The Invention of Exile

by Vanessa Manko

  The border was close—a mile beyond the mine and one could stand before it quite easily, as Austin stood now after a long walk. The hand-painted placards were driven far into the ground with a black line down the middle, “U.S.A.” written lengthwise on one side of the line, “Mexico” on the other. He’d been as close as this many times.

  “It’s easy enough to cross,” a fellow foreman had told him in the first months after they’d left. “A few years back, in the twenties, much easier. Cows, all the cattle too, grazing back and forth across the line.” He’d said this fanning his arm through the air, an easy back and forth to denote crossing.

  “Yes, but I’m not cattle.”

  “I bet some days, though, you wish you were.”

  “True, true.” Laughter. But he was Russian. That identity was vanishing, just like the country itself. It was 1934. The Americans still feared the Red Menace, the border guards on the lookout for any Reds coming up through South America, intent on revolution. It no longer mattered that he was a husband and a father. The world did not care. He stared across the border. It was not just that he felt Julia across that line and the children too, a two-thousand-mile line stretching west to California’s Pacific and east along Texas. He was there as well, or a version of a self, his other, parallel self, that industrious, proud man who was granted his visa (such a small thing to want after everything), the man who escorted his wife and children aboard that train and then sat with them in the leather banquette seats as it crept out slow and steady from the Cananea station, picking up speed onward to Nogales and breaking fast through the border so that they didn’t even know it when they’d crossed it, not until they’d reached far into Texas with its skies as big as Mexico’s. He saw the man who watched that big sky country fill up with hills, as the train kept steady toward the smaller skies of New England. And when he liked to think big and stretch his imagination far to cross every boundary—real or imagined—he’d see himself living that other life, certain of his position, living without any fear, these images running alongside him, streaming and stretching back and forth across the line the way we carry our past with us, our futures too. He’d be that man. Not this one—the one in Cananea: the border a separation; the place of closest connection.

  • • •

  THE SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF their departure. Austin lay asleep, his heart pounding not in fear but in expectation of an arrival, his whole being open to the moment he’d embrace them, see their familiar faces. He was damp with sweat, disoriented as he woke at 5 A.M., his eyes adjusted. He lay hot under the covers save for his shoulder exposed to the chilled, early morning air. From the front room, he could hear a floorboard letting out a familiar crack and he threw off the covers, sitting up, still expectant, eager. His heart raced and grew loud in his ears as he listened for more signs of their presence. This time the humming was louder and he was certain of it, knew the melody, a children’s nursery rhyme? His feet hit the floor, tingling from the cold. He was certain that it was their voices he heard in the next room over. They must be near—there, beyond the door. Julia’s humming, the quiet absorbed play, the soft click of blocks. He was smiling so hard his cheeks hurt. Tears sprang to his eyes. They’d come back to him! She’d gone and done as she wrote in one of her letters. Take the train all the way back to you. In an instant, he would embrace them, but he was walking such a long way and still he could not step over the threshold. He could hardly bear to open the door, to see their faces, knowing eyes. Yes. It would be them for certain. He could see the cool, milky morning light from under the bedroom door and his stomach growled as he realized the hour—5 A.M., drowsy, empty.

  He pushed on the door and took in the front room. The small, square windows placed at shoulder height let in two long beams of gray-white light.

  “Julia,” he half whispered. He cleared his throat and then called her name once more. This time louder. Where had they gone? He stood in the center of the room, turning around. A minute passed. He retraced his steps to the bedroom, and then back in through the front room, to the porch, their voices trailing him like tracers. Turning around, he stood in the frame of the front door, looking into the small barracks house—the light through the windows, the air holding on to a stark, steadfast silence. He stepped back outside and moved to the porch steps, shaking the voices from his mind, yet trying to hold on to that joyful certainty of having been near to his family. The dream lingered through the now-tarnished morning of their absence and when a moment of it came back—murky, incoherent—the infusion of feeling was one that he could only recognize as joy.

