The Goldfinch

“He wasn’t in many. Like, two.”

“But I mean. That one—that was a really big movie—that police movie, you know, the one about policemen taking bribes. What was the name of it?”

“He didn’t have a very big part. He was in it for like one second. He played a lawyer who got shot on the street.”

Boris shrugged. “Who cares? Still is interesting. If he ever went to Ukraine people would treat him like a star.”

“He can go then, and take Xandra with him.”

Boris’s enthusiasm for what he called “intellectual talks” found an appreciative outlet in my father, as well. Uninterested in politics myself, and even less interested in my father’s views on them, I was unwilling to engage in the kind of pointless argument on world events that I knew my father enjoyed. But Boris—drunk or sober—was glad to oblige. Often, in these talks, my father would wave his arms around and mimic Boris’s accent for entire conversations, in a way that set my teeth on edge. But Boris himself didn’t appear to notice or mind. Sometimes, when he went down to put the kettle on, and didn’t return, I found them arguing happily in the kitchen like a pair of actors in a stage production, about the dissolution of the Soviet Union or whatever.

“Ah, Potter!” he said, coming upstairs. “Your dad. Such a nice guy!”

I removed the earbuds of my iPod. “If you say so.”

“I mean it,” said Boris, flopping down on the floor. “He’s so talkative and intelligent! And he loves you.”

“I don’t see where you get that.”

“Come on! He wants to make things right with you, but doesn’t know how. He wishes it was you down there having discussions with him and not me.”

“He said that to you?”

“No. Is true, though! I know it.”

“Could have fooled me.”

Boris looked at me shrewdly. “Why do you hate him so much?”

“I don’t hate him.”

“He broke your mother’s heart,” said Boris decisively. “When he left her. But you need to forgive him. All that’s in the past now.”

I stared. Was this what my dad went around telling people?

“That’s bullshit,” I said, sitting up, throwing my comic book aside. “My mother—” how could I explain it?—“you don’t understand, he was an asshole to us, we were glad when he left. I mean, I know you think he’s such a great guy and everything—”

“And why is he so terrible? Because he saw other women?” said Boris—holding out his hands, palms up. “It happens. He has his life. What is that to do with you?”

I shook my head in disbelief. “Man,” I said, “he’s got you snowed.” It never failed to amaze me how my dad could charm strangers and reel them in. They lent him money, recommended him for promotions, introduced him to important people, invited him to use their vacation homes, fell completely under his spell—and then it would all go to pieces somehow and he would move on to someone else.

Boris looped his arms around his knees and leaned his head back against the wall. “All right, Potter,” he said agreeably. “Your enemy—my enemy. If you hate him, I hate him too. But—” he put his head to the side—“here I am. Staying in his house. What should I do? Should I talk, be friendly and nice? Or disrespect him?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, don’t believe everything he tells you.”

Boris chuckled. “I don’t believe everything that anybody tells me,” he said, kicking my foot companionably. “Not even you.”

xxvii.

AS FOND AS MY dad was of Boris, I was constantly trying to divert his attention from the fact that Boris had basically moved into the house with us—which wasn’t that difficult, as between the gambling and the drugs my dad was so distracted that he might not have noticed if I’d brought a bobcat to live in the upstairs bedroom. Xandra was a bit tougher to negotiate, more prone to complain about the expense, despite the supply of stolen snack food Boris contributed to the household. When she was at home he stayed upstairs and out of the way, frowning over The Idiot in Russian and listening to music on my portable speakers. I brought him beers and food from downstairs and learned to make his tea the way he liked it: boiling hot, with three sugars.

By then it was almost Christmas though you wouldn’t have known it from the weather: cool at night, but bright and warm during the day. When the wind blew, the umbrella by the pool snapped with a gunshot sound. There were lightning flashes at night, but no rain; and sometimes the sand picked up and flew in little whirlwinds which spun this way and that in the street.

I was depressed about the holidays, although Boris took them in stride. “It’s for little children, all that,” he said scornfully, leaning back on his elbows on my bed. “Tree, toys. We’ll have our own praznyky on Christmas Eve. What do you think?”

“Praznyky?”

“You know. A sort of holiday party. Not a proper Holy Supper, just a nice di

Much to my surprise, my father—and even Xandra—seemed delighted by the idea (my father, I think, mainly because he enjoyed the word praznyky, and enjoyed making Boris say it aloud). On the twenty-third, Boris and I went shopping, with actual money my father had given us (which was fortunate, since our usual supermarket was too crowded with holiday shoppers for carefree shoplifting) and came home with potatoes; a chicken; a series of unappetizing ingredients (sauerkraut, mushrooms, peas, sour cream) for some Polish holiday dish that Boris claimed he knew how to make; pumpernickel rolls (Boris insisted on black bread; white was all wrong for the meal, he said); a pound of butter; pickles; and some Christmas candy.

Boris had said that we would eat with the appearance of the first star in the sky—the Bethlehem star. But we were not used to cooking for anybody but ourselves and as a consequence were ru

“Come on, boys!” he said. His face was flushed and shiny and his voice very quick, with a strained, staccato quality I knew all too well. He had on one of his sharp old Dolce and Gabbana suits from New York but without a tie, the shirt loose and unbuttoned at the neck. “Go comb your hair and spruce up a bit. I’m taking us all out. Do you have anything better to wear, Theo? Surely you must.”

“But—” I stared at him in frustration. This was just like my dad, breezing in and changing the plan at the last moment.

“Oh, come on. The chicken can wait. Can’t it? Sure it can.” He was talking a mile a minute. “You can put the other thing back in the fridge too. We’ll have it tomorrow for Christmas lunch—will it still be praznyky? Is praznyky only on Christmas Eve? Am I confused about that? Well, okay, that’s when we’ll have ours—Christmas Day. New tradition. Leftovers are better anyway. Listen, this’ll be fantastic. Boris—” he was already shepherding Boris out of the kitchen—“what size shirt do you wear, comrade? You don’t know? Some of these old Brooks Brothers shirts of mine, I really ought to give the whole lot to you, great shirts, don’t get me wrong, they’ll probably come down to your knees but they’re a little too tight in the collar for me and if you roll up the sleeves they’ll look just fine.…”

xxviii.

THOUGH I’D BEEN IN Las Vegas almost half a year it was only my fourth or fifth time on the Strip—and Boris (who was content enough in our little orbit between school, shopping plaza, and home) had scarcely been into Vegas proper at all. We stared in amazement at the waterfalls of neon, electricity blazing and pulsing and cascading down in bubbles all around us, Boris’s upturned face glowing red and then gold in the crazy drench of lights.