The Light of Seven Days by River Adams

Author:River Adams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Delphinium Books
Published: 2023-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

March 1991

It’s almost midnight when my taxi skids on frozen thaw in front of the Pulkovo-2 international terminal and comes to rest at a precarious angle by the curb. In a few minutes the date will be March 21, 1991, and I keep searching for some deeper meaning in traveling from this world to the next on a vernal equinox, but if there is meaning, I can’t see it. Maybe because nothing feels vernal this spring.

It’s been a wintry March, but I am dressed for the flight: too lightly. As soon as I step out of the car, the wind drives icy mist like a barrage from a nail gun into my arms and legs, through the thin spring jacket and jeans. The jeans are American, fancy and too expensive, so new that they’ve never been worn before. I came upon them at a street kiosk a couple weeks ago and stopped without fully realizing why. Something about buying them made me feel appropriate. More prepared. One sure thing out of a thousand unsure ones. Across the ocean lies the Miltonian dark continent, and I know nothing about it, except bits of myth and pages of history books. And McDonald’s. And that of the people I’ve met who have emigrated, none have been seen again. Boarding the airplane tomorrow morning is as close a thing to death as I can fathom from this side. On the other side is the unknown. A deaf, utter lack of predictability. A crossing of the Styx, and no one can tell me what is there or what is right or what’s to come. Other than the jeans. I assume it’s what they wear. I slide my hand under the jacket and touch the leathery label. It is ineffably comforting, American and Jewish at once: LEVI’S.

Not that I’ve been told truly nothing of what is supposed to happen next. My plane will take off in the early morning and land in Shannon, Ireland, then in Newfoundland, and finally in New York. From there I’m supposed to fly on to Philadelphia and be met by somebody either from a Jewish organization that handles refugees or from the synagogue that’s volunteered to sponsor me, I’m not certain. This is where my awareness of my future ends.

I haven’t been told if anyone picking me up on the other side speaks Russian. The worry of it nags me periodically, because what I speak of English is limited to the phrases I’ve managed to learn from my “In Common” tapes over the past five months, and most of them seem pretty stupid: “Greeting people is not simple.”

“Kyle is a good student.”

“This is a parking meter.” I have trouble with the meaning of the last one. Two are useful questions: “What is your name?” for identification, and “Who are you?” for profession. So it says. Our language in school was French, which is great for ballet terms but wouldn’t help me, I suspect, were I to move to Paris.

I catch some raindrops on my tongue.

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