Hum: Stories

by Richmond, Michelle

  A few weeks into my research, I discovered an interesting fact on an obscure blog written by an Uradian university student: the ambassador had been one of several hundred children orphaned by a factory disaster in the early sixties, and from the age of five until he left for college, he had been shuttled from relative to relative. There was a photograph of the ambassador at the age of seven, standing in the first row of a group of several dozen schoolchildren. The photograph suggested the usual boisterousness and chaos that attends large groups of children, but the young boy who would become the ambassador seemed frozen in place as he stared into the camera, arms crossed over his chest. I too was an orphan. I too had spent my childhood in many different houses, among many different adults. The orphan moves through life with a peculiar loneliness only another orphan can understand, always feeling not quite one with the world.

  ***

  In November, five months after we moved into the house, there was a sudden flurry of activity. Instead of coming twice a month, the maintenance personnel began appearing at our door once a week. By the end of December it was three times a week. In early January, five hundred of our soldiers arrived in Urada on a “peacekeeping mission.” The event hardly made the news—just ten seconds on CNN’s World Minute, slightly better coverage on BBC. Only by searching the small stories far back in the newspaper did I discover that the ambassador had bluntly criticized the action. “This is clearly a military occupation disguised as something benign,” he said.

  There was no public outcry to speak of; even the most vociferous of the left remained silent. No one seemed to know where Urada was or what we were doing there.

  During my nocturnal visits to the garden, I noticed that the ambassador was spending less and less time at his desk, more and more time staring out the window, yet he never so much as glanced my way. I had expended so much of my emotional energy on him, so much of my time, and he did not even know I existed. It reminded me of a terrible crush I had for three years in high school on a boy one grade above me, a boy I never met. When the object of my affection graduated, I felt a deep sense of regret for never having spoken to him, never having made myself known. I was a shy teenager with few friends, and after the boy disappeared from the school I felt an overwhelming sense of despair. Now, it was as if that high school crush was being repeated, albeit with much higher stakes.

  One night in early February I went so far as to turn the light on in the garden and stand in a spot easily visible from the ambassador’s window. I willed him to look at me. At one point, he did glance in my direction. I could not tell if it was merely a tick of his neck, or if he acknowledged me with a small nod.

  In March, the number of troops in Urada increased to 1,000 and our government promised to send more, bandying about a number of noble words that rolled off their tongues with terrifying ease. “Freedom,” our president said, “duty,” uttering the words with such conviction one might surmise that God himself was leading the whole operation. The discussion of Urada took up fewer than three minutes of an hour-long press conference. Soon thereafter the ambassador called a press conference of his own, which was attended by only half a dozen reporters. “This has gone too far,” he said. “All we ask is that you leave our country in peace.”

  ***

  Three months after the occupation began, I felt myself giving in. It was eight o’clock on a Thursday evening and my husband was working the late shift. I was alone in the house. I had taken my shower and enjoyed a simple dinner of salad and cold chicken. I was sitting in the study, well into my third glass of wine, listening to soft music. Each time a song came to a close, I felt my throat tightening, my whole body tensing, as I waited for the humming interval between songs.

  The hum, that night, seemed louder than ever. What was it about the hum that bothered me so? It was annoying, certainly, but it was more than that. The hum reminded me of him, and when I thought of him I could not help but consider my own invisibility. The hum was a constant reminder that he did not see me. His country, too, was invisible, noticed only by a few powerful men who viewed it as a small, easily surmountable obstacle.

  It was by some subconscious impulse that I found myself in the kitchen, staring into the open drawer, my fingers traveling over the contact paper. Only after I had peeled the paper from the wood, loosened the piece of tape that held the key, and slipped the key into my palm, did I realize what I was doing.

  I walked down the hallway to the second bedroom. I hesitated only for a moment. Then, as if of its own will, the key slid into the doorknob. I expected something quite different, I suppose—alarms, bright lights, at the very least some resistance from the doorknob. But there was nothing, just the key sliding easily into place, clicking slightly as I turned it to the right, the doorknob yielding to my hand, the door swinging open.

  I fumbled along the wall and found the light switch. The room was smaller than our bedroom, the walls adorned with a fussy floral wallpaper that must have been chosen decades before by the original owners. Inside the room, the hum was even louder, a steady, high-pitched whine. The room was filled with computers, unidentifiable gadgets, tiny TV screens. Each screen was labeled: green room, blue room, meeting hall, entryway, dining hall, bedroom 1, bedroom 2, and so forth.

  It was not the meeting rooms and offices that interested me, the large tables around which important matters were discussed. Nor the sound of serious voices, discussing Urada’s fate. What I desired was a more intimate picture—not of the ambassador, but of the man.

  I walked from screen to screen until I found one labeled Ambassador’s Personal Suite. I pulled a chair up to the television, took a moment to gather my nerves, and leaned in close. The screen was dark and grainy. I could make out a bed, a dresser, a rug. It took a few moments to focus, for my eyes to translate the moving shapes, but then it became clear—two bodies on the bed, the man partially clothed, the woman entirely naked.

