DEFICIT FOLLOWS THEM HOME
by Anna Birman
“The guitar will cost extra,” droned the customs officer. He had never passed up an opportunity to charge more ever since his mother lost her job. Vera withdrew a wad of zaichiki, Belarussian rubles, from her pocket. Zaichiki means bunnies in Russian, and Vera’s mind wandered to memories of bunnies that she used to watch in the forest. The decision is made, no looking back, she told herself. The customs officer impatiently held out his hand for her passport. It read Vera Moiseevna Cogan from Minsk, Belarus born February 19, 1973. The fifth line said “Jew.” That’s all the government ever needed to know.
Her family sold almost everything they owned, leaving behind a town full of memories. However, Vera could not leave behind the beloved guitar that her father had brought for her from Poland. “The guitar will cost extra,” repeated the customs officer. She slid the money that she could not spare across the table and locked eyes with the customs officer to stand her ground. As soon as she saw his face, her hand flew to her mouth.
Waiting at the next checkpoint, she wondered what forced him to work at the airport after being accepted to one of the best schools in the country.
Introductions
Let’s get acquainted. My name is Deficit. For the people of the Soviet Union, I was a close, mutual friend. I entered all homes uninvited. I ate everything on the table and stole all of the food and clothes at the store. I tortured the people, many resorting to bribery and crime out of sheer necessity. But all that makes me sound so evil; I just take great pleasure in my job. I have since expanded my line of work to other countries, maybe even yours. I would like to ask you not to judge me too harshly because right now, I am just your storyteller. I will tell you about my work in Eastern Europe not too long ago. I am here to show you why Vera had to leave her country and why the customs officer had to stay behind. Maybe this story might even help you understand why all humans react in the same way when they run into me.
My Good Friend
Stanislav hated working as a customs officer. His passion lay in music. He had friends, but only kept up with one. Me, Deficit. I convinced Stanislav not to quit his job at the airport. He proudly showed me the bribe money that he collected in return for clearing contraband items at his checkpoint; one time, it was a girl’s guitar. Usually, at the end of the night, Stanislav bids me goodbye, but like a child in a sandbox, I never want to leave.
My Night Off
Just a few years before, the day that this story begins, the Soviet Union had fallen, and the punks, artists, and dreamers crowded the streets and discotheques, dancing to American music for the first time. I had to raid some stores in a nearby country, so I left my post in Belarus for a few days and left the youth to their fun. That night, a young man named Stanislav soulfully playing his violin on the side of the road caught Vera’s eye. When they locked eyes, he shyly walked over to her to admire her beautiful guitar. The fifth line of his passport read “Russian,” allowing him room to breathe.
Vera and Stanislav met at the park every day that week. Stanislav loved the way that her curly hair stuck to her neck in the July heat, and she loved that he knew all of the poems by the Soviet dissident poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, by heart. Vera told him that she wanted to become a prosecutor and was taking the college entrance exam the following week. I noticed that her eyes sparkled whenever she spoke of school. “Which college are you applying to? ” he asked.
“Smolensk State University.”
“You’re kidding? Me too!”
“What will be your profession?”
“Violinist, but I’m worried because my grades weren’t very good in school.”
“Hey, Stanislav, I’m taking the train to Smolensk next week. Can I meet you there?”
“I’d like that.”
Vera looked out onto the statue of Lenin in the plaza and whispered, “You won’t get me this time.”
My Evening Stroll
“Stanislav, who was the girl who came by here last night? I want to meet her.”
“Mom, I just met her.”
“She had curly hair, right? She isn’t Russian, is she?”
“What?!”
Passing by, I was intrigued by their very audible fight. I slipped in through the open window just in time to see Stanislav’s face starting to turn red.
“Mama! Why can’t we just let others exist? What makes us tell on our neighbors, and then look over our shoulders?” I definitely knew the answer to his question. It was all I could do to keep from giggling.
“She isn’t Russian, right?”
“If you say that I can’t see her because she’s not Russian–”
“Calm down, Stanislav. Is she Jewish?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” He was getting dangerously angry.
“You should keep seeing her.”
His wildly beating heart stopped in his chest, his fists uncurled, and the red rushed out of his face.
“What?” he asked quietly.
“Gorbachev is letting Jews out of the country, but not Russians. You should propose to her. If you get married, you can go to America with her, and then call for us. Imagine, Stanislav! America!”
“I can’t use her like that.”
“We can’t go on much longer like this. The shelves in the stores are empty, people are breaking into homes, and the radio is censored. My boss just found out that I was rejected membership to the Communist Party, so I’m inevitably going to be fired soon. Trouble is coming.”
