The Invention of Exile (27 page)

Beneath the trees' cover, he gets a respite from the rain, wipes the water out of his eyes. He stands still, listening, the rain here dulled, its softer patter on the canopy the trees make all hushed for a moment. Where exactly is he going with his designs? He had it in his mind that he'd bring them somewhere, but to where or to whom he's suddenly lost. The post office? Perhaps. But it is closed. To the U.S. Embassy? He can't go back there. He stands clutching them still, the satchel wet.

“Why did you ever go through with it?” He hears Jack's voice, the same abrasive baritone. In the darkness, Austin can't make him out. The trees and night more dark than ever with all the rain.

“They insisted. I had no choice,” Austin says, his voice in a strained whisper and then growing louder. “They believed they could help me.”

“Of course it wouldn't work. I told you it wouldn't make a difference.”

“If they'd just make an exception,” Austin says.

“Impossible. You heard what the clerk said, if they made allowances all the time, the country would be overrun. And now you are left with one option.”

“What is that?”

“You know.” Austin can't see, thinks for a moment he may be going blind, all is so dark. He places his hands in front of his face, fingers spread, palms wide. He brushes the rainwater out of his eyes. He can see his hands before him, the rain, wet on his jacket, his satchel.

“Crossing,” Austin half whispers. “It's what they want me to do.”

“Do you want to?”

“I have no other choice.”

“There are consequences if you cross.”

“If I'm caught.”

“What makes you think you won't be caught? With me following you?” But Austin keeps searching, trying to find Jack, back and forth across the clearing in the park. But after each time he hears Jack's voice, only the rain in its hissing race to the ground makes any noise at all.

“I trust my children,” Austin says into the emptiness.

The rain bursts and then settles to a now steady hush as his thoughts continue to do a frantic series of about-faces—crossing, not crossing— while he grips tightly to his designs. They now seem useless in his arms. All these days and years, held together by the thinnest of strands, strands that had multiplied to form a web over actuality, over his own reality. And now here, he tears through the fine gauze and for a moment the years in Mexico are as clear as glass. An existence made out of nothing but his own pride, fear and folly, a stubborn certainty, a blind, sheer will that his inventions would bring him to the United States, to be an American inventor, to be a father, to be a husband. Meanwhile, they had moved on without him, and his soul feels hollow, scraped out. What use was he? What use his inventions? The yearly attempts? He is weary, now conscious of a deep exhaustion in body, mind, and soul, and he stands still with his satchel in hand wondering at where he is going and why.

All the years come at once, bold and forthright, fall right into his palms—the weight of them and likewise their lightness—and he is now forced to see them, how they've changed, the faces within his mind, and he looks to find perhaps that they no longer exist in the way he needs them to. To see them now, here, is to see himself now—the clear truth: the wasted years, hollow, dry years, and they had accumulated, one after another without his even noticing, one turning over to the next effortless change of a waiting life, one built around the loss of them, but also the loss of all his possible lives, his hopes, what he'd wished for in America, then again in Russia. And perhaps on the third try, in Mexico, he did not have the strength to imagine another way of being in the world without them and so instead set himself headlong into getting back to them, all of it in a state of perpetual striving for if not a life of that then what? Nothingness. He is staring into it now, a crevice in time, which seems to him of navy and blue. Darkness—a place that has its own rules and reasonings, its own strange logic.

 • • • 

T
HUNDER
WHEN
SHE
HEARD
it had always been in her general surroundings, not so far off that she had to wonder about the noise as she did now, lying awake. The low rumbling seemed to come from outside the city itself. One or two
A
.
M
. it must have been. The distance, the nonthreatening clash of hot and cold, no lightning yet, made her wonder what exactly she was hearing and, because she was wide awake, she was listening, hearing it travel, incremental and growing louder as the storm drifted closer, still no flash of light, just the rumble. Hollow. Like distant drumbeats. And she thought of all that air and cold and heat and when exactly the rain would come.

