Jacob's Ladder

39 Yurik Comes Home

(EARLY 2000)

Nora recognized the chirping little voice immediately—she could have picked it out of a thousand others. It was Martha. As shapeless as a hayrick, as kind as a St. Bernard, with a voice like a windup toy.

“Nora! So glad I managed to get through to you. Come over as soon as you can. Yurik is on drugs; he’s in a terrible state. Vitya and I don’t know what to do about him.” Martha spoke in English, but Nora understood every word she said.

“Where is he now?”

“In New York. He was here. Just left. He came to get money. He looks awful. It must be heroin or something like that. Hard drugs. Vitya is crying. He told me to call you. Please come as soon as you can!”

Tengiz was drowsing on the couch. He woke up and looked at her in alarm.

Vitya was crying? Unbelievable. Nora immediately dialed the last phone number she had for Yurik. It was Tom Drew’s place, where she hadn’t been able to reach him. But the stars were so kindly disposed toward her that Yurik had just stopped over at Tom’s.

Without asking any diplomatic questions, Nora laid it all out for him: “Yurik, listen to me. Martha called me and told me you’re on drugs. Listen carefully. This is what we’re going to do. Here, in Moscow, there’s a clinic. It’s private, a very good one. The doctors are good friends of mine. I’ve already made arrangements. They’ll get you out of this. No withdrawal—you won’t have to suffer. You’re going to be fine. I’m coming to get you, very soon, as soon as I buy the tickets. I have a visa already. There’s just one thing you have to do—be careful. Be very, very careful. Stay strong until I get there. Don’t give up. Maybe you should live with your father for the time being?… All right, all right, I understand. I’ll let you know when I have the ticket. In the meantime, stay in touch with me yourself. Please.”

Of course, there was no clinic where she had good doctor friends; but within three days, she had found one.

Nora didn’t even ask him whether he wanted to return to Moscow or to escape the trap of addiction. They had never entertained the thought of his return until now. Nora had visited him once a year—she couldn’t manage more than that. During her last visit, Marina, with whom she always stayed when she was in New York, had remarked that things seemed to be somewhat amiss with her son—his behavior was erratic, questionable. At that time, Nora had not wanted to hear it. She just shrugged it off, saying, “You just don’t know him. He has always been a bit … different. Off in his own world.” What had she done? She was the one who had sent him there.

Marina just nodded. She didn’t try to explain to her friend that she was living in another time, in another country. In America, the rules of the game were different; there were other problems, other perils.

“I’ll come with you. All right?” Tengiz said.

“Thank you,” Nora said. She was glad.

But they weren’t able to fly together. Tengiz made his visa arrangements in Tbilisi, and flew to New York three days later. Nora, as usual, stayed with Marina, who was rattled by all of this. She had long ago realized what was going on.

Marina Chipkovskaya’s children, who had all been born in America and didn’t speak Russian, were not thrilled about her mother’s strange guests from Moscow. Her mother’s friends, even the ones who lived here, émigrés, spoke English poorly, were not terribly successful, and generally irritated them. They didn’t try to hide this. When she was still a child, her daughter had asked Marina, “Why do Russians have such bad teeth and greasy hair?”

Marina could have answered this question, but she chose to remain silent; there would have been just too much to explain, about how every culture has its own habits: Americans change their T-shirts twice a day and wash every time they come near a shower. But a Russian, from one generation to the next, washed once a week in the bathhouse, on Saturdays, and changed his underwear at the same time. Many of them lived in communal housing, where there was no bathroom at all. And she would also have had to talk about how every shabbily dressed Russian child at their age read as many books in a year as she and her brother were likely to read in a lifetime. And how every decent Russian adult knew as many poems by heart as a professor of philology in this country had ever known.

Marina said none of this to her children, because she wanted them to be 100 percent American, so that the cloying air of the immigrant would disperse as quickly as possible, in the first generation. Those newly arrived from Russia fell into two categories: the ones who taught their children Russian, so that they could read Pushkin and Tolstoy in the original and wouldn’t lose touch with Russian culture; and the others, like Marina, who did not. What held true for both groups was that emigration brought enormous losses in social status, and very few were able to achieve the positions they had occupied in their homeland.

Vitya Chebotarev was one of the few who had managed to adjust painlessly to his new country. In Russia he had been an original, a unique talent, with no status whatsoever, and such he remained in America. Moreover, he had been overtaken by luck in the form of Martha, who had taken Varvara Vasilievna’s place in running his household, and at the same time had become his truest friend, and later his wife.

