The Invention of Exile (9 page)

Round and round on the Ferris wheel. From up top one could see far out into the desert. Austin had liked that view, at night. Looking out across the land, he remembers, was like looking at a dark sea.

The carnival was smack up against the border, the stone cement border pillars like little shrines, or odalisques. They blended into the landscape, particularly at night. Once, coming off the Ferris wheel, the children scattered. In the commotion, he'd lost Leo, who had wandered off beyond the reach of the lights. Dread. That's what he remembered of it. Dread of the worst kind. He still wonders what made Leo go off into that darkness, at four, maybe even five years old. They'd searched everywhere until they found him out in the middle of an open field. Austin had run and swept the boy up into his arms, scolding him. The boy had looked all stunned and frozen, his face breaking like children's do, crinkling up into a crying mess. That was in '32 and it was only on the walk back that he'd realized—he was in the United States. The boy had gone straight across the border.

“Simple as that,” Austin murmurs now. He shakes his head, sips his water and sets it down. “Simple as that,” he repeats. “Wandered off across the border.”

Julia found them and had brought Vera and Aussie with her, the entire family standing in the middle of the open desert leading off into the hills. He watched as Julia gathered them all together, turning back to the fair. He can still see that image, her hair backlit by the lights—golden.

“We could keep going,” he'd called to her.

“Yes, but what will we eat?”

“We're bound to find some people as we go.”

“Yes. That's what I'm frightened of.”

“Not Indians. I meant Americans.”

“There are Apaches out there in those hills. Never mind wolves. And the sun. What will we do in broad sunlight? We'll all get scorched.”

They had crossed the line back into Mexico, leaving the United States and the border behind them.

And later, in the first years without Julia when Austin was alone in Cananea. Waiting. The Mexico-U.S. border so enticingly close, a constant taunt; 1934 to 1936. Then, the risks were present: increased border patrols, enticements by smugglers. And now the consequences still remain. He keeps a low profile with Mexican authorities. He does not have a permanent address. He sends and receives letters
lista de correos,
general delivery. He works at an unsigned, unlisted repair shop, business spread by word of mouth. And he makes every attempt to avoid the Soviet Embassy and its vicinity, walking two or three streets out of his way so as not to stumble into one of his countrymen—these Soviets, his own people when it comes down to it, one never knew if they were going to slice your throat or embrace you, beat you unconscious and smuggle you onto a steamship or invite you for vodka and caviar. He practices vigilance like a religion. Vigilance, reticence are his now constant companions, for he is not home; Mexico City is not his home. And if he crosses and the Americans catch him, he'll be deported—and not back to Mexico, but to Russia, or what is in reality no longer Russia, his Russia, but an idea put into practice. He cannot even call it a country, this Soviet Union. Russia was a country, not what it had become.

“A country run by barbarians cannot last,” everyone had then said. Well, it
had
lasted. And under this Stalin too. No. The risks, for Austin, too great. Shipped off to another continent. Twenty years' hard labor a possibility. He wouldn't survive that. Not after everything. It was death. Deportation. Russia. Death. He'd escaped once, twice might be asking a lot. And if he did not cross at all?

 • • • 

T
HE
DAY
HAS
SHIF
TED
from mid-afternoon to late afternoon. The traffic, cars and pedestrians, thin. The waiters gather inside now. Some are seated. Others lean on the bar. The patrons have all left except for a few American tourists who are filtering in at this empty hour, their bags hanging tired across shoulders, their city maps rumpled. It is time for Austin to go.

 • • • 

A
N
HOUR
LATER
and
he is in the Alameda. It has always been his favorite park. Its diagonal lanes are long enough for contemplation, but not so overwhelming that his energies are wasted, walking out all his inspiration. It is now close to 4
P
.
M
., and he is walking at a slow, metered pace. His footsteps like a thin pencil trace. These walks allow him to enter a flow of thoughts. One long chain of mechanical processes. He tries to keep them steady in his mind, but beneath it, lurking, lies another idea—crossing. He cannot admit it even to himself.
Better luck crossing the border
, the American man had said.

