The Invention of Exile (13 page)

“Look at me,” the commissar demanded. Austin lifted his gaze, met the commissar's stare.

“Bring them inside,” he ordered.

 • • • 

A
UST
IN
STOOD
BEFORE
the
commissar's desk. He could see the outline of absent icons that had once cluttered the walls with their gold, black, and bronze, now rectangles and squares of white. The one room smelled of pine and smoke and ink. Men in a corner were laughing. Julia leaned on him. She could hardly stand.

“Please, let her sit. She is pregnant,” Austin said in a whisper.

The commissar came in, looking first to Julia, then to Austin. The gaze lasted a minute.

“Ustin!” he said. His hands fell hard on the desk, the paraffin lamp trembled and its light flickered a moment before settling. “Ustin, Ustin,” he kept saying, smiling. And then, to the men standing idle in the corner, “Bring her a chair, then go. Leave!” Austin could not get his mind, his thoughts to catch up with this new, drastic shift in tone.

“You don't remember me. It's okay, it's okay,” the commissar said, “I know you. That is all that matters. Ustin Alexandrovich Voronkov. Village of Varvarovka. You went to America.” He slapped Austin on the back. He moved fast, with energy that frightened Austin. And then a face emerged out of the fan of wrinkles now settled around the eyes, the coarser skin of the high cheekbones, the broad brow. Distant shots broke the joy of recognition. Austin could think of the wall only, the bullet holes as he stared deep into the shifty black pupils of his childhood friend.

 • • • 

C
ABBAGE
SOUP
,
PORK
,
POTATOES
,
raspberry jam. And tea. Vodka. A feast—a meal worthy of reunion. He'd believed they were being led to death and then they threw them a party. It didn't matter to the commissar that Austin's brother was a White officer, that Austin was in fact a kind of enemy. He was a private landowner after all. No. He'd just been pleased by some memories of childhood.

They slept on good clean sheets. All the while, Austin cautious, believing his friend would change his mind, luring him into some trap and that, at any moment, he'd be led to execution. He was shifty and besides, Austin didn't remember any of his memories, though he pretended to and thought, many times, of what he recalled when he recognized Austin, what images came up for him—some kindness bestowed, an afternoon of unbridled joy, an adventure in the forests or fields. It was distinct enough though, a memory that makes a life turn on a dime, a memory that meant—when one skins it all down to the bare bone—well, the difference between life and death.

They covered them in rugs. Austin and Julia took a train to Odessa under rugs. That way, they would avoid the gendarmes searching out anyone attempting to flee across the now closed borders. A ridiculous idea, Austin thought, surely they'd be found. They held each other tight, one rug after another piled on top. Under woven rugs—they loaded them onto the train. The discomfort for poor Julia, terrified she'd lose the baby through that train ride. Hours of must and cold. And then the man who knew, the one who had been bribed to smuggle them out, collected his rugs and they were loaded onto the dock in Odessa, where they would be safe in the port city for the time being. Enough time for Julia to have her baby. A week later, they boarded a boat to Constantinople. With their newborn, they sailed down the Bosporus, gorging themselves on pistachios and apricots in the bazaar. There was little else to eat.

They were greeted by other Russians. Exiles, refugees, émigrés. These words had not yet stuck. They were not yet uttered. It was only 1923. For the time being, they were still Russians. They would return. “A country run by barbarians cannot last,” they said. They said it in the streets. In the markets. In the rooming houses where countesses didn't clean—“Why should I clean? I'll be going back to Russia soon.”

Everyone had something to sell. Emeralds stitched into corsets. Pearls among a child's toys. Rubies sewn into coat linings. Rubles stitched into an astrakhan hat. Silver spoons were ubiquitous—the easiest to smuggle out. It was impossible to go back. After a year, two, there was despair. The White Army disbanded, any hint of counterrevolutionary talk and one could disappear in the middle of the night. The language began to shift and soon it was no longer a crime to refer to themselves as émigrés or refugees. He now belonged to no country. It was not what he had planned for his young family, his firstborn son. To be stateless, unwanted just like his father. It was his fault at the unknowing boy's expense. How many other children were caught between countries? An entire generation without a known fatherland. It pained him to think of it. They would return to America. He made a promise to himself and to Julia and to their young son.