  Of course, what did I expect? He was doing what people do when their worlds fall apart: he was making love to his wife. There was no audio, just the movement of their bodies, and all around me, the high-pitched hum. I sat for several minutes, staring at the screen. The chair creaked each time I so much as shifted a knee, and I imagined an indistinct someone in some other dark room, listening in, noting the exact time the second bedroom was breached.

  Eventually the ambassador stood up and wandered away from the bed, into what must have been the bathroom. The woman lay naked on her side. A couple of minutes later the ambassador returned. I watched them fall asleep. I could see the rise and fall of their chests as they breathed. At some point I realized that I was breathing with them, the three of us in tandem, a synchronized trio of breath. I put the chair in its original place, closed the door behind me, and returned the key to the kitchen drawer, pressing the contact paper down around it.

  At four in the morning I heard the front door open, my husband’s footsteps in the foyer. He came into the living room, and in his face I could see he was startled to find me awake, sitting in the chair by the fireplace.

  He walked over and sat on the arm of the chair, touched my face.

  “Why are you crying?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come to bed.”

  I allowed him to lead me there.

  My husband was not an uncaring man. He was not without intellect or charm. As far as I knew, he had never been unfaithful. He was not to blame for the fact that, over time, we had become quietly lost to each other.

  In April the number of troops rose again, this time to 2,500. I continued to make my nightly trips to the garden. One night, the ambassador did not appear in his window. Not the next night, or the next. Had he left the country? Had he relinquished his post? I searched the back pages of the paper for news of him, but there was nothing.

  ***

  One afternoon in April, I left my husband to housesit while I went to see a movie at the Cinaromaplex. The title of the movie was Countdown Emergency! It was the
kind of mindless blockbuster to which I have always been partial, the kind of movie that allows me to relax completely and forget my worries. When I arrived, however, it was already sold out. Rather than returning home to face my husband, who had been asking a lot of questions over the last few days—Why was I so quiet? Was I hiding something? Had he done something to upset me?—I bought a ticket to an independent film from Bulgaria that had received international acclaim, exactly the type of film I always tried to avoid. Subtitles, delicate characterizations of angst-ridden individuals, and political subtexts never failed to leave me depressed and anxious.

  The poster for the Bulgarian film called it “enlightening and thought-provoking.” I was not in the mood to be enlightened. I had come to the movies to clear my mind. The image I most wanted to erase was that of the ambassador’s wife lying naked on the bed. Even with the blurry distance of the surveillance cameras, I could tell she had a lovely figure. My feelings about the ambassador’s wife could not properly be called jealousy. What she inspired in me could more aptly be described as a sense of loss. She lived day to day with the elegant and serious ambassador, this man whom I had secretly come to care about. Despite the fact that I had never met him face to face, I had a feeling that we were matched in temperament, the ambassador and I, that in some complex way we were compatible. For all the good will I felt toward my husband, I could not say we were compatible.

  The theater was already dark when I went in, and the ads were playing. A commercial for Hersheys came on, filling the air with the sweet, waxy smell of milk chocolate. Although the theater was crowded, there were still a few pairs of empty seats scattered about. I walked halfway to the back and took a seat at the very end of a row, on the left. I placed my handbag and coat in the empty seat next to me, hoping to deter anyone who might wish to sit there. Under my feet, I could feel the vibrations from the action adventure movie playing on the lower level. There were the usual trailers, followed by short ads for the theater’s state-of-the-art sound and olfactory systems. Then the lights went down, a melancholy music began to play, and the scent of summer grass filled the air. An open field bathed in sunlight appeared on-screen. Then the camera moved out to reveal two children running through the field. It was strange to smell sun and grass when, outside, the weather was foggy and cold. Soon there was a kitchen on screen, a lonely housewife with a red kerchief around her head, the smell of baking bread.

  “Excuse me,” a voice said. For a moment I thought the voice had come from the speakers, but then I caught sight of a figure in the aisle on my left. “Is that seat taken?” he asked. I didn’t look up to see his face, I just saw the hand with the popcorn gesturing at the seat next to me. Unhappily, I removed my coat and handbag from the empty seat and moved my legs aside as much as possible to allow the man to pass. Still, he could not help brushing the backs of his legs against my knees as he squeezed by. I looked up. His back was to me, a broad back in a woolen coat, and yet something about him seemed so familiar my breath caught in my throat.

  He fumbled a bit getting into his seat, squeezed as it was between me and a rather large woman on the other side. Once he had sat down, I was able to see his face. It was the ambassador. He must have felt me looking at him, because he glanced over and gave me a little nod. I quickly turned my eyes toward the screen. A man had entered the dreary kitchen and was arguing with the woman. The music ended, and their voices rose and fell in a kind of domestic rancor. I was too startled to read the subtitles imposed in white over the ugly scene. The smell of the ambassador’s popcorn mingled with the smell of baking bread from the movie, and I felt dizzy and a little nauseous.

  I had always had the feeling that the ambassador rarely left the embassy, that he was trapped there in much the same way I was trapped in the house. But no, he was sitting beside me, flesh and blood. I could feel the heat from his body. If I dared put my hand on the armrest I might even touch his skin.