He walks absorbed, reluctant to make eye contact, instead allowing the park to offer him the sense that he is an inhabitant of the city with all the aspects of the urban—buildings, concrete, traffic, and city dwellers—bearing down upon this small, central space, situated in the historic center, its poplar trees long gone and replaced now by the canopy of ahuehuetes. He is trying to focus on a design, running it over in his mind—the propeller, curve of blade, engine—but the empty spaces fill, flood over with fear. He is more on guard. A heightened sense of the park. Sounds more distinct, sharpened. Others around him, anyone, at this moment, may be intuiting his thoughts within the vacant spaces of his mind—his hidden intentions, his contemplations of crossing.

He feels a sudden movement from behind, the hurried scuff of a walk too fast and he increases his pace. With as much ease as he can muster, he turns his head to the side, a casual look behind him, though it's difficult to see. He'd have to crane his whole neck around, do an about-face and confront his follower. But he is being ridiculous. He is not sure, though he keeps walking and now slows his pace to show that he is not frightened, not worried in the least. His heart loud and thudding as the thoughts of crossing pursue him even as he tries to walk them out. He is focused at once on the possibilities if he were to succeed. Next, on if he were to be caught and then on if he were to return. To be deported, to return, to cross, to not cross, to cross, all the while meandering, one foot in front of the other along the star of the walking path, each spoke, each ray a new terrain of mind. And on such a day as he dares imagine crossing, it is as if he has nearly forgotten what he was doing in Mexico City at all. He's grown so accustomed to his routine, this starburst pathway that is etched deep into the day, as if he'd always been here in the DF, walking this same way. He is not the man who, in 1913 and with one foot in front of the other, left his village—this first time by choice, the second time in 1922 by force—and not the man who had been pulled through countries and across borders and who now remains these many years later without his family.

Sweat breaks out along his forehead, upper lip. He will make an exit, losing his pursuer, if there is indeed anyone who may care, may want to know his paths and routines, which are quite consistent and predictable, like himself, dressed in the same suit. Like an image on celluloid, pulled through the city on some endless reel. Faces stream past him. Conversations, shouts. There are more faces on the benches, heads thrown back in relaxation or laughter. The sounds accumulate as if gathered in the bottom of a well. White light comes through the trees, the heads backlit by the afternoon sun so that actual faces are dark, shadowed until he walks closer and features find their shapes again. Gazes lift from the pages of a newspaper. He can feel their eyes on him; falling away and then meandering back, away and back, like the gentle rock and sway of a small boat at mooring.

He hears footsteps behind him. Loud and soft as if his follower has a limp. He increases his pace, his whole body labored. A great strain in his joints, a heavy clampdown. If he wanted to run, lift his legs, move swiftly, he knows he will be unable. He lets the weight come. Thoughts of crossing descend, to a subterranean place within himself.

 • • • 

T
HE
FLAGSTO
NE
FLOOR
of
the post office is as empty as a stage. The late daylight falls in long white rectangles along the walls. He is grateful for the silence; he works to enter such establishments in the off hours. No crowds. A large crowd disturbs him. It sends a shiver along his chest, makes his knees buckle, his jaw clamp closed. Bristling, he freezes, coming to a full stop as a strange lassitude, a near paralysis overtakes him. It is not just the sight of masses moving, but more the sound. The roar and hush. It has happened to him at Sanborns, at the bullfights. He cannot withstand the bullfight's stadium crowd, the ring and the endless bleachers of people, all distinct, yet en masse. He feels something sinister lurking there—in a snippet of faces. The voices stalk him, approach low and murmuring before he can hear a whole rush of human sound—whispers, shouting, laughing—approaching him in one mass, like a large dark wave, threatening to drown out his voice, his very self.
Where are you from? What is your country of citizenship?

