The Invention of Exile (25 page)

Vera was right. They look alike. No surprise there, to his mind, but the experience of it is an altogether different thing. Shyness. He'd not expected that either. A kind of sneaking for a glimpse, a real gaze at the face and then, as if overwhelmed, having to turn away. Neither can hold the other's gaze. His eyes, his gestures had been Leo's alone for his twenty-one years, and to see them sketched on another makes him angry. “The imposter” is what he wants to call his father. Already on the defensive, an element of distrust in someone who looks so like himself.

This first meeting. It is not how he had imagined it. Years and he had just stood before a doorway. It happened so fast. He wants to go back and review. That doorway was now the doorway. One, two, three steps and he was in the same room, inhabiting the same space, the breathing air, the space of his father's days.

“Vera has you all fixed up,” Leo says.

“She does.” He nods, a half smile.

“New shoes. New suit,” Leo continues. And then. “We will do what we can, you know.”

“It is appreciated,” Austin says. His eyes draw them both in, but his tone of voice pushes them away—keeping them a little at a distance, suspicious, as if, at any moment, they may vanish.

“I'll get us a sandwich,” Vera says.

“I'll go with you.” Leo begins to follow her.

“No. Stay. It's just across the street. I'll be only a few minutes. Stay.”

“Yes. Of course.”

Vera leaves. They both watch her exit. Leo has no idea what to do, where to stand. He puts his hands in his pockets and then takes them out again. He sees the shop, the two rooms filled with clocks and radios. His father sits in a chair alongside the counter, he still standing. Leo walks, more paces, before the window, the ceiling low, the light weak, and the chimes above the door seem, in this decrepit place, a small luxury. He has not prepared himself for, what is this burning sensation, a singe at his throat and torso, radiating out toward his shoulders—shame. To see the space of his existence, to witness how close to the bone his father lives, he can almost hear these things rattling within silence and solitude.

Their talk turns to Julia. Does she ask for me? Yes. Does she work? Yes. Too hard. Leo can feel his father tracking him with his eyes as he walks back and forth. Is she waiting for me? Yes.

“Father, enough of all that now,” he begins. “Listen to me, I've been thinking. I know Vera has an appointment with the embassy. We're all scheduled, but if we can't make any progress, if it comes to it, I think we should try crossing the border.” His father meets his gaze now, a silence stretching out along the band of light that falls into the shop. Leo can see the dust motes spinning wildly, holding on to the air in desperation. He looks away from his father.

“I'll drive,” Leo says.

“Was there ever any question about that?”

“I'll drive. We'll go up to Sonora,” Leo continues. “You know those towns. We can make it a nice trip—a good long one. Get out of the city. And we'll drive and drive. Maybe even make a segue to the coast. We'll take that coast road along the Sea of Cortez. All the way up to Nogales. It's just route 15. We'll head west, first through Toluca and Tonalá, then to Guadalajara, Tepic. I've mapped it out here in the guidebook.”

“I don't know.” His father is shaking his head, jaw set, his face, body with a confirmed resistance, Leo meanwhile still pleading. He draws closer to his father now, leans forward and then pivots on his heel to pace.

“We'll take it nice and easy. We can go to the ocean maybe, you know? Then it's just to route 15 all the way up—Culiacán, Hermosillo, Cananea, Nogales. And we'll just cross right there, pretend like we're simply crossing home to Arizona or California to get our
visas
de turistas
fixed.”

“And if they stop us?”

“They won't.”

“But if they do?”

“You really think they are going to bother with you? We'll give the border guards a little something, what do they call it—a
mordida
, right? Grease the palms, you know? I'm telling you it's easy, easy.”

“Yes, yes. I've heard this—‘it's easy, so easy,' but no,” his father says, leaning on the counter now. It is cooler out, the early night coming on, and a breeze finds its way inside. The beads sway and click.