  By 7 A.M. the sun had changed the light to a soft amber glow. He remained standing, watching the day begin to arrive, staring, near-catatonic as the gradual, incremental sorrow sank in, intruding on his day, wanting to stop time, but knowing the minutes would keep coming and soon it would be hot and the heat and white sunlight would take him far from this moment, their presence, the dream, all still fresh in his mind and the hours of the day waiting. Friday. The workday ahead, the interminable weekend—two concrete blocks of days he’d have to chip through with a chisel. He would feign it though, pretend to fall in with the raucousness toward the evening, playing cards, drinking tequila with the workers before they traveled back to their remote villages, where they’d eat big meals, and stroll arm in arm on Sunday with a sweetheart. He was sitting now on the porch and found himself occupied by the efforts of the ants that busied themselves on his windowsill. He laughed in what he knew was a bitter, tired way, in awe at how the little creatures lifted and carried crumbs and sticks, tiny heads holding high a load twice their size—nature’s engineering.

  • • •

  IT’S EASY ENOUGH TO CROSS, he heard the foreman’s voice. But he had not crossed the ocean twice to end his days with ice and a pickax, languishing in a labor camp. And to stay?

  • • •

  THE CONSULATE IN NOGALES is a low-roofed, single-floor structure. One room in front. One room in back. It is almost always closed. He’d gotten a ride with a group of migrant workers. He’d had to sit in the back of the truck and so arrived with a fine film of dust on his face and in his hair. He stood outside the consulate, combed his hair—one, two strokes along the left side, one stroke for the right, his part now visible. In the reflection of the window, his face blurred as his focus shifted to three men crossing the street. He could just make out their faces beneath the brims of hats, neckties cinched tight around starched collars. Eyes concealed in dark shadows, mouths moving as they conferred. He placed the comb in his front pocket and turned to face the men, who were upon him, close enough for him to see the lines etched deep into foreheads, along the corners of their still-moving mouths. They passed him and walked into the consulate. He followed, a little reluctant, a little cautious, pausing to check his reflection in the door’s glass before walking from the bright day into the dimly lit room.

  • • •

  HE WAS SURPRISED NOT to find the three men he’d seen enter. Surely, they’d be standing at the front desk, but they were nowhere to be found. He wondered if he’d half imagined them, when, as he approached the front desk, he heard men’s voices in low, secret discussion, the suit sleeve of one of the men now visible through a half-closed door. The man made eye contact with Austin, looked away, and then closed the door. He turned back to the room, a single ceiling fan turning slow and apathetic above the clerk at the reception desk, a Mexican family sitting on wooden chairs lined along the front window. Why had the man looked at him with such a strong gaze, and then shut the door so abruptly? Not a good sign, he thought, as he took a seat beside the family. Not good at all, he thought, sitting on his hands and leaning forward a bit in his chair before sitting back to take a less anxious pose, shoulders pressed into the back of the chair, legs outstretched, one crossed over the other, in repose. A confident posture. Let them open the door and shut it in my face once more, he thought. Let them see me seated here in this way.

  • �
� •

  “YOU SAID MAYBE A month, two,” Austin said. He was seated before the Nogales consul, wondering if the man remembered him at all, remembered his Julia and their children. He’d once been considerate, accommodating then, had left them with some hope.

  “I make no promises,” he said now, eyes hard.

  “You men and your power,” Austin said under his breath. He shook his head and stared out the window.

  “Mr. Voronkov, it is not easy with this anarchist charge. You must have patience.”

  “It has been two years.”

  “Anarchy is taken very seriously, you see.”

  “I am not an anarchist. My wife is an American. My children— You see, if I can simply enter the country, I will show them I am not an anarchist. I will—”

  “It does not work that way.”

  “And what am I to do for them down here?”

  “We can petition again, but it takes up to a year.”

  “A year?”

  “Yes.”

