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CHAPTER 1

ACT ONE

The Townspeople Tell the Story of Sonya and Alfonso

Gunshot

Our country is the stage.

When soldiers march into town, public assemblies are officially prohibited. But today, neighbors flock to the piano music from Sonya and Alfonso's puppet show in Central Square. Some of us have climbed up into trees, others hide behind benches and telegraph poles.

When Petya, the deaf boy in the front row, sneezes, the sergeant puppet collapses, shrieking. He stands up again, snorts, shakes his fist at the laughing audience.

An army jeep swerves into the square, disgorging its own Sergeant.

Disperse immediately!

Disperse immediately! the puppet mimics in a wooden falsetto.

Everyone freezes except Petya, who keeps giggling. Someone claps a hand over his mouth. The Sergeant turns toward the boy, raising his finger.

You!

You! the puppet raises a finger.

Sonya watches her puppet, the puppet watches the Sergeant, the Sergeant watches Sonya and Alfonso, but the rest of us watch Petya lean back, gather all the spit in his throat, and launch it at the Sergeant.

The sound we do not hear lifts the gulls off the water.

As Soldiers March, Alfonso Covers the Boy's Face with a Newspaper

Fourteen people, most of us strangers,
watch Sonya kneel by Petya

shot in the middle of the street.
She picks up his spectacles shining like two coins, balances them on his nose.

Observe this moment
— how it convulses —

Snow falls and the dogs run into the streets like medics.

Fourteen of us watch:
Sonya kisses his forehead — her shout a hole

torn in the sky, it shimmers the park benches, porchlights.
We see in Sonya's open mouth

the nakedness of a whole nation.

She stretches out beside the little snowman napping in the middle of the street.

As picking up its belly the country runs.


Alfonso, in Snow

You are alive, I whisper to myself, therefore something in you listens.

Something runs down the street, falls, fails to get up.
I run etcetera with my legs and my hands behind my pregnant wife etcetera down Vasenka Street I run it only takes a few minutes etcetera to make a man.

Deafness, an Insurgency, Begins

Our country woke up next morning and refused to hear soldiers.

In the name of Petya, we refuse. At six a.m., when soldiers compliment girls in the alleyway, the girls slide by, pointing to their ears. At eight, the bakery door is shut in soldier Ivanoff's face, though he's their best customer. At ten, Momma Galya chalks NO ONE HEARS YOU on the gates of the soldiers' barracks.

By eleven a.m., arrests begin.

Our hearing doesn't weaken, but something silent in us strengthens.

After curfew, families of the arrested hang homemade puppets out of their windows. The streets empty but for the squeaks of strings and the tap tap, against the buildings, of wooden fists and feet.

In the ears of the town, snow falls.

Alfonso Stands Answerable My people, you were really something fucking fine

on the morning of first arrests:
our men, once frightened, bound to their beds, now stand up like human
  masts —
deafness passes through us like a police whistle.

Here then I testify:

each of us comes home, shouts at a wall, at a stove, at a refrigerator, at himself. Forgive
  me, I

was not honest with you,
life —

to you I stand answerable.
I run etcetera with my legs and my hands etcetera I run down Vasenka Street
  etcetera —

Whoever listens:
thank you for the feather on my tongue,

thank you for our argument that ends, thank you for deafness,
Lord, such fire

from a match you never lit.


That Map of Bone and Opened Valves

I watched the Sergeant aim, the deaf boy take iron and fire in his mouth —
his face on the asphalt,
that map of bone and opened valves.
It's the air. Something in the air wants us too much.
The earth is still.
The tower guards eat cucumber sandwiches.
This first day soldiers examine the ears of bartenders, accountants, soldiers —
the wicked things silence does to soldiers.
They tear Gora's wife from her bed like a door off a bus.
Observe this moment
— how it convulses —
The body of the boy lies on the asphalt like a paperclip.
The body of the boy lies on the asphalt like the body of a boy.
I touch the walls, feel the pulse of the house, and I stare up wordless and do not know why I am alive.
We tiptoe this city,
Sonya and I,
between theaters and gardens and wrought-iron gates —
Be courageous, we say, but no one is courageous, as a sound we do not hear lifts the birds off the water.

