Free The Mathematician’s Shiva by Stuart Rojstaczer Page A

these performers was accepted without question. She would talk to the artists as my father and I idly stood by. The appreciation in the performers’ eyes, hearing my mother heap praise, was often palpable. But it was never long lasting. In the uneven light that seems to exist backstage in all concert halls, the inevitable would happen. My mother would pause from her stream of compliments, breathe in the stale indoor air, and then change her tone.
    “You poor things. You are like circus animals, in a way. Forced to travel and parade your beauty and talent only to be put back in a cage after the show. I know. I was like you. But now, here, I am free. My name is Rachela Karnokovitch. I was a student of the great Kolmogorov in Moscow. But here I am free to do whatever I wish. I can accomplish so much more than I ever could in Russia. And you can, too. . . .”
    Usually, well before she reached this part of her standard speech, the blue suits with their pale skin, bad breath, and yellowed teeth would come forth and gently try to move my mother along. Also usually, well before this portion of her speech, the appreciative glow on the artists’ faces would change to panic at the thought of what punishments might await them as a result of this random, contaminating encounter with my mother. Sometimes the panic would escalate into hysterical shouts of disavowal in Russian. “I don’t know this person! I’ve never met her! She came from I-don’t-know-where!”
    My mother, my father, and I would walk away. My mother would forcibly remove the hand of the KGB man against her elbow. “I don’t need your help, you bastard,” she would growl. Then the litany would fly from her lips. “You dogs! In Russia, I had to be polite to you, smile at you. But here it’s different. Here, you have to be pleasant to me. How many have you murdered, you bastards? How many have you imprisoned? Here on Earth you are almighty. But in the world to come you will burn forever!”
    These events would repeat themselves at almost every concert we attended. Even as a child, I couldn’t understand why the KGB didn’t have a picture of my mother, so that they could intercept her before she made their work so difficult. The look of satisfaction on my mother’s face as we walked back to our seats would be absolute.
    But every once in a while the script would change. The blue suits would be doing lord knows what. They wouldn’t be paying attention as my mother beckoned an artist to defect. Even rarer still, the performer’s eyes would lock into my mother’s stare as if hypnotized, as if this were a dream come true. A woman was telling him in perfect Russian what he had been thinking for years, reading his mind. At such times my mother would pass a piece of paper into the hand of the artist quickly, with a nod. “You call,” she would say. “You call me whenever and wherever. I will take care of you. I will make sure you are safe.”
    As a child, these “successful” exchanges filled me with pure panic. They were far worse than the embarrassment of being whisked away by the KGB. What if a call from one of these adult urchins did come? What trouble would my mother, so fervent in her anticommunism, get us into? The frequent intrusions of mathematicians visiting our house and sleeping on our living room couch or, worse yet, taking over my bed and making me sleep on the couch, were bad enough. I thought ahead and had visions of being exiled to our living room couch for years, usurped by a new needy member of our “family.”
    My mother was bound to succeed sooner or later. Two years after she handed a ballerina a slip of paper with the alphanumeric string HI4-6572, the HI standing for Hilltop, it happened. I, at the tender age of thirteen, picked up the phone and heard the panicky voice of Anna Laknova, who, like my mother and Kolmogorov, was brought up from the dust and, through the Soviet system, polished into a shining jewel of talent. Disappointed