He cuts a path across the open, clear main lobby. He knows the feel of the floor beneath him, the way his shoes squeak just so along the worn tiles. There is the scent of pulp and glue, perfume and tobacco. The window to the right of the door, high up with a kind of welcoming sheen, is where he'd stood reading Julia's first letter to him in Mexico City. She'd described their flat, the street they lived on. And she'd written out the meals they'd eaten, how the children insisted on setting a place for him. In the succeeding years there must have been a day when she'd paused before setting out the plate—there must have been that day, that moment, when she stopped herself. It wasn't needed anymore.

Words—throngs of them reached him in Julia's fine hand, in the children's slanted, fumbling pencil print—
I love . . . I miss . . . I pray for . . .health . . . years . . . time . . . God willing . . . home. . . . I kiss . . . eyes. You must . . . News . . . children . . . return . . . coming home . . . good faith . . .
He has read them all straight through, standing in place. Sometimes, two times over, he, lingering within the building that held their voices, delaying the moment he'd have to walk to the door, down the steps and back out into a city in which they did not exist.

The
lista de correos
window is the last of a long bank of postal windows, all outlined in a filigreed copper. The marble countertop stretches across all twelve windows. Only two clerks at work. No one at the
lista de correos
window, but someone will come. Two postal workers push large canvas carts filled with letters. A whole mass of them—thick, thin, gray, white, light pink, or pale blue. So many letters in the world and he only wants one, at most two, but he will settle for one he thinks, just one.

“Nombre.”

“Austin Voronkov,” he says, his palms against the coolness of the marble counter. The postal clerk nods and steps to the side wall—a grid of cubbyholes, envelopes nestled in tight neat squares, awaiting pickup from others whose addresses are like his own:
lista de correos
, general delivery. He hopes for a letter, but better to trick the mind, he thinks, remembering days he'd been undoubtedly certain of a letter as days when he, almost without fail, received nothing. Defend against disappointment—one day's lack of a letter. Nothing from the Labor Department. Nothing from the patent agents and attorneys. He works instead to be disappointed, certain that no letter has arrived so the opposite effect will occur—delight, should he actually receive a letter. Disappointment. Delight. They are two sides of a coin. Like circuitry, the current of disappointment cutting a path through the midpoint, then changing—like the flip of a switch—to delight.

“Voronkov,” says the clerk, “Austin Voronkov?”

“Yes. That's me.”

“No letters.”

 • • • 

I
T
IS
A
WOODEN
BOX
but he wishes he could remember what kind. Oak. Fir. He's ashamed in his realization that he cannot remember the wood. It may have been burl wood, much more likely that than oak. Or walnut. He should know it though. He should remember. It once belonged to his father. His father's snuff box. It is here he keeps some of his smaller drafting tools—lead pencils, sharpener, slide rule, and compass. Eraser. He removes the pencils from the box, the heady lingering scent of snuff now layered over the bitter sharpness of lead and metal. He sees the evenings when he was a boy, watching his father, a stout ashen-haired man, take this box off the sideboard and remove its hand-carved lid. His father had carved it too—the amber-handled knife, pressing with a steady intention and focus, creating notches, which became cross-hatchings for sun rays or water. The careful precision of a knife's cut. The wood's minuscule shavings he'd collect from the carving—a refuse he liked to feel tickle the palm of his hands. The box was transformed. The at one time solid, plain lid soon became embellished with ornate cross-hatchings and rosettes, crescent moons. How superstitious the old man had been. It frustrated Austin so, now remembering the days before leaving when he'd scowl in disgust at his father and mother's insistence that he take pause and sit for a while before his journey. How callous he'd been when his father had given him the box, thinking the man old, harmless, and just a bit ignorant. Disdain for the snuff box and its symbols, significant to his parents only, and their old beliefs and superstitions—the goddess Mokosh and her hold on the grain harvest, and the lectures and reminders to wear a belt, never place a hat on the table lest you lose money (or the bed in which case you could become ill), to always leave a pinch of snuff for the
domovoi
, the “he,” “the other half,” the “well-wisher,” who might pass in the night and thus bless the home and harvest—were the very things he'd so wanted to throw off.