P. A. Callaro

THE DEREV’YA SOCIAL CLUB

И толь’ко здесь’ я обречен на страдать,
И толь’ко здесь’ – к спокойствию.
- Лермонтов, “Мой дом”

And only here I'm doomed to suffering,
And only here - to calmness.
- Lermontov, “My Home”

Three men watched Alexei enter. He removed his cap, scratched his cloud-white whiskers, took a seat at the bar, and politely asked the barman for tea and sushki biscuits. He turned and nodded at the three men with a satisfied smile as one of the three, an old man with a thick gray beard, rose from his seat and moved toward the bar. 

The Derev’ya Social Club in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn was opened in 1951 by two Russian brothers nostalgic for the cafes of their homeland. Its main room was thirty feet square, with small black and white hexagonal floor tiles. Along the rear wall resided a long, worn mahogany bar, home to two enormous brass samovars both cast in the image of double-headed eagles, an homage to the great Tsars of Russian history. At one end of the bar stood a carved bookshelf filled with chess sets, the latest editions of the newspapers Novom Svete and Vecherniy, and dog-eared volumes of Lermontov, Chekhov, and Tolstoy, many printed in Russian. At the other end was an upright piano on which, during cold and dreary days reminiscent of the Russian winter, a skilled patron might delight the room with a Rachmaninoff Prelude. On the walls, fabled Russians such as Stravinsky, Plisetskaya, and Gorbachev looked on as their compatriots nibbled their biscuits. In the center of the room was a woodstove surrounded by tables, each with a glass vase holding flowers picked from the outdoor garden in the rear of the cafe where glorious planetrees provided guests with dappled shade, and the club with its name. Uneven stones paved the garden where its main feature, an eight-foot-tall marble fountain, was crowned with a bust of Tchaikovsky. Metal tables, benches, and heavy wooden pedestals inset with stone chess boards looked up to the maestro as pews would an altar. For the older Russian emigres, Derev’ya was a soothing refuge, a sentimental tribute to the beloved motherland, an agreeable place that blissfully erased time and distance. For those of the new generation in Brighton Beach curious about their Russian heritage, it was a living chronicle to ensure that the time of great Russian culture and enlightenment would not be forgotten. 

As the hot tea melted the memorable biscuit in Alexei’s mouth, the bearded man approached him and said, “Hello, may I inquire if you are you new to the Derev’ya?”  

“Yes, I am,” Alexei said. “I moved here two weeks ago and as of today, I am a member of this fine club.”

“Well then, allow me to introduce myself, I am Leonid Asimov, but you can call me Leo.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you Leo, I am Alexei Petrovich Ivanov, but please, call me Alexei.”

Leo invited Alexei to his table where the other two men were now standing to greet the stranger.

“Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet a new member of the club, Alexei Petrovich Ivanov. May I introduce Ivan Belsky, and this is Ivan Grumov. Long ago we gave up the confusion and they became Belsky and Grumov.”

Eyeing the frayed and yellowed collar of his shirt, the two men shook hands with Alexei.

“It’s my pleasure to meet you all. I’m very happy to now live near a café like this. In the Bronx, I had no such place nearby. To Derev’ya, I can walk in minutes. And I must say, the ginger biscuits are heavenly,” Alexei said.

Leo shook his considerable stomach, “That is the work of Mrs. Solokin. She runs a serious kitchen and is not one to be trifled with. When it’s known that she is making her apple blintzes, it’s so busy here, you can’t get in the door.”

“Yes, I think you will like Brighton Beach much better than the Bronx,” Belsky said.

Leo offered Alexei a chair. “Please, join us.”

“I don’t want to interrupt your conversation,” Alexei said.

“It’s no interruption, we are three old men talking about nothing. We are happy to meet a new neighbor of similar age,” Leo said.

“Thank you, I share the sentiment,” Alexei said.

“So, you say you live nearby? Belsky asked.

“Yes, I live with my sister Vera near the glove factory on Neptune Avenue.”

