Us Conductors

by Sean Michaels

  Love is strengthened by distance. Dreams have weight and velocity. They are signals, promises. They have a destination. One night we will know no doubts, feel no foreign forces, and our particles will come to rest.

  WHEN LEV DEPARTED, I followed him out the door. The air was thick. I watched as he sloughed away up the street, holding out his hand as a goodbye. I saw that my Cadillac was gone. Maybe it was with Pash, on the way to whatever came next. When I came back inside I lit a fire in the hearth, just in case, just in case I needed to burn anything.

  Men came to the house that afternoon, as Lev had promised. They were not bungling goons: they were unfussy professionals, efficient. The first car carried chroniclers, note takers; they brought folders, labels, archival boxes. They collected the papers from my filing cabinets and sorted them by topic, sealed the boxes tight. I called Pash. Of course no one answered. Pash had left my life. A large truck arrived with six more men. These ones disassembled equipment, loaded it onto pallets, into pine crates, nailed the crates shut. They asked me, “What is going?” and I answered by pointing. I did not need everything. I needed the first things, the last things, the best things. Some inventions were toys, redundancies, dead ends. But other devices might have a use, tomorrow.

  In the cellar I shoved aside old boxes of RCA theremin kits and hauled out a trunk, the same one I had brought from Leningrad. It was the brown of wild horses. When I had come, I had filled it with trousers, shirts, shoes, a tool kit. Now I wanted it to take a million things—photographs, ticket stubs, an automat’s receipt for two plates of pie. I looked at the faded corner of the basement where I used to lift weights, complete the four forms. A wooden dummy languished beside a lamp. I had neglected my kung-fu. Perhaps in Leningrad I would resume my practice. I wondered if my broad-shouldered teacher would still be there. If Lughur and Moritz still grappled like rams. I went to the wall, where I had pinned my etching of Leung Jan. He seemed balanced on a precipice. I took it down and put it in the trunk.

  Around four o’clock, I took a taxi to the college where Schillinger was teaching. I found his office and waited for him to finish class. He darkened when he saw me. “Lev. Is everything all right?”

  Behind his door’s frosted glass, I told him I was leaving.

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Bullshit.”

  This made me laugh. Because he was right: what bullshit. I laughed at its absurdity, and Schillinger watched me laugh, until his grave expression wavered and he began to laugh too. We leaned with our hands on his desk, laughing, laughing, subsiding. It was silent. I stared at my knuckles. What would we say now? What should we say?

  “Leningrad?” he murmured.

  “Yes.”

  “I will visit.”

  “Come for the white nights,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  We raised our heads. In an awkward gesture I reached to shake his hand. “I’ll call Frances,” Schillinger said. “We should have a farewell drink.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “There is too much to do.”

  I saw him looking around the room, searching for a memento to give me, something. Finally, he pulled a book from a stack of papers. “Ah! Here.” It was his own new monograph. The Second Half of History: Art in the Electronic Age. “Just like one of our conversations,” he said, “only you can keep it on your nightstand.”

  “Wonderful,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  We shook hands another time.

  “Don’t tell anyone I came here,” I said.

  I TOOK A CAB ACROSS TOWN, unfolding another of the bills Walter Rosen had given me. “Yes, here’s fine,” I said. I reached forward to pay the driver. As I got out I saw Schillinger’s book left behind, on the seat. I closed the door. I watched the taxi glide away.

  I stood before the building where you lived with your husband, Robert Rockmore. I lifted the heavy knocker, a brass lion’s head, and knocked. I did not expect an answer. This story required me to come here, to knock on the white oak door. It did not require anyone to answer. But then I heard a sound, a man’s cough, and the door opened. There he was, younger and taller than I remembered.

  “Mr Rockmore,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  My mouth twitched, flinched almost, as if someone had swung at me. “Is your wife at home?”

  His gaze tightened.

  “I know you,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  We faced each other across the threshold.

  “I could kill you,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Or I could send her a message and you would never know. It would go right through you.”

  Something was gathering behind Robert Rockmore’s eyes, something weaker than wrath. He worked his lips, choosing a riposte.

