The Wanderers

by Meg Howrey

  DMITRI

  You are a fag,” Dmitri says to his brother.

  Ilya takes this calmly. “I am not,” he says. “But if I were, so what? Pfff. It is nothing.”

  Dmitri does not think it is nothing, and Ilya’s complacent sense of himself and the correctness of his opinions are a little irritating.

  “Also you should not say ‘fag’ here,” Ilya continues. “It is more cool to be okay with whatever people want to do.”

  “Don’t let Papa hear you say that.”

  “I am quoting Papa,” Ilya says, widening his eyes. “I repeat his words exactly. There is gay and not gay or both or maybe nothing. Yeah, and some boys are not boys and some girls are not girls and also there is mixture. Possibly we should not even learn English pronouns, to be safe.”

  “Ilya, when did Papa tell you this?”

  “On the walk.”

  This interests Dmitri. Before their father was about to leave for training, or go on a mission, he liked to take them each on a long walk and have a conversation about meaningful things. Dmitri was always curious about what his father said to Ilya, but since Ilya never seemed curious about Dmitri’s time with their father, pride prevented him from inquiring.

  “Papa was saying things are different here,” Ilya continues. “It is not a thing to say: fag. I should not say, and if someone says I am a gay, I should not fight.”

  “Does he know that you got in fights because of this at home?”

  “No. Did you tell him?”

  “Of course not.” When their father was home, he was so happy to be with them that they all put their troubles away for a bit and pretended that everything was perfect. Some of that was good, like being on vacation. Some of it was like being in a play, which Dmitri had been made to do once in school, and had not enjoyed.

  On Dmitri’s walk with his father, they had discussed the divorce. Unfortunately, his father had spoken to him like he was a child. The divorce, he said, was not a division of their family, but an enlargement. Family was the most important thing, his father had said, and therefore it was a good idea to make your family as large as possible, to include as many people as you could in your family. Imagine if the whole world were your family. Then there would be no war.

  “There would still be divorce,” Dmitri had pointed out. It was as close as he dared to come in contradicting his father, or introducing a note of reproach in their conversation. His father had laughed and said, “That is true,” and appeared almost proud of Dmitri for making the remark, and for a moment it seemed like he would talk to Dmitri like a man, but he did not. His father said that it was possible to divorce with love. No one was angry, he said, as if no anger meant happiness.

  Dmitri looks across his younger brother to his mother and Alexander, who are holding hands. Dmitri is used to the sight of his mother and Alexander holding hands, and hugging, and kissing. It disgusts him, but he knows that his objections are childish, and he has decided to be stoic about it. His stoicism moves him.

  Tonight is Ilya’s treat. The ballet here is not in season, so they have come to a Broadway musical. Tomorrow is meant to be Dmitri’s treat, only at the time he was asked he was in the mood to reject the notion of treats, so he just said Ilya could use his turn.

  Tomorrow he could tell his family that he is sick. He is fifteen. His mother might let him stay behind in the hotel on his own.

  No.

  Yes.

  No.

  Yes. He will tell them that he is sick. Tonight, he will start coughing.

  “Do you want me to explain to you what the synopsis says?” he asks Ilya, opening up the program. Ilya gives him an assessing look, and then agrees. Dmitri feels ashamed about the assessing look. He teases his brother too much. He loves his brother, and admires him. It means something to him that his brother should trust him. If his brother decides that he can’t trust him, then that will be that, he will never trust him again. Ilya is not a subtle person; he only believes one thing at a time.

  Dmitri thinks that in this, Ilya is very like their father. Maybe.

  Dmitri translates the synopsis into Russian, quietly, because they are meant to speak only English in public, for practice. They examine the pictures of the performers that are printed in the program.

  “This guy,” Ilya says, pointing. “You can tell he is a good dancer.”

  “It’s just his head,” Dmitri objects. “How you can tell about his dancing from just his head?”

  “You can tell,” Ilya says.