“Leo lives not far from there,” Belsky said.

For the next hour, over tea, Mrs. Solokin’s sweet pastila cakes, the men, in a pastiche of Russian and English, shared their stories from the old world and the new.

In 1931, Alexei Petrovich Ivanov was born in the small village of Dubishki, Russia. Now seventy-seven years old, he praised the sushki biscuits at Derev’ya which were almost as sweet as those he shared with his father each Sunday morning of his childhood. Young Alexei idolized his father and his fondness for books and music. He was a man of culture who always carried some book of poetry and a notebook in his suit pocket. He earned meager wages writing for the local newspaper and spent his leisure time with the educated class, discussing music, language, books, art, and writing poetry. In the evenings, after tutoring his children in the basics of English, he delighted in playing symphonies on his phonograph. He read to Alexei and his younger sister Vera at bedtime. Often, it was Pushkin. Young Alexei was ill-equipped to comprehend the verses of A Magic Moment I Remember, but he was spellbound by the emotion in his father’s voice as he read the closing lines, “Then came a moment of renaissance, I looked up – you again are there, a fleeting vision, the quintessence of all that’s beautiful and rare.” They lived a civilized and artistic, if frugal, life. Alexei would never forget his father’s words that material things are transient, but that which is in our hearts and minds will last forever.

In 1953, with Vera already settled in Chicago and nothing left in Russia for his heart to embrace, Alexei and his new wife Anya planned a new life in America. With the assistance of a professor in St. Petersburg who knew his father, a job as a schoolteacher was arranged in the Russian community near Pelham Parkway in the Bronx. Soon after arriving, Anya gave birth to a son, Pyotr, the most precious gift Alexei could imagine. Complications made additional children impossible, which made Pyotr all the more precious. After college, Pyotr found great success as an American entrepreneur. Alexei showered his fellow teachers with reveries, not of his son’s success, but of the walks in the park with grandchildren that would surely come one day. But how could he know? There was no foretelling of a horrific railroad accident. Russia’s subjugation had taken his mother and father and now America’s liberties had taken his wife, his son, and his hope for a grandchild. He became an inconsolable recluse, darning his own socks, writing the occasional letter to his sister Vera, leaving his small flat in the Bronx only to go to work, or for groceries, or to pick up his mail which mostly consisted of advertisements – vacations to the Catskill Mountains, the latest child’s toy, arthritis cream – all of which brought tears to his eyes. Sitting by his open eighth-floor window, he contemplated his own end. In this, he may have succeeded were it not for the resolute love of his sister Vera who could read both the feigned contentment and the unwritten sadness in her brother’s letters, and who invited him to share her new home in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

With the dinner hour approaching, each man reached into his pocket to pay his check. Leo, Belsky, and Grumov tossed notes on the table that would pay their checks and leave a respectable gratuity for the barman. Alexei, under the curious eyes of the others, opened a small, ragged cloth purse, removed several coins, and counted them precisely before placing them on the table.

As they walked to the door, Leo said to Alexei, “Perhaps next time we play a game of Durak, you can join us. Do you play? We can always use a fourth player.”

“One moment please,” Alexei said, as he walked back to the table to retrieve his cap. Grumov and Belsky frowned at Leo, unsure that an invitation to join their card game was appropriate for a man they had just met.

Leo whispered, “Weren’t you listening to him? He’s wonderful, he will be an excellent addition to our group.”

Alexei returned with his cap and answered, “I would be delighted to play with you, but I must warn you, I am a remarkably poor player. You may wish you never invited me.”

Grumov said, “This will not be a problem, for no one plays Durak any more poorly than Belsky.”

They all chuckled and Belsky, encouraged by Leo’s words, replied, “Alexei my new friend, Grumov here believes he is the superior player, but he confuses talent with luck.”

The sound of old men coughing through their laughter was heard by all as the four friends left Derev’ya and breathed the salty ocean air, each pleased with this new beginning.