  I spent the next two hours imagining possible scenarios, scripting each one in detail, with a beginning, middle, and end. Some of the scenarios involved only a few minutes, while others stretched on for years. All the while I felt the ambassador breathing beside me, heard the popcorn crunching between his teeth. He kept moving around, unable to get comfortable, and several times his leg brushed against my own.

  Finally, the credits began to roll. The ambassador shifted in his seat, took his coat in his arms, but did not get up. He leaned forward to watch the credits. The theater began to empty. The credits went on and on. The emptier the theater became, the more strongly I felt the presence of the ambassador. Finally there was no one left but the two of us, sitting side by side in the dark. The final scene had been of a melancholy sexual encounter between the housewife and a bank manager, and the musky scent of sex lingered in the air, mingling with the ambassador’s cologne, a strange, foreign fragrance. Added to these smells was a faint tinge of my own perspiration. The darkness of the theater, the closeness of our two bodies, the rows upon rows of empty seats, and the embarrassingly personal smells all combined to create an awkward intimacy.

  By now the credits were finished, and he was obviously ready to leave. I gathered my handbag and coat and stepped into the aisle. I could hear him walking behind me. Moments later we were in the lobby. The next move came so easily, it felt as though I had been planning it all along. I had little to gain, much to lose, but what else could I do? I felt an acute sense of time passing, the remaining years moving rapidly toward an abrupt and unsatisfactory end.

  I stopped and turned to face him. Our eyes were only inches apart. As the words formed in my mind, the hum began to grow fainter. “Mr. Ambassador,” I said, and the choice seemed clear now, inevitable. He looked up. “I’ve seen you around the neighborhood,” I blurted. “Would you like to have coffee?”

  “Why not?” It took me a few seconds to register his response. Instead of my catching him off guard, it was the other way around.

  We stepped outside, into the dim, foggy light. “I know a place just a few blocks from here,” the ambassador said. I found myself being led by him along the crowded city street. It was a sensation at once thrilling and embarrassing; somehow, he had managed to put me in the role of an obedient child. As we walked, we talked very little. He made a comment about the weather, then pulled out his cell phone and checked his messages. He walked very fast, it was an effort to keep up. Eventually we arrived at a hole-in-the-wall sort of establishment, not a café but a bar. He glanced around before slipping inside the open door. There was no one in the place except the bartender, who looked up from the television and said to the ambassador, “I thought you’d disappeared.”

  “No, just busy,” the ambassador replied. He walked to a little booth in a back corner, and not until we were seated did he finally put his cell phone away. He propped both elbows on the table and leaned forward, resting his chin on his folded hands. “Well,” he said, smiling, “you obviously know who I am. Who are you?”

  “Susan,” I lied. Everything had happened so quickly and unexpectedly, it suddenly seemed wise not to divulge my real name.

  “Jack and coke?” the bartender said, pulling a bottle off the shelf.

  “Yes, and she’ll have—” The ambassador paused, waiting for my response.

  “A glass of pinot, please.”

  A radio station was playing over the speakers. The DJ had just come back from a commercial break and was announcing the call letters—KNBA, out of Anchorage, Alaska. “It’s local appreciation hour,” the DJ said. “Here’s the Glacial Explosion, singing ‘Time to Waste’.”

  The ambassador hummed along to the song. “The best way to judge a bar is by the music it plays,” he said. “Roy knows his music.”

  Roy brought our drinks and returned to his stool behind the bar. A small overhead television was tuned to a soccer game.

  The ambassador raised his glass in a toast. “To you, Susan.”

  Our glasses clinked. I didn’t know where to go from there. Anything I’d
ever wanted to say to him seemed inappropriate. The thrill of finally being eye to eye with the ambassador was somewhat tempered by the fact that it all seemed too easy, too quick. “I’ve seen you on TV,” I said. “I’ve been keeping up with what’s going on.”

  “Why?” He was looking at me with genuine surprise.

  “Your country’s been through a lot.”

  “It’s a disaster,” he said. “I talk and talk, but no one listens.”

  “At least you have your principles.”

  He stared at me with an amused expression. After all those months of observing him, I was the one who suddenly felt like a specimen under a microscope. “But you have something better,” he said. With a sweep of his arm he indicated the open door, the world waiting outside. “You have this dream.”

  “What good is a corrupt dream?”

  “A dream is always better than a nightmare.”

  He finished off his drink and ordered another, plus a second glass of wine for me. I had only taken a few sips of my first glass, but, feeling the need for courage, I quickly emptied it. Over the next hour, the ambassador asked me questions about my job, my background, and finally my family. “I suppose you have a husband,” he said.

  By now I was finishing my third glass of wine. “I do.”

  “I suppose you will not be telling the husband about this afternoon.”

  “I don’t see how we’ve done anything wrong,” I said. I could feel my face getting hot. The ambassador seemed to be enjoying my discomfort.

  “True, but we both know we’re about to,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Part of me could not believe his directness, his lack of diplomacy. Another part of me understood that his steady gaze and unembarrassed proposition were small-scale indiscretions, perfectly befitting a man who dared defy the most powerful government on the planet.