Episode 9: Eternal City
The first song I heard outside the Soviet Union was Bless the Beasts and the Children. The song was part of the soundtrack for the movie with the same title. I saw the movie with my mother in Rome, where we were “stationed” during a kind of layover between our emigration from the Soviet Union and our ultimate settlement in the U.S. I didn’t understand the lyrics, of course, not speaking any English at that time, but the movie and the song both left an indelible impression. In the Soviet Union, most popular singers performed in a style called “estrada,” which is a sort of mix between cabaret and theater singing styles. Lots of emoting, but not a lot of actual emotion. Karen Carpenter’s performance of Bless the Beasts and the Children was something different. At once powerful and fragile, clear and colored with emotion, smooth and razor sharp, her voice soothed the ear while ripping apart the soul, and I sat in the dark theater next to my mother and sobbed my heart out. The movie was something different for me, too. I was used to movies that glorified the Communist party, held up heroes who outsmarted the Nazis or outwitted Capitalist robber barons or factory bosses, and promoted family values. Six emotionally challenged boys at a reform camp attempting to save a herd of bison from slaughter was a kick in the head as well as the heart. That movie opened something new for me, even though I didn’t understand a single word of the dialogue.
I’ve always been fairly good with language. Whether it’s a natural ability or the result of my addiction to books, I’ve never known. But the fact remains that I learn languages and dialects fairly quickly and easily, a fact I discovered that summer in Italy. The trip out of the Soviet Union went something like this:
1) My family and I boarded a plane from Leningrad to somewhere in Eastern Europe. I don’t remember which country or city we flew to. I do remember going through security at the Leningrad airport and seeing my parents patted down roughly by security agents, our luggage opened, belongings taken out, examined, handled, etc. Once particularly zealous security agent took a vase out of my mother’s open suitcase, lifted it, then opened her hands, dropping the vase on the granite floor, where it shattered into a million pieces. The security agent grinned at my mother, shaking her head in mock sorrow. “Oops,” she said, smiling the whole time, “I dropped it. It was an accident. So clumsy of me.” This kind of thing went on for some time. A few pieces of jewelry and other valuables never made it back into the suitcases, but at least we made it onto the plane and out of the country.
2) From whatever European city we flew to, we took a train to Vienna, Austria. I know that my parents never breathed easy until we were off the train and on Western soil. I’m pretty sure that my six-year-old brother and I slept through most of that train trip.
3) We stayed in Vienna, in a hotel room booked for us, for a week. During this time, we explored the city as much as we could, while we waited for arrangements to be made for us to fly to our next stop, Rome. I remember liking Vienna well enough, with its pretty parks and buildings, but my mother fell in love! It’s not so much that Vienna was prettier than Leningrad. After all, built as St. Petersburg, it was modeled on Paris, so Leningrad was no slouch in the architecture, monuments, and parks department. But Viennese streets were clean, washed each evening with water and detergent by city employees who wielded their brooms and brushes with Teutonic vigor and national pride. And that cleanliness stole my mother’s heart. I mainly remember some parks, a zoo, and sausages with mustard. All in all, a week well spent, as far as I was concerned.
4) After a week, we boarded another plane and were on our way to Rome. The security protocol was markedly more civilized, so no personal belongings were mishandled or misappropriated, and we arrived in Rome in pretty good shape. Thus began one of my favorite periods of my life, a summer in Ostia, a small town on the outskirts of Rome, spent on the beach, or at markets, or just running around with some local kids who befriended me.
5) Our final leg of the trip would take us from Rome to New York and then to Louisville, KY.
Why Louisville? The short answer is “why not?” The actual reason had to do with seasons and my parents’ desire not to live in a big city. While in Rome, my parents had several meetings with representatives of HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), a non-profit organization originally created a century earlier to help Jewish refugees fleeing Russia (that would be us) resettle in the Middle East or in the West. https://hias.org It was HIAS that arranged our transportation to Vienna, where Soviet refugees were initially processes, then our flight to Rome, along with temporary living accommodations, and continued support for a final settlement in the refugees’ country and city of choice.
During one of these meetings, my parents were asked where, specifically, they wanted to settle. While our Exit Visa from the U.S.S.R. named Israel as our final destination, this wasn’t necessarily where we would go. Israel was stated as our destination because it was considered the only “valid” reason for any Jew to be allowed to leave the Soviet Union. However, once you were out, your destination was up to you. In any case, my parents were always going to go to America, and they said so during the meeting in Rome. The HIAS worker laid out a large map of the U.S. and began pointing at various cities. New York City, Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles were quickly ruled out. My parents didn’t want to live in a big city, and, being from a northern Russian city, they had really hoped to live somewhere with four distinct seasons. In addition to orchestrating the pre-settlement trip, HIAS also helped immigrants by securing a place to live and lining up jobs, if possible, in the adults’ field of expertise. My father had been a dentist, so a job in a dental office or dental lab would be ideal.