Over the following years, Alexei Petrovich Ivanov made a home in Brighton Beach. He spent his mornings walking along Brighton Beach Avenue under the roar of the EL trains visiting with the shopkeepers, conversing in Russian with community elders, and making pennies appear from behind the ears of the neighborhood children. On warm days he would cross the boardwalk, remove his shoes, and feel the sand between his calloused toes, picking up errant trash as he walked. On Wednesdays, he made a detour to Saint Nicholas church where Mrs. Meladova, the former librarian, attended morning services. Alexei would bring her a few sushkis to eat and push her wheelchair to the boardwalk so she could see and smell the ocean that so lifted her spirits. After lunch at home with Vera, he would nap and then walk to the Derev’ya for tea and sweets accompanied by some lines of Turgenev under the shade of the planetrees. Soon, Leo, Belsky, and Grumov would arrive, and stories of younger days would be told and retold, the day’s gossip would be broached, a chess match offered, more tea and perhaps some vodka would be drunk, and a rambunctious game of Durak would be played. During these years, the four men shared a deep contentment with life and their friendship. But the world turns, and for some, the blessings of America – charity, freedom, conscience – compete with darker visions of selfishness, pride, and bigotry that reside in their hearts.

One September afternoon at Derev’ya, the four sat for tea in the shade by the fountain and Leo asked, “Alexei, when you were a boy in Dubishki, did your family travel often to Moscow?”

“Dubishki,” Alexei said, “is halfway between Moscow and Leningrad and a great distance from both. There was no money for family trips. But my father did travel to Leningrad to be in the company of the writers and professors at the university.”

“Each to his own Alexei,” Grumov said sternly, “but I believe the proper name is St. Petersburg.”

“Pardon me, you know it’s an old habit from my youth,” Alexei said.

“Yes, a habit you make no attempt to correct,” Grumov said, unable to hide his irritation.

 “My apologies, I will try to remember,” Alexei said.

“So, your father was a professor at the university?” Belsky asked.

“No, my father was a journalist by trade, but truly, he was a poet,” Alexei said. “He enjoyed the company of the writers and musicians and philosophers at the university. He would return home inspired and would write poems and then he would recite them to Vera and me.”

Leo smiled, “How wonderful, to be a child and hear poetry in your father’s voice. You haven’t told us much about your father Alexei, did he ever come to America?”

“No, he did not. He died in Russia.”

“I am sorry,” Leo said.

“I believe all of us have lost our fathers. How old was he when he passed?” Belsky asked.

“He was a young man,” Alexei said.

“Was he killed in the war?” Grumov asked.

Alexei looked to the floor and gazed at his shoes in need of polish. Only Leo sensed his discomfort, “I think perhaps this is too personal. Why don’t we change the subject.”

“No, I don’t mind the question,” Alexei said. “We have been friends for years.”

“Are you sure?” Leo asked.

“Yes. After the war, a party official in our village with a strong dislike for my father, accused him of stealing and had him sent away. I was fourteen years old, but I knew this was a lie; everyone in the village knew my father could never do such a thing. But the hatred had always been there; the Nazis only added to it. And when they were driven out, the hate was uglier, as if that was possible. My father was sent away and shot not because he was a thief, but because he was a poet – and because he was a Jew.”

The air between the men was still and as Alexei’s lip quivered, Leo said, “I am very sorry Alexei. You must have a great deal of pain and anger inside.”

Alexei breathed deeply and said, “I was angry for many years, but my anger consumed me and left no place for the beauty of the world to touch me, the beauty that my father shared with me and Vera through his poetry. My anger was a victory for the hate, and I refused to allow it to conquer me.”

“Your philosophy is admirable Alexei, I would have difficulty myself,” Leo said.

“Yes,” Belsky said. “It was a terrible time; it’s best to forget it and move on.”

“Yes, best to move on and look ahead,” Grumov said.

There was a halo of sadness around Alexei when he said, “It’s true, I have had my share of tragedy and I have missed my family terribly. But, in music and art, and in my father’s poetry, and my years of friendship with all of you, I have found great comfort and hope. At my age, I have only one regret, and that is not having a grandchild to love, to teach, to share poetry, and to carry on a new generation when I am gone.”