  Dmitri chews his lip and then points to a picture of a girl with blond hair and the appearance of five hundred thousand teeth.

  “Her name is Rose,” he says, reading the program. “She says thank you to her family and friends and teachers for believing in her, and her husband, Trey, for giving her love, and the Lord, for giving her a reason to wake up singing. So, Ilya, can you tell from her picture whether she is a good dancer or not?”

  Ilya barely glances at it. “She is an idiot.”

  Dmitri laughs and shuts the program. His stomach hurts.

  • • •

  IN THE LOBBY, Dmitri noticed a man.

  He noticed the man, and looked at him until the man looked back. The man had a little gray in his hair, though his face was not old. Dmitri did not think the man was American, because he was slim and very well dressed and not talking and anyway, there didn’t seem to be so many Americans in New York City. The man was standing by himself in a way that Dmitri admired. He wished that he too was standing by himself, and was well dressed and not a kid.

  Dmitri had a sudden feeling, a thought. That man will know what to do. But he hadn’t been able to think much beyond that because he himself did not know what to do, or precisely what he meant by that, even.

  He sort of knew.

  “I have to go to the toilet,” Dmitri had told his family, after he saw the man. “Restroom,” he corrected himself. Dmitri’s mother looked at Alexander.

  “You don’t have to wait for me,” Dmitri said. “If you give me my ticket, you can all sit down now.” Alexander, who liked to make a point of respecting Dmitri, handed over the ticket. Dmitri was, as always, a little ashamed of his ability to make people do what he wanted them to do.

  He had to walk by the man to go to the restroom, but the lobby was crowded, and people had come between them. He had felt very stupid in the restroom, and did not trust touching himself, even to take a piss, so he just washed his hands and then came out.

  The man was standing next to a poster on the lobby wall. Dmitri pretended that he was interested in inspecting all the posters, which seemed like a reasonable occupation. He was very afraid that the man would walk away before he got to him, but that did not happen.

  “Hello,” said the man, when Dmitri was next to him.

  “Hello,” Dmitri said. The poster next to the man was blue and pink colored and pictured a ridiculous blond girl, a unicorn, and an imbecile wearing legwarmers making a dance pose in roller skates on top of a rainbow. It was an absurd poster. No one could possibly be interested in it except for a six-year-old girl or a fag.

  The man had on cologne. Alexander wore cologne. Dmitri’s mother liked it, she was always smelling him. Dmitri’s father did not wear cologne, because he often had to be in very close spaces with other people and so needed to have as little smell as possible.

  “Are you interested in the theater?” the man asked in a friendly way. Perhaps Dmitri had been mistaken. Perhaps this man would not know what to do.

  “No,” said Dmitri. “I like art.” Although it wasn’t art he liked, he liked geometry, of which art had many good examples.

  “Oh?” The man turned and looked at the poster and seemed to give it polite consideration as a potential work of art. The poster read Xanadu on it in bubble letters. Dmitri did not know what that word meant, or how you would say that word
, or even if it was a word. Perhaps he didn’t know English at all. He was a moron.

  “Are you visiting New York?” the man asked. Dmitri was not able to place the accent.

  “Yes. No. We are—I am moving—my family is moving—at this moment—we are in hotel.” Dmitri stopped. His face was burning, so he kept it aimed at the poster. This was not him, this know-nothing child. “I am in a hotel,” he said.

  “Ah,” said the man. “I am visiting. I am also staying in a hotel. The Gramercy Park Hotel. Do you know it?”

  Dmitri shook his head and then looked at the man. Beauty was symmetry but also something else. This man wore cologne that made Dmitri’s tongue feel big in his mouth.

  “How old are you?” the man asked.

  “Eighteen,” said Dmitri. So, now he had told a lie and now it was all a game. This idea made Dmitri feel powerful and he stopped being embarrassed. He looked fiercely at the man.

  The expression on the man’s face changed. It became at once more gentle, and somehow much less so.

  “My name is Kamil,” said the man.

  “Mikhail,” Dmitri said.