“Father,” he says, “why do you have to be so damn good? It might help more if you were a bit of a jerk, you know—not so upstanding,” he continues, and then laughs to lessen the harsh tone he hears in his voice. Vera passes in front of the window, and then, in a moment, she enters. How out of place they both seem. Distinctly Americans, Leo thinks. In contrast to their father—his accent, his manner. Suddenly he is acutely aware of how their consonants are hitting hard against their teeth.

“Look,” says Leo. He is taller than his father, just a bit, fills out his suit more though he has a lankiness of youth. “Now, we came here to help you. You can't go on living like this. We'll simply get in the car and drive. They'll have no idea and you'll be with us. God, Vera and me? You can't get more unassuming than the two of us.”

“You? You've practically got ‘blacklisted' stamped on your foreheads,” his father says, shaking his head. “I'm not going back like that. I want to be legal.”

He watches his father, hears him repeating, “I want to be legal.”

“More than you want to be home with us?”

“They are two different things,” his father insists.

“Father, please stop being so stubborn and idealistic.” Leo feels the words through his gritted teeth.

“Stubborn? Idealistic?” His voice is loud, booming. “If I go illegally, maybe the first day, the second, or in a year, they will get me, they will find me out—” He breaks off, shaking his head. “And then what? Back to Russia? For what? Live out a life in a camp? No. I will work on my inventions. I will go legally.”

“Don't you see they'll never let you in legally. I can even see that. It's been over ten years! You have tried their way, with their rules. It has not worked!” Leo can feel the excitement in his voice, his heart racing. “Has it?”

“You do not know what I know,” Austin says, matter-of-fact.

“What is it that you know, that you are so certain of, that you know more than we do?” Leo asks.

“I know what they are capable of,” Austin says. The same flat, steady tone.

“Who?” he snaps, and then as if thinking out loud, the thought just coming to him, voice lowered, near to a whisper, he muses, “All these years and you've fled other countries, crossed other borders, and now this last one, this one you won't cross.”

“You don't know—these men. They know things. There are some people I know. They have power, you see? You understand? You don't know what they can do. They came for me when I did nothing wrong, nothing! What will they do to me when I actually break their laws?” His voice rising.

“Haven't they already done enough? Besides, don't you see, there is no ‘they,' they won't do anything to you, they won't bother with you. You can go, you can—”

“You don't understand, you don't realize. These men!”

“All right now,” Vera says, placing the sandwich she purchased on the counter. “Enough! Let's settle in and talk before we get into any plans.” She turns to Leo, her voice lower. “Don't upset him. He gets agitated enough, be gentle. It's not so easy for him.”

“It hasn't been easy for us, for Mother,” Leo grumbles.

“Don't you think he knows that, feels that every day of his life?”

“He's just drowning in his own sorrow is how I see it.”

“Can you blame him?”

Leo is standing in the doorway now, back to the inside of the shop, hands stuffed in his pockets, he can't stop fuming, but feels tears come into his eyes.

“It's his own fault.”

“No, it is not and you know that's not true. He's trying in his own way.”

“What way is that? His inventions? Useless scribblings by an old stateless Russian. That's what they are!”

 • • • 

“
Y
OUR
NAME
,
SIR
.”

“Austin Voronkov.”

“Austin Voronkov. Is that your full name? In Russian?”

“It's Ustin Alexandrovich Voronkov.”

“What country are you from?”

“I'm an applicant for U.S. citizenship.”

“But we'll need to know your country.”

“Russia,” Vera says.

“The Soviet Union?”

“No. He is Russian,” Leo said.

“I see. Well, Russian.”

“Yes.”

“And you come here today with your son and daughter.”

“Yes.”

“And please, your full names.”

“Vera Voronkov. Leo, Leon Voronkov,” Vera said.

“I see here you are requesting an appeal, a waiver?”

“Yes.”

“For deportation, a ruling from 1920.”

“Yes. That's correct.”

“Anarchy. Mr. Voronkov, you've been found guilty of the charge of anarchy. Do you agree to this?”

“Yes. That is correct.”