 • • • 

P
APER
IS
STRONGER
THAN
one thinks. Papers, documents don't define a man, but they lived in a mire of them. Nansen passport. Work identity, birth certificate, country of origin, ration stamps, postcards, telegrams, newspapers, degrees. The list like a litany, a memorized chant. His days revolved around papers. But no amount of paper means a country. And Russia, their Russia, his Russia, that had vanished. He had left it the first time with a secure sense that home would always be there even if he never expected to return. It was different when he realized that his home as he'd known it had vanished, that it existed now only in memory. A whole world. A country. Poof. Gone.

He wrote to his mother and father. One year, then two, and he was near certain that they were long dead. Starvation most likely. Or they were shot. One or the other. Word spread fast in the villages. People did not forget. They had a son who was a White Army officer. And then Austin returning from America with an American wife. It was easy to point the finger at them, to say take them, take their land, they are the real traitors to the fatherland.

 • • • 

T
HEY
FOLLO
WED
WORK
like
water. Paris did not embrace them. The skies were often bruised yellow, mauve, and, should it be about to rain, charcoal gray. It was impenetrable, this pearl of Paris. He stood outside the language, living on Rue Daru, in the garrets of an apartment building, six flights up, the plaster façades the color of bone.

But he'd found Russia in the bistros of Paris—a hub of memory and argument held within the gleam of brass, hovering over the glow of orbed lights, lingering amid the small marble-topped tables of La
Rotonde, La Closerie des Lilas. He would often gather around the old White generals who pushed salt and pepper shakers to map out their military machinations, maneuvers, wracking minds and memories of what would've happened if they had approached from the hills, across the river, in the morning, no, at midnight, in the late afternoon, through the fields or woods.

 • • • 

T
HEY
DIDN
'
T
MAKE
THE
U.S. quota system. 1924. 1925. 1926. They were not among the 2 percent allowed to enter the United States. Whether he'd ever be let in was a different matter.

 • • • 

H
E
SEES
HIMSELF
THEN
.
The demitasse placed before him, the cubes of sugar, the stray espresso foam staining the rim of the cup. The red door of the apartment on Rue Daru, entering and leaving each morning, that comes back too. He can almost hear the resounding click of the iron lock, which allowed one to enter first along a narrow corridor and then to a small courtyard before walking the steep six flights to their attic apartment—two diminutive rooms of yellow and white. Julia with Aussie and their new baby girl, Vera, waiting for him.

Walking up the stairs, down, his hand rises, like an instinct, to the front inside pocket of his overcoat, feeling for the crude booklet, the corners thick and splayed, the three staples rusted. Gray. He worked then for the Renault factory. His booklet and working papers were gray. It was a hefty fine if one was stopped and found with no papers. A whole week's worth of pay. By then, he'd had his young family to take care of. That gray booklet, all those papers—he was obsessed. Inspectors stood in doorways of Russian émigré hotels turned to rooming houses, destined to become final dwellings for some, and in the apartment houses filled with one- and two-room shared apartments. It was easy to stop the workers, most on their way to the Renault factory, or to seek out the cab drivers who lingered at the corner tobacconist and who scattered upon the approach of an inspector.

 • • • 

S
OME
NIGHTS
,
NEIGHBORS
DISAPPE
ARED
.
Loud knocks at early hours and then a struggle. The next morning, no one spoke. It was as if it didn't happen. One could hear the whispers though, “They've kidnapped him. He was working with the ROVS. He was a member of the OGPU.” At night, the cabaret across the street sold vodka and wine and conversations revolved around counterrevolution; the Whites were still fighting, there were plans. Everyone had plans. Fights broke out, drunken shouts, glass breaking, once a chair broken along the cobblestones. After a year, he received two letters from home, one from his mother, another from her sister. They were censored, stamped, torn in half, held together by string in some cases—it seemed one could not get away from surveillance: “The village is in a terrible state. Hunger is everywhere. We haven't eaten meat since Easter. Some walk around dressed in rags. Train lootings, bandits and robberies are rampant. Live well, be good where you are.”

