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September 24, 2004/Tishri 9 5765, Vol. 57, No. 4
Finding babushka
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
Autobiographical fiction is how writer David Bezmozgis describes "Natasha And Other Stories," (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $18 hardcover), his collection of short stories released earlier this year. The seven linked stories mine the experiences of a family of Russian immigrants living in Canada in the 1980s.
But while Bezmozgis may have embraced literary license to liberally embellish family lore, he displays an uncanny ability to describe its depths, digging out raw nuggets of humor and pathos that make this book more than just another retelling of the immigrant experience.
Yes, it is all here. The difficulties of making a new life in a new land: learning a language, gaining a toehold, navigating the social landscape. So is the profound sense of loss, the disruption, the dizzying change exacerbated by the yawning generational divide. And the disconnection that comes from a generation denied the right to practice religion in Russia now newly arrived and labeled Jews.
But Bezmozgis, as protagonist Mark Berman, brings to the enterprise an appealing naivete, in both the telling and the writing, and an underlying sophistication that provides both literary and dramatic polish. His spare language and simple syntax tell the story, but his sly observation and wry tone provide its substance.
The collection is arranged chronologically, allowing the book to unfold as Berman, whom we first meet as a first-grader in Toronto, moves through each stage of his life. The first story, "Tapka," tells how Berman and his cousin Jana, now latchkey kids, become dog-sitters for a neighbor's beloved Lhasa Apso. When catastrophe befalls their charge, Tapka, the youngsters must try to assuage her distraught owners and facilitate a solution for the non-English speakers.
The second story, "Roman Berman, Massage Therapist," is endearing, as much because it captures the poignancy of the desire to succeed as the difficulties to prevail. We literally ache for the aspiring Roman as Berman carefully draws the picture of a father struggling to achieve his dreams in the new world.
Bezmozgis juxtaposes the story of his father's efforts to establish himself with that of a wealthy Jewish doctor, Harvey Kornblum, who prides himself on reaching out to the new immigrants. The depiction of dinner at the Kornblums' home is priceless; it's a searing portrayal of the condescending do-gooders and the base instincts of an immigrant kid, also a guest at the dinner, who tucks a few toys in his pants because, "What doesn't this rich bastard have?"
"Natasha" plays a teen-ager's coming of age against the coarseness of life in Russia. When Berman's mother asks him to befriend Natasha, the daughter of his uncle's new wife, what results are a desultory sexual escapade and an unsettling revelation about human nature.
Bezmozgis seems to really hit his stride as he reaches maturity. The two final stories of the collection bring the reader face-to-face with the demise of the older generation, as first in "Choynski," as Bezmozgis tells of his grandmother's lingering death, and then in "Minyan," of his grandfather's subsequent life as a widower.
"During the funeral I only cried for my mother's sake, and before that a little because I saw my grandfather lost and weeping like an old Jew," he writes. "Even when her pine coffin reverberated like a bass drum with the first shovelfuls of dirt, I was OK.
"It was only later that night, when I was on my hands and knees in the cemetery searching for her dentures in two feet of snow, that I wailed in Russian: Ba-bushka, babushka, g'dye tih, maya babushka? Babushka, babushka, where are you, my babushka? I cried shamelessly, up to my elbows in the snow, looking for the new teeth which they had forgotten to bury with her."
Berman had returned to the cemetery with the teeth, then dropped them near the snow-covered grave. He struggled with freezing hands to retrieve them.
"By the end, I didn't even want to bury the teeth anymore. I just wanted not to lose them."
Holding on to his ba-bushka, Bezomozgis keeps one foot firmly planted in the past even as he ventures further out in the New World. In "Minyan" he tells the touching story of his grandfather's move to a new subsidized apartment where there is a preponderance of old Jewish men and a daily minyan. When one of the regulars dies, leaving behind a roommate of questionable character, Herschel, who is still on the waiting list for his own apartment, there is much speculation about whether he will be allowed to stay.
Zalman, the synagogue's gabbai, decrees, "My job is to have 10 Jewish men. Good, bad, it doesn't matter. Ten Jewish men. Only God can judge good from bad. Here the only question is Jew or not. And now I am asked by people here who never stepped into a synagogue to do them a favor. They all have friends, relatives who need an apartment. ... This is not my concern. My concern is 10 Jewish men. If you want 10 Jewish saints, good luck. You want to know what will happen to Herschel? This. They should know I don't put a Jew who comes to synagogue in the street. Homosexuals, murderers, liars, thieves - I take them all. Without them, we would never have a minyan." And Bezmozgis might not have had a book.
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