  I beat him to it. “I am leaving this country,” I said. “I will never need to come back.”

  He took a breath. “She never talks about you,” he said.

  “Of course she doesn’t,” I said.

  Then he slapped me, strongly, with the palm of his hand. And I punched him in the solar plexus, hard. He doubled over. I shoved him by the head, down into the sidewalk’s smears.

  There was a moment, and then he said, “I’ll call the fucking cops.”

  I stood over him. My jaw twinged where he’d hit me. I swallowed and felt my heart diving, diving. I wanted to weep, Clara, great grey tears. “Right through you,” I repeated, in a thick voice.

  It was late that night when my wife came home. She was distracted. She was hungry, angry with her choreographer. On the top floor I prepared an omelette. I chopped onions. She prowled the crowded kitchen, unaware that the house had been excavated, its secrets parcelled up. She ate with knife and fork, talking at me; she did not search my face. Later we lay in bed, side by side. I wondered what I would write in a letter to Henry Solomonoff, to Missy and Bugs Rusk, if I were writing letters. Would I apologize to the Rosens, send them schematics for a new theremin? Would I thank the Bolotines? Lavinia stretched her arm across my chest. I gazed at the ceiling. The clocks were all ticking. “Let’s take a holiday to Haiti,” she said to me. “For the winter.”

  We were in a house of dreams. When I was gone, Walter Rosen would take it back.

  At 11:28 p.m., into the darkness, the doorbell buzzed. Lavinia stirred. “Ignore it,” she said. I remained frozen. After a few minutes, the door buzzed again. I got up. “What is it?” she said.

  “The door.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Never mind,” I said.

  I put on my trousers and belt. I put on the jacket I had set aside. Lavinia shifted. In a parched voice she asked, “Are you getting dressed?”

  I tied my shoes. “Yes.”

  The door buzzed again.

  “For the door,” I said.

  She propped herself up on her elbows. I went downstairs, all the way downstairs, drawing open the door and pulling in all that moonlight. Three men awaited me. “Comrade,” they said.

  I let out a deep breath. “Here you are,” I said. They hesitated when I invited them inside. They wanted to know if I was ready

  “Yes,” I said, “just a moment.”

  They said we had to leave. “Yes,” I said again. I stood in my parlour, looking around, unsure of what I was seeking, what I was waiting for. I heard Lavinia’s voice from upstairs. I called her. I rubbed my face. I gave the men a suitcase that I had hidden in a broom closet. It held more clothes, my shaving things. I gave them a case containing a Skylark Mk II typewriter. They took these things without speaking. Then Lavinia was on the stairs behind us. She wore a shawl across her shoulders. She was long and young, ravishing. She seemed like something borrowed, in that moment; something I had borrowed and was now returning. Her brow was knotted, her wide hazel eyes hardening.

  “I have to go,” I told her.

  “Go where?”

  “They are taking me away,” I said. “I do not know when I will be back.” />
  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “I do not know if I will be back.”

  She came down the stairs. “What do you mean you do not know if you will be back? Who are these men?”

  The men took a step toward me, instantly an entourage.

  “We must go,” one of them said to me, to her, in accented English.

  “Where are you taking my husband?” Lavinia demanded, in Russian now.

  “Goodbye,” I said.

  “Lev!”

  They had taken me by the arms and were guiding me to the door. She came at us, tried to pull them from my shoulders. She was stronger than they expected and abruptly we were standing together, in the night’s halo, the two of us.

  “I have to go,” I murmured, and I saw her jaw set, saw frozen water at her eyes. “I have to go.” With this last speaking, she suddenly became smaller.

  She kissed me once, fiercely. She had questions in her face.

  “I love you,” she said. Her glance flicked to the other men.

  “Good night,” I said. I swallowed.

  She grabbed the scruff of my coat and stayed that way, holding me, until one of the men removed her hand.

  I went away with them.