  • • •

  1936. THE MEN IN white muslin are back. White tunics and pantaloons. A red sash around the waist. Their hats wide and flat. He sees them once every month or so. They pass by his barracks house sometimes in groups of three or five. They stare at him, smoldering gazes, accusatory and patient, as if they knew a secret about him.

  He’d been thinking hard, running through a pattern of an idea, the position of the hoist chain for the cement block lifter, his thoughts wandering off to his boys and his baby girl, be good to your mother. Telepathy. They might even be able to hear him. Did they remember the sound of his voice? “Papa’s funny accent,” they always used to tease him. And he’d been working all that morning, three hours or more spent at the desk he’d built for Julia, trying a new idea from all angles so that he’d run out of the last bit of paper and was forced to go out to the company store. How much he did not like to venture out on a weekend when the mining barracks were more desolate and empty than during the week. Chalk days is what they were, brittle and breaking—it was running smack into their absence and it hurt and stung like any lash of a whip he’d ever felt. And he’d run into one of the men in muslin. Hard, cold stares and silence. “What do you want from me?” he’d asked the man, and then walked away, onward toward his house.

  Now, he is watching them cross in front of his barracks house, slow strides, two front, three behind. They never speak to him. Just stare. Not a blink of eye or movement of head. Nothing. He steps out on the porch, better to let them know he knows they are watching. He walks down the steps and makes as if he’s mending the railing that lines the porch. Best not to let them wonder at what he might be doing inside, let them think he is a man with a house to attend to, fixing the loose boards. With his hammer he begins to knock on one of the wooden railings. Will they see that there is no nail? They watch him for what seems an hour, but it could be only five minutes. Or is it? He is hammering, sweating.

  He stands tall, arching his back, and runs his palm along the banister. “Shit,” he yells and looks into his palm where a long splinter the length of a needle has lodged itself into his thumb. The men are still watching. He can see them out of the corner of his eyes and all it took was one man to enter his rooms, hold a rifle to his chest and demand his papers, his inventions, taking his notebooks. His hand is throbbing, but he will not let go of his grip on the banister, he will show them that he is simply a man working on his house. When he turns around the men are small as toys, far up into the hills, hardly visible save for their shadows, which stretch sideways on the ground.

  Cananea, 1936

  Dear Julia,

  How I do miss all of you dearly—my wife and children. When I think of the good times we had. I can only hope for a future when we are all together. I am working, and thank goodness for that—I have my work. Without it I do feel these hours would seem useless for I must say this is a lonely place. I know not a soul. All are strangers to me, and for a man like myself—rather peaceful and calm of nature—it is not easy for me to always face people I do not know whose customs are so different. I am afraid that I spend my time in the barracks house, working on my inventions. I do have a wonderful new invention—a stationary hydro-propeller for steamships. . . . I have also corresponded with the D.C. patent office. Of course, what will they make of me here in Mexico, but I’ve explained my situation thoroughly and can only hope they will accept my ideas. If they do, we will all benefit, and mostly you my dear Julia, who I’ve written on my application as a sole benefactor of any monies earned. We shall see what they write me. And I hope they will accept my oath of a single inventor. Being alone here, I had to sign the witness as God.

  • • •

  AUSTIN SOON DEVELOPED A series of pastimes for the weekends. He’d wander through the vacant works, closer to the border, not altogether unpleasant at times to walk within the shadow of the machinery at rest, lying quiet and unused, the smell of copper lingering, a screech of metal as wind blew dust into gears. Vultures sat atop the hoist and the cement blocks, and on his walks he stopped to watch them—their sternums pulsing, fast undulating breath.