The Townspeople Circle the Boy's Body

The dead boy's body still lies in the square.

Sonya spoons him on the cement. Inside her — her child sleeps. Momma Galya brings Sonya a pillow. A man in a wheelchair brings a gallon of milk.

Alfonso lies next to them in the snow. Wraps one arm around her belly. He puts one hand to the ground. He hears the cars stop, doors slam, dogs bark. When he pulls his hand off the ground, he hears nothing.

Behind them, a puppet lies on cement, mouth filling with snow.

Forty minutes later, it is morning. Soldiers step back into the square.

The townspeople lock arms to form a circle and another circle around that circle and another circle to keep the soldiers from the boy's body.

We watch Sonya stand (the child inside her straightens its leg). Someone has given her a sign, which she holds high above her head: THE PEOPLE ARE DEAF.

Of Weddings before the War

Yes, I bought you a wedding dress big enough for the two of us and in the taxi home we kissed a coin from your mouth to mine.

The landlady might've noticed a drizzle of stains on the sheets —
angels could do it more neatly

but they don't. I can still climb your underwear, my ass is smaller than yours!

You pat my cheek,
beam —
may you win the lottery and spend it all on doctors!

You are two fingers more beautiful than any other woman —
I am not a poet, Sonya,
I want to live in your hair.

You leapt on my back, I ran to the shower,
and yes, I slipped on the wet floor —

I watched you gleam in the shower holding your breasts in your hand —

two small explosions.


Still Newlyweds

You step out of the shower and the entire nation calms —

a drop of lemon-egg shampoo,
you smell like bees,

a brief kiss,
I don't know anything about you — except the spray of freckles on your
  shoulders!

which makes me feel so thrillingly

alone.
I stand on earth in my pajamas,

penis sticking out —
for years

in your direction.


Soldiers Aim at Us

They fire as the crowd of women flees inside the nostrils of searchlights

— may God have a photograph of this —

in the piazza's bright air, soldiers drag Petya's body and his head bangs the stairs. I

feel through my wife's shirt the shape of our child.

Soldiers drag Petya up the stairs and homeless dogs, thin as philosophers,
understand everything and bark and bark.

I, now on the bridge, with no camouflage of speech, a body wrapping the body of my pregnant wife —

Tonight we don't die and don't die,

the earth is still,
a helicopter eyeballs my wife —

On earth a man cannot flip a finger at the sky

because each man is already a finger flipped at the sky.

Checkpoints

In the streets, soldiers install hearing checkpoints and nail announcements on posts and doors:

DEAFNESS IS A CONTAGIOUS DISEASE. FOR YOUR OWN PROTECTION ALL SUBJECTS IN CONTAMINATED AREAS MUST SURRENDER TO BE QUARANTINED WITHIN 24 HOURS!

Sonya and Alfonso teach signs in Central Square. When a patrol walks by, they sit on their hands. We see the Sergeant stop a woman on her way to the market, but she cannot hear. He loads her into a truck. He stops another. She does not hear. He loads her into a truck. A third points to her ears.

In these avenues, deafness is our only barricade.

Before the War, We Made a Child

I kissed a woman whose freckles arouse the neighbors.

She had a mole on her shoulder which she displayed like a medal for bravery.

Her trembling lips meant come to bed.
Her hair waterfalling in the middle

of the conversation meant
come to bed.
I walked in my barbershop of thoughts.

Yes, I thieved her off to bed on the chair of my hairy arms —
but parted lips

meant bite my parted lips.
Lying under the cool sheets. Sonya!

The things we did.


As Soldiers Choke the Stairwell

As soldiers stomp up the stairs —
my wife's painted fingernail scratches

and scratches the skin off her leg, and I feel the hardness of bone underneath.

It gives me faith.