 • • • 

S
OON
,
HE
SEES
WINTER
OV
ERCOATS
and boots stacked on the sidewalks. He learns that people were heading to South America. Some to Paraguay, to Chile. They would no longer need their furs, overcoats, felt boots. Others were heading to Mexico. Two months later, they decide to follow, and they too will sell their winter belongings on sidewalks, their china, fake paste jewels, crystal trinkets, pots and pans, kettles, scarves piled in boxes.

 • • • 

O
NLY
M
EXICO
WAS
ACCEPTING
.
They were told that they could live there and work and then enter the United States. It would, at least, be on the same continent. How much he'd wanted only to be with her, to love and live, raise a family and enjoy the things they'd do, the people they'd become in a good country. But perhaps they should have stayed in Mexico, all of them together, living at that lighthouse, growing up by the sea—Mazatlán, the place of the deer, the Aztecs' name for it. He doesn't like to remember it. The lighthouse. The time there held a preciousness, lived within him like a secret that if divulged one too many times loses its significance, tarnished by the repeated reverie.

They lived in a lighthouse. He knows those days as the happiest of his life, when possibilities were open still and when he could provide for them all, his young ones, and his Julia. They'd fought through a country disassembling, had lost two homes, two probable lives, he waiting for the third one to turn over, wondering if it ever would.

What did the lighthouse in Mexico look like? There was the sea, for one, and it was on a cliff . . .

 • • • 

1927–34

T
HE
CLIFF
WAS
ON
top of a hill, which sloped down to a rocky beach. The hill leveled out to a flat plateau from which one could look out over the ocean. And the lighthouse was built of stone, lichen, and barnacles on the outer edges nearest the water. Windows ringed the cylinder; to stand inside was to stand within a bracelet of light, the wrought iron staircase curling upward like a trail of hardened smoke. The constant ocean winds washed over the lighthouse, some days weak and other days fierce, gusting, but always washing over the lighthouse, windows shaking in their frames, the door shuddering too. The howls and whistles, the clanking of the chains in the wind. And at this lighthouse in Mexico, a long cement walkway led to the front door, bordered by small steel pillars. A chain was strung between as a kind of railing, the ground strewn with a thick layer of white and gray pebbles, darker, sea-stained rocks, and shells the color of sunset—rose, violet, peach. To walk on it was like stepping on broken shards of bone china.

. . .

S
HE
STANDS
AMID
THE
billowing sheets, shirts, pinning clothes along a line made of hemp twine, one side affixed to the exterior of the lighthouse, the other end tied around the base of a palm. The air is dry, the wind from the ocean choppy. A boat drifts close and away again; its white wake like a scar. The smell of brine in the air. The scent of the sea's erosion. She bends and reaches, straightens and stretches. She places a palm at the small of her back, aching, the flutter and float of her stomach as she draws a hand across her belly. It seems she has the ocean in her, the slosh and splash of it. In her, her third one.

“Julia, Julia,” the call comes. She watched him leave that morning, and then later saw him, Austin walking a straight path along the coast, the two little ones weaving behind him like the tails of a kite. And now they return, coming up over the dunes, far up the hill. They walk up the sand and rocks to the brambles, the seaweed salted white and dried, crunching beneath their step. They disappear and then, after the long hike uphill, they are near. She can see the tops of their heads.

“Mama, mama,” they call to her, running, their hair tousled, windblown. And he comes up after them, his wide, wicked grin on. He is like a child. It is like returning to a town or country long loved and long missed, the familiarity welcomed.

He is a handsome man. A solid head, the brow strong and high, a kind of fine sheen to his skin—sweat, sea. His black hair tinged with streaks of charcoal now. There is a thickness and certainty to his beauty. It strikes a certain, resonating note in her, like a solid bell chime. This day she will remember. She knows to savor it and she works to memorize the way the light is, so white and blinding in the heat, the breeze from the ocean warm. His eyes too, rising up from the sand to meet her own. Look how he smiles. She watches them, her hand raised to her brow, blocking the sun's rays, shielding her eyes. In that moment, he kissed by the sun, the white flash of his teeth, the ease and heft of his walk—this, she will remember.