In New York, it was some time before Nora could find her son. For two days, Tom answered the phone and told her Yurik wasn’t there. On the third day, Yurik called her himself, and went over to Marina’s apartment. Nora had prepared herself for the meeting with her son—she had to keep herself in check, not cast blame or reproach, suppress the horror that welled up in her. Yurik looked terrible. He was bedraggled and seemed very, very weary. They hugged. A stench of old clothes, rotting teeth, and death clung to him.

“Tired, old man?” Nora said.

Yurik looked at his mother in surprise. “Yes, that’s exactly it. Tired.”

“Well, I got here in time, then. We’ll discuss everything later; it will all work out. Let’s go into the city. We’ll grab something to eat and buy our tickets.”

“I can’t buy a ticket, Mama. I lost my documents. I’m never getting out of here. It’s the end for me.”

His eyes were so full of despair that Nora felt she was being turned inside out. He understood everything. There was no hiding, and nothing more to hide.

“I didn’t come here to bury you. I came to pull you out. But you have to help me—I can’t pull it off without your help. Let’s do it this way: you forget about yourself for a while, and help me save my son. All right?” Nora spoke quietly, calmly, in a voice that was almost steely, but inside she was howling and keening, being torn to bits.

“Mama, I told you, I don’t have any ID. I lost everything—my green card and my driver’s license.”

So he didn’t remember how they had gone last time to the Russian Embassy to get him a new passport. In order to do this, they had had to file a report with the police about the theft of the old one, and to have new photographs made. It hadn’t been difficult. In the Russian Embassy, Nora had stood in line, and they submitted the application together. The passport was supposed to be ready within the month. Then Nora flew back home. Six months had passed since then. She realized he didn’t remember, but she asked, just in case, “And your Russian passport?”

“My what?”

“We applied for one last time I was here. Did you lose it again?”

“No, I completely forgot about it.”

Nora called the embassy. The passport had been ready for a long time, but it was only valid for him to be able to buy tickets to fly back to Moscow. Which was just what they needed.

They went together to pick up the passport. Tengiz was flying in on the same day, and Yurik promised to go with Nora to meet him at the airport. But suddenly he started hurrying nervously, claiming that he had urgent matters to attend to. He asked her for twenty dollars, and promised to come to Marina’s in the evening.

Nora met Tengiz and took him to Marina’s. The entire rescue operation was not at all to Marina’s liking, but their long friendship bound her to the obligation of offering Nora and Tengiz refuge. Yurik didn’t call that evening; he called the evening of the following day. When he showed up, he hugged Tengiz, and they ritually clapped each other on the back. And then Yurik immediately hurried off somewhere—on business. He asked his mother for another twenty. Nora gave him the money, realizing he needed it for a “fix.” Everyone understood the situation. Nora said that she would buy the tickets the next day, for the following day.

“I’d rather wait a week,” Yurik said.

But Nora objected. “No, Yurik. You wrap it up today. I’m buying tickets for the next flight. This is an urgent matter.”

The next day, Nora and Tengiz went to buy tickets. They bought a new one for Yurik, but Nora’s return ticket was, just by chance, for that very date. A hundred-dollar fee allowed them to change the date on Tengiz’s ticket so he would be on the same flight.

Nora asked Yurik to come over on the evening before the flight. Marina’s nerves were so strained that she took the children and went to stay with a friend in Tarrytown. Yurik didn’t show up that evening. Nora didn’t sleep the whole night. She called Yurik every half hour at what she thought was his apartment—Tom Drew’s, that is. Tom first told her that Yurik wasn’t there, and then stopped answering the phone. If he knew where to look, he would have tried to find him, but no one knew. Yurik himself might not have known where he was.

To make it to JFK on time, they would have to leave home at four o’clock in the afternoon. Tengiz had hardly slept all night, either. He was gloomy and depressed, and went to take a walk in Central Park. He said he’d be home by two.

Nora stayed behind alone. She had never in her life felt so desperate and helpless. She counted her money—$830. It was clear that they’d have to rebook their existing tickets, because there wasn’t enough money to buy new ones. She wondered how much Tengiz had on him. It would hardly be possible for them to buy three new tickets. They could go to the Aeroflot office and try to exchange them. But something stopped her—the faint hope that Yurik would show up in time. She wandered around the empty apartment. She found a bottle of whiskey in the kitchen cupboard, poured herself a shot, and drank it down. Vile stuff. But she immediately felt somewhat better, though not at all relaxed. She looked at the clock: ten in the morning. They still had six hours before they needed to leave the house for the airport.

