.d, he scared the h.e.l.l out of me.

-The KGB, they know how to knock on a door.

-Especially that one. A true Soviet patriot.

Sergei looked down the hall in the direction of the KGB agent's departure. My father looked. So did I. The man had gone.

Sergei turned back, looked at my father, and grinned.

-I was in the washroom, I almost p.i.s.sed myself. I thought, if I'm lucky, it's only another drug test.

-Since when are you afraid of drug tests?

-Since never.

-Do I need to remind you of our regard for drug tests?

In his capacity as Dynamo administrator it had been my father's responsibility to ensure that all the weightlifters were taking their steroids. At the beginning of each week he handed out the pills along with the special food coupons. Everyone knew the drill: no pills, no food.

-Absolutely not. Keeps the sport clean.

-And, of course, you're clean.

-I'm clean. The team is clean. Everyone is clean.

-Good to hear nothing has changed.

-Nothing.

Sergei clapped my father on the shoulder.

-What a wonderful surprise.

On our way to the hotel, I had been rabid with excitement to see Sergei, but seeing him in person, I couldn't speak. I stood behind my father and waited to be acknowledged. It seemed like a very long time before Sergei turned his attention to me. When he finally did, he looked down and appeared not to know me.

-And who is this?

-You don't recognize him?

-He looks familiar.

-Think.

-It's hard to say.

-Take a guess.

-Well, if I had to guess, I would say he looks a little like Mark. But he's too small.

-Too small?

-Mark was much bigger. He could do fifteen, maybe even twenty push-ups. This one looks like he couldn't even do ten.

-I can do twenty-five! I do them every morning.

-I don't believe it.

I dropped down onto the red and gold Sutton Place carpet and Sergei counted them from one to twenty-five. Panting, I got back up and waited for Sergei's reaction. He smiled and spread his arms.

-Come on, boy, jump.

I leapt. Sergei carried me into the hotel room and I hung from his arm as my father called Gregory's room. Sergei's compet.i.tion was two days away and it was decided that he would spend a little time with us the next day and then he and Gregory would come for dinner after his compet.i.tion.

When my father and I returned from the hotel with the good news, my mother was scrubbing every available surface. Floors, oven, furniture, windows. She presented us with several bags of garbage which we dropped down the smelly chute in the hallway. My father told her that Sergei looked good. As though he hadn't changed at all in the last five years.

-What did he say about the way you look?

-He said I looked good. Canadian. Younger than the last time he saw me.

-If you look young, then I must be a schoolgirl.

-You are a schoolgirl.

-The ambulance comes once a week. Some schoolgirl.

The next morning my father stopped at the hotel on his way to judge events in the middleweight cla.s.s. Sergei wasn't competing that day and I took the subway with my father so that I could guide Sergei back to our apartment, where my mother was waiting to take him shopping. As we crossed the lobby toward the elevator I noticed the KGB agent making his way over to intercept us. I noticed before my father noticed. From a distance I had the vague impression that there was something not quite the same about the agent. As he drew closer I saw that his face was badly swollen. With every step he took the swelling became more prominent. It was as though the swelling preceded his face. From a distance he had been arms, legs, torso, haircut, but up close he was a swollen jaw. My father, distracted by his obligations to the compet.i.tion and nervous about being late, didn't appear to recognize the man until he was standing directly in front of him. But then, on seeing the agent's face, my father stiffened and seized me by the shoulder. My G.o.d, he said, and simultaneously drew me back, putting himself between me and the KGB agent.

The KGB agent clapped his hands and broke into what appeared to be a lopsided grin. His distended lips barely parted but parted enough to reveal white cotton gauze clamped between his teeth. When he spoke, it was through this gruesome leer, like a man with his jaw wired shut. My father tightened his grip on the back of my neck.

-Roman Abramovich, looks like you really did me a favor.

-She's the dentist for my family. I go to her. My wife. My son. I swear she always does good work.

The agent's jaw muscles twitched as he clamped tighter into his grin.

-Good work. Look at me. I couldn't ask for better. She put in three crowns and a bridge.

-She's a very generous woman.

-She knows how to treat a man. Anesthetic and a bottle of vodka. I left at four in the morning. A very generous woman. And beautiful. It was a wonderful night, you understand.

-I'm glad to hear you're happy.

-Roman Abramovich, remember, you always have a friend in Moscow. Visit anytime.

Laughing at his joke, the agent turned, and we proceeded to the elevator and rode up to Sergei's floor. In the elevator my father leaned against the wall and finally loosened his grip on my neck.

-Don't ever forget. This is why we left. So you never have to know people like him.

We knocked on Sergei's door, and after some shuffling, Sergei answered. He was in the middle of his push-ups when he let us into his room. He was wearing an unders.h.i.+rt and his arms were a bold relief of muscles, tendons, and veins. In Italy, during our six-month purgatory between Russia and Canada, I had seen statues with such arms. I understood that the statues were meant to reflect the real arms of real men, but except for Sergei I had never met anyone with arms like that.

As my father was in a hurry, he left me with Sergei as he rushed back out to the convention center. I waited while Sergei dressed.

-So where are you taking me today?

-Mama says we'll go to the supermarket. She thinks you'll like it.

-The supermarket.

-The good supermarket. They have every kind of food.

-And you know how to get there?

-Yes. First we take the subway and then the bus. By the subway and the bus I know how to go almost anywhere.