She was right. I was already climbing the steps to their apartment.
Bribes and Morals
The testing day had come. “Good luck, Vera!” called Alla to her daughter. Vera was going to need all the luck she could get. She proceeded to lock the outer wooden door and the inner metal door. You see, I had caused the rise in crime after the collapse of the Soviet Union, so people needed more locks.
The night before, Alla found out that universities were purposely not admitting Jewish students, even the ones that performed very well. No one had any proof of what the students said during their oral exams, and the examiners used the gap of documentation to lie about the students’ scores. They gave them a score just low enough to fail them entirely. She hated bribes, but…. for her daughter? I chuckled from behind the door a little too loudly. Alla heard me outside, hating me for making her resort to bribery. I’ve learned to brush it off. She knew that not bribing a professor in the name of morals would mean that her daughter could not get an education, the only way out of the country. Was it really worth not trying?
The Director’s Advice
Alla’s heels clicked firmly on the linoleum floor of the law department at Smolensk State University. After thinking about it all night, Alla knew that she had no other choice.
“Larisa Stepanovna,” Alla began, “ I understand that you are the director of the law department. I am Alla Isaacovna. I would like to speak to you regarding the admission of my daughter. Here are her papers.” Larisa Stepanovna’s eyes stopped on the fifth line.
“What can I do for you?”
“Vera is a very talented student; she received top marks this year. I am willing to show you how valuable she would be to this department.” She slid a wad of zaichiki across the director’s desk. Larisa Stepanovna looked down at the money that looked so tempting. She could buy a month’s worth of food, send money to her ailing parents, or bribe the landlady to extend the deadline for her rent. You should know that on the whole, I don’t discriminate. It didn’t matter that she ran the law department; I dined at all tables and stole change from all pockets. She knew this money could change her life and yet, “I cannot accept this, I’m sorry.”
“Please let my daughter into your program.” Some of the firmness was slipping from Alla’s voice.
“It is not up to me. The interviewers are instructed to fail all Jewish students. Since Gorbachev is allowing Jews to immigrate, the government believes that there is no point in using our top-notch resources on your daughter if she will leave anyways. My best advice would be to leave soon because this problem will only get worse.”
Alla thought long and hard about the director’s advice. They should leave now.
Oral Exams
Vera crept up behind Stanislav in the lobby in the crowd of other eager students.
“Ready?” she yelled. He flinched and turned to face Vera, trying to hide how much she had scared him.
“I was born ready!” He grinned sheepishly. She smiled and kissed him, noticing how he smelled like her beloved forest.
The students burst into the exam room as if a dam had been broken. When the proctor yelled that the time was up, Vera was confident that she had written the essay to a 5, the highest score possible. The oral exams were the ones that she was truly worried about. As much as her mother had tried to keep it from her, Vera knew.
She stepped into the classroom and stood opposite the table from the examiners.
“Name?”
She hesitated. “Cogan, Vera Moiseevna.” Everything about her screamed Jewish: her last name, her brown eyes, her dark brown curls.
“You will answer five questions on the topic of history orally.”
The panel of interviewers sat austerely at the table like judges deciding her verdict.
“Explain the significance of the Moscow Trials.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Vera saw Lenin’s massive stone head in the plaza leering at her through the window. She gathered herself and answered every one of the questions perfectly.
Exhale
Results day. Hordes of students crowded around the score sheets. Stanislav dreamt of moving the audience to tears at the grandest concert halls in Russia. He envisioned one day leaving his country for a place where the radio was not censored, where his mother did not have to bribe, where his father did not have to drink, where he could love without thinking about benefits, where he could just exist. He breathed a sigh of relief. He passed.
The Ugly Truth
Vera’s future shattered before her eyes. Just outside, Lenin’s statue grew taller and more formidable. She didn’t pass. Her shoulders hunched forward from the shame and injustice of it all. Just as she was about to find Stanislav, a girl tapped her shoulder.
“It will be ok.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“Which results are yours?” Vera pointed. “Cogan, huh?” The girl sighed. “I’m Lina Bergstein. I think you can guess that I didn’t pass either.”
“I overheard my mom talking to her friend the other night who told her that I definitely wouldn’t get in because…” Vera looked behind her and whispered, “I’m a Jew.”
“I hate that you lowered your voice. I’ve already decided that it’s time for me to leave.”
“What do you mean leave? Where would you go?”
“America. I convinced everyone to go already. My dad will get a job as a teacher, my grandmother will babysit, and I will go to college and clean houses on the side.”