“I know your feeling,” Grumov said. “My grandsons are the sunshine of my life even when they disobey.”

“Yes, they are delightful children. I so enjoy seeing them here at the café,” Alexei said.

 “My daughter lives not ten blocks from here, but I don’t see my grandchildren as much as I would like to. Perhaps if the new playground is ever completed, all our grandchildren will spend more time here,” Belsky said.

At that moment, Alexei stood, politely asked for his check, and said, “Gentlemen, I think it is time for me to leave you, Vera is making a pot roast tonight and it is best eaten hot. Please enjoy the evening.”

Alexei departed and Leo could not contain his anger.

“You both should be ashamed of yourselves. To hear him speak of his lost family and then to carry on about the joys of your own grandchildren, was vulgar. How could you be so cruel?”

 “So, we must never speak of our grandchildren again in his company? He is not the only one who lives with sadness. Our families also knew the atrocities of Stalin and the Nazis. But the son of the great Russian poet from the university at Leningrad expects pity with his stories of heartbreak,” Grumov said.

“Leo, in your old age, you are taken in by his manipulations like a fool,” Belsky said.

“Can any of us imagine his heartache? He has always been a man of deep emotion and kindness, yet you both treat him like someone who is trying to steal from you,” Leo said.

“That would not surprise me either,” Belsky said.

“What does that mean?” asked Leo.

Belsky answered, “You see the way he reaches into that filthy old purse to pick out coins to buy one biscuit for himself? I can’t remember the last time he bought tea for us. I don’t care if his father was a penniless poet. Leo, do you remember when Grumov invited us to dinner at Matryoshka after he won at the racetrack and Alexei was happy to join us? But, when we returned to the restaurant a month later, he could not come. Do you know why? Because he knew he would have to pay his own check.”

“It’s his nature,” Grumov said. “The man is a miser. Will we ever see the day when he buys a new suit coat, or at least patches to cover the holes in the one he wears every day? And all these years, he lives with his sister. Why does he live there? We’ve all tasted her blinis, so we know it’s not for the food.”

Belsky and Grumov roared with laughter.

“No, it is so he can pay half rent,” Belsky said. “And I’m also tiring of his air of superiority. Did you hear him last week giving me advice at the chess board? Not as a joke, but a return to his role as schoolteacher. He sits and thinks and thinks and thinks again. Such a strategist. He beats me because of my boredom as I wait for his next move.”

The two howled again with laughter.

“I’m sorry you both feel this way,” Leo said.

Winter came and Grumov and Belsky saw less of Leo and Alexei. When the four were together, the chill in their words matched the cold sea air and the Durak games were less rambunctious.

On a cold but windless Wednesday morning, Leo joined Alexei for a morning walk along the beach.

“Leo, have you noticed a change in Belsky and Grumov recently?” Alexei asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Things seem different when we are together, like Chekhov’s student who feels a cold wind blowing inappropriately.”

“I don’t know, Alexei, perhaps it’s just the annoyances of old age. Maybe they aren’t feeling well.”

“Yes, perhaps. I will light a candle for them at St. Nicholas.”

“Yes, my friend, I know you will.”

In March, the garden at Derev’ya was not yet open. Grumov and Belsky were conversing at the bar when Leo walked in.

“Good afternoon Leo,” Belsky said. “You’re late today.”

“I have bad news from Vera. Alexei was taken to the hospital this afternoon. It is serious; he is in a coma.”

“Do they know the cause? Belsky asked.

“The doctors are not sure. Vera said she could not wake him from his nap. She called the ambulance, and they took him away.”

“Had he complained of any pain? Grumov asked.

“No, no complaints. The doctors are doing tests and hope to know more later today.”

“Should we go to see him?” Belsky asked.

“Yes, we probably should go, if he can have visitors,” Grumov said.

“Only family members can see him now. Perhaps tomorrow he will improve, God willing, then we can visit him.”

