The Free World by David Bezmozgis

speaking about their experiences with their mainly drunken boyfriends. That was when she learned that most men went to great lengths to avoid having to deal with the contents of the yellow wrapper, and that, despite the risks, most women relented. They rationalized their actions by maligning the quality of Soviet condoms, which were known to rupture or slide off. It made little sense, they said, to put one’s faith in something so unreliable. In Polina’s experience, the condoms had never ruptured or slid off. She also thought the alternative measures the women cited—hot water, wine vinegar, urine—sounded dubious, but several weeks later, when they were alone in Polina’s apartment, her parents having gone with Nadja to attend a choral recital, Maxim found that he did not have any condoms, but Polina insisted that they do it anyway. It was not something she had planned in advance, but neither was it entirely spontaneous. It was the first time she had ever challenged Maxim’s authority, and shewas as aroused by the prospect of luring him into temptation as by the recklessness of what they were doing. Maxim was sitting up on his knees when she told him what she wanted, and he wavered for a few seconds, a look of fear and doubt on his face, before Polina reached out and took him into her. After that, the fear and doubt left his face and were replaced by something insular and fierce. For as long as it lasted, Polina felt florid reverberations, as if from dense and cumbersome things thrown against her body. Gothic thoughts took shape in her mind, some of which momentarily surprised her and then mocked her surprise. Shortly before it ended, Polina hissed in Maxim’s ear that she wanted him to do it inside her. It was a sentence that had been circling malevolently in her head from the moment she had insisted that they have sex. As she said it, she knew it couldn’t have had less to do with a desire for children. And as soon as Maxim finished, Polina slid out from under him and went to the kitchen for a basin and a purple, thin-necked vase from which she had to first remove three of Maxim’s carnations. She returned to the bedroom, set the basin in the middle of the floor, and urinated into it. Carefully, under Maxim’s silent gaze, she transferred the urine from the basin into the vase, spilling several drops onto the floorboards. She then stretched out on the floor, arched her pelvis, and instructed Maxim to pour the urine into her from the vase. What they were doing was disgusting and sordid, and Maxim avoided Polina’s eyes as he carried out her instructions. He was pliable then in a way that he had never been before and never would be again. She had made him complicit in something depraved, and she expected that, in some way, she would be punished for this. Later, when her punishment was meted out, Maxim never once blamed her for what she knew was exclusively her fault.

3
    O n his third day at the briefing department, standing before the newly arrived émigrés at their cafeteria orientation, Alec felt like a fraud. He felt tempted to confess that, not one week before, he had been sitting in their place, and that he knew no more about Rome than they did. But he was aware that this kind of revelation would only sow panic.
    After the orientation Alec made the rounds of the émigrés’ hotel rooms. He distributed U.S. emigration forms, priming people for their Persecution Stories and, if necessary, their Party Stories. Some people came prepared with a vast catalog of grievances that they had been compiling their entire lives; others needed some interpretive assistance.
    A couple from Berdichev found the concept particularly boggling. The wife looked at Alec like he was obtuse.
    —What do we need this for?
    —Nobody’s saying you need it. The Americans need it. You’re claiming refugee status. To be a refugee you need to have been persecuted.
    —The entire country was persecuted.
    —Did you and your husband