4 a.m. Bombardment

My body runs in Arlemovsk Street, my clothes in a pillowcase:
I look for a man who looks exactly like me, to give him my Sonya, my name, my shirt —
It has begun: neighbors climb the trolleys at the fish market, breaking all their moments in half. Trolleys burst like intestines in the sun —

Pavel shouts, I am so fucking beautiful I cannot stand it!
Two boys still holding tomato sandwiches hop in the trolley's light, soldiers aim at their faces. Their ears.
I can't find my wife, where is my pregnant wife?
I, a body, adult male, awaits to explode like a hand grenade.

It has begun: I see the blue canary of my country pick breadcrumbs from each citizen's eyes —
pick breadcrumbs from my neighbors' hair —
the snow leaves the earth and falls straight up as it should —
to have a country, so important —
to run into walls, into streetlights, into loved ones, as one should —
The blue canary of my country runs into walls, into streetlights, into loved ones —
The blue canary of my country watches their legs as they run and fall.

Arrival

You arrive at noon, little daughter, weighing only six pounds. Sonya sets you atop the piano and plays a lullaby no one hears. In the nursery, quiet hisses like a match dropped in water.

Lullaby

Little daughter rainwater

snow and branches protect you whitewashed walls

and neighbors' hands all Child of my Aprils

little earth of six pounds

my white hair keeps your sleep lit


Question

What is a child?

A quiet between two bombardments.


While the Child Sleeps, Sonya Undresses

She scrubs me until I spit soapy water.
Pig, she smiles.

A man should smell better than his country —
such is the silence of a woman who speaks against silence, knowing

silence moves us to speak.
She throws my shoes and glasses in the air,

I am of deaf people and I have no country but a bathtub and an infant and a marriage bed!

Soaping together is sacred to us.
Washing each other's shoulders.

You can fuck anyone — but with whom can you sit in water?


A Cigarette

Watch —
Vasenka citizens do not know they are evidence of happiness.

In a time of war,
each is a ripped-out document of laughter.

Watch, God —
deaf have something to tell that not even they can hear.

Climb a roof in Central Square of this bombarded city, you will see —
one neighbor thieves a cigarette,
another gives a dog a pint of sunlit beer.

You will find me, God,
like a dumb pigeon's beak, I am pecking every which way at astonishment.

A Dog Sniffs

Morning.

In a bombed-out street, wind moves the lips of a politician on a poster. Inside, the child Sonya named Anushka suckles. Not sleeping, Alfonso touches his wife's nipple, pulls to his lips a pearl of milk.

Evening.

As Alfonso steps onto Tedna Street in search of bread, the wind brittles his body. Four jeeps pull onto the curb: Sonya is stolen into a jeep as Anushka cries, left behind as the convoy rattles away. The neighbors peek from behind curtains. Silence like a dog sniffs the windowpanes between us.

What We Cannot Hear

They shove Sonya into the army jeep one morning, one morning, one morning in May, one dime-bright morning —

they shove her and she zigzags and turns and trips in silence

which is a soul's noise.
Sonya, who once said, On the day of my arrest I will be playing piano.

We watch four men shove her —

and we think we see hundreds of old pianos forming a bridge from Arlemovsk to Tedna Street, and she

waits at each piano —
and what remains of her is

a puppet that speaks with its fingers,

what remains of a puppet is this woman, what remains of her (they took you, Sonya) — the voice we cannot hear — is the clearest
  voice.

Central Square

The arrested are made to walk with their arms raised up. As if they are about to leave the earth and are trying out the wind.

For an apple a peek, soldiers display Sonya, naked, under a TROOPS ARE FIGHTING FOR YOUR FREEDOM poster. Snow swirls in her nostrils. Soldiers circle her eyes with a red pencil. The young soldier aims in the red circle. Spits. Another aims. Spits. The town watches. Around her neck a sign: I RESISTED ARREST.

Sonya looks straight ahead, to where the soldiers are lined up. Suddenly, out of this silence comes her voice, Ready! The soldiers raise their rifles on her command.