She drifted in and out of sleep, holding on to a thought only to lose it as she dozed off, waking to find her mind settled on something else—a vague idea about her father, about Leo, she fighting to nail it down before it passed. And then feeling the fatigue of the day, how much it had offered to think about, and she seemed to be staring into the very truth of her father's life.

“A nervous condition, severe mental strain. It's to be expected,” the doctor had explained when her father ran out of the embassy. The clerk had suggested the psychological evaluation as a way to lend some support to the appeal. If it was a positive evaluation, the appeal would be viewed favorably, would give him more of a chance with the appropriate authorities. “Common among refugees, émigrés,” he'd said in an effort to comfort them and then later, “But with the anarchist charge and this condition, I'm afraid he will be categorized as ‘unfit for entrance.'” Oh, but it was all their doing! If anyone had blood on their hands it was them—these men in power, these governments and embassy clerks! It was their fault, and she'd said as much. She was ashamed now suddenly at her own rage, remembering how she'd sprung forward, lunged at that young doctor, pointing. “And it's no wonder! It's your fault!” It was guttural, instinctual, a kind of cry, plea. And now they are left with Leo's idea. The best chance they had really. Crossing.

She had dozed off again and then was woken by the wind or what she thought was the wind, but when she heard a faint calling, she knew it was him in an instant.

 • • • 

“
D
ADDY
,
WHAT
ARE
YOU
doing here?” she asks, looking over her shoulder and back again as she stands in the doorway.

“Are you drunk?” she says, drawing close to him, trying to get at his scent, his neck and mouth. He looks at her, his stare vacant, confused.

“Father,” she says, taking him by both arms. “How did you get here?” She pulls him into the courtyard.

“I don't know.” He looks past her.

“Speak softer, please. Come,” she says, taking his wrist and leading him to the dry corridor between courtyard and house, not wanting to disturb her host family.

“We made a decision. I let you all go,” he says, trailing behind her. “I wanted you to go. It seemed the wisest thing to do then. It was the consulate who told us.”

“Okay. Yes,” Vera says, standing in front of him now, smelling the sharp, bitter scent of tequila as he struggles to keep his eyes steady on her.

“They told us,” he continues, resting his head now back against the wall, closing his eyes. “I should've known not to listen to it, to trust it. But then, they'd told us two months at most. It was too good to turn away from. Never in the world did we think they'd not let me in. Every year it seemed more of a possibility, especially in the first years. A year—so little—one stops counting. And now?” He looks to her and looks away, lips pressed tight. “What do I have to show for myself? I've amounted to what? I'd like your mother to think I had made something of myself.” He does not look at her.

“You are her husband. Once you are home, you will work, your inventions—”

“Mere scribblings by a stateless old Russian.” He groans.

“It serves you right to think of them that way,” Vera steps back from him, drawing her robe closed before folding her arms across her chest.

“What good have they done me? Leo is right. Besides, I'm still here aren't I?”

“We will drive you. Leo has said he'll drive. I'll go with you. We'll all go. And you'll see how easy—”

“How can you know? You don't. I cross the border and I'm illegal. A pawn. Wait for them to get me. How can I be a father and a husband when they think I'm an anarchist?”

“What does it matter anymore? It was years ago. No one will bother with you—”

“Julia, Julia, my jewel. She's worked her whole life. And what kind of husband and father have I been to you? Not able to make a scrap to send.”

“You'll simply be with us.”

“I kept hoping. I did work. Drafts and drafts. You've seen them. There. Look,” he says, his satchel left out in the courtyard, its leather darkened by the rain. “They are all for you. The designs, my inventions. It has all been for you, but I've been able to offer you nothing, provide you with nothing. Is that a father, a husband?”

Vera watches him, his shoulders curved inward, his head bowed so that he glances up to look across to the wall beyond her. “Do you know I applied for my first papers? I did. I took English classes. I registered for the draft. I took out my first papers, an applicant, you know, an applicant for American citizenship.”