 • • • 

T
HEY
SEEMED
TO
BE
in no country, alone for miles on all sides. No borders, nationalities. No decrees, politics, beliefs of fervor. No panic. No disappearances in the middle of the night. No fear. Austin is calm here, relaxed. They are at peace in this loneliness, and it is a joy for her to see him contented in his work, his mind at ease.

It is hot and white all day, the grasses dry like hay, the color of sand, and the palm fronds brown and shriveling. She can hear the slow crawl of insects in the grass. She knows the scorpions lie burrowed and silent under the rocks and she warns the children. Every now and then, the slither and rustle of the large lizards frightens them, but it's the silence they should be most scared of, she tells them. They find the smaller lizards in the house, sunning on the windowsills, devouring the bananas. Once, one made its way far up to the top of the lighthouse.

They are far from what they know. It is not their landscape. So tired then of always moving, traveling. But they stayed there a year. They lived in the lighthouse.

 • • • 

S
OMETIMES
SHE
SEES
IT
in a dream, intact. Other times only the children come running toward her. She can hear their voices and laughter carried on the wind. But he does not come. She can only sense him, she waiting. She may see the furtive flash of his eyes as they look up from the ground to meet hers. Then, she wakes. Some mornings his presence is so strong, he seems to hover over her, follow her. These years later she can no longer distinguish what was dreamt from what was lived. Dream and memory have merged, more braided like the individual strands of a rope.

So this is it, then. Two lives. They live two lives. The life in their minds, the life at hand. And in that shared place, the landscape of the imagination, they continue to love each other; they live.

 • • • 

O
N
ANO
THER
DAY
OF
that year, he fixes the lighthouse. He climbs up the wrought iron railing, swirling upward.

“There are bats up there,” she tells him.

“They're sleeping now. It's daylight.”

“Be careful,” she says, staring up at him, nearly dizzy from the height of it, her neck craned, looking up. She can hear his step clanking up the stairs, tools in tow. She takes Vera, now four, and Aussie, six, outside and down to the shore. She is walking slower now, the baby growing, she getting rounder.

The lighthouse was abandoned before they arrived, the keeper dying a year earlier with no one to claim possession. No keeper's son, wife, or daughter. They found him at watch, the light still blazing like a second sun, the radio tuned, he slumped over in his chair. It has not worked since.

“How would you like to live in a lighthouse?” Austin had asked her that first month in Mexico. After the old keeper had died, and, when in town, Austin had volunteered. As an engineer, he felt confident he could handle the equipment.

“What? Here, in Mexico?” she asked.

“Yes. A lighthouse. In Mexico.”

 • • • 

T
HEY
U
SED
TO
LIE
on a wide bed, their room golden, spherical, like the world. The ocean surrounding them on all sides. She hung a white sheet. It divided the circle of the house in two, like an equator. The room seemed to breathe as the light grew dim, then strong, pulsing like a heartbeat. It was always windy, the windows shuddered and the sheet rippled.

If only they knew then to stay there. They lived in a lighthouse. They had no car. They were marooned. Over the rush of the ocean, the wind, and the seagulls, they can hear the sputter and clank of Mitchell's truck, its plume of smoke over the hedges, zigzagging along the land, flat and wide. And in a cloud of hazy dust, it comes barreling out to the coast. She can still see Mitchell, at the wheel, smiling. His long, lean face, all sunburned and freckled, his hair a shock of white. Mitchell the expat by choice. They met him at the market.

“I am never going back,” he'd always say of America. And Austin and Julia would look at him dumbfounded, for that is all they wanted.

He drives them to the market—Julia in the open back, the baby now a month old and asleep in her arms. Aussie and Vera riding on the crates. Mitchell and Austin up front, arms hanging out the windows. She will always remember the drive to the market. The hazy heat, humid and moist, sulfur on the air, and salt. One would never think they were so close to the ocean. All the land around is dry and cracked for miles. The movement of the truck speeding down the roads creates a breeze, her hair whipping wildly around her face. She can hear the low rumble of Mitchell and Austin in conversation. Sometimes serious. Other times lewd, Mitchell mostly lewd. She ignores it.