She lay on the couch in the living room. One wall was covered with Marina’s paintings, which had a tinge of the screams and anguish of expressionism. Marina had graduated from the Stroganovsky Institute of Industrial Art, but soon thereafter immigrated to the United States when her career in Russia was just getting under way. She had been one of the most promising students in her graduating class, but things didn’t work out for her in America. Immigrants always land on the lowest rung of the social ladder, from which they need to start to work their way up again. Nora closed her eyes. Marina’s pictures, which loomed before her, weren’t making her feel any better.

Tengiz made his way to Columbus Circle and then into Central Park. He had no idea how enormous it was—this piece of Manhattan, with its granite boulders heaving up from the ground, overhangs, bare trees, snowy expanses, and frozen puddles. It was cold and sunny. The paths were peopled with multitudes of sweaty joggers, some with headphones and some without, bicyclists, and even horseback riders. No, Tengiz did not like America, although the park was wonderful. Something prevented him from taking a shine to it. Maybe, despite all its charms, it was still too big, too simple, too indifferent, this America; and our boy was being stalked by death here …

He went down to the big lake. It glittered with a fresh layer of ice. He sat down on a bench and felt as cold as the devil on a church pew. He lit up a cigarette. The bench was in a secluded nook, away from the runners and the walkers. Two black fellows were sitting on another bench not far away, one of them with a guitar. He was strumming quietly. A third fellow joined them—a young white man. It was Yurik. They shook hands, and exchanged something in the process. Holy shit, heroin! Of course, it was heroin. Tengiz was afraid he might scare them, but he couldn’t let Yurik get away. So he started to sing. He sang a Georgian folk song at the top of his lungs. Yurik turned around and saw him, and his face lit up. He said goodbye to the others, who melted into the bushes immediately. Tengiz hugged Yurik, and they clapped each other on the back. Without withdrawing his hand from Yurik’s shoulder, Tengiz announced joyously, “Let’s go home, kid! We’ve got a plane to catch.”

“What do you mean, Tengiz? I thought it was tomorrow.”

“Why tomorrow? Tomorrow’s today. Besides, what difference does it make? Let’s go.”

“Hold on, I have to collect my things, my guitar.” Yurik tried to wriggle out from under Tengiz’s grasp.

“What things, buddy?” Tengiz put on his most winning Georgian accent, the one he used for telling jokes. “What do you need that stuff for? An old guitar? Come on, we’ll buy you a new one, and go to the airport.”

Buying a new guitar was a dream Yurik had long cherished. He had sold his favorite instrument dirt-cheap several months before to a dealer, and his only other guitar wasn’t worth beans. “Let’s see. I know of this place with good prices, but it’s sort of far away. Let’s go to the Guitar Center; maybe we’ll find one there.”

By two o’clock, Tengiz, Yurik, and the new guitar all arrived at Marina’s apartment.

Nora had already called all the ticket offices and agreed with one of the Aeroflot employees to rebook the tickets at the airport. She would pay a fee for these services to one Tamara Alexandrovna, who would meet her at the JFK entrance. How convenient it is to be Russian sometimes, Nora thought. Our bribery network functions the world over. The last vestiges of Nora’s anxiety evaporated when she saw her men standing in the doorway. “Oh, Tengiz…” was all she managed to say. Yurik sat down in a chair and began to tune the guitar, as if nothing at all had happened.

Before leaving the house, Nora said something that mothers rarely have occasion to say to their sons: “Yurik, you do understand that we’re going without heroin, don’t you?”

“But I’ll go into withdrawal.”

“I know. So go to the bathroom and shoot up one last time.”

But he shook his head and said he didn’t need to yet. He would take his last fix at the airport, just before they took off.

“Are you crazy? What if they catch you?”

“Mama, I know what I’m doing. I have it hidden in my sock. And I’ll already be clean when we board the plane.”

Nora was the one losing it, not Yurik. Tengiz gripped her by the shoulder and said, “Be quiet.”

They were traveling lightly—Nora with a small suitcase, Tengiz with a backpack, and Yurik with the guitar, with which he quietly carried on a conversation. Nora felt they had already made it to the last leg of their journey, but another surprise was waiting for them at the entrance to the airport. The baggage check took place not in the terminal, as she had come to expect, but right at the entrance. There were two policemen with a sniffer dog standing right behind the baggage conveyor belt. The dog wasn’t a ferocious German shepherd, but a friendly setter that she immediately wanted to pet.

They stopped.