With all this in mind, the HIAS agent pointed to Louisville, explaining that this was one of the places where they could set us up with an apartment and potential job for my father. My parents looked at the map. Louisville north of many other places, such as Texas or Florida, which they guessed would be north enough for us. So, Louisville it would be. The process of lining up an apartment and possible jobs would take time, so we would be in Ostia for three months.
Our apartment in Ostia was small and airy, but the only things that mattered to me was that it was walking distance to the beach and that there were other kids close to my age, who included me in their noisy circle and with whom I could swim in the Mediterranean and run around the streets of Ostia. I spent as much of my time with them as possible, learning Italian, running to the beach, eating ice cream cones and cold watermelon, and developing my first crush.
Antonio was a year or so older that me, probably close to thirteen. He was nice to me, but then all the kids were nice, so that didn’t mean a thing. I didn’t think about it at the time, but with this small group of Italian children I didn’t have to work to fit in. They made me feel as if I belonged with them, accepted with no labels or conditions. I was happy just to be with them. Well, that’s not exactly true. I would have given anything to be one of them, not just be around them. I wanted to be Italian!
I wanted long hair and olive skin that would tan to a golden brown. My own very pale skin seemed to only be able to burn, turn red, peel, and become very pale again, and my hair had never been long. I wanted jeans and t-shirts, or better yet jeans and tube tops. I wanted red nail polish and rings on my fingers. I wanted the wooden-soled sandals that barely stayed on your feet and made a loud clacking sound when you walked on the cobblestone streets of Ostia or the concrete sidewalks of Rome. But what I wanted more than anything was jewelry, specifically metal bangles, just like the thin, colorful ones that every Italian girl seemed to wear stacked at least a half dozen on each arm. Even if I never had the long hair, or the tube top, or the sandals, jewelry could make me a real Italian girl.
I begged my mother, but she said no. No to the clothes, and the nail polish, and the sandals, and definitely no to jewelry. I felt the injustice of of it to my core. How was I to know that we only had a couple hundred dollars to last us until my father could get a new job in America? How was I to understand that my mother’s relentless haggling over the price of every tomato or loaf of bread in the markets wasn’t for the fun of haggling? She had learned just enough Italian to ask “quanto costa?”(how much?) based on the Italian denominations of lire, worth one thousand mille, and employed this knowledge ruthlessly at every stall and counter to get the absolute lowest price possible on everything. It had looked like she was having fun! That was all well and good for her, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to be Italian! I wanted to be an adult.
Then, one morning, I woke up and found blood on my sheet. My parents had had “that talk” with me when I was about ten years old, so I knew what was happening. Over the next couple weeks, my body shifted and changed from that of chubby child to that of a slightly less chubby pre-teen. I probably weighed the same, but my mother had to concede to the need for new clothes, including a new, chocolate brown two-piece swimsuit. But no clacky sandals, and definitely no jewelry.
Before we left Italy for Kentucky, a miracle happened. One warm, clear evening, I heard my name shouted from the street below our little apartment. I ran down to join my friends, and in the courtyard of my apartment building, they suddenly surrounded me, and one of them wrapped a scarf around my eyes, blindfolding me. Not knowing what else to do, I stood and waited. Nothing happened for a few seconds, and then I felt something slide onto my finger. The scarf came off, and I looked down at the ring. It was silvery, with the band made up of several individual wires, wrapped around each other, which came together in the center and were topped with tiny, blue enameled flowers. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Did these kids understand how desperate I had been to belong, to become one of them? I doubt it. But there they were, chanting “Italiana! Italiana!” as I stood, examining the proof of my new identity. They had made me Italian, one of them. I don’t know where the ring had come from. Had it belonged to one of the girls? Had it belonged to a mother or a grandmother who donated it out of kindness? Did they buy it at one of the markets, haggling down the price from some local seller or steal it, not having any money of their own? It didn’t matter. It was mine, and I was Italian. Of course I ended up losing it eventually. But that feeling! I never lost that. It was the first time, though not the last, that I felt a sense of belonging, offered by a group of people who had welcomed me into their inner circle and made me one of them.
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