  “Mikhail, do you remember the name of my hotel?” asked the man.

  “The Gramercy Park Hotel,” said Dmitri.

  “Tomorrow afternoon I will be there, all afternoon,” said the man. “My room is 1204. What is the number of my room?”

  “1204,” said Dmitri.

  “1204 was the year of the siege of Constantinople,” said the man. “If you forget the number, then you must look up when was the year of the siege of Constantinople.” The man smiled, and then laughed, which made Dmitri laugh too.

  “You should join your family, Mikhail. Enjoy the performance.” The man stepped back and so Dmitri had no choice but to do what the man said.

  When Dmitri got to his seat, Ilya was making a fuss about how he would need to ice his ankle later because they were doing a lot of walking, which was why Dmitri had needed to call him a fag.

  His mother and Alexander are talking to Ilya now. Dmitri is not certain how to spell the word Gramercy—with a y at the end? Or an e? He traces different versions in English on the leg of his pants with his fingernail. Gra-merci.

  His mother and Alexander are now talking to him. Apparently, the woman seated next to his mother—a total stranger—has taken an interest in their personal business. This woman has said that the show they are about to see is more singing and acting than dancing, but it is very good. If they want to see more dancing, the woman has recommended another show to see tomorrow night. Dmitri says that is fine, although who knows if this woman can be trusted.

  He coughs a few times. Ilya had acted like he could tell a guy in the program was a serious dancer just from looking at his head, but it turns out this isn’t a serious dance show. So, maybe that guy cannot dance at all. So, Ilya doesn’t know everything. So, he can’t tell. No one can tell.

  They are sitting in the third row. The man, Kamil, must be sitting behind them somewhere. Perhaps the man cannot see Dmitri from where he is. You have to know someone very well before you can know them just by the back of their head. The lights blink. The performance is going to begin soon. Everyone is sitting down.

  Dmitri stands up. His mother looks at him and hisses for him to sit, but Dmitri whispers that he is only taking off his jacket. He is a man who knows what to do, and he takes off his jacket and drapes it across his seat, which means he is turned around, facing the rest of the audience, and after he fixes his jacket he stands up straight for a moment, and then he turns and sits down.

  There. Kamil knows where he is now, he is certain of it. Kamil is looking at the back of Dmitri’s head, his neck, his shoulders. The lights go down and Dmitri puts his open program on his lap so that his dick can be hard if it wants to be hard, which it does. The orchestra, which is not in an orchestra pit but somewhere behind the curtain, begins to play.

  He cannot go to the hotel tomorrow, to the room where Constantinople was seized.

  He cannot not go.

  On the day of Dmitri’s twelfth birthday, they’d been on vacation at their cousin’s house near Novorossiysk. His father had been on the International Space Station, and made a special plan to celebrate with them. His father had calculated when he could look out the window of the cupola on the station and be passing over just where they all were. And they had brought their father’s pair of night vision goggles with them so they would be able to look into the night sky and see the light of the station passing over. They went outside at the right time, and held sparklers in the air, and they’d seen the light of the station, and waved their sparklers. “I felt I could see you,” his father said later. “Just knowing that you were there, looking up at me, and I was looking down at you. It was one of the best moments.”

  They had been able to see his lights, but he hadn’t seen theirs. The Black Sea, yes. The lights of Novorossiysk, yes. But not their individual sparklers. His father couldn’t see him then, and could not see him now. His father wasn’t even in space now, looking down. His father was in Japan. After that, his father would be in Utah. And then, his father would possibly go to Mars and become one of the most famous people ever on the planet. They were all very proud. The thing about pride, though, is it doesn’t fully occupy you. It’s like holding a sparkler. Basically, you just stand there with a light in your hand and look up.

  The curtain rises, and the show begins. Dmitri looks at the things happening on the stage, but he does not see them. He imagines the back of his head, and the back of his neck, and the back of his shoulders and wonders what they look like to the man who is watching him, in the dark.