“And why the appeal at this late date? Your date of deportation is 1920. It's 1948.”

“I would like to join my family.”

“Your family is here.”

“I'd like to join my wife and children in the U.S.”

“You do know that we can accept a waiver and appeal form, but it's Washington that deals with deportation cases?”

“Yes. We understand this,” Vera said.

“Anarchy. A serious offense.”

“His political leanings have changed,” Vera said.

“Look here, I'm not an anarchist.”

“It's a mistake, you see,” Vera began.

“I'm an applicant for U.S. citizenship,” Austin began to speak, but Vera placed her hand out to stop him.

“An applicant, perhaps, but if you were deported”—the immigration officer tilted his head to the side and then tipped his glasses down his nose, staring at Austin—“well, you see, it's not just a simple application for U.S. citizenship.”

The room was tight, confining, low-ceilinged, and the one window faced a brick wall. The hallway was dim and every once in a while he could hear footsteps clatter past. His head felt tight. His pulse in his neck throbbed. He was taking deep breaths. They were asking him questions. He answered. He could hear his voice, though a strange echo brought his words back to him and he kept his eyes on his hands, could feel Vera on one side of him, Leo on the other. They too were talking, when they had something to say—sometimes leaning forward to emphasize a point, other times sitting back in slumped exasperation. The clerk was of some higher office than the petty clerks who sat within the outer room behind the glass partition. No. It seemed they had moved farther into the building. Closer to the seat of power, yes. Austin imagined that somewhere within this entire structure was a central office with one man seated in the middle, aware of what went on within all these rooms with windowless doors. And he heard the words come to his lips, almost without realizing it he was talking, in response to a question. He heard his words echoing still, but he seemed to be speaking and taking deep breaths, gasping as he continued talking, telling the clerk, “Look here, look here,” and going on at once about his wrongful arrest, hoping that the unseen surveillance would also hear, about the weeks spent incommunicado, the interrogation and the deportation. “Thrown out back to a country intent on murder and starvation!” And he explained his long travels as a Russian émigré, following with the others to Odessa, across the Black Sea to Constantinople and then onward to France—Le Havre first, before Paris. Then the Nansen passport. He produced it from his satchel. A many-folded, wrinkled booklet of gray disintegrating papers. And the long waiting process through quotas. He heard himself asking the clerk if he knew about quotas. The young man blushed and looked away from Austin, who looked to Vera and Leo before continuing on, explaining that the quotas meant only a certain percentage of ethnicities were allowed into the country in any given year. “Two percent,” he said. Two percent of the U.S. Russian population for any given year would be allowed in. They never made the 2 percent, they never made quota. And he spoke of the journey from Russia to Veracruz and Mazatlán. Desperate for work, he took the lighthouse work, then the copper mines, waiting to be reinstated. Two months. He told the clerk about the two months, how it was only to be two months, which stretched into one year, then two before he moved to Mexico City, and now, the lousy brutes started stealing his designs and drafts. “You men and your power,” he kept repeating like a refrain. He told the clerk about how he knew that the U.S. government had been watching him, sending this Jack to ensure his inventions wouldn't get to the patent agents or to the commissioner, making sure that he wouldn't try something tricky like crossing the border. They'd cornered him in. They'd blocked him out. He was breathing more heavily now, quite out of breath. The man was behind the desk, staring. Vera and Leo too were at him, saying, settle down, whispering.
It's all right, Father. Settle down
. Someone brought him a glass of water and he drank half of it in one full gulp, spilling some down his chin and onto his shirtfront. Vera rose and was talking, nearly whispering to the clerk, who'd risen himself, both near the now open door.

“Can't you see? He's quite in need of being with his family,” he heard her say, and then the clerk: “If we allowed for every person in need of being with his or her family, the country would be overrun.” Words whispered. Hushed. Hissing and then a louder voice.

“Is there no way to make an exception, considering the circumstances?” Leo stepped in. “We'd like to have him home.”