A Widower


Alfonso Barabinski stands in Central Square without a shirt,

rakes up snow and throws it on marching troops.


His mouth drives the first syllable of his wife's name into walls —

He, on foot, a good mile and a half of wind,
sets off for the beach, on cobblestone streets, and stops every woman he meets —

Alfonso Barabinski, vodka flask in his pocket, bites a hole in an apple and in
  that hole he pours a shot of vodka —

and he drinks to our health —
a toast to his wife shot in the center of town where her body

lies down.

Alfonso Barabinski, a child in his arms, spray-paints on the sea wall:
  PEOPLE LIVE HERE —

like an illiterate signing a document

he does not understand.


For His Wife

I am your boy drowning in this country, who doesn't know

the word for drowning
and yells

I am diving for the last time!


I, This Body

I, this body into which the hand of God plunges,
empty-chested, stand.

At the funeral —
Momma Galya and her puppeteers rise to shake my hand.

I fold our child in a green handkerchief,
brief gift.

You left, my door-slamming wife; and I,
a fool, live.

But the voice I don't hear when I speak to myself is the clearest voice:
when my wife washed my hair, when I kissed

between her toes —
in the empty streets of our district, a bit of wind

called for life.
Wife taken, child

not three days out of the womb, in my arms, our apartment empty, on the floor

the dirty snow from her boots.


Her Dresses

Her bright dresses with delicate zippers.

Her ironed socks.

I stand by the mirror.

Trying on my wife's red socks.


Elegy

Six words,
Lord:

please ease of song

my tongue.


Above Blue Tin Roofs, Deafness

Our boys want a public killing in the sunlit piazza.
They drag a drunk soldier, around his neck a sign:
  I ARRESTED THE WOMEN OF VASENKA.
The boys have no idea how to kill a man.
Alfonso signs, I will kill him for a box of oranges.
The boys pay a box of oranges.
He cracks a raw egg in a cup,
smells a trickle of oranges in the snow,
and he tosses the egg down his throat like a vodka shot.
He is washing his hands, he is putting on red socks, he is putting his tongue where his tooth has been.
The girls spit in the soldier's mouth.
A pigeon settles on a stop sign, making it sway.
An idiot boy whispers, Long Live Deafness! and spits at the soldier.
In the center of the piazza a soldier on his knees begs as townspeople shake their heads, and point at
  their ears.
Deafness is suspended above blue tin roofs and copper eaves; deafness feeds on birches, light posts, hospital roofs, bells;
deafness rests in our men's chests.
Our girls sign, Start.
Our boys, wet and freckled, cross themselves.
Tomorrow we will be exposed like the thin ribs of dogs but tonight we don't care enough to lie:
Alfonso jumps on the soldier, embraces him, cuts him to the lung.
The soldier flies about the sidewalk.
The town watches the loud animal bones in their faces and smells the earth.
It is the girls who steal the oranges and hide them in their shirts.

A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck

Alfonso stumbles from the corpse of the soldier. The townspeople are cheering, elated, pounding him on the back. Those who climbed the trees to watch applaud from the branches. Momma Galya shouts about pigs, pigs clean as men.

At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this? And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?

In the Bright Sleeve of the Sky

  Is that you, little soul?
Sometimes at night I

light a lamp so as not to see.

I tiptoe,
Anushka

drowsing in my palms:

on my balding head, her bonnet.


To Live

To live is to love, the great book commands.
But love is not enough —

the heart needs a little foolishness!
For our child I fold the newspaper, make a hat

and pretend to Sonya that I am the greatest poet and she pretends to be alive —

my Sonya, her stories and her eloquent legs,
her legs and stories that open other stories.

(Stop talking while we are kissing!)
I see myself — a yellow raincoat,

a sandwich, a piece of tomato between my teeth,
I hoist our infant Anushka to the sky —

(Old fool, my wife might have laughed)
I am singing as she pisses

on my forehead and my shoulders!

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Excerpted from "Deaf Republic"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Ilya Kaminsky.
Excerpted by permission of Graywolf Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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