  YOSHI

  Yoshi settles with himself that he is grateful. Yes, it would have been nice to spend the entirety of his last two days in Japan with his wife, but Madoka could not walk away from her work for an entire day merely because he happened to have some free hours. They will have all day tomorrow, and they have had many evenings, or partial evenings, in the past seven weeks. Helen and Sergei have not been so fortunate. Yoshi moves through his house, consciously taking in the colors, the objects, the textures of things. It will be a long time before he is here again, and in a few months, he will not have any of these creature comforts. This glass bowl with flowers in it, for instance, and these candlesticks, a wedding present. Yoshi focuses on the candlesticks, but they are not quite the right objects to evoke emotion. One does not miss candlesticks.

  For Eidolon, he will be allowed a very small bag for personal items, less than one kilo in weight. He will take something from nature, if it will be approved: his favorite acorns. Q. phillyraeoides, Q. dentata, C. cuspidata. The acorns will be a reminder of the trees that he loves, and are something he can hold in his hand. Later on, for the real mission, they will be acorns that have been to Mars.

  Yoshi continues his tour through his small house. He and his wife have very compatible taste, preferring to live with light colors and no clutter.

  Sometimes Yoshi does picture himself seated in a deep, tufted armchair, wearing a heavy silk dressing gown and brocaded slippers, surrounded by towers of dark bookcases and telescopes, and carved tables covered with maps and botanical drawings, a faithful midsize canine at his feet. He would not call it a fantasy, but perhaps it is that. He has not even told Madoka of this image.

  It is too bad his wife could not have spent more time with his crew so they could know her. The day at Meiji-mura would have been a good opportunity, but she had insisted he go alone. “It will be better with just the three of you,” she said. “You won’t be able to talk as freely if I’m there.”

  This was prescient of her. His crew had talked freely, or as Prime might put it, they had deepened the context of their rapport and created a shared experience. If Madoka had been there, Sergei might not have taken the opportunity to speak about his divorce, and—in the presence of one who bore all the burden of astrona
ut life and none of the joy—they might have felt the need to temper their enthusiasm concerning Prime Space.

  Yoshi thinks he will use the remaining time before his wife’s arrival to attend to some household chores so that tomorrow they can devote themselves entirely to each other. There is not a great deal to do—accustomed to travel, Madoka and Yoshi leave light fingerprints—but there is laundry to put away. Yoshi unclips a pair of his wife’s underpants from the drying line and considers how best to fold them. He recalls watching with wonder, early in his marriage, as Madoka briskly converted a fitted bed sheet into a perfectly neat rectangle. He had not even known that was possible, and she had moved too quickly for him to study her method. He still does not know how it is done, has deliberately left it as one of life’s eternal mysteries, a romantic acknowledgment on his part of the unfathomable depths of his wife.

  Yoshi moves into the bedroom and opens the top drawer of his wife’s bureau in order to get a paradigm for how Madoka likes her underpants folded. Not at all, it seems. She leaves them in a flat pile.

  Yoshi tells himself that if his wife had raised serious objections to his joining Prime for this mission he would have listened to them. He had been careful, when outlining the specifics of the timeline to her, to do so in a neutral way so as not to prejudice her honest response. “I could be one of the first three humans to walk on another planet” had not been part of his presentation. He had not brought up the increase in salary, that he would be earning—for the first time in their married life—more than his wife. He had not said, “JAXA was lobbying hard for a Japanese citizen to be included in the astronaut selection and they have let me know that if I turn this opportunity down, Prime will not replace me with another Japanese astronaut. We were selected as a team—the three of us—and as far as Prime is concerned, individual components of the team are not replaceable.”

  None of these points were inconsequential—indeed, they were almost overwhelming in their combined significance—but it was the last point that had initially excited him the most. It was evident that Prime considered the three of them to be a kind of dream team, a trio whose individual temperaments, skills, and experience would combine in such a way as to be able to withstand the most challenging and dangerous expedition in the history of humankind. It was not unlike being told that one’s soul mates had been located.