  WE DROVE THROUGH the city’s darkness. Young men on street corners, holding cigarettes. Dogs in the middle of the road. Hobos in doorways, curled on their sides. Neon signs spelled words. POMADE, CABARET, CHOP SUEY, each in red, each somehow a goodbye. The men I was with didn’t speak. I wondered whether I had seen my last familiar face? Was I already given over to strangers? New York flickered outside my window. Now I was thirsty for farewells.

  We dipped into the Holland Tunnel.

  I leaned back in my seat. I looked at the wedding ring on my finger. How long would I wear it? Perhaps they would send for Lavinia after all. Perhaps Lavinia would follow, in a fortnight, her trunk packed with sundresses. Perhaps she would dwell with me in the hills beside Lake Ladoga, planting dill and tarragon, while I strained with wires and tubes and the distance of you.

  We emerged in New Jersey, where the sky was pricked with twenty thousand stars. The road lifted us up and set us down and we followed the bend of the water. It was like a sea. Slowly, I remembered: it is a sea, it is a sea. The lights streaked and glittered, New York City across the bay, and then everything beautifully deafened by the roar of a locomotive running beside the road, fine and sparking, iron. I realized I was going home. Home to Russia, the motherland, canyons and cities and three million rivers, rushing. The Physico-Technical Institute. Sasha and Helena. Blini from the stall on Kolokolnaya Street. Springtime and the bitter winter that makes enchantment out of candlelight.

  I could see the boats now, in the harbour. They were as big as mountains. One of them was mine. The men in the car were more attentive, roused somehow, looking. The tires beat a rhythm on the road. I folded my hands in my lap. We twisted into the docks, stopped at a sign, wheeled round and into the shadow of the Stary Bolshevik. Lights shone down on us. The men got out of the car and I followed them, alive in my shoulders and ankles; the wind was everywhere, whipping, salted. Lev was there, talking to a man in uniform. I shook his hand. I was smiling now, girded. He introduced me to the captain, to the ship’s master. “Our log keeper,” Lev said. “That is what you are.”

  “Log keeper,” I said.

  The captain spoke with a Samaran accent. “Assistant log keeper.”

  “It is my pleasure,” I said, bowing my head.

  Lev watched me with a certain skepticism. I did not care about his skepticism; I knew who I was, where I was headed; I knew what I carried in my heart. I was Lev Sergeyvich Termen.

  “My equipment is all here?”

  “Show him,” said the captain.

  The man who appeared at my elbow was like a polar bear. “Follow me,” Red said, and he led me up the gangplank into the body of the ship. Just as I passed through the bolted doorway I turned and glimpsed Lev with two other men—were they the Karls?—and I think there was a huddled warehouse and the silver imprint of a city spire, and in a certain way there were countless other figures, friends, enemies, and a thousand acquaintances, Katia, Jin and Nate Stone, Rosemary Ilova and George Gershwin, perhaps Pash, watching from the darkness, as I disappeared into the Stary Bolshevik.

  I would not come out until we landed. Red would show me the room with my equipment, the theremins packed in crates, the boxes of files, and he would show me the room I am now inside, eggshell blue, with its tidy cot. I remember the key turning in the lock. I remember the heave of the ship as its engines wakened. Like that, so simply, like a folded piece of paper, I was gone.

  ONE DAY SOON I WILL arrive at the Leningrad port. I do not know what will await me. I do not know the forces that will swiftly act upon my being. They will let me out of this room and I will go to the mouth of the vessel, shake hands with my captain, feel no more seasickness. After weeks of waves I will wobble on the pier. I will do my duty. I will build new wonders.

  I will call to you through the air.

  PART TWO

  Twelve months of winter

  The rest is summer.

  Russian saying

  ONE

  UNICORN

  IT IS SNOWING IN MOSCOW. I have spent the past hour in front of this square of window, this square of snowstorm, deciding what to write to you. My headset is around my neck. The machine whirs before me. How does one begin the first letter in eight years? With a greeting? Hello Clara? Dear Clara? Dearest Clara? But then this letter will never reach you. I am almost certain that it will never reach you. I heard your voice again today. I sat at my desk and tried to choose the first line of a letter that you will never read.