  Other days he ventured farther along the border. He was only one man, and all he need do was walk calmly across it, and continue. One foot in front of the other. All the way across the open expanse like any farmer surveying his land, and he’d walk not parallel to the border as his pathways took him now, but perpendicular, a simple repositioning of the body. And he would stumble upon a town, and as long as he spoke to very few, he would then walk to the next one over, and the one after that before finding water and food, and maybe he would take a situation, an odd job or two—fix car engines. He would save enough for a rail ticket—he would need $25 for the ticket, a month or two of work. No more. His hopes lifted like a small prop plane along a runway and for a while it was all clear before him—the sky, the ground. The border placard reached knee height and if he kicked it with his boot it would fall down into the dust and brambles. He could see that, he could make sense of it, the openness, but he stood still and before he knew it his mind was wandering down pathways, as he imagined Julia’s letters to the congressman and senators, next, his own walks to the consulate, the company store, his meandering along the edge of the border, at the end of each journey, each trip he felt the weight of a heavy door like a tomb. The consulate in Nogales, the patent officers, his ideas, all of them together formed in his mind an impenetrable barrier and he saw it as paper—a clean, white boundary filled with an incriminating fact—he was an anarchist, a threat, a dangerous, subversive element. And then he stood tall, shoulders pressed back, staring out across the border, and for an instant he was back in the cement block cell, hearing the taps through the walls, the men and their questions, an endless barrage that seemed to afflict and wound him, and he felt a terrible shudder, a quaking at the exposure, alone. He cowered back, ashamed and broken, and when he could look no more, he crouched on the ground to bury his head in his hands.

  He wept, his eyes blinded by the tears. He tugged at the ends of his hair. The dirt scratched at his ankles, and the dust stuck to his damp, sweaty forehead, soon to pour down his brow and neck. The beads of sweat formed along his back, tears rolled down his face, and his heart felt dry and parched with anguish as he felt something break, a deep terrible split, like a tendon torn, his heart beating faster, a sinking feeling as if he were falling from a great height, though when he looked he knew he was on the ground, and the tearing pulled and stretched and, as much as he tried to throw himself across, he felt it all fall away from him.

  A truck passed, its wheels kicking up dust in clouds of misty sparkle. Austin rose, placed his hat on his head and turned to face the road two yards from the border. The truck windows were down and someone had a radio on, the static and scratch like tangled twigs of a bird’s nest. A man’s voice was booming through the static. The words were in Spanish or maybe not. It was hard to tell through the interfe
rence, not on the right frequency, something off there, he thought. The voice surrounded him, in an accusatory tone, but he was not certain.

  The voice trailed off into buzz and noise and then the truck sped farther off. The sun overhead was hot and bright. His jaw locked tight, his eyes watering slightly, and a stillness came over him, nearly paralyzed. His heart raced. He pivoted to look behind him, took in the horizon on all sides, the white sky above him, and the sun temporarily blinded him so that he saw blackness and then red and then light. He closed his eyes, feeling a vertigo. He stumbled, breathing hard and trying to relax his mind, struggling to gain a foothold as he opened his eyes to see the horizon slanted on an angle, tilting, as if the earth had been momentarily jarred off its axis and then back again.

  The man stood twenty yards from him, a dark shadow underfoot. The sun reflected off the man’s watch, the sheen of his polished shoes. He did not know where the man came from, and the barracks and the mines were a far ways off from where he stood at this lone, abandoned border placard, though he knew about the patrols—the border agents, the FBI, the Mexican police, even the Soviet agents were here. He looked behind him and across the border placard, searching for any sign of a car or truck, for any others, a horse even. Nothing. The man did not move, simply stared at Austin, and then he began to open and close his mouth, but Austin could only hear a kind of roaring tumult and then a piercing ringing, his heart seemed to flex as if it were a hand opening and closing within his chest. The man took a step toward Austin, then another, still his mouth was moving, but Austin could not make out what the man was saying. He tried to steady himself with the now-still line of the horizon. When he turned back, the man was flanked by others, they held their bayonets in dirty, rough hands, five of them in all, their bast boots in rags. One was holding a cigarette between lips, Siberian blue eyes like his own, a sapphire now dulled to white gray, and beyond them in the hills the red flags were in wait. He looked to the border and then back again. The men were gone. Austin was left alone.