“America. I like that.” Vera thought about America constantly because Lenin’s sickle looked more like a scythe with every passing day.
At The Brink
“Stanislav! Have you thought about proposing? I heard that Vera is leaving next month!”
“Mama, I love her, but I can’t use her like that.”
“You just said that you love her, so get married. We can be financially stable in America, and we won’t have to wait in line for hours for toilet paper for a change.” Just between you and me? Sometimes I liked to take some toilet paper from the warehouse just to see how long the lines could get.
“I know it’s fast, but I got fired today. Please.” His mother’s news was heavy on his chest. She looked at him so imploringly, he felt her pain. But how could he do this to Vera? On the other hand, he really did love her.
“Alright. I will propose.” His mother, the strongest person he knew, leaned on the kitchen table and began to weep.
“Thank you, Stanislav, thank you.”
Plans
Vera couldn’t understand why Stanislav had proposed to her. They hadn’t discussed a future together. Life in a foreign country would be hard and would place a strain on their budding relationship. She still had so much to see, so much to do, and Stanislav just didn’t fit into her life.
I Win
Stanislav’s mother was sitting at the table with her head in her hands. She looked up at him, trying not to hope about the outcome of his proposal.
“She said no. I’m so sorry.” He took in the bills piled on the table. “Did the landlord come by again?” She nodded. “That’s it, I’m getting a job.”
“Absolutely not. You are not leaving your studies, do you hear me?”
“Let me help you. It’s summer. Hopefully by September, we’ll be alright. Our neighbor told me that he has an opening for a customs officer at the airport. I’ll go see him tomorrow.”
I had finally kicked down the door to their apartment.
I Must Confess
Let’s take a break from Stanislav and Vera for a moment. I will tell you a little bit about myself and my career. More than anything, I love power. I thrive on it. Sometimes, I am brought about inadvertently by natural disasters or disease, but sometimes, humans unleash me onto themselves. I live best when people are desperate and have no other choice but to steal, bribe, and cry out, “No, Deficit! Stop!” When the government removed all private property in 1917, and everybody, no matter how educated or successful, earned roughly the same salary, I emerged from my cocoon and started to grow. However, the pinnacle of my career was in 1991 when the co-dependent republics of the Soviet Union were ripped apart overnight, and exports between them stopped. Suddenly, engineers in Latvia could not get the raw materials they needed for production to go on in their factories because Uzbekistan stopped exporting metal. Seeing this vast nation in chaos delighted me, and the continent was my playground for nearly a decade.
She Slipped Through My Fingers
For the first time in her life, the fifth line reading “Jew” in her passport saved Vera. She gained refugee status as a Russian Jew and received an expedited green card. It took her three years to finally purchase a plane ticket to San Jose, California.
Vera placed the duffel bag containing her entire life onto the conveyor belt, when a customs officer yanked her guitar out of the line of suitcases passing through the screener like obedient ants. “The guitar will cost extra.” He had never passed up an opportunity to charge more ever since his mother lost her job and they were evicted. As soon he threw the guitar onto a nearby table, a flash of recognition streaked across his eyes. His head jerked up.
Exasperated, Vera slid the bribe money that she could not spare across the table and locked eyes with the customs officer to stand her ground. As soon as she saw his face, her hand flew to her mouth. She noticed the blue eyes that she fell in love with three years ago now tinged with exhaustion. Don’t you just love the irony? She had turned down his proposal to make it in a new country, and he was the last obstacle before she could do just that.
“Vera…. It’s been so long. So you’re really leaving.”
“Yeah. To America.” A long pause followed.
Under his breath, he murmured, “Vera, I still love—” He looked at her packed-up life on the conveyor belt and thought better of it. “Good luck.”
“You too.”
Vera didn’t know this, but Stanislav had been trying to leave Belarus with his mother, too. The immigration authorities told him that the wait time could be up to twenty years. Meanwhile, he was supposed to stay in Belarus and sing the national anthem as if his life wasn’t falling apart.
Once she crossed customs, the waist-high barrier was the only object separating her from me. I flung myself as far over the railing as I could, but it was as if a force field shoved me backwards. My tricks that I had developed over the years had no place on the other side; it had entirely different rules and systems. And although she knew there would be many challenges there, for Vera, the other side of the barrier meant hope.
Vera’s eyes welled up remembering her happy childhood and thought of looking back one last time, but she gathered herself and stepped onto the plane. She was resolved to do whatever it took to make her new life work. I was shocked that my persistence was no match for hers, and I coiled in a hurt ball on the floor, finally releasing my grasp on the curly-haired, brown-eyed, Jewish girl from Minsk.
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