  It is snowing in Moscow. It has been eight years since I wrote a letter like this, at a desk, to a friend. Is that what you are—a friend? Today I heard your voice through the earpiece, while I bent over my machine. Your voice was hiding in the noise, like a ghost. Like a transmission from the other side of life, from the spring.

  When I am finished writing to you I will fold this piece of paper in thirds. I will trade Zaytsev some cigarettes for an envelope. A letter in an envelope, such an easy thing. My plan ends there. There are no mailboxes in Marenko. What is a prisoner to do with a letter? Perhaps I will slip it to a sympathetic guard. Perhaps I will burn it. Perhaps I will keep it forever in my things, forever until a guard discovers it, snatches it from where it hides in a book, tears it into a hundred dry scraps. I remember when this happened to Andrei Markov.

  I have a question for you, Clara: What good is a letter that will never be read? What good is a lost message?

  I heard your voice in the noise, in the shush of crackling static, on a tape they brought from Spaso House. As I listened to Averell Harriman.

  All these new names.

  MY NAME IS Lev Sergeyvich Termen, as it always was. My number is L-890. I live in Marenko prison, outside Moscow, with four hundred lawbreakers. We are called zeks. It is February 1947, not yet St. Valentine’s Day. Nobody in this country celebrates St. Valentine’s Day, except perhaps Ambassador Harriman. I am in the attic of a residential building. It is on a side street near the Kremlin; unheated, glacial, but I have known worse cold. I will not ask Beria for a heater. I will not ask Beria for anything. Until he appears in a doorway, with eyes of coal, I will pretend he does not exist.

  The reason I am in this place is that when I sit at the small, square window, there is a direct view of another window, four or five hundred metres away, across a red brick wall. I will not tell you who sits behind that window, gazing out across the city.

  The attic has a low, angled ceiling. It is all made of wood, like a cabin in the forest. Each corner of the room has a knit of light cobweb, but I have seen no spiders. They are either concealed or they have gone away.

  There is a door in the far wall that leads down a back passage to the street. It is not shared with the apartments below, where Kremlin officials live with their families, dine on pork
and fresh peaches. I come to this attic twice a week, for fourteen hours. I have never seen my neighbours. I hear them through the floor but only Beria knows I am here.

  Sometimes I fear that one of the residents will hear me, and call up to the attic. She will call up to the attic, wondering who is hiding here, and I will not answer, and then my patron will send some NKVD agents to have my neighbours murdered.

  There is a desk along one wall of the attic. It has a stack of folders, several writing pads, labels, pens and ink. There is this small typewriter. There are two boxes of magnetic tape. There is my whirring machine, innocuous and painted cream, and another machine, a player, connected to a headset. The first machine has one wire for the power supply and another wire that leads up behind it to the window. It snakes outside through a hole in the wall. On the other side of the glass, a device is fastened to the window frame. The wire leads into this device. The device is black and unusual. It looks like a crow, hunched, gazing out toward the Kremlin.

  There is also a gun on the desk beside me. This gun is not for self-defence. If I need to defend myself I will kill my enemy with kung-fu. The gun is not for strangers; it is for me. If I am discovered, I will turn the muzzle of the gun toward myself and pull the trigger, click.

  I REMEMBER I WAS once a man who conducted the ether.

  I am no longer the conductor.

  TWO

  A PERSON ISN’T SAFE

  ANYWHERE THESE DAYS

  WHEN I RETURNED FROM the United States, eight years ago, I found Leningrad empty. It was the end of 1938. It was a brilliant winter’s day and a huge albino sailor brought me out of my cabin, onto the deck, where the air stung my lungs. The city was like an elegant miniature. Waves skimmed the harbour. I remember seeing the embraces of unfamiliar men and hearing the sound of grinding metal, then later watching a crane hoist my crates from the ship. I remember my fear as the boxes swung in the air, so perilously high: the vision of an overcorrection, a mistake, a slipped hook. For one instant I could see them falling and then the crates would splinter against the ground, explode, all my past destroyed.