“Yurik, go outside and throw your junk away, into the first garbage can you find,” Nora said quietly.

“I can’t. I’ll go into withdrawal in two hours if I do. You have no idea what it’s like,” Yurik said morosely.

“Have you lost your mind? Toss it out,” Tengiz ordered sharply, the first time in all these days, and perhaps in their whole life together, that he spoke in such a tone.

Yurik’s lips trembled, the corners of his mouth drew downward, and Nora understood that it was not a twenty-five-year-old man standing before her, but a fifteen-year-old boy who was gripped with fear. She hugged him tight, and whispered in his ear, “Don’t be afraid. I have a sedative with me that would put an elephant to sleep. If you take it, you won’t wake up for nine hours. Come on, throw the stuff away.”

“You don’t understand—once the withdrawal pains start, there’s no way to stop them.”

While they were negotiating, the dog fixed his intelligent eyes on his master and growled softly: he needed to relieve himself. The policeman with the dog left. Tengiz placed his things on the conveyor belt. Yurik was reluctant to part with the guitar and didn’t want to put it under the X-ray, but he finally did. Nora thought again—fifteen years old, fourteen years old … Vitya, Vitya … The X-ray didn’t reveal anything dangerous, and they walked briskly toward the terminal.

They had a bit of time for a snack, and sat down at a table.

“Well, it’s time. Go to the bathroom and take what you’ve prepared,” Nora said. And she thought, It’s like a bad dream. Is this really happening to me? Like some B-movie …

“You know, I don’t think I need to yet. I’ll know when it’s time. I’m okay for now.”

They ate some sort of rubbery salad in a little plastic trough, and some plastic bread, and drank some American coffee that resembled dishwater in a paper cup. Nora recalled how she had liked all of this the first time she visited America. Where have we ended up as a result? This hasty, catastrophic departure from America, and his departure from Moscow to America nine years earlier, suddenly seemed to blend into a single event—damn, it was all her own doing. It’s because she was so headstrong, it’s because she wanted to take life into her own hands and mold it, organize the process to meet her needs and demands, to stage her own play …

A voice announced that their plane was boarding. They entered the plane, and there were no more checks. The plane was enormous and half empty. They sat down in the middle row—Yurik sitting between Tengiz and Nora. The plane took off. Nora, leaning over Yurik, took Tengiz’s hand and kissed it. Tengiz didn’t take it away, and even held it still for a moment; then he pulled her nose sharply … She laughed. A director indeed. He couldn’t stand pathos. But she knew that, without Tengiz, she would never have been able to save Yurik.

It seemed to her that the worst was already behind them, and she fell asleep even before the plane finished its ascent.

An hour later, Yurik poked her in the side: “Now, Mama.” She let him go, and he went to the bathroom. Five minutes later, there was an announcement that they had encountered some turbulence, and they requested passengers to stay seated and to fasten their seat belts again. The plane did begin to rock and shudder. Nora did, too—for her own reasons. Fifteen minutes later, Nora began to feel alarmed that Yurik was taking so long in the bathroom. Ten minutes later, she got up and went to the bathroom, then started to pound on the door, calling: “Yurik! Yurik!”

Silence … At that moment, Nora was gripped by panic. She banged on the door. A moment later, she heard him say: “Just a minute…”

He emerged, soaking wet from head to toe, as white as a sheet, enormous black eyes staring out—his pupils were so enlarged that there was no blue around them.

“What happened?”

“Nothing. I’m okay. The plane was shaking so hard it knocked the syringe out of my hand and the vein burst. Blood was spurting everywhere. I washed everything, and I had to rinse my clothes. I was covered with blood.”

Much later, after a year or two, Yurik told his mother the details of what had happened, which she would otherwise never have known. “My brain had already switched off, and I didn’t know what I was doing, Nora. I didn’t have just one fix—I had four. I wanted to get good and high. If it hadn’t been for that turbulence, I wouldn’t have made it to Moscow alive.”

He told her many things about his tenure in America, but the primary account of that experience was a thick notebook that he had filled almost completely during his six weeks in a clinic and then put away in his desk. Nora had opened it and wanted to read it, but she couldn’t make out a single word. The handwriting was the same childish, uneven, crooked scrawl he had always written. This was part of the therapy: the patient had to disgorge everything he remembered about his past of drug addiction, not only in conversation with the psychologist, but also in written form. He had to reconstruct the whole history of his lethal experience. It was a text that had to be written and then excised from his life. Nora leafed through the notebook and put it back in its place—as part of the family archive.