A Replacement Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

into careful laughter. Grandfather nodded, permitting amusement, and some people hooted. These were the stories Slava would tell until his own grave—the “bearing arms” story, the story of Lusty Lena and the mulberry bush. This would be the total of Grandmother, as far as her offspring knew.
    “She was better than all of us,” Grandfather said, cutting through the noise.
    “Hear, hear.”
    “The new generation continues our work,” Benya Zeltzer said, repeating an old Soviet slogan. Eyes turned to Slava, to Benya’s hopefully named grandson Jack.
    “What we have been through, may they never,” Benya’s wife said. Arms extended with cognac thimbles, though no one touched rims. Clinking was for celebrations.
    “But remember.”
    “But remember, yes.”
    “You know the expression,” Uncle Pasha said, winking at Slava. “The best way to remember is to start a new generation.”
    Someone whistled. Eyes returned to the young people, marooned in their obviousness. Jack Zeltzer was, what—seventeen? An apron of fuzz hung over his lip.
    Mercifully, the table dissolved in conversation. Uncle Pasha waddled out of his chair and dug his meat-pie hands into Slava’s shoulders. Slava felt the enormous globe of Pasha’s belly at his back. Pasha had the girth of a bureau, but he wore a silk shirt underneath a nice Italian blazer.
    “Slavchik!” He crumpled Slava’s jacket like a piece of looseleaf. The scent of cognac encircled Slava again. Pasha ran a limousine for Lame Iosif and drew from a camouflaged flask of Metaxa throughout the day.
    “Look at you, Slavchik,” Pasha whispered into Slava’s ear, sweat from his upper lip touching Slava’s earlobe. “Shoulders like a boar. The girls jump for you? I bet they jump for you. We don’t need to have the prezervativ conversation, correct? Man or not, too young to be a father.”
    Slava rolled his eyes. “Everything’s in order, Uncle Pasha.”
    Uncle Pasha was Slava’s mother’s second cousin. Pasha drove a large car, tipped well, andwouldn’t let up until he had given attention to every unpartnered woman on a dance floor. Aunt Viv only approved. Smoke machines belching cold mist, strobe lights raiding the dance platform, a heavyset peacock in magenta lipstick belting out hity on the stage (“Yellow, yellow roses! You are mine forever! Yellow, yellow roses!”), and Uncle Pasha doing the elliptical: the guarantees of an evening at Odessa or Volga or Krym, the restaurants where they all got together for birthdays, the last reason they got together with the exception of death.
    “That’s what I like to hear,” Pasha said. “Your aunt and I, we could have waited a little bit.” He pointed a fat finger at Aunt Viv, bulking in swaths of black crinoline decorated with daisies. Her name was Vika—Victoria—but in America, after seeing Caesar and Cleopatra with Vivien Leigh, she had decided that Viv was more glamorous.
    “Maybe she’s no beauty queen now,” Pasha said, “but when she was young? People turned. Not only men. Women . That’s the highest compliment, by the way, when the women notice. Hair like a fire alarm. Used to be, used to be.”
    Slava nodded politely.
    “What I’m saying is?” Pasha said. “ Tfoo, you come to say one thing . . .” His jowls jiggled and he scratched at his chin, releasing a belch. “What I’m saying is: Over there you couldn’t work like a normal person.” He pointed at the black window and, beyond it, their former life. “There was no work. They had five people doing one job. Why work? ‘Get yourself noticed, get yourself problems,’ as we used to say. But what we have here is normal? I think America’s next big invention will be how to live without sleep. I am in the limousine five a.m. to nine p.m., and I am not the biggest earner. Your grandfather is always asking me why I don’t come visit. I am in that goddamn car! You think I was this fat back home? I was disc-throwing champion at my high school.