The Invention of Exile

by Vanessa Manko

  • • •

  LEO SAT WITH HEAD BOWED, the weight of it all, picking over what had happened. The pulquería was dark. The broad shadows of the maguey and palms fell across the narrow sidewalk and through the open windows whose shades were pulled only halfway down. Overhead, fans whirred through the intermittent clink and clatter of glasses passed, pulque poured.

  Drinking, he could feel layers unearthed. One atop the other. Whole countries turned over and he felt gratitude. He stood on the man’s shoulders. The old man had unknowingly sacrificed his life for their lives and oh he’d make something of himself. He’d get out of this terrible, wrenching situation with a mother who cried anytime his father’s name was mentioned, and a father who’d worn down his mind in Mexico City.

  Damn them. He had been in the service—the Navy—and this is how he’d been thanked? Unable to bring his father to the United States. Part of him wanted to hit the man, hit it out of him, make him see clearly, make him realize that they could go, that no one would bother with him, no one would come for him, and then the opposite urge to offer sympathy and some semblance of comfort, but how, how? This old, thin man raving about his inventions. Damn it. They were useless. Scribblings by an old stateless Russian, he’d said, regretting it now, but, well, it was true. He’d spell it out, draw it out right there and say they were no use. And he would then put the man in the car himself, put him in and drive up to the border. Put him in against his will if he had to. Drive up through the states of Mexico—Sinaloa, Sonora. And they would cross, like any Americans going back after a good time below the border, or to renew their tourist visas. Or they’d get him a fake passport. Yes! That was an option too. And then he saw the scene in his mind, it bloomed before him, the place he’d go—a small room downstairs, a basement one entered from the street or back alleyway. A postage stamp of a room. A small half door and a man seated over a desk with one of those magnifying glasses affixed to his eye, hunched over papers, fake seals. The intricate, painstaking work of forgery. And then damn the U.S. Embassy! It had all been too much for his father. Why had they put him up to it, to face it? How had they not realized he wouldn’t be able to handle it? An appeal seemed all well and fine if it worked, but why had they believed coming in person would work, when all this time their mother’s letters were simply futile attempts, amounting to nothing?

  His mother’s letters. Where were they? Who had they gone to? Missives sent into some abyss was how he saw it, but there she had sat over the years—the old cumbersome machine, teaching herself to type, more point and peck. But she’d done it, and she’d written so many letters pleading their case, their family’s case. And his father’s damn inventions, drafts sent to patent agents. Pay the price and they’d handle the administrative hassles—a waste! Oh, but one had to break the rules in this life, one had to at least have more moxie, more willingness to not always toe the line. One had to break out, take some kind of active stance. Once he was with them all, once his father was back home, Mother would take care of him. He’d come around then, he’d find rest. Worn down his mind. It was true, but they would put him to some kind of work—a mechanic maybe, or working as an engineer, maybe at the Sikorsky plant. Surely, they’d take him. He could do numbers and figures, understood all the mechanics of engineering. He had excellent drafting skills, that Leo could see from the designs, the precise measurements, all these fractions scribbled in the margins. They’d take him. It would work. Worn down his mind. And then, well, he’d be an upstanding citizen of America as he’d always wanted to be. He’d decided. He’d put the man in the car himself, if it came to that. And he’d drive, he’d be the one to drive.

  • • •

  IT IS LATE. It is early. It is 2 A.M. Austin can hear the thunder in the distance as he nears his boardinghouse. He has walked from the cantina, a dull numbness in his feet as if his steps are upon not concrete, but soft felt. He walks to the stairs, holds the banister, and struggles up the steps. He falls. It is the fall of a child, tottering, but not bracing, more collapsing, limbs pliant. He is muttering, his tongue thick in his mouth.

  “Mr. Voronkov, can you tell me where you are from?”

  “Where were you born?”

  “In what country do you have citizenship?”

  “Where do you work?”

  “On what street do you live?”

  “What is your permanent address?”

  The thunder grows louder as it moves over the mountains, encroaching upon the city.

  “These men and their power and position,” he mutters to himself, “with their stamps and papers.” It is in rolling succession, the words come, phrases streaming through his mind.

  “Are you an anarchist?”

  “Do you have anything against the government?”

  “What is your country of citizenship?”

  He stares around him, startled, dazed. He has reached the top of the stairs, his chest tight from exertion and now releasing as he stumbles for the door to his rooms. Darkness. The thunder louder now, closer, and then a sudden downpour like the far-off cheering of a swelling, enormous crowd. As his eyes adjust, he can make out the gray-white rain forming a veil over the window. He walks to it. The taxi still parked at the end of his street in all its sinister stillness. He is drawn back to his room, can now see the table, and in the next room, his bed, dresser, and a flash of light in the oval mirror. He is suddenly unsure how he got here, standing in the middle of his room. The wind outside is strong, strong enough to shake the windows. He is sweating. He races to his table. His drafting papers lie scattered. He begins to take the designs—under the floorboard, the bed, next, behind the dresser. He gathers them, laying them out on his table. Such definite marks—points connected, measurements taken. Something would be made out of them, something tangible, of worth. He grabs his satchel on the floor and places it on the table. He gathers the designs into a tight bundle and stuffs them in his satchel, fastening the buckle, struggling with it, bent over it, pulling and tugging. His head swirling as he stands upright, placing the satchel snug under his arm and taking a deep breath, waiting for the room to steady, bracing himself on a chair, then on the doorframe. In a moment, he is out of his rooms, racing down the hallway, taking the stairs two at a time.

  Outside, there is nothing but the rain and wind, which, when it barrels down the street, creates havoc—trees bent, leaves damp and strewn, the wheezing, whistling is incessant until the wind calms for a moment, silence resuming except for the now steady pelting rain. The rain is cold and already his hair is drenched, his shirt too. His shoes begin to rub his bare heels, the water seeping through the soles, he conscious of a sting, knowing the skin has chafed and torn. No matter, he thinks, walking, his satchel beneath his arm still. He holds it tight, close to his body as if the wind might snatch it away from him, its contents strewn over the Condesa, blown away on a terrible gust and lost. No cars. No lights. The streetlamps black. He stops at the corner of the Parque México in its glossy green oval of trees, wet in the rain, benign and lush amid the blackness and damp around him.

  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.

  • • •

  THUNDER 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.

  • • •

  “DADDY, 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, m
y 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.