Mrs. Solokin placed May flowers in the vases on the tables near the bar. In the garden, no sunlight could penetrate the clouds and the leaves of the planetrees were dark. Grumov, Belsky, and Leo sat near the maestro drinking tea and eating honey cakes. Belsky dealt the cards, and they played Durak in silence.

The door to the garden opened and out ran Rachel Belsky.

“Grandpa, will you come with me to the new playground when it opens later?”

Belsky spread his arms, “Of course, I will, malyshka, come give Grandpa a hug. Is your mama with you?”

“No, Mama is working, Mrs. Sergeyevna is with me. She says they will make the ribbon at three o’clock and then we can go on the playground, and you can push me on the swing.”

“Yes, yes, cut the ribbon, and then you can swing. Anything you want malyshka.”

“Thank you, Grandpa. I’ll see you later, at three o’clock, don’t forget.”

“I won’t forget.”

Belsky turned to Grumov, “Will your grandchildren be at the playground for the opening?”

“Are you joking? They have been waiting three years for this day. They will be there,” Grumov said.

“I’m sure my little ones are at the playground already, waiting,” Leo said with a wistful smile.

When the time came, the three walked to the new playground. Three years of bureaucratic red tape, something Russians understand well, was finally at an end. A sea of young children with their parents, grandparents, and nannies were gathered for the ribbon cutting. The playground was the size of a city block, filled with swings, slides, jungle gyms, and even spray fountains to splash water on hot summer days. Dozens of planetrees shaded the perimeter. At the center, a three-foot square wood replica of a house stood on a short pedestal with a sign that read: BIBLIOTECHNYY. It had large doors that swung open to reveal dozens of books for the children to read and borrow, plus volumes from immortal Russian poets and writers for the pleasure of the parents and grandparents. A city official stepped to a podium for the ceremony. Before he cut the ribbon, he unveiled a bronze plaque with the playground’s dedication which he read:

PUSHKIN PARK

Dedicated to the children and grandchildren of Brighton Beach –
Our hope and our future. 

The City of New York Offers Its
Sincere Thanks to the Park’s Benefactor
ALEXEI PETROVICH IVANOV 

IN LOVING MEMORY OF
PYOTR ALEXEYEVICH IVANOV

Belsky and Grumov stood silently, their faces expressionless. Leo wiped tears from his eyes. Mrs. Meladova, who had helped fill the small wooden library wept openly. Later, in Derev’ya’s garden, the three men were having tea when Vera appeared. Leo invited her to sit at their table and said, “Vera, I had no idea Alexei was involved…what a wonderful gift to the children and tribute to his…” Leo was unable to finish.

“He had quietly arranged with the city to pay for the park several years ago,” Vera said.

“If I may ask, where did he get such a sum to build a park?” Belsky asked.

“His son left him everything. Alexei was never at ease with gaining riches from the death of his son. He would have burned it all to get Anya and Pyotr back. So, he quietly gave it away, first to the public library and then to build the park. He asked me to keep his secret. But when he died, I asked for the dedication plaque to include their names.”

“I understand that he would give money to the library, but why to a playground when he had no grandchildren to use it? Surely there were other ways to give away the money,” Grumov said.

Vera explained softly, “His most precious hope was to have a grandchild, but he knew it was not to be. That other children would find joy in the park and be touched by the books and the poetry as he was, that was his wish.”

“Vera, I will never forget him. Your brother was a man of decency and virtue,” Leo said.

Leo looked at Grumov and Belsky and asked, “Wouldn’t you agree?”

The two men nodded in agreement, and raindrops began to fall, but none reached the gathering thanks to the broad leaves of the planetrees.

P.A. Callaro is a native New Yorker who stumbled into a love of literature in college. Now, he runs for miles in the early morning searching for clarity of thought. Occasionally he finds it and invents characters for his fiction who discover, or stumble into, some of life's small but stubborn truths. His work will appear in the April 2023 edition of The Umbrella Factory magazine.