Free The Free World by David Bezmozgis

from Ben Gurion Airport to boot camp. Getting killed or maimed in Lebanon, or Egypt, or wherever the bullets were flying, seemed to defeat the whole point of leaving the Soviet Union. Karl felt the same way and Rosa knew it. But when a man nearby loudly opined that Begin was allowing himself to be led down the garden path, that even Brezhnev would neverbe played for such a fool, Rosa interrupted and deflected the conversation onto the subject of the Shcharansky show trial.
    —While the rest of the world condemns Brezhnev for Shcharansky you dare to compare him to Begin?
    —One has nothing to do with the other, the man said.
    —What are Shcharansky’s crimes? Being a Jew. Wanting to go to Israel. Tell me how the two are not related?
    —He wants to go to Israel not because of Begin’s ridiculous peace with Egypt. If you want my opinion, he is willing to go in spite of it. He’s a true believer. If Israel was run by a group of half-wits who bayed at the moon—so long as they were Jewish—Shcharansky would go.
    —Are you suggesting that Begin is a half-wit?
    —Show me the proof he isn’t.
    —Brezhnev is an anti-Semite. Begin is a Jewish hero.
    —Tell me, please, if you’re such a patriot, what are you doing in Italy? As I recall, the plane for Tel Aviv departs from Vienna.
    —My reasons are my own.
    —All right, fine, the man said.
Shalom aleichem.
    In the crowded HIAS waiting room, Alec stood with Polina until he heard the name Krasnansky pronounced once and then a second time above the din. Alec looked around and saw Syomka Bender stepping over feet and picking his way through the room. Syomka wore a denim jacket, clearly a recent acquisition, but was otherwise unchanged. His face, intelligent and reserved, allowed the trace of a smile.
    —I saw your name on the list, Syomka said, and got myself assigned to your file.
    —I forgot, Alec said, Iza told us you worked here.
    —That’s right, Syomka said, you saw my brother.
    —We did.
    —The less said about that the better, Syomka said. Follow me into the hall; it’s impossible to talk in here.
    —Just me or all of us? Alec asked.
    —All of you is probably best, Syomka said.
    Karl and Alec had both been friendly with Syomka in Riga. They came across him at parties and at the beach in the summer. For a long time Syomka had dated the same girl. She was from a good family and was studying piano at the conservatory. There was general consensus that the two were ideally matched. At parties, everywhere, you never saw one without the other until it became impossible to imagine them apart. They shared the same disposition, quiet, clever, vaguely aristocratic. Even to each other they spoke little and yet seemed, as if by telepathy, to communicate and agree. More than once Alec had met them after a movie or a play and, just by the measured way in which they listened and considered what he said, he became convinced that they had understood the movie or the play at a level far deeper and better than he. Alec would walk away from these encounters slightly embarrassed but basically full of admiration. Almost everyone held the same opinion of them. Which was why their breakup, unremarkable for any other couple, acquired the level of scandal. Nobody could have predicted that Lilya Gordin might be discovered, unapologetic, in the arms of a cellist two years her junior. For two days afterward it was said that Syomka trailed the cellist. He didn’t confront him or say anything, he just waited outside his building and then shadowed him like a KGB agent. Alec never spoke of the breakup to Syomka. He didn’t know anyone who did. Syomka continued to show up at parties and at the beach, sometimes with his brother. Women treated him with kindness and uncertainty; his longtime unassailability and his eminent devastation conferred upon him the aura of the exotic. A girl explained that it was as if there was something monastic or virginal about Syomka, profoundly magnetic. But