The rain has stopped, but the sound of heavy, residual drops falls from the trees, their soft echoes resound off the flagstones, the stone walls.

“You've allowed
us
to be Americans,” Vera says. He seems to take this in, offers a little laugh—in spite, in gratitude, she's not sure which, and then he stares directly into her eyes.

“Oh, Vera, but don't you see, I've forgotten even why.” He scowls.

Silence. She speaks softly, her words forming over the last of the rain.

“Perhaps it is time now to come home and find out why, to remember why.”

 • • • 

T
HEY
STAND
WAITING
LIKE
CRI
MINALS
. The Cadillacs slide, curve through the morning city streets, which are damp still from the night's rain. Car windows streaked white, then black like enamel. Austin has a cigarette at his lips and in his hands a book of matches, a compact square that he flicks loosely as he passes it through his fingers.

“He said eight, right?” he says out loud.

Vera nods, offering a murmured yes of confirmation. She is wringing her hands—she would be. He is pacing, the pebbles beneath the sole of his shoe making a pleasant scratching sound on the sidewalk. The city is slowly filling as the cars amble by through thin morning air that is fumed by the sweet, thick scent of gasoline.

He watches the street. Far down a man on a bike approaches, his head peering out from behind a tower of packages—cotton sheets of periwinkle and pink, boxes, flowered oilcloths yellow and red and blue. His shoulders tense, rise. He turns his head and sees Vera in profile, her back to him.

“Why are we standing in this sun? Come, let's cross,” she says over her shoulder. She begins without him, he falling back behind her, pausing to allow the bicyclist to pass. He has moved from the sun to the shadows of the trees, and the leaves cast a pattern along his face. He enters into the full shade, the cooler relief of Parque México
.
The knotted, arthritic tree roots have cracked through the cobblestones so that the ground is uneven. She sits on a bench and he sits beside her.

A Cadillac passes, the buttercream chrome and silver of the hood ornament unmistakable, like a mermaid or angel, hair billowing through water or wind, a sense of resistance, of pressing onward.

The cars keep passing. He begins counting. Cadillacs in new models—the slim, dashing lines, the silver grille plate, the spearmint white tires blur. He's stuck now with the distraction of it—Packard '38, cobalt blue; Cadillac Sixty Series, blood red; a black one, slick as the top of a piano. Out on the Avenida Amsterdam someone is leaning on a horn. Too early. Others follow, someone pressing in fast bleats. It startles Vera and her shoulders jump from the suddenness of it. And he too. His blood seems to freeze and then course fast through chest, neck, temple, settling into a bloom of heat across his sternum. He thinks momentarily of simply walking across the street, getting up, sliding away farther into the park, away from their plan. He turns to see Leo. He's hanging out the driver's side window of a light pistachio green sedan. His hands wide and stretched along the bulge of the car, tapping it—one, two, three, four—full, hollow sounding. In one hand he holds a navy blue booklet.

Vera stands, her torso blocking him from the sun. Then, the click of her heels, slow and dragging as she makes her way to the car, placing her palm down on the hood as she steps down from the sidewalk.

“I'm sorry I kept you waiting,” he hears Leo say.

“We didn't hear you drive up,” Vera says.

“I cut the motor and let it coast in.” Leo is out of the car now. He's opening a pack of Wrigley's Spearmint gum. Austin joins them, following up behind Vera. Leo offers him a piece of gum.

“No. No, thank you.” Austin's eyes are on the passport. It looks real enough.

He has packed nothing, or nearly nothing. He has only one bag of minor effects. That and his satchel.

Leo hands him the passport. The rectangular book lay in his hand—navy. The way he'd envied them at one point. Paper is stronger than one imagines, he thought to himself, flipping through the book now, slapping it against his palm a bit. Deep navy and crisp as the Atlantic and he remembered walks along the Long Island Sound, then a remembrance of possibility when he'd felt young, strong, enterprising, and in love. That was what the passport in its dashing, brash navy blue seemed to say, all neat and clean and almost as serene as a sea.