Mitchell strolling through the market is a giant. He is a foot, sometimes two feet, taller than the Mexicans, Austin too. But they smile wide when they see Mitchell. “
Señor
Mitchell,
Señor
Mitchell,” they call out. He strides through. He shows them what to buy. How to buy. Everyone knows him.

“Bargain. Always bargain. If you don't, they are insulted,” he says to her as she stands in front of a man and woman, staring at her blankly.

“No, no,” he says to her. “Give it back to them. Start over.” She tries again. This is how she learns to bargain. Soon she is buying flour, corn, peppers. There are eggs. Chickens. Straw hats and bags. Animals for sale. Goats and pigs. The Indians selling dried herbs, flowers, medicinals. Donkeys tied to the posts of their tents. The white canvas flapping in the breeze. Rows and rows of sunflowers,
girasoles
, like gold from a distance.

 • • • 

W
HEN
HE
GETS
LIKE
this there is no stopping him. His mind fixates on a problem. And his mind works like his hands, tinkering, taking it all apart, reassembling the pieces. He will spend all day up there. Sometimes she can hear him talking to himself, muttering under his breath. It's like a fever has taken him. He won't eat. They tell her it's from being alone, but they're alone together up there, so high above Mazatlán, above any other person or family. It's just them and the sea, the storms, the birds and boats that might happen to pass by. Their only contact is Mitchell and the days at the market or the long walk down into town.

She keeps busy. There is so much to be done. Making meals do, stretching them out until the next market day, until they see Mitchell again. The sand gets into everything. Always a track of it in the house, in the sheets, sometimes in the food—the tortillas she makes are granular. She takes the children for walks on the shoreline. They collect shells.

 • • • 

A
FTER
EVERYTHING
,
she doesn't
mind the being alone. It's a welcome solitude. They know this will not be forever.

“I think we should stay here,” she tells him.

“Yes. But the work won't last. And it's not a proper place for them.”

“I know. But I don't like the leaving.”

 • • • 

F
ROM
THE
MARKET
they
buy seeds.

“I will plant a garden,” she tells him.

“No use for that, rain will wash it away.”

“I will plant a garden,” she tells him. She must keep boredom at bay. They will have squash and maybe peppers. The children will help her.

The day she plants the garden is warm, clear. The sky so blue, pulled tight like the canvas on a drum. Austin is up in the lighthouse. She can hear the clank of his tools. She is digging into the ground with a shovel, the baby on the blanket beside her, Aussie and Vera watching. The ground is firm, with a topcoat of pebbles, the larger stones underneath. How rocky the ground is. When she hits a stone, the three of them kneel and dig with their hands, taking out the rock. The dirt gets moist as they dig, filled with worms and larvae, ants. The dirt is under her fingernails, in the children's hair, on their faces. Oh, the washing she'll have to do later.

The day nears noon, the sun blazing, the only cool from the ocean's winds. She is sweating, her handkerchief tied around her head is soaked through. She's removed her blouse and stands only in her cotton shift dress. The sun feels good on her bare arms. Every once in a while, she turns in the direction of the breeze and lets it dry her wet face, salt stained. The children are tiring.

“Aussie, Vera. Go sit down now and watch Mama,” she tells them. She pulls the seeds from her pocket, each wrapped in palm leaves. They fall like marbles into the palm of her hand.

“How is it going down there?” Austin asks. It's his first appearance of the day. She sees him leaning out, his torso hanging over the balcony. The children shield their eyes and look up. She does the same.

“Fine. I'm going to plant now.”

“The water will wash it away. You don't listen, but it is true.”

She ignores him.

“Papa, there is no water.”

“Not now, but with a storm—just wait until the next storm comes.”

She listens to their exchange as she places the seeds into the ground. Vera and Aussie run around the house, staring up at their father. They tire and walk out to the farthest edge of the plateau, where it drops off to the hill and then far down to the sea.

“Be careful,” she yells to them.

“We will,” come their voices in singsong. She can hear his footsteps clanging down the iron staircase. He is hurrying down like she tells him not to, so fast he moves that he might propel himself over a banister. She hears